[Source: Fiji Women's Crisis Centre/ Facebook]

The Nadi and Ba Crisis Centers have dealt with 120 cases of domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault in the Ra province in the last seven months.

Fiji Women’s Crisis Center coordinator Shamima Ali highlighted this during the re-opening of the Rakiraki Women’s Crisis Center yesterday.

Ali says the Rakiraki Women’s Crisis Center closed its doors last December due to staff and management issues, but they continued providing the necessary service.

Ali says all counselling cases from the Ra province were being referred to the Nadi and Ba crisis centres when the Rakiraki Women’s Crisis Centre was closed down.

“We didn’t actually close forever. The 24-hour line was held by Ba so when people called they did the referral. It was difficult but women still are accessing services and that is very important. The more awareness there is the more advocates there are, all of us together, the more women will access services and eventually, we all want to see an end to this.”

Ali says the Rakiraki Women’s Crisis Centre, which initially opened in July 2011, has been seeing and helping an average of 112 women and children a year.

She hopes that there will be an end to violence and that they will no longer need crisis centres.