Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine has called on Pacific leaders, urging them to adopt intentional, innovative, and bold approaches to tackle the complex challenges of gender inequality in the region.

Addressing the 15th Triennial Conference on Pacific Women in Majuro, President Heine emphasised the need for transformative action: “We must take risks, create new partnerships, and be unwavering in our commitment to bring about substantive gender equality for the region.”

“Gender is not an issue that can be addressed on its own – we must think also of how it intersects with our other challenges and opportunities and develop our policies and approaches with gender equality in mind,” President Heine added.

The conference, which precedes the 8th Pacific Women Ministers meeting later this week, has identified three critical themes: women’s health, gender-based violence, and climate justice.

In her address, President Heine stressed the interconnectedness of these issues and their disproportionate impact on women and girls.

“For example, we know that we cannot have gender equality without climate justice, and vice versa. We know that the climate crisis will make achieving gender equality even harder – and that we cannot solve the climate crisis without gender equality.

“Women are often hit fastest and hardest by climate impacts – they are the ‘first responders’ of the family, responsible for ensuring that the family is taken care of and healthy,” President Heine said.

Echoing the conference theme, “An pilinlin koba komman Lometo for a resilient and sustainable Pacific” which translates to “droplets of water creating an ocean”, President Heine emphasised the power of collective action. Meaning that just as droplets of water come together to form a vast ocean, so too can our individual efforts to create a wave of change for gender equality in the Pacific.