When governments and regional institutions reach first for hard security, our communities have reason to worry. Across Fiji and the wider Pacific, we know from centuries of lived experience that peace cannot be commanded from above, nor can it be delivered by the State.
Peacebuilding and conflict transformation are not technical exercises to be added after decisions are made. They are acts of deep democracy: daily, difficult, relational work rooted in justice, accountability, care, and the dignity of all people.
DIVA for Equality has carried this understanding since 2011, and many of us have carried it for far longer through GPPAC, Women’s Action for Change, Pacific feminist movements and other social movement strategies across our region. I came into this work alongside people such as Rev Akuila Yabaki, Jone Dakuvula, Rebecca Spence, Peni Moore, Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls, Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi and many others. Our formal and informal efforts fed into the long work of building peace from the ground up. I studied international relations and peacebuilding because I did not believe then, and do not believe now, that foreign policy or domestic policy can be separated from the work of transforming conflict and building peace.
For people’s movements, peace is never only the absence of violence. It is the presence of gendered social, economic, ecological and climate justice. It is held in bodies, families, kinship networks, villages, settlements, workplaces, parliaments and regional spaces. It is present when women, girls, children, queer and trans people, men, Indigenous communities, people facing poverty, people living with HIV, people who use drugs, and all those pushed to the margins are treated not as threats, but as rights-holders and full political actors.
That is why a narrow security lens is so dangerous. It often treats social pain as disorder, poverty as risk, dissent as instability and communities as problems to be managed. But our work tells us something different. The struggles for gender justice, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), SOGIESC rights, development justice, climate justice and ecological balance are all peacebuilding struggles. They require negotiation, mediation, courage, strategy and sustained relationship-building across every level of society.
People’s movements know that peacebuilding is always about liberation, development justice and ecological balance. It is about transforming conflict toward futures in which communities are not merely policed, managed or consulted after the fact, but are resourced, listened to and trusted as makers of peace.
— Noelene Nabulivou
Across our networks, this is not theory. It is praxis. We work through hundreds of organisations on SRHR, SOGIESC, gender justice and women’s human rights across Pacific states and territories. We connect with Indigenous villages and settlements, regional and global feminist coalitions, climate and ecological justice formations, and community groups doing the daily work of survival and transformation. Whether through Women Defend Commons Network, Qaqa Grassroots Young Feminist Network, Pacific LBQ Working Group, Pacific Feminists Defending the Living Planet, Pacific Islands Feminist Alliance for Climate Justice, Pacific Women Mediators Network, the Pacific Gender Technical Working Group, the Pacific Gender Constituency Group or global work with the Women and Gender Constituency to the UNFCCC, our message is consistent: peacebuilding must be grounded in liberation, ecological balance, and justice.
Consider the realities facing our communities. Young people who use drugs, many now living with HIV, need care, support, and rights-based services, not punitive State responses. Women need an intersectional national HIV sub-strategy. Women and PIDSOGIESC people facing gender-based violence need safety, justice, and negotiated change across intimate relationships, families, kinship networks, police, civil services, politicians, faith leaders, and community structures. In a heavily patriarchal system like Fiji, this is crucial. Children and young people need systems that nurture them, especially when we know that violence affects so many bodies and lives. Peacebuilding insists on systemic change.
The epidemic levels of violence against women in the Pacific, the very low numbers of women in many national legislatures, and the backlash against gender justice, SRHR and SOGIESC rights are not separate from peace and security. They are central to it. Climate disasters, displacement, extractive industries, food and water insecurity, militarised borders, patriarchal authority and authoritarian politics all shape whether people can live freely and safely. Feminist climate and disaster risk reduction work must therefore be connected deliberately with EVAWG, peacebuilding and conflict transformation.
All governments make domestic and foreign policy choices that shape the lives of entire societies. Today we see regressive attacks on gender justice, SRHR and SOGIESC rights in many regions, including the Pacific. We see patriarchal and authoritarian politics emboldened. We see some Indigenous and coloniality-influenced nationalist groupings claim authority while pushing against gender and human rights in constitutional and public policy processes. We also see powerful movements for liberation, including the global and Pacific solidarity movements for Palestine, reminding us that peace without justice is not peace at all.
We cannot experience peace when the ecosphere is so damaged. Seven of the nine global planetary boundaries are now crossed. The 17 Urgent Demands of Pacific feminists call for immediate material and systems change. That means gender and human rights, including the strongest care economies, Indigenous rights, locally defined pro-poor policies, free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), water and food sovereignty, people-centred due diligence, strong regulation, and endless negotiations over environmental impact assessments. It means fighting back against the ferocious power of multinational corporations, financial institutions that defend the rich and not the majority, big technology, and agribusiness. This work is difficult because it confronts concentrated power. But conflict transformation has never meant avoiding conflict. It engages honestly and ethically, with a clear commitment to justice and better futures for all.
The same is true in our SOGIESC human rights work. The Pacific Women Lead SOGIESC Guidance Note is an important new tool, but tools do not implement themselves. We must negotiate its use (as we did during its three-year development). We will add more analysis, tools and resources; build understanding; engage educational, religious, and community leaders where possible; and support those most affected to shape the terms of change. In SRHR work, bodily autonomy is not only an individual rights issue. This work is also about significant learning, knowledge transfer, education, and the collective social and political conditions that determine who makes decisions, who sets the type and pace of change, who is denied contraception or emergency contraception, who has formal and informal political power, and whose lives are treated as negotiable or peripheral.
Feminist economic justice work makes the same point. Pro-poor policies, recognition of the care economy, and the reality that women carry most unpaid care, domestic and communal work are peace and security questions. Supporting women-led groups to navigate Indigenous and local communities for development justice and human rights is peacebuilding. Building genuine relationships across years and decades, as with Pacific Feminists Defending the Living Planet (PFDLP), the Pacific Feminist SRHR Coalition, and the Pacific LBQ+ Working Group, is difficult but necessary peacebuilding.
People’s movements know that peacebuilding is always about liberation, development justice and ecological balance. It is about transforming conflict toward futures in which communities are not merely policed, managed or consulted after the fact, but are resourced, listened to and trusted as makers of peace.
So, when hard security is prioritised, Pacific feminists will continue to push back. We will insist that the work of gender equality, care, justice, human rights, and democracy is central. We will insist that peacebuilding is not a soft alternative to security but the only path that takes the lives, bodies, and futures of all Pacific people seriously.
About the writer:
Noelene Nabulivou is the Co-Executive Director of DIVA for Equality and a co-founder of the Pacific Women Mediators Network
