Why gender justice, community resilience, and climate recovery must be treated as national security priorities
When we speak about peace and security in Tonga, we must look beyond borders, uniforms, and emergency response plans. The threats shaping everyday life are already present in homes, schools, workplaces, online spaces, coastal communities, and temporary settlements. Gender-based violence, economic insecurity, environmental disruption, cyberbullying, and disaster-induced displacement are not separate social issues; they are security issues because they determine whether people can live with dignity, safety, and trust.
The 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai eruption made this reality impossible to ignore. In the aftermath of disaster, families faced not only physical damage and disrupted livelihoods, but also heightened vulnerability, uncertainty, and pressure on already stretched support systems. For women and young women, crisis often intensifies existing risks: domestic violence, discrimination, reduced access to services, and the silencing of those who most need to be heard.
If national security responses fail to account for these lived realities, they risk missing the very conditions that make peace sustainable. Public trust is not built only through authority; it is built through protection, inclusion, clear communication, and the confidence that institutions understand what communities are facing.
Community focus groups and human security assessments continue to show that insecurity is layered. Women and girls speak of violence in private spaces, harassment and discrimination in public and professional spaces, and online abuse that follows them into digital spaces. Young people are asking for education that prepares them for the risks they actually face, including climate change, disaster preparedness, online safety, and livelihood uncertainty. Communities want information they can trust, delivered in ways they can understand and use.
These concerns should not sit at the margins of security policy. They are central to it. A society where violence is underreported, where communities do not know how government development initiatives will affect them, where young people see few economic pathways, and where displaced families struggle to recover is a society carrying security risks beneath the surface.
Security must be understood not only as response after harm occurs, but as prevention before harm hardens into crisis.
— Fuatino ‘Esau
That is why Tonga needs a whole-of-community approach to peace and security. Traditional security actors have an important role to play, but they cannot work alone. Effective prevention and recovery require partnerships with women’s rights organisations, civil society organisations, faith leaders, schools, youth networks, disability advocates, SOGIESC representatives, community leaders, and government agencies. Security must be understood not only as response after harm occurs, but as prevention before harm hardens into crisis.
Our assessments in the 2025 Pacific Women Mediators Network Human Security Mapping Report underscore several priorities that should guide this shift.
First, responses to gender-based violence must be treated as core public safety work. This means strengthening reporting pathways, supporting survivors, engaging men and boys, and ensuring that protection systems are trusted and accessible before, during, and after disasters.
Second, education must equip young people for contemporary risks. Online safety, climate awareness, disaster risk reduction, and Pacific knowledge systems should not be treated as optional additions. They are essential tools for resilience, leadership, and informed decision-making.
Third, vocational pathways and livelihood support must be expanded. Economic vulnerability increases exposure to exploitation, family stress, social unrest, and unsafe choices. Investing in skills, employment, and local enterprise is therefore also an investment in peace.
Fourth, information must flow more clearly between government and communities. When people understand development initiatives, disaster plans, and available services, they are better able to participate, prepare, and hold institutions accountable. Where information is absent, mistrust grows.
This year, our Human Security Mapping is strengthening inclusive participation by connecting the priorities of young women and girls with older women in rural and urban communities, persons with disabilities, and representatives of our SOGIESC community. This matters because peace and security must reflect women in all our diversities, not only those most often invited into formal conversations.
It is also how the peace and security agenda can be connected more meaningfully with national commitments to gender equality and women’s rights. Gender policies become stronger when they are informed by community realities. Partnerships between government, civil society organisations, women’s rights organisations, and community networks become more effective when they are grounded in shared responsibility rather than consultation after decisions have already been made.
Community partnerships are central to this work. Young women and girls should be supported to work alongside community leaders, schools, churches, youth groups, and women’s groups to make informed decisions and advocate for change. Their voices are not an add-on to peacebuilding; they are part of the evidence base for what security must become.
Regional collaboration also matters. Across the Pacific, communities are facing overlapping challenges: climate shocks, displacement, violence, economic stress, and the struggle to make institutions more inclusive. Strengthening partnerships with regional organisations allows Tonga to learn, share, adapt, and contribute to a Pacific understanding of security rooted in care, justice, and resilience.
The lesson is clear: peace is not secured only at the border or in moments of emergency. It is secured when a woman can report violence without fear, when a young person can imagine a future at home, when a displaced family can recover with dignity, when a person with a disability is included in planning, and when communities trust that their concerns matter.
We must all be willing to widen the frame.
Human security is not a soft alternative to national security. It is the foundation that makes national security real. If we want lasting peace, we must listen to communities, protect those most at risk, invest in prevention, and place gender justice and resilience at the centre of recovery and development.
About the writer:
Fuatino ‘Esau is a Pacific Women Mediators Network Programme Associate based at the Talitha Project – Tonga
