Fiji

Overview of SDG progress

"The Fiji Civil Society Organisations (CSO) VNR Taskforce comprising of the Fiji Council of Social Services, Fiji Women’s Right Movement, Fiji Disabled Peoples Federation, Rainbow Pride Foundation, Citizen’s Constitutional Forum, Save the Children Fiji, Adventist Development Relief Agency Fiji, Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding, Pacific Islands Association of NGOs, Habitat for Humanity Fiji, Fiji Commerce &Employers Federation and Fiji Trade Union Congress was established in November 2018 after a regional meeting on SDG organised by UN DESA and ESCAP. In their last 2018 meeting, the taskforce resolved to organise a mapping exercise to gauge how civil society and community groups were contributing to the achievement of the 17 SDGs in the country. To carry this out, FCOSS convened the two-day Fiji NGO Dialogue that brought together it’s member District Councils of Social Services together with like-minded NGOs including Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Integrity Fiji, Scripture Union, Pacific Youth Against Corruption and 350.Org and provided a space for an exchange of civilsociety perspectives around development effectiveness and reporting on the SGDs. A CSO mapping that employed participatory methods was successfully conducted at the event, the result of which was shared to the Taskforce in March 2019. The taskforce then identified from the mapping CSO leads that we could approach to coordinate inputs for each goal from CSO peers. "

Overview of climate change

While Fiji has championed and initiated global CC commitments, at the national level, there are criticisms that there are no coherence with national environmental policies and laws and suspicion around funding for local CC initiatives particularly in supporting communities to become resilient.

Civil society priorities

Inclusive development, coherence in development approaches and environmental conservation, democratic accountability, impunity of officials involved in corrupt private-public dealings, gender violence, militarisation and nepostims of/in the civil service

Civil society engagement

Ad hoc dialogue a month before VNR 2019 and there are no consistent policy dialogues. CSOs were invited to submit data and success stories which were captured in a draft Govt VNR report in 2019 but a more recent report that has been placed on UN website has removed all references to NGOs.

Public awareness

This remains very limted. As CSOs were mobilising for VNR reporting in 2019, there was general acknowledgement of govt officials that awareness of SDGs is low.