The theme for the 53rd Pacific Island Forum Leaders Meeting is Transformative Resilient Pasifiki: Build Better Now.
And this week that theme prompted Tongan journalists who were undergoing training in preparation for the meeting to debate the use of the words “transformative” and “resilient” in one sentence.
They asked how the theme was chosen, and how can it be explained in a simple way.
The Pacific Islands Forum’s Director for Governance and Engagement, Sione Tekiteki, explained that while Tonga chose the theme, it has a significant meaning.
“The theme is really about how ‘Resilience’; for example, if it’s health or education, how do you build resilience amongst those sectors? Because one of the issues, particularly in those fields, is that you are losing a lot of good people—good teachers, good medical people—who are leaving us, who are leaving to go elsewhere.”
Tekiteki added: “So this idea of building resilience is: how can we come up with measures and solutions, whether it’s a cyclone or any other challenge, so that the country can respond to it very quickly and there are much fewer interruptions because everyone is on the same page?”
He says Tonga has would like to see discussions at this coming week’s leaders meeting consider, “How do we build resilience into everything that we do?”
The theme resonates differently for the Director of the Tongan Women’s and Children’s Crisis Centre, Ofa Ki Levuka Guttenbeil.
She used it as a challenge to journalists at the training, to consider that given women are amongst the most resilient people in the community, “How are we going to take care of this resilience?”.
“We need to transform our mindset, and when we talk about gender equality, we need to be serious about it because we are losing women, having brain drain, they are leaving our country, they are moving elsewhere. We need to open up the conversation and have co-leadership of this country,” Guttenbeil urged.
“Tonga, for example, has more women than men now, and yet 90% of our parliamentarians are men, and they make decisions that impact our lives, that impact the lives of our families, of our children, of our village, of our communities, and of our nation.
“So who do we want on the decision-making table?”
That is a question that many will ask, both inside the meetings and those watching, as Pacific leaders meet this week.