Down by the River: Addressing the Rights, Needs and Strengths of Fijian Sexual and Gender Minorities in Disaster Risk Reduction and Humanitarian Response

This Down By The River report relays the priorities shared by Fijian sexual and gender minorities through their stories, and offers reflections from a workshop with Fijian disaster risk reduction (DRR) and humanitarian actors. Although Down By The River was a relatively short project, it provides guidance for substantive steps toward inclusion of sexual and gender minorities in DRR and humanitarian programs. And it challenges government, organisations and individuals to interrogate underlying heteronormative, cisnormative and binary assumptions that exclude sexual and gender minorities, and that make specific inclusion measures necessary.

The primary intended audience are government and non-government organisations implementing DRR and humanitarian programs in Fiji, and members of Fijian sexual and gender minorities engaging with those organisations. It should also be useful for government and non-government organisations, advocates, and communities elsewhere in the Pacific, and around the world.