Justice for Pacific & Caribbean Women & Girls

We here at ICAAD are incredibly grateful for your support and are excited to update you on the progress made on our Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action: Promoting Access to Justice for Women and Girls in Pacific Island Countries

ICAAD’s access to justice project aims to strengthen the rule of law by restoring accountability, transparency, and consistency to the judiciary. 

Our focus is to change the attitudes and behaviors of judges and prosecutors through evidence (data collection and analysis) and train them to recognize how gender stereotypes and cultural norms contribute to low levels of sentencing, thereby denying access to justice for victims/ survivors by perpetuating the cycle of violence.

Using strategic assessments developed collaboratively with a team of 40+ pro bono attorneys, ICAAD and DLA Piper LLP are engaging in rule of law training, medico-legal training, case law analysis, and building technical expertise of local NGOs to combat violence against women. 

Huridocs and faculty and students at Parsons The New School for Design are working with ICAAD to implement technology and communications solutions to increase awareness, improve data collection, analyze cases, and improve economic empowerment of women.

ICAAD was invited to join the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) in 2014 and once again in 2015, and the partners have come together to make this project a CGI Commitment to Action.

Project Outputs Thus Far

• 12 strategic assessments on Pacific Island Countries analyzing gender equality
• 940 judicial decisions in 10 countries analyzed for how cultural norms affect sentencing
• 2 rule of law trainings conducted for judges and lawyers at Gender & Law Conferences
• 50+ local, national, regional, and international stakeholders met during field work in Fiji
• 50 impactful interventions identified with local input, 7 selected as high priority
• 40+ attorneys spent 3,000+ hours on research & analysis
• $1,000,000+ pro bono hours donated

See the attached report for more details on the rule of law trainings, pictures from the training and ICAAD at the Clinton Global Initiative, and upcoming initiatives, such as our presentation for Pacific Island lawyers on September 17th in Brisbane, Australia. 

Thank you for your continuing support, and feel free to contact ICAAD at info@icaadglobal.org with any questions.

• Progress Report (PDF)