Honourable Chief Justice, Mr Anthony Gates

Acting Director of the Legal Aid Commission, Mr Shahin Rafique Ali

Head of Cooperation, European Union Delegation for the Pacific, Mr Christoph Wagner

Empower Pacific Chief Executive Officer, Mr Patrick Morgam

Executive Director of Medical Services Pacific, Ms Jennifer Poole

President of the Fiji Disabled People's Federation, Mr Joshko Wakaniyasi

Civil society participants, Ladies and gentlemen

I am very pleased to welcome you to the Signing Ceremony for Grants for Justice Support Services, supported by UNDP’s Fiji Access to Justice Project and generously funded by the European Union. Thank for being here with us this morning.

The Fiji Access to Justice Project is designed to improve access to justice for vulnerable groups by empowering people to understand their legal rights and access legal services and strengthening key justice institutions to deliver better justice services.  In partnership with the Judicial Department and Legal Aid Commission, and with funding from the EU, the project seeks to enhance the justice institutions internal systems and support the professional development of the institutions’ staff with a view to providing effective and efficient justice services to Fijians.

To augment the ongoing work with the formal justice sector, UNDP and the EU recognized the need for support services to help guide people through the justice system, ensuring they receive the right services at the right time through increased awareness of the justice system and legal rights, and, for those who have experienced trauma or violence, that they are also provided with complementary medical and counselling services.

The project has tapped into the skills of NGOs in Fiji to extend these accompaniment access to justice services to vulnerable groups. This includes a priority foundational need to raise the awareness and understanding of legal rights and the justice services available to Fijians and provide basic services, such as referrals, on access to justice and human rights at the community level to reach those in more remote areas of Fiji.

One key element of these activities has been to engage individuals working at the community level, and train them as community human rights advocates to create a sustainable and accessible source of information on legal and human rights in the most remote communities. UNDP established and trained a network of community human rights advocates in 2017 and will harness their reach into communities by linking them to the grant activities being carried out by the NGO partners present today.

Under the Fiji Access to Justice Project, an access to justice assessment was conducted in early 2018 to identify the challenges in the justice system in Fiji requiring further support. The assessment indicated that there is a need for support services for legal engagement, particularly in matters of violence against women and girls, sexual and gender-based violence, violence against children, and family issues; that there is a need for CSOs to increase their knowledge in these areas; and access to services at the community level is required.

This grant programme was developed to address these findings through support to CSOs already operating in these areas, and working with the government to provide a broad range of services for Fijians interacting with justice institutions, particularly women and girls who have experienced violence. The grants focus on:

• Providing access to justice, counselling and protection support services on child abuse, violence against women and girls, and sexual and gender-based violence;
• Providing access to justice support services for persons with physical and psychosocial disabilities;
• Engaging the public beyond Suva and working in communities at the grassroots level;
• Carrying out widespread public awareness and education campaigns to increase the public’s knowledge of the justice services available to them.

Fiji is fortunate to have in its midst three organizations with the capacity, skill set and reach to achieve these objectives.

Firstly, Medical Services Pacific operating from both Suva and Labasa will conduct an array of training in areas to include access to justice, sexual and reproductive health, the Do No Harm principle and dispute resolution. The organization will also have a focus on training for community leaders and community human rights officers in these areas. In addition, MSP as a service provider will facilitate mobile clinical outreach, counselling services and rapid response to sexual and gender-based violence and child abuse offences. The project is also delighted to support MSP’s advocacy efforts for patients, gender and child protection and education services.

The second organization working towards these objectives and a grantee of the project is Empower Pacific, which will undertake its activities in Lautoka and Kadavu. Empower Pacific will provide coordination support to a range of government ministries, NGOs, the Legal Aid Commission and the Fiji Police Force in their collaborative efforts to assist victims of sexual and gender-based violence. Further, the organization will provide counselling and social work services together with referral services for psychosocial support and child protection. In terms of counselling services, the organization will also offer specialized therapeutic counselling to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. Empower Pacific will be engaged in numerous training and community awareness raising activities on various topics, including legal rights and services, sexual and gender-based violence and child protection.

The final grantee today, Fiji Disabled People’s Federation, operating from Suva, will undertake outreach training on legal and human rights together with access to justice for people with disabilities. The training will include a component focused on practical methods of accessing justice and institutional mandates. The Federation will also engage in policy reform and advocacy, working towards improving facilities in justice institutions for people with disabilities.

We wish the three organizations all success in providing the support services and in working closely with the citizens and the formal justice institutions.  

Strengthening Civil Society Organizations’ role in society is critical to ensuring Fijians are supported in accessing justice, medical and counselling services throughout the country, given their unique expertise, their networks down to the grassroots level, and their advocacy role in policy making

 I also believe that increasing awareness on gender equality and support services for child abuse, sexual and gender-based violence and violence against women and girls, together with strengthening the integration of rights of persons with disabilities in accessing justice support services, is key to ensuring an inclusive, just and equitable development pathway and that no one is left behind.

Thank you Empower Pacific, Fiji Disabled People’s Federation and Medical Services Pacific for participating in and contributing to this initiative with us.

I would also like to thank the EU once again for your generous support and partnership which has made this programme possible and for our national partners and stakeholders for their vision and leadership of this important work.