October 2017
Over 50 women and men farmer leaders, partners and stakeholders from ten Pacific Islands gathered for the inaugural Pacific Women in Agriculture (PWiA) Forum in Port Vila, Vanuatu on 16 October 2017. The inaugural meeting focused around the theme “Inspire, Innovate, Impower”. The forum heard that while women and girls are significant contributors to food production in the Pacific and most vulnerable during natural disasters, their voices are seldom heard at community, national, regional and global levels.
The workshop was organised to coincide with the Pacific Week of Agriculture currently underway in Vanuatu that week October 16 – 20. It provided an opportunity for participants to share success stories and the challenges they encountered in their respective countries. Ronald Hartman, IFAD’s Pacific Country Director in his official opening remarks stressed the importance of empowering women as they tend to invest back into their families, communities and economy. “All women need to be empowered, to have more influence in decision making and to address gender inequalities in the agriculture context. Women in agriculture also need our support and to have access to models that work and can be replicated.”
The one-day workshop organized to support Pacific women in agriculture ended with an outcome statement that called on government and development partners to actively support women farmers in the Pacific to ensure that their rights are protected. It also called for allocating dedicated funding for farmers organisations focusing on leadership and management capacities to run specific women’s spaces with their male counterparts in farming organisations.
The event was organised by the Pacific Islands Farmers Organisation Network (PIFON) in partnership with the Pacific Islands Association of Non Governmental Organisation (PIANGO) with funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development under the Medium Term Cooperation Programme for farmer organisations in Asia and the Pacific Phase II (MTCP II) project.
Women invest back into their families, communities and economy.