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By Andrianah Kole
The Solomon Islands Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources will launch its new Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) Strategy on Friday, following a three-day training programme to prepare ministry staff for its implementation.
The strategy was endorsed in April 2026 and is intended to strengthen the integration of gender equality, disability and social inclusion across the ministry’s work.
The Pacific Community (SPC), through the Pacific-European Union Marine Partnership (PEUMP), has provided technical assistance in developing the strategy.
The development process included a policy review, community consultations in two provinces, stakeholder engagement, key informant interviews with selected Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR) staff, and a validation workshop.
The three-day training is designed to help ministry officers understand the strategy, its objectives and their roles and responsibilities in putting it into practice.
Ronelle Panda, the ministry’s Gender Focal Point, said the training was aimed at strengthening officers’ understanding of gender and its relevance to fisheries.
“We will go back to the concepts of gender, and how gender relates to fisheries,” she said.
The training brings together officers from different areas of the ministry, including aquaculture, coastal fisheries and offshore tuna fisheries.
Ms Panda said the strategy was intended to ensure different groups were considered in the management and development of the fisheries sector.
“It is men and women, and also including children, youth, people with disabilities,” she said.
“It’s all about including everyone.”
She said this was particularly important when managing fisheries resources.
“When you are managing fisheries resources, you must consider everybody inside,” Ms Panda said.
Natalie Makhoul, a Gender and Human Rights Specialist with SPC, said the organisation had supported MFMR over several years on gender, social inclusion and disability mainstreaming in fisheries.
She said the current training was intended to build the ministry’s capacity to implement the new strategy.
“We will learn about what GEDSI means, how it matters in fisheries, what are the tools that they can apply in their work,” Ms Makhoul said.
The training looks at GEDSI across different areas of fisheries, including inshore fisheries, aquaculture and the tuna industry.
It also considers GEDSI within the ministry’s internal policies, laws and human resources.
The third day of the workshop will focus specifically on the new strategy and its implementation plan.
Ms Makhoul said this would help staff understand the strategy and what was expected of them.
“The training aims to ensure that the staff that are here today are equipped with the tools and the knowledge that they need to go back and to apply GEDSI lenses in their work,” she said.
Ms Makhoul said fisheries were an important part of life in Solomon Islands, providing food, income and income-generating opportunities.
She said women were involved in different activities along the fisheries value chain, although their roles were not always visible.
“Many women do different activities along the value chain but often we don’t see their roles in fishing,” she said.
The tuna industry was also an important employment sector for Solomon Islanders, with women and men from the provinces able to access jobs in tuna processing facilities.
Ms Makhoul said the ministry wanted its services to be equitable and inclusive, allowing people to participate and benefit from the fisheries sector.
The new GEDSI strategy is broader than the ministry’s previous gender mainstreaming strategy, which Ms Makhoul said had focused on inshore fisheries.
The new strategy covers aquaculture, community-based resource management, internal policies and processes, the tuna industry and coastal livelihoods.
“It has a very comprehensive action plan to make it easy for MFMR to implement it,” Ms Makhoul said.
The strategy includes a mission and vision statement, six objectives and an action plan.
Ms Makhoul said community voices had also informed its development.
She described the strategy as a significant milestone for MFMR, saying it was among very few ministries in the Pacific to have its own comprehensive GEDSI strategy.
Ms Panda said the strategy would be incorporated into the ministry’s annual work plans, with funding allocated to support its implementation.
“We are developing work plans for every year, to make sure that we are including activities, and then also we have a budget for implementing activities,” she said.
The training also covers GEDSI tools and data collection.
Ms Panda said officers would be guided on how to ensure different groups were included when working with communities.
“We are training a lot of gender tools, how we are collecting data to make sure that when we go to communities, we make sure we are including everybody,” she said.
The workshop includes officers who have previously received gender training as well as those attending for the first time.
For some participants, the training is a refresher, while for others it is an introduction to gender concepts.
Ms Makhoul said the overall aim was to ensure ministry staff took ownership of the new strategy.
“GEDSI is everybody’s business and everybody’s responsibility,” she said.
The GEDSI Strategy will be formally launched on Friday.
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