What we do
The Pacific VAWG Prevention Hub provides high-quality, accessible resources for practitioners, activists, and researchers committed to ending violence against women and girls. As part of a growing regional network, we support individuals and organisations with the knowledge, tools, and skills needed to drive effective, evidence-based prevention and strengthen feminist movements in the Pacific.
Our vision
The Pacific VAWG Prevention Hub is a Pacific-based dynamic space for learning, sharing, advocacy, and support to end violence against women and girls in all their diversities. Grounded in feminist, intersectional and rights-based principles[1], we work to strengthen locally led prevention efforts, build community-driven evidence, and support policies and systems that drive long-term, transformative change.
We connect diverse voices across the region to advance practical, inclusive solutions that address the root causes of VAWG and promote a just and equitable future.
[1] See Guiding Principle 1 for an explanation of feminist, intersectional and rights based; Guiding Principle 2 for a detailed outline of Pacific led and focussed, Guiding Principle 4 for an explanation of evidence based and Guiding Principle 6 for an explanation of transformative change
Our guiding principles
Guiding Principle 1: VAWG prevention is grounded in four core values — it is feminist, intersectional and inclusive, rights-based, and survivor-centred.
Feminist
A feminist approach recognises that violence against women and girls (VAWG) is both a cause and consequence of gender inequality. It seeks to transform unequal power structures, challenge harmful social norms, and dismantle systems of oppression and exploitation. Feminist prevention places women’s human rights at the centre and works in solidarity with those most impacted by violence — including those who are often excluded due to their identity, status, or situation.
The VAWG Prevention Hub highlights examples from across the Pacific where communities are taking action to shift power, challenge norms that support VAWG, and build gender-just futures.
Intersectional and Inclusive
An intersectional approach recognises that women and girls experience violence in different ways based on overlapping aspects of their identity — such as ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic status, and more. It acknowledges that VAWG is shaped by multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination that shape the risk, experience and consequences of violence.
Being inclusive means ensuring that women and girls — in all their diversities — are represented, heard, and able to access support and opportunities equally. Together, intersectionality and inclusion ensure that prevention strategies are fair, context-specific, and responsive to the varied realities of women and girls in all their diversities across the Pacific.
Rights-based
A rights-based approach recognises VAWG as a violation of human rights. It addresses both the immediate impacts, and the root (systemic) causes of violence, including structural inequality and discrimination. This approach affirms that all women and girls have the right to live free from violence, and that states and institutions have a responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil these rights.
Survivor-centred
A survivor-centred approach places the rights, needs, and agency of survivors at the heart of all prevention efforts. It ensures that survivors are treated with dignity, safety and respect — and that their voices help response, policies and practices. This approach prioritises safety, informed consent, confidentiality, and non-discrimination, while recognising the broader gendered power dynamics that contribute to violence.
Guiding Principle 2: The VAWG Prevention Hub is Pacific-Led and Pacific Focused.
There are 22 countries in the Oceanic Pacific:
Cook Islands | American Samoa | Papua New Guinea |
Niue | FSM | Vanuatu |
Samoa | Kiribati | Solomon Islands |
Tokelau | Republic of the Marshall Islands | Fiji |
Tonga | Nauru | New Caledonia |
Tuvalu | Palau | Pitcairn Islands |
Wallis and Futuna | Guam | |
French Polynesia | Northern Mariana Islands |
18 of these countries are organizations / individuals who are members of the Pacific Women’s Network Against Violence against Women and Girls (PWNAVAW). The PWNAVAWG is a network of Pacific Island women’s organizations working together to stop violence against women and girls. Founded in 1992, it raises awareness, influences policies, and supports survivors. It also helps create EVAWG programs, trains government staff, and engages men as allies in preventing violence.
The Hub is guided by the leadership, voices, and lived experiences of Pacific people—especially Pacific women and feminist practitioners. It prioritizes locally grounded approaches and solutions developed within Pacific contexts. For membership, this principle ensures that:
- Pacific leadership is central to decision-making and content
- Members must respect and support the expertise and priorities of Pacific communities and practitioners
- External organizations may participate only in supportive roles, without dominating or reshaping the agenda.
Membership is open to those who actively uphold and strengthen this Pacific-led, Pacific-focused vision.
Guiding Principle 3: All prevention work follows a ‘Do No Harm’ approach, ensuring efforts do not create unintended harm or increase risks for individuals or communities.
A Do No Harm Approach makes sure that prevention programs do not accidentally cause problems, create risks or unintentionally make existing inequalities worse for individuals or groups. It helps those running the programs to think carefully about any risks, especially to women and girls, and to take steps to keep everyone safe. This approach supports the rights and safety of all involved.
Guiding Principle 4: VAWG prevention is evidence-based, valuing Pacific-grown knowledge, lived experience, and collective learning—even when it falls outside traditional Western evaluation models.
