RRRT staff member Donna Pune-Narai with staff of the Vanuatu Ministry of Education and Training, Vanuatu, 2018
What We Do
Despite progress within PICs in advancing human rights-compliant laws and national policies, as well as improved UPR and treaty reporting, the human rights context has changed very little over the past four years. Whilst laws, policies and reporting are steps towards change, they in themselves will not realise change without education, training, implementation and enforcement - all only possible through a well-informed and motivated leadership, whether in civil society, judiciary or Government. This next phase of RRRT’s work (2017-2021) focuses on implementation and enforcement, and deepens emphasis on ‘mainstreaming’ a rights-based approach (RBA) across sectors and partners, transformational human rights education (HRE), and capacity development that shifts mind-sets and attitudes, and stimulates action.
RRRT's work is focused on three broad areas:
RRRT is building PIC governments’ knowledge, capacity and attitudes to promote, protect and fulfill human rights standards.
Violence against women and girls is the most pervasive violation of human rights in the Pacific. RRRT has been a primary support to PICs in drafting and advocating for legislative change for survivors of violence. RRRT is now supporting increased access to justice for women and girl survivors of violence through increased access to justice services.
Read more about ending violence against women
Alongside its assistance to PIC governments as ‘duty bearers’, RRRT is building the capacity of civil society organisations (CSOs) and communities to effectively promote human rights, gender equality and EVAW.
There are a number of common approaches underpinning this work:
- Contributing to regional and international goals
- Responding to priority human right issues
- Applying an intensive, varied approach to capacity development
- Mainstreaming a RBA across settings and sectors
- Maximising country-specific and regional perspectives
- Contributing to SPC organisational objectives
- Building evidence and sharing learnings.
RRRT’s work is underpinned by a theory of change.
Key performance indicators are measured across all three outcome areas:
The vision and strategic objectives of RRRT are guided by Pacific Leaders’ priorities previously included in the Pacific Plan 2005–2015, and more recently in the 2014 Framework for Pacific Regionalism. RRRT contributes to the realisation of all three development goals outlined in the SPC Strategic Plan 2016-2020, and specifically to Development Objective 6 to “Advance social development through the promotion of human rights, gender equality, cultural diversity and opportunities for young people”. RRRT also contributes to SPC’s organisational objectives, including Objective 3 to “Address members’ development priorities through multi-disciplinary approaches”, with RRRT’s specific result under this objective being “strengthened capacity of SPC to apply a rights-based approach to development programming”. SPC’s rights perspective promotes human rights and democracy as fundamental to sustainable development.
RRRT’s work supports Pacific states to progress Sustainable Development (SDG) Goal 5, “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” and Goal 16, “Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies”. RRRT’s work also supports PICs work towards Goal 10, “to reduce inequality, policies should be universal in principle paying attention to the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized populations”, Goal 13, “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”, and Goal 14, “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources”. The work of RRRT supports the realisation of all of the Sustainable Development Goals. Our work directly supports Pacific states to progress….
