Vanuatu has alarmingly high rates of violence against women by husbands/partners as reported in the Vanuatu National Survey on Women’s Lives and Family Relationships undertaken in 2009 by the Vanuatu Women’s Centre in partnership with the Vanuatu National Statistics Office. Seven years after this ground breaking study, UN Women commissioned research into Women and Children’s Access to the Formal Justice System in Vanuatu.
This Report analyses why an estimated 98% of cases of violence against women and children do not reach the stage of being charged by the police, let alone prosecuted by the courts. The Report summarizes 12 Key Findings on why women and children’s access to the formal justice system in Vanuatu is so low and makes some recommendations on how this situation might be improved.
