About the project
Violence against women and girls is a prevalent issue for many small-island developing states (SIDS) in the Pacific. Research shows alarmingly high rates of intimate partner physical and sexual violence across the region with large percentages of females from Melanesia (64%), Micronesia (44%) and Polynesia (43%) having experienced domestic violence in their lifetime. For many SIDS in the Pacific, domestic violence costs account for approximately six percent of the GDP per annum. In addition to the high economic costs of violence, the social, emotional and psychological costs exact heavy tolls on the growth and development of all sectors in SIDS.
At the 2018 Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police Conference, police leaders from across the region acknowledged the need to prioritize the improvement of police responses to domestic violence (DV) and implored stakeholders to work with police organizations to collaborate in their responses to both perpetrators and victims of DV. However, anecdotal evidence collected at a workshop with 62 female police from the South Pacific, who attended this conference, revealed a disjuncture between local understandings of DV and definitions imported into organisational policies from Australia and other developed countries, which then inform professional responses. For example, descriptions of DV outlined in many organizational policies and procedures would classify a large number of these female officers as DV survivors, in contrast to their own understandings of their personal relationships. This finding raises important questions about the employment of policing response models based on imported understandings of social problems. It signals the need for a theoretical shift in the way DV is understood, in order to revise and improve responses, through education and dialogue. These insights directly inform this DECRA project.
In opposition to the popular practice of knowledge and policy importation from former colonial powers to former colonies, this project takes a localized approach to understanding DV. The purpose is to develop an actionable strategy for improved responses to DV victims and perpetrators by police and other local non-government stakeholders who work in partnership with the police. It aims to:
- Discover local knowledge about how DV is understood in two post-colonial contexts – Solomon Islands and Tuvalu;
- Investigate local stakeholder perspectives about the causes and manifestations of DV;
- Examine strategies to improve stakeholder responses to DV by considering context-specific ambiguities and complexities; and
- Provide a conceptual and evidence base for DV policy development from the perspective of the local stakeholders.