10 December 2025, Nadi, Fiji
Over 14 years, DIVA for Equality has been loud, grounded, and unapologetic in building a just, beloved community across Fiji and the Pacific, and trans-nationally. DIVA for Equality’s feminist work takes place in the vast Pacific region where all justice issues are deeply interconnected, overlapping, and struggles are accelerating.
Climate disasters intensify every year, destroying homes, livelihoods, institutions, state infrastructure, and ecosystems. Poverty deepens, especially for women, Pacific islanders with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (PIDSOGIESC), and informal and domestic workers. Unrecognised care economies and corporate extraction tighten their grip on land, oceans, air, water, and people. We face geopolitical play. Climate Majors and polluters bring dangerous, ecocidal times. None of these linked crises is accidental. They are predictable outcomes of exploitative hetero-patriarchal, white supremacist, hangover colonial systems designed to extract from Pacific peoples while denying us ownership, power, safety, and dignity. Gender hierarchies—embedded through colonialist systems, whether we claim statehood and self-determination or not—continue to silence individuals and communities carrying the heaviest burdens.
DIVA’s work goes far beyond trying to “fix” or reform systems that were never designed for us. We challenge them, try to break the worst, and we rebuild alternatives. DIVA for Equality networks insist on redistributing power, resources, and opportunities in ways that centre collective wellbeing, justice, and care.
People ask, ‘Why are these Pacific feminists in all these sets of work?’ Because the feminist work is everywhere. The tent is large and the work deep, the struggles are both immediate and long-term as we are working for justice, ecological balance and liberation.
The DIVA for Equality 16 Days of Activism campaign work in 2025 (Nov 25 to Dec 10) builds on more than a decade of Majority World feminist organising grounded in universal human rights, feminist praxis, bodily autonomy and integrity, gender justice, and deep social movement solidarity rooted in DIVA’s broad feminist constituency networks. These constituency networks continue to grow collective power and amplify work that is often systematically erased or ignored in local, national, regional, and globalised decision-making.
Our 16 Days campaign pushes for stronger recognition, political action, and community-driven solutions to EVAWG and GBV, ensuring that women and gender-diverse people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can access support. Our programmes carry out this work long-term, and at the 70th Commission on the Status of Women in March 2026, Women Deliver 2026 in April 2026 in Melbourne, the 4th Pacific Human Rights Forum in Mā’ohi Nui, and at COP31 in Turkey in late 2026, and with preparatory work in the region, we will work with many others for genuine gender-just change.
“We also intentionally inspire and introduce emergent feminists and protect those who have served the movement for decades – expanding an intersectional, intergenerational movement that reflects all women, people, and all diversities, everywhere,” says Co-Executive Director of DIVA for Equality, Noelene Nabulivou.
“Women Human Rights Defenders Day on 28 November is one of the most political dates on our calendar. Too often, the immense contributions of Pacific LBTQ+ human rights defenders are erased, sidelined, or treated as optional. Not this year. DIVA made a deliberate intervention to lift, celebrate and fiercely defend the voices of those who risk everything for justice, liberation, and community survival,” says Noelene Nabulivou.
“Six Pacific Island states still criminalize adult, consensual same-sex relationships. All 22 Pacific states criminalize abortion, denying women, girls, and gender-diverse people autonomy over their own bodies and lives. These laws are not neutral; they are tools of control and punishment,” says Viva Tatawaqa, Co-Executive Director of DIVA for Equality.
On 27 November 2025, we hosted a powerful regional webinar with activists and allies speaking from lived experience and deep movement analysis. Most were LBQ activists. Speakers uplifted the leadership of LBQ activists, disabled feminists, sex worker advocates, young women, rural women, and faithgrounded human rights defenders. Discussions exposed the daily and structural violence facing LBQ women and genderdiverse people, the persistent erasure of their issues in wider movements, the emotional and physical labour of defending communities, and the rising threats of authoritarianism, militarism, and backlash. The message was clear: our movements need accountability, courage, and solidarity, and resources – never victim-politics, nor tokenism.
We also commemorated World AIDS Day on 1 December. With Fiji experiencing one of the fastest-growing HIV epidemics in the region, this day holds deep urgency. Stigma and misinformation continue to harm people living with HIV – especially LBTQ+ people, sex workers, disabled people, young people, and those living in poverty. Violence, family rejection, criminalisation, and lack of safe services increase vulnerability and deny people their right to health, dignity, and life. DIVA networks and the National SRHR Coalition marched with the national constituency through Suva Fiji calling for truth, justice, solidarity, non-discrimination, and fully resourced healthcare systems that serve all people.
We support and advocate for national surge work. We place testing, treatment and work together to support all people living with HIV and AIDS, preventing and protecting each other. DIVA is also working on local storytelling to reflect the realities of drug-users, and their struggles with addiction and change in a system that faces major challenges to support and accompany those needing treatment.
On 5 December 2025, DIVA participated in the International Day of People Living with Disabilities. Disabled people continue to be excluded, denied resources, and subjected to violence and stigma. Many LBT and gender-nonbinary people acquire disabilities due to systemic violence, trauma, and medical neglect – political outcomes of patriarchal and colonial systems never designed to support our lives. Yet our communities continue to resist, lead, and fight for justice. We honour their radical leadership and everyday activism. We call for real change, where we see it in the ways our Pacific societies, government, and institutions function, in law and in practice, for all, including PIDSOGIESC people with disabilities!
World Human Rights Day on 10 December marks the political conclusion of our 16 Days campaign work. The DIVA community will travel in the earliest hours to the capital, Suva, Fiji, to join the annual NGO Coalition on Human Rights March – an act that asserts that human rights must be real and lived by everyone in Fiji, and the Pacific. This is important to stand publicly together in these times of fascist regression and gender pushback around the world. WE MUST NOT GO BACKWARD.
As we close the 16 Days and move into the festive and resting season, we send strength, warmth, and radical solidarity to all. May you rest, stay safe, remain bold, and carry this energy of resistance and collective power into the new year.
From DIVA for Equality: stay loud, grounded, AND STAY IN THE WORK.
Contact DIVA for Equality: public@divafiji.org