Transparency International New Zealand has worked with South Pacific people, civil society leaders and communities through the development of the South Pacific Outreach Project.
The project, funded by New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT), supports the Pacific Reset policy’s prioritisation of greater coherence and connectivity between domestic and international engagement, recognising the value of deepening connections between Pasifika communities across the region.
As the first phase of the Project which began in November 2020 winds down in September 2021, CLCT Integrity Fiji is pleased to report on these last set of activities aimed at enhancing our competencies in delivering anti-corruption initiatives to the Fijian public.
Social Media Training
Youths for Integrity, a network of CLCT Integrity Fiji has benefited from the inputs of Mary Kane Kivalu and recently with Chelsea Cain.
Chelsea ran two very well received Zoom training sessions looking at Basic social media strategies and how to run anti-corruption campaigns. The training sessions have provided competencies to the youth leaders to increase visibility and public engagements on their Twitter, TikTok, Youtube and Facebook accounts.
Chelsea has also provided innovative training notes which will be very useful as the youths optimize digital strategies to ensure that their social media accounts become a dynamic tool of anti-corruption advocacy with the Fijian public.
Small Island Nations Integrity Systems
On Saturday 21 August, a group of academics from the faculty of Humanities and Education of the Fiji National University met to discuss the key ‘pillars’ in a country’s governance system, such as judiciary, public sector, media, both in terms of their internal corruption risks and their contribution, as integrity systems, to preventing and fighting corruption in society.
In Pacific Island States, there is often a disjoint between how well the pillar concepts fit with local culture. Cultural institutions, for example, especially in Melanesian and Polynesian nations, have a strong influence on ethical practice, such as the Fa’amatai in Samoa or the Fijian Chiefly system. Transparency International New Zealand, for example, faced this challenge when trying to incorporate the Treaty of Waitangi and tikanga within the integrity systems in New Zealand.
The lively discussion with Fijian academics highlighted strategies where local traditional governance systems could be integrated into the traditional Eurocentric NIS assessment tools. This will be constructive when functional models of NIS assessments are integrated with Pacific cultural governance models.
Youth Leaders Workshop on Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Harassment Policy (28 August)
It is the policy of CLCT Integrity Fiji to promote equal employment opportunities and to ensure the continued absence of discrimination on the grounds of gender, marital status, race, nationality, ethnic origin, political or religious belief, physical impairment or sexual preference, in relation to all human resource practices and daily activities in the workplace.
The Workshop discussed what the individual should do in exploitation and harassment situations.
