After 15 years of advocacy, NiVan women are asking what the world’s newest gender-climate framework will mean for daily life in the Pacific.
Six years ago, a message crossed the Pacific.
Mary Jack, a women’s leader from Vanuatu, reached out online to Australian advocate Wendy Harper. Their conversations continued across unstable internet connections and time zones, often squeezed between community meetings, family responsibilities, and the ongoing reality of cyclones affecting the islands.
What began as a shared passion for women’s empowerment across an ocean became a deep friendship — and a shared commitment to amplify the voices of Pacific women too often left out of global climate conversations.
For years, the work of building Mitingar, (Mitingar.org) Vanuatu’s first national grassroots representative body, happened entirely through screens.
Connecting wasn’t easy. Telecommunications across the islands are intermittent, expensive, and often inaccessible — and cyclones made everything worse. But they kept showing up. Plans took shape in the margins, in between Wendy’s advocacy work in Australia and Mary’s community meetings and disaster recovery efforts in Vanuatu.
Mary was advocating for women who are never invited into the global policy spaces where decisions about their lives are made.
A Historic Meeting — and What It Represents
Then, just weeks ago, that connection came full circle.
Wendy organised getting Mary to Sydney to present at in Climate Action Week, joining a series of events across the city where global leaders, government ministers, policymakers and advocates gathered to discuss the future of climate action.
And for the first time, Mary and Wendy stood side by side in the same room having ‘in the flesh conversations’.
But the significance of this moment ran deeper than their long-awaited meeting. For the first time, Mary Jack — a grassroots women’s leader from Vanuatu, and the architect r of Mitingar’s blueprint to connect all the women across 65 remote, inhabited islands — had her name placed on the table at ministerial events and international policy discussions.
After fifteen years of her hard won advocacy, the world was finally listening.
She brought the voices of Pacific communities directly into conversations where women like them have rarely been heard before. Her message was direct and deeply personal:
“We have gone through many things and we have been advocating for the past 15 years, and very little has changed on the ground.”
Across the Pacific, women are rebuilding their basic dwellings after cyclones, restoring gardens that feed their families, re-establishing water supplies, and caring for children, elders and people with disabilities every and throughout disasters. For them, climate change is not theoretical. It is daily life.
What Is the Belém Gender Action Plan?
This is why the Belém Gender Action Plan which was adopted at COP30 in Belém, Brazil in November 2025 matters so profoundly to communities like the ones Mitingar serves.
The Belém GAP is a landmark nine-year framework (2026–2034) under the UNFCCC. For the first time in international climate negotiations, it includes explicit commitments on gender-based violence, women’s health, care work, and protections for female environmental defenders. It aims to embed gender equality directly into climate policy — ensuring that women are not only included in decision-making, but that climate funding reaches the communities most affected by environmental change.
It is the most comprehensive gender-climate framework ever adopted under the UNFCCC.
But adoption is not implementation. And for women in places like Vanuatu, the real question — the same question Mary has been asking for 15 years — is whether global commitments will finally translate into meaningful change on the ground.
The Reality Behind Climate Policy in Vanuatu
Vanuatu is widely recognised as one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, regularly exposed to cyclones, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and rising sea levels.
For communities across the islands, climate change compounds existing challenges around infrastructure, livelihoods and access to basic services. Mary describes these realities plainly:
“As women, we don’t have running water. Food is constantly insecure. Water is scarce and hard to access. We don’t have electricity Grass roots women live by candlelight, with little opportunity to develop livelihoods. Materials to build waterproof huts, transport, mobile data and supplementary foods are expensive and out of reach for most. We have many struggles surrounding these issues.”
For many ni-Van women, climate resilience is not simply about adapting to environmental change. It is about building the systems that support everyday life — access to water, energy, food and safe homes. And it is about ensuring women themselves have the power and resources to lead and deliver those solutions.
That is precisely what Mitingar exists to support. As Vanuatu’s national grassroots women’s organisation, Mitingar is dedicated to representing, advocating and resourcing the self-determined efforts of ni-Van women — so they can build a stronger, safer, healthier and more prosperous future for themselves and their communities.
From Global Frameworks to Ground-Level Change
International frameworks like the Belém Gender Action Plan create the policy conditions for change. But they don’t deliver change by themselves.
What bridges that gap is the sustained, often invisible work of grassroots women’s organisations — the kind of work Mitingar has been doing in Vanuatu for years. The work of leaders like Mary Jack, who spent years advocating across unstable internet connections before finally standing in the same room as the people making decisions.
The Belém GAP is a genuine step forward. It signals that gender-responsive climate action is no longer optional — it is an international commitment. But for Pacific women, the proof will not come from a framework document. It will come from running water, reliable food systems, safe homes, and the resources to rebuild after the next cyclone.
That work is already happening. Mitingar and its network of ni-Van women leaders are doing it every day.
What changes — what must change — is whether global climate institutions and funders finally direct real resources toward the women who are doing it. These wheels turn slowly. We are not waiting. While they make up their minds private change-leaders are investing in Mitingar’s mission so that the women of Vanuatu are not left waiting.
Mitingar is Vanuatu’s national grassroots women’s organisation. We represent, advocate for, and resource NiVan women’s self-determined efforts to build stronger, safer, healthier communities.
If you believe Pacific women’s voices belong in global climate conversations — learn more about our work, or get in touch or support us below.
Sources:
- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
- Gender Action Plan World Bank
- Climate Risk Profile: Vanuatu UN Women Asia Pacific
- Gender and Climate Change Pacific Community (SPC)
- Gender Equality and Climate Programs FAO, Food Security in the Pacific
- ActionAid & CARE International, Pacific Women’s Programs
