Fiji Women’s Crisis Center Coordinator Shamima Ali says they will be conducting a national survey to get new data on violence against women and girls this year.

Ali says the last national prevalence study was conducted in 2011 which is still being quoted by many when writing reports.

She says they were due to carry out the next survey in 10 years, but were unable to do so because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ali says they’ve partnered with the Fiji Bureau of Statistics and feminist researchers from Melbourne Equality Institute to carry out the survey.

“So we have already started the work on that, the planning and we will be going out into the fields this year in August and hopefully by the end of next year, we will have the report ready and that will tell us whether we’re still there, whether it has increased or decreased, we don’t know.”

Ali says the researchers used the last data to write a lot of policies to prevent gender based violence.