Noelene Nabulivou Women’s Action for Change Suva, Fiji A Young Activist

Noelene is a Pacific workshop facilitator, trainer and community educator, with experience developed in diverse spaces in rural, remote and urban Pacific areas. As Coordinator of Women’s Action for Change in Fiji, much of Noelene’s advocacy focuses on rights of women and young people. “Women defenders in Fiji are challenged because we work on human rights and equality in small, complex post-conflict spaces. Rising evangelical and right-wing nationalist groups challenge hard-won gains from recent decades. We face trauma of years of coup d’ etats on the whole community, and in particular on women human rights defenders ourselves. Each subsequent coup sees still more of us targeted in subtle and overt ways.” WAC ensures that unpopular issues such as rights related to sexuality, abortion and sex workers, as well as religious fundamentalism, indigenous masculinist politics, and Fiji’s warrior culture and militarism are challenged.

The 2008 16 Days Campaign theme is important because it calls and claims solidarity and sisterhood with all women human rights defenders, globally. Our work impacts deeply and personally on every individual activist so it is not important who is on the campaign posters. Reflected in the 16 faces are a myriad of defenders in Iraq, Nicaragua, Burma, Bougainville, Tonga, Guam, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Phillipines, West Papua, USA, Jamaica, South Africa, the Solomon Islands, Fiji and every other country - all working against all forms of gender based violence and toward true equality for women and girl child. All carry the movement, and all need our solidarity and care.—Noelene Nabulivou, Fiji