FWCC Coordinator Shamima Ali. [File Photo]

The Fiji Women’s Crisis Center is hoping to address discrimination against the LGBTQI community in the country.

Coordinator Shamima Ali says these Fijians face discrimination in evacuation centers during and post natural disasters.

Ali says the organization has been supporting the LGBTQI group over the years.

“Because there are quite a strong group at the moment in this country, we have from the time we started in 1984, there was no other counselling services and things like that, people just came to us, the children started coming to us, the lesbian and gays started coming to us also and there was harassment when they were being raped and so on, so we have always supported them.”

She says people need to understand that the LGBTQI group are normal people and should not be discriminated against.

“And in this times, what we have found especially in the past is that they are the last to get any help because people don’t accept them as normal human beings, so they often tend to be the last, there is so much discrimination. Luckily for the Ministry of Women leading this work on the referral pathways and on being inclusive and so on that is being addressed but not as much as we like to.”

The FWCC is urging every individual to step up and raise their concerns against any form of discrimination in society.