In the Pacific, evidence means the shared knowledge of what works and what does not work in preventing violence against women and girls. It draws from local experience, skills, and ways of doing things that may be different from Western evaluation standards but work well in the Pacific. The Prevention Hub showcases this Pacific-led work worldwide, challenges the myth that local evidence is lacking, and creates spaces like Talanoa forums where people can share ideas and learn from each other. By supporting ethical approaches to evidence—including informed consent and proper attribution—the Hub helps strengthen Pacific-driven solutions to complex issues such as climate change, slow progress on gender equality, and the ongoing impacts of colonisation.
Guiding Principle 5: VAWG prevention approaches value transparency and accountability — sharing what has worked and what has not, to promote continuous learning, ethical practice, and collective responsibility across the Hub.
The Hub is committed to openness at all levels — with survivors, communities, partners, and in pursuit of the broader goal of ending violence against women and girls. Accountability means being clear about how decisions are made, how resources are used, and how results are shared. It ensures the Hub’s work is guided by integrity, fairness, and respect for those most affected by violence.
The Hub promotes collective responsibility among all partners to uphold feminist and intersectional values, maintain ethical standards, and ensure that prevention activities do no harm. This includes transparent communication, regular reflection and feedback, and mechanisms that allow individuals and organisations to raise concerns safely and constructively. Together transparency and accountability strengthen trust, support ethical use of evidence, and help Pacific practitioners focus time, energy, and resources on approaches that truly make a difference.
Guiding Principle 6: VAWG prevention is transformative – addressing root causes of inequality and shifting harmful norms, with a long-term commitment to gradual, community-led change.
A transformative approach aims to change the social norms and systems that lead to violence against women and girls. This means not only responding to individual cases but also addressing the root causes of inequality and discrimination. It involves challenging harmful gender roles, unequal power, and unfair sharing of resources. A transformative approach works to challenge these imbalances by promoting fairness, equal power, and respectful relationships.
The Prevention Hub shares examples of programs and strategies that have worked well in Pacific communities and show early signs of positive changes in attitudes, behaviours and everyday practices. It shares lessons and successes while recognising that transforming deep-rooted beliefs about gender roles and women’s rights takes time—meaningful progress toward gender equality can take 5 to 10 years or more.
References
- Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG): is any form of violence disproportionately perpetrated by men against women and girls in all their diversity. It is deeply linked to women’s inequality and includes physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women and girls, including threats, coercion, exploitation and abuse of women and girls in online spaces or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life
- Women’s Human Rights: The rights of women and girls as part of the universal human rights framework, including the right to life, to live free from violence, discrimination, and coercion, the right not to be tortured or treated in an inhuman and degrading way and to right fully participate in social, economic, and political life.
- Intersectional Approach: A framework that recognises how different aspects of identity (e.g., gender, race, class, disability) intersect to shape individuals’ experiences of oppression and privilege. Originally coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.
- Women and Girls in all their diversities: An inclusive phrase acknowledging that women and girls are not all the same and have diverse identities, backgrounds, and experiences. This includes but is not limited to women and girls who are LGBTQ+, disabled, Indigenous, from rural or remote areas, or living in poverty.
- Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA): A framework that applies international human rights standards to VAWG prevention efforts. This approach uses international human rights — like the right to live free from violence, discrimination, and fear — as a foundation for all efforts to prevent VAWG. It means everyone has rights that must be respected and protected, and governments and institutions have responsibilities to make sure those rights are upheld. In this approach Rights-holders are the people who have rights — in this case, women and girls. Duty-bearers are those who have the power and responsibility to protect those rights — like governments, police, service providers, or community leaders. HRBA ensures that Women and girls know their rights and can speak up for them, duty-bearers are held accountable if they do not protect or promote those rights. Laws, policies, and programs are designed to reduce inequality and empower communities.
Survivor: Refers to a person who has experienced VAWG or gender-based violence. The term acknowledges their strength and resilience. Survivor-centred responses prioritise safety, dignity, control over their own life and freedom to decide for themselves.
- Accountability: Being responsible and answerable for actions, decisions, and outcomes — ensuring transparency, fairness, and respect, and creating safe ways for people to give feedback or raise concerns.
Systems: are the structures, institutions and rules in society—such as laws, schools, workplaces, governments, policies and community traditions—that influence how people live interact, and access power and resources and treat each other. When these systems are unequal, they can reinforce harmful gender roles, give more power to men, and make it harder for women and girls to access safety, resources, or opportunities, and they can reinforce discrimination and contribute to violence against women and girls.
Frequently asked questions
What is the VAWG Prevention Hub?
The VAWG Prevention Hub is a Pacific-based space for learning, sharing, and collaboration to help end violence against women and girls in all their diversities.
It brings together practitioners, activists, researchers, and policymakers to access practical resources, share knowledge, and build skills for effective prevention. Grounded in feminist, intersectional, and rights-based approaches, the Hub supports locally led solutions and amplifies community-driven evidence from across the Pacific.
By connecting people and ideas, the Hub helps strengthen movements, inform policy and practice, and drive long-term, transformative change.
Why was the Hub created, and who manages it?
The Hub was created to support learning, sharing, and collaboration across the Pacific to end violence against women and girls. It provides a dynamic, Pacific-based space that connects practitioners, activists, researchers, and organisations working to prevent VAWG.
