Vanuatu Women's Centre - National CAVAW Network Against Family and Sexual Violence

Founded in Port Vila in 1992, the Vanuatu Women's Centre (VWC) built the country's national counselling and referral service for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, anchored by a network of volunteer Committees Against Violence Against Women (CAVAW) that grew from 37 committees in 2015 to 45 by 2019.

The 2009 Vanuatu National Survey on Women's Lives and Family Relationships (3,691 households, published 2011) found 60% of ever-partnered women had experienced lifetime physical and/or sexual partner violence, 68% emotional violence, and around 30% sexual abuse before age 15. In FY2018, VWC delivered 6,574 counselling sessions to 1,811 clients, and research cited by ANU's Devpolicy Blog credits VWC-supported processes with facilitating roughly 87% of family protection orders issued in Vanuatu between 2015 and 2017.

Devpolicy Blog research notes that an estimated 98% of violence cases in Vanuatu never reach the formal justice system, and reach into remote outer islands remains constrained by the volunteer CAVAW model and continued donor dependency.