Unseen, Unsafe: Case Studies

The child protection landscape across the Pacific and Timor-Leste is going through immense change and development. Governments across the region are endeavouring to build robust systems to protect children.

Most tragically, children are not only victimised by the harmful attitudes, actions and norms that are dominant in their families and communities; they grow up to embody those social influences and the cycle of violence continues.

This report examines five countries as in-depth case studies – Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Timor-Leste and Fiji (with the remaining Pacific countries in the Appendix). Across the five countries, the key violence against children categories of physical violence, emotional violence, sexual violence and neglect have been examined to reflect the scale of the problem. Further, overseas development assistance (ODA) is interrogated at the country level across all major donors.