Grounded in feminist, intersectional, survivor centred and rights-based approaches, the Hub strengthens locally led prevention efforts, builds and shares evidence on what works, and supports policies and systems that drive long-term change. It also helps connect and strengthen regional movements, ensuring diverse voices and community experiences inform practical, inclusive solutions to address the root causes of violence.
The Hub is hosted and moderated by the Pacific community, governed by an independent seven-member Reference Group.
Who is the Hub designed for?
The Hub is designed for practitioners, activists, researchers, governments, civil society, and community organisations working to eliminate violence against women and girls across the Pacific.
It supports a diverse and connected network of users by providing accessible, evidence-based resources and tools to strengthen locally led prevention and response efforts, inform policy and practice, and build knowledge grounded in feminist, intersectional, and rights-based approaches.
How does the Hub support governments, civil society, and community organisations?
The Hub supports governments, civil society, and community organisations by sharing practical tools, resources, and evidence to help strengthen efforts to prevent and response to violence against women and girls.
The Hub promotes feminist, intersectional, and rights-based approaches, while amplifying community-driven knowledge about what works in the Pacific. The Hub also connects people across the region—practitioners, activists, researchers, and policymakers—so they can learn from each other and collaborate.
By building skills, sharing evidence, and fostering partnerships, we help support more effective policies, programmes, and long-term solutions to end violence.
Why is the Hub Pacific-led and Pacific-focused?
The Hub is Pacific-led and Pacific-focused because lasting change needs to be grounded in the knowledge, leadership, and lived experiences of Pacific people—especially Pacific women and feminist practitioners.
VAWG prevention and response efforts are most effective when they reflect local realities, cultures, and community strengths. That’s why the Hub prioritises solutions developed within Pacific contexts and supports locally led approaches that address the root causes of violence.
This principle also ensures that Pacific voices guide decision-making and shape the Hub’s direction. While partners from outside the region are welcome, they play a supportive role—respecting and strengthening, rather than leading, Pacific priorities.
By keeping Pacific leadership at the centre, the Hub helps build more relevant, inclusive, and sustainable solutions to end violence against women and girls.
How often is new content added?
The Hub is continuously updated, with new content added as contributions are submitted and reviewed, helping to keep the platform current and useful for users.
Is there a glossary of terms available?
Yes, a glossary of terms is available on the Hub to help explain key concepts and language used across the platform.
What guidelines should contributors follow when submitting content?
Contributors to the Hub are asked to follow guidelines that reflect our vision, purpose, and six guiding principles. All content should:
- Be feminist, intersectional, rights-based, and survivor-centred – prioritising the safety, dignity, and diverse experiences of women and girls.
- Respect Pacific leadership and perspectives – recognising locally led approaches and valuing Pacific-grown knowledge, lived experience, and collective learning.
- Follow a ‘Do No Harm’ approach – ensuring content does not unintentionally increase risk or cause harm to individuals or communities.
- Be evidence-informed – sharing what works and what doesn’t, drawing on both community-driven and research-based knowledge.
- Support transparency and accountability – clearly citing sources, acknowledging contributors, and promoting ethical practice across the Hub.
- Promote transformative change – focusing on root causes of violence, addressing harmful norms, and supporting long-term, community-led solutions.
All submissions are expected to align with the Hub’s values and principles, helping maintain a safe, inclusive, and trusted space for learning and collaboration. In addition, contributors must respect copyright and intellectual property rules and comply with the Hub’s Terms and Conditions. This includes having permission to share the material, obtaining informed consent from anyone featured, and ensuring content respects safety, dignity, and cultural context.
How are contributors’ rights protected?
Contributors’ rights are protected by sharing materials only with permission and proper consent, and by giving clear attribution so authors are recognised for their work.
All content is used respectfully, in line with the Hub’s guiding principles, and governed by our Terms and Conditions. This ensures a safe, ethical, and transparent space for learning and collaboration.
What do you mean by “prevention”?
By “prevention,” we mean taking action to stop violence against women and girls before it happens in the first place. This involves addressing the root causes of violence—such as gender inequality, harmful social norms, and unequal power relationships—rather than only responding after harm has occurred. Prevention includes working with communities, institutions, and systems to change attitudes and behaviours and systems that allow violence to happen, promoting respect, equality, and safe environments for all women and girls.
At the Hub, we focus on approaches that are feminist, intersectional, and rights-based, and that are grounded in the lived experiences and leadership of Pacific communities.
What if you are not a feminist?
You do not need to identify as a feminist to use or contribute to the Hub. Anyone committed to ending violence against women and girls is welcome to engage.
Our work is grounded in feminist, intersectional, and rights-based principles because these approaches address the root causes of violence, including gender inequality and unequal power. All content on the Hub aligns with these guiding principles and is expected to be inclusive, rights-based, and survivor-centred.
We recognise that people come to this work with different perspectives and experiences. What matters most is a shared commitment to learning, respect, and meaningful action to end violence. We encourage all members to engage openly with these principles and to support approaches that centre the rights, safety, and dignity of women and girls in all their diversities.
As a shared space, the Hub also upholds clear community standards, and all members are expected to engage in ways that reflect and respect these standards.