Vanuatu/In Port-Vila, a hundred women pave the way for a regional dialogue on equality

Around a hundred women, including academics, elected representatives, students, entrepreneurs and community activists, gathered on May 12 and 13, 2026 in the auditorium of the National University of Vanuatu (UNV) in Port-Vila, for the first Forum of Influential Women.

Organized by the Observatoire francophone pour le développement inclusif par le genre (OFDIG), a unit of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), in partnership with UNV, and with the support of the Canadian government under its Indo-Pacific Strategy, this event inaugurates a series of three regional forums that will continue in Cambodia inUNV and with the support of the Government of Canada under its Indo-Pacific Strategy, this event inaugurates a series of three regional forums that will continue in Cambodia in 2026, alongside the Francophonie Summit, and then in Vietnam in 2027. The Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) is one of the partners associated with this initiative.

The Forum opened with the presentation of a documentary report by consultant Lucie Nmara Nauka, which provides an uncompromising assessment of the situation: although Vanuatu has a legal framework aligned with international standards, with the ratification of CEDAW in 1995, the adoption of the Family Protection Act in 2008 and the National Gender Equality Policy 2020-2030, these formal advancesHowever, these formal advances are hampered by the persistence of customary law, kastom, which still marginalizes women in terms of inheritance, land ownership and community leadership. Two figures sum up the extent of the gap: more than 70% of women in Vanuatu say they have experienced violence from an intimate partner, according to the Vanuatu Women's Centre 2024 survey, and women hold only around 1.9% of seats in the national parliament.

For two days, conferences, debates and round tables combined academic analysis, first-hand accounts and political discourse. The "Women and the Power to Influence" panel featured Jenny Tasale Regenvanu, the first woman elected to head the Port-Vila Town Council in 2024, and MP Marie-Louise Milne, elected to Parliament in 2025. The second day highlighted an often overlooked angle: the place of women in higher education and research, through the trajectories of doctoral students and university managers from Vanuatu. The Forum was not just a forum for discussion: it also sealed an institutional act, with the presentation of the five-year Framework Agreement on Scientific Cooperation between UQAM, via OFDIG, and UNV, for the production and dissemination of knowledge on gender equality in the Pacific.

For Dr Leslie Vandeputte, Director of the UNV Language Centre, this first Forum was "an inspiring and enriching experience". which confirms the University's vocation to become "a catalyst for research, the development of ideas and the strengthening of leadership". Beyond Port-Vila, this first step places the French-speaking Pacific, long kept on the periphery of major regional debates on gender, in a conversation that now links it to French-speaking Southeast Asia. For the AUF, whose Port-Vila office has been supporting the development of French-speaking higher education in Vanuatu for several years, this first meeting signals the emergence of a French-speaking ecosystem in Vanuatu.For the AUF, whose Port-Vila office has been supporting the development of French-speaking higher education in Vanuatu for several years now, this first meeting signals the emergence of a Francophone ecosystem of this kind in the Pacific, an ecosystem whose institutionalization will depend on future Forums.

Source: www.auf.org/