“With the Center 24 Hour online phone call, the Center is also busy 24 hours around the clock recieving complaints by both female and male partners seeking counselling and or legal solutions and even spiritual Counselling to their problems,” said Tahi.
The Center is equipped with 500 male advocates throughout the country who have been trained to carry out awareness amongst the male population of the country on good behavior and respect for women and young girls and at the same time, also provide counselling and reporting of cases back to the Head Office in Port Vila, Tahi explained.
She added that the Center has set up and running 40 Special Committees across the country that handle cases which are sensitive and require the services of more than one staff to deal with.
“We have 43 full time staff, including 2 lawyers based here at the head office and staff at the six provincial sub-branches and the 40 Committees in various centers throughout the country.
The Center set up structure is very helpful in that crisis are dealt with as soon as reports are filed and we always aim to get the issues resolved as quickly as possible. It’s not always easy but our staff and committees across the country are trained and equipped to provide solutions in the end, even if cases had to be dealt with through legal systems,” said Tahi.
“The bulk of cases that the Center deals with is mostly male relate behavior towards female that ends up with one form of violence or another and at the same time, here are cases of male reports on the social behaviors of female partners.y
“It’s a widespread issue in Vanuatu today, in both the urban and rural sectors of our communities at large.”
