Women's Empowerment and Good Governance Through - amarc

Best Experiences for an Action Research Process 88
tiatives, strengthening our communication networks, facilitating training and attachments to
enhance our collective media skills. We are staging annual partners meetings, which provide
a valuable opportunity to review our progress and identify priorities for the future, in order to
continue to provide coverage of the implementation of UNSC RES/1325 in our countries and
in the regional policy level. This regional network will also be the platform for establishing
women’s community radio stations initially in Solomon Islands and Tonga.
Conclusion
Women’s exclusion and marginalization pose a significant threat to sustainable human security
(43). The consequences are far-reaching and manifest in core security risks such as the absence
of legal and human rights, lack of protection against gender-based violence and access
to justice, health, education as well as exclusion from participation in economic life, credit, land
and natural resources. These consequences not only constitute underlying sources of political
and economic instability, but also result in the weakening of social and family units.
What is clearly needed is the opportunity to continue to build women’s skills and confidence
and support women’s representation in the social, political and economic spheres, especially
as the reality is that many women, in Fiji and the rest of the Pacific Island Region, are excluded
from the structures that make the decisions to sustain peace or engage in conflict. There are
few women in political and civil service leadership positions across Pacific island countries.
Despite the important role played by women’s groups in prevention and recovery efforts, we
are also marginally represented in decision-making bodies, whether these relate to recovery
planning or formal peace processes.
Community radio offers the opportunity to build and strengthen alliances from local, national
and trans-national levels to ensure that women’s experiences and expertise can be shared
from the community level to the international scene, in order to better inform power and decision-making
structures – whether it is the Pacific Forum Regional Security Committee or the
UN Security Council. Stronger and therefore more responsive information and communication
channels can assist in addressing the status quo, especially to create greater visibility of Pacific
women’s realities in the evolution of the global and regional human security framework.
The femLINKpacific community radio model represents an opportunity to strengthen women’s