By Vasiti Ritova

The name Salamo Fulivai spells a cushion of comfort for Pacific Island women at the international level. But it becomes a real problem when critical issues concerning the Pacific Islands and women in particular, are not addressed or articulated on the same platform.

Fulivai, executive director of the Pacific Foundation for the Advancement of Women (PACFAW), a regional organisation seeking to empower Pacific women particularly those in the rural areas, on a variety of disciplines, speaks her mind on issues critical to the Pacific. She packs a punch when it comes to protecting the Pacific against exploitation.

She says the Pacific is a region of its own and must take its fair share of the global cake when it comes to development partnership and funding.

She is on demand by the Government of Tonga when it comes to presenting a country perspective at a regional or international forum and wears a second hat for Pacific NGOs when it comes to battling for the recognition of Pacific women's demands and needs.

Fulivai, here in New York on March 3, just as she created a Pacific Wave in the Chinese capital, Beijing, ten years ago, has, so far, spoken with much ease on gender matters for the Pacific Islands, criticizing what would be a seeming lack of guidance by the region's inter-governmental organizations like the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) for the way forward for Pacific women.

"There is no comprehensive plan yet for the way forward," she said. "We are looking to these two, SPC and the Forum (PIFS), to help us move forward."

She then suggests more meetings in the future for consensus on issues of contention and argument.

At the same time, Fulivai is working hard to get her country, Tonga, to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Government had reservations on some sections of the international bill of rights for women, saying it believed it impinged on some of its well-established traditional cultural beliefs.

She revealed Tonga was now doing two crucial things - working towards CEDAW ratification and restructuring the Department for Women within the Prime Minister's Office to become a fully-fledged Ministry.

A case study by the Commonwealth Foundation has come up with a comprehensive overview of the development of gender and development policy in Tonga, saying that national initiatives on the advancement of Tongan women, pieced together carefully by Fulivai and her band in the early 1990s, paved the way before the 4th Global Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.

The Commonwealth Foundation study case showed how Tonga has progressed through the years. Although the women of Tonga had participated in the UN global women's conferences in Mexico City, Nairobi in Kenya and Copenhagen, the Beijing Conference was the one that reflected effective mobilization and meaningful participation because of the participatory consultative process and strong partnership between women's organizations and networks and the government machinery.

It was during the pre-Beijing preparations that the women of Tonga, under the principal guidance of key players like Fulivai, were able to work as a united front in women and development. The Beijing Conference marked the change in women and development for Tonga.

Not only were the implementation of its activities done more effectively and more focused, it was a time for institutional strengthening for national machineries that were agents of implementation, including what was initially started by the late Queen Salote, Langafonua 'a Fefine Tonga, the National Council of Women for rural Tonga. They had plans of action and the move towards better things started then.

Now development partners and the Government of Tonga back women's plans through funding mechanisms and with the approval of a national policy on women around 1993, both government and Langafonua have become strategic partners in developing women.

The partnership outcomes, as outlined in the Commonwealth Foundation report, says that all women of Tonga have benefited from the commitment that has been made by the Government because this has provided a leverage for both the local and international assistance for women's development projects.

More importantly, women of Tonga are now using all these concepts to mobilize government's support towards the ratification of CEDAW.

The kingdom's Deputy Prime Minister, Cecil Cocker, head of delegation to the New York CSW Conference, promised delegates Tonga was "working towards it".