Women carrying burden of Fiji’s meth crisis, report finds

Women and families in Fiji are quietly shouldering the devastating social fallout of the country’s worsening methamphetamine crisis, with communities left to fill gaps in overstretched health systems, a new regional policy paper has found.

Dr Audrey Aumua, a Fijian and chief executive officer of The Fred Hollows Foundation New Zealand, said the crisis was being felt at the family level.

“Women are caring for family members experiencing addiction. They are managing the social and economic fallout and, in many cases, they are holding communities together as social cohesion strains,” Dr Aumua said.

She said churches, women’s groups, youth networks and local leaders were already responding by providing informal care and creating safe spaces, often with very little support or funding.

“A key priority should be ensuring that these community-led responses are not seen as peripheral, but as central to the health system approach,” she said.

Ross Ardern, a former New Zealand senior police officer with 40 years of Pacific experience, said law enforcement alone could not solve the problem.

“We must look to those in the community that can offer support to law enforcement and work with them, including our traditional leaders and civil society,” Mr Ardern said.

The paper, Turning the Tide Together, released on Wednesday by the Pacific Security College and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, calls for a Pacific Islands Forum-led regional summit in 2027 to develop a coordinated Pacific drug strategy.