TWENTY-SEVEN Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer (LBQ+) feminists from ten Pacific Island countries and territories gathered in Nadi, Fiji, for the second Pacific LBQ Working Group: Feminist Strategy Meeting, taking place from 21–23 January 2026.
Participants represent LBQ activist groups from American Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and West Papua, bringing together diverse identities, lived experiences, and political contexts across the vast Pacific Ocean. This Strategy Meeting builds on an inaugural planning meeting held on 5–6 November 2024 in Nadi, Fiji. The Working Group is co-convened by DIVA for Equality and ILGA Oceania and originated at the third Pacific Human Rights Conference on SOGIESC in April 2024, where collective priorities were documented.
The message from Nadi is clear: we are here—strong, undeterred, and together. This three-day meeting creates space for Pacific small-island LBQ activist groups to collectively analyse realities, share urgent work, confront what must change, and strengthen what activist groups are doing well. Members support each other’s health and well-being for the long struggle.
The meeting centres on intersectional feminist leadership rooted in Pacific worldviews, decolonial resistance, and collective care. The Pacific LBQ+ Working Group is deepening its shared political analysis and coordinated action across local, national, regional, and global platforms. Discussions focus on constituencies, movement challenges, safety, sustainability, and long-term engagement, while strengthening members’ knowledge and skills to work more effectively through feminist approaches grounded in Pacific contexts.
In her opening remarks, Her Excellency Jennifer Lalonde, the High Commissioner of Canada to Fiji, shared that “This meeting celebrates the leadership, solidarity, and voices of Pacific LBQ communities, whose work and courage are shaping a stronger, more inclusive Pacific. Through Canada’s CFLI, we are proud to support this effort.”
The Working Group is jointly supported by DIVA for Equality and ILGA Oceania. “Since 2024, the Pacific Feminist LBQ Working Group has met regularly online, leveraging national, regional, and global advocacy opportunities. Activists have built deeper relationships across borders and movements. Members now better understand the realities, risks, exhaustion, and courage that define LBQ feminist organising in the Pacific— limited resources, heavy emotional labour, and increasing political, economic, and environmental pressures are real. We will work for change, together.” Noelene Nabulivou, Co-Executive Director, DIVA for Equality, Fiji.
The work has begun. Recently, the Working Group submitted its first-ever submission to the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) on violence and discrimination experienced by lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women. The submission was drafted by members of the Working Group and will be presented to the 62nd session of the UN Human Rights Council in June 2026.
Louisa Wall of the Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Waikato, Ngāti Hineuru in Aotearoa New Zealand, and Women’s Chair ILGA Oceania shared that “For LBQ people in the Pacific, this group is more than advocacy. It is visibility and recognition that we exist as Indigenous representatives across the region. It provides a space to build networks, amplify voices, and create lasting social and legal impact, drawing on our expertise and experiences to shape policies, programs, and movements that truly reflect our rights and realities.”
LBQ+ women with disabilities representative Melania Tanoa shared that this space builds her capacity as a feminist, stating that “To educate is to empower. The human rights of LBQ+ women with disabilities matter.’’
Similar sentiments were also expressed by Fiji feminist activist Ilisapeci Delaibatiki, reflecting that “The meeting provides a space to reconnect and foster regional solidarity and strategy for Pacific LBQ+ women.”
For Janette Olliver from the Cook Islands, “This meeting allows us to support one another, identify needs, share knowledge, develop informed responses to issues that lesbian, bisexual and queer women go through, and build strength as women whose voices are too often marginalised or silenced.”
LBQ+ feminist organisers in the meeting challenge criminalisation, misogyny, heteropatriarchy, racism, militarism, colonial legal systems, and broken neoliberal capitalist structures that harm bodies, communities, and Islands. The Working Group centres climate and ecological justice, recognising that Pacific LBQ women live on the frontlines of climate change and ecocide.
The vision of the Working Group is for just, ecologically balanced futures where all Pacific people—including those of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics —can live with dignity, safety, and self-determination. All really means all.