Marking 40 years of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre as a service provider and bold public advocate for women and girls

13 Aug, 2024

The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC), a feminist organisation which is an equal parts service provider and bold public advocate has been a trailblazer not only in Fiji but in the broader Pacific region since its establishment in 1984.

Housed in a prominent downtown Suva building with its logo and messages blazoned over its fence and walls, the Centre was started by a group of women concerned with the number of sexual attacks on women in and around the capital, Suva, and with the lack of support from the Government.

“An expatriate woman working with the government was raped by two men who broke into her house where she was alone at night. A police spokesman at the time of the incident told the press that there had been quite a few cases of rape that year and there was little the police could do about it. He added that police believed the men in this case had watched the woman undress before entering the house. He said that in some rape cases women had tempted men by undressing in a room where they could be seen from the street and by going out alone at night.” wrote FWCC Founding member Carole Carter in a 1985 Broadsheet magazine article.

Crisis Centre organizers in early 1983 included lawyers, doctors, nurses, and community workers. The group would meet at 5.15pm on the second and fourth Mondays of each month at the Young Women’s Christian Association. In time-honored feminist tradition, they formed a Feminist Collective in August 1983 and the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre became operational a year later on 13th August 1984. Initially, the group aimed to provide a service for the victims and survivors of rape. However, the more the women investigated the issues involved in rape in Fiji, the more aware they became of the magnitude of violence against women generally, particularly domestic violence. They took several deep breaths and broadened their charter; their services are now available to all women and children who have suffered any form of violence.

Shamima Ali joined the Centre a year after its establishment. She soon became the Centre’s Coordinator, a position she holds to this day.

FWCC still proudly operates as a Feminist Collective, where women have maintained a democratic process of policymaking and decision-making. All members have an equal voice.

It’s been a long road between that first informal gathering of women in 1983 and the existence of FWCC today. The members of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre say the road ahead will be longer. A great deal has been achieved, but they feel they have only begun to make their mark.

From the start, the Centre’s central function was to provide a support service to survivors of violence against women and girls. Counsellor Advocates were provided training from a qualified counsellor. They offered psychological and emotional support, provided survivors with information about their rights, accompanied them through police and court procedures, and assisted them in locating emergency accommodation. There has always been an emphasis on awareness and prevention from the start as well. FWCC conducted classes and seminars and wrote pamphlets and articles in the media.

Initially, the FWCC struggled to exist, living off small community donations and relying largely on volunteer labour. In those “hard years of the eighties,” as Ms Ali puts it, the United Nations agreed to fund the Centre, but the Fijian government refused to provide the required official endorsement of the project proposal. It was feared that the project would contradict Fiji’s international image as an island in paradise. The government suggested to the Centre that it remove the word “crisis” from its name.

Rather than buckle to Government demands, the FWCC turned instead to Australia. At first, Australian aid officials were skeptical. FWCC had to make the case that their work was developmental, at a time when violence against women and girls wasn’t on the development agenda at all.

But 1990 saw a breakthrough, with funding being provided for the first time to FWCC from the Australian aid program, initially through an Australian NGO (then Freedom From Hunger, now part of Oxfam Australia).

In 1994, the Australian government started funding FWCC directly, and it has continued providing financial support to FWCC to this day – for a period now of almost 34 years. 

Learning from scratch

Running an organisation like FWCC takes hard work. For Shamima Ali and her team, there was no blueprint on how to operate an organisation like the Crisis Centre. So, they did the next best thing- learning from experience.  Their continuous interactions with survivors on the ground helped a lot.

FWCC looked at what was happening everywhere while they were responding in Fiji and kept adapting their programs.  As Ms Ali says they strategised after learning from them.

“How violence affected them. What were the dynamics, what happened when they tried to access services like police, the law, health services, and you know, and welfare services. That helped us to strategise on what we must do.” she adds.  

Looking back on achievements

Despite the struggles, there have been several achievements and Ali says she feels particularly elated when major legislative and national changes occur to benefit human rights.

“Particularly if you look at the Domestic Violence Legislation contributing to the Family Law Act and we have the Crimes Act now, having things like de-facto relationships recognized within the Family Law Act. So, whenever those things change, I have a great sense of satisfaction, pleasure, and elation because I know the Crisis Centre had a hand in this”

Ali adds everyone is talking about ending violence against women and women’s human rights in Fiji because they started the ball rolling publicly and very visibly.

She also acknowledged the work to establish Fiji’s National Action Plan to Prevent Violence Against All Women and Girls adding that it is a true testament to the dedication and the hard work of women’s rights activists who have been fighting tirelessly for gender equality and women’s rights in Fiji, around the Pacific and the world.

FWCC is also one of the founding members and secretariat of the Pacific Women’s Network Against Violence Against Women, the region’s longest-running network, working to eliminate violence against women and girls since 1992. The network consists of more than 20 organisations addressing the issue of violence against women and children in their diverse communities.

As secretariat of the network, FWCC has been holding a Regional Training Program (RTP) on Gender, Violence Against Women and Girls and Human Rights since 1995. To date, more than 900 women and men from around the region and Fiji have undergone this training.

Personal reflection

Now at 71, Shamima Ali says she cherishes the achievements she has made with her team over the years.

“I have always had the objective of growing old disgracefully as all feminists do, that we work until the end. That we continue activism until the end. And that’s what I have done all my life,” Ali stresses.

She also hopes to continue inspiring women to continue with this work.

“Ageism is very rife with women. I would say age should not be a barrier for anyone. We should come together. We should heal the generation gap that has been created because of patriarchy and the kinds of systems that we live in that everyone has a place. Everyone has a place to contribute. For us, the elders, we listen to the young people. They have some very bright ideas that we should embrace, And then young people should also have that desire to learn from the elders,”

Ali also wants to see many more women in all their diversity putting their hands up to enter politics and she stresses that must create an enabling environment for them.

She stresses that talking about women’s human rights is political and a woman’s place is everywhere.

“For me, the women’s movement is political. We lobby for changes to make our lives better. In a democracy, so-called, when we have democracy, already we have rights violated of the vulnerable, particularly of women, of people with disability, with the LGBT, with the poor and so on. When those spaces shrink, democratic and human rights spaces shrink, our rights shrink further. So, it’s in our interest to ensure that it doesn’t shrink any further. We need to ensure that we are there pushing the boundaries,”

The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre will continue to work itself out of business. We hope that you will help us do this.