You might have noticed some brightly colored posters and stickers appearing around Majuro, broadcasting some confronting truths about violence against women and girls in the Marshall Islands. You will encounter these orange and purple posters and stickers in government and non-government offices, as well as some private businesses and public spaces throughout Majuro and outer islands. These posters are the latest community education campaign produced by Weto in Mour, the North Pacific region’s first ever violence against women and girls support service established by WUTMI, in partnership with the Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development initiative, the Australian government’s 10-year initiative to improve economic, social and political outcomes for women throughout the Pacific region.
“We had two objectives in developing these community education materials,” said Alison Birchall, Violence Against Women and Girls Technical Adviser at WUTMI. “The first was to unsettle the normalization and widespread acceptance of violence against women and girls in the Marshall Islands, through highlighting some of the myths we regularly hear used to justify men’s choice to use violence against women and girls. The second was to challenge the community to give serious reconsideration to who they hold responsible for violence against women and girls. Women are not to blame for the violence they experience, the responsibility lays solely with the men who choose to use the violence and with the community that enables them to do it.”
Read more about this in the March 18, 2016 edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.