Projects / Initiatives

Research focus

Research aims

Key people

Eliminating violence against women is one of the major challenges of the 21st century. Awareness of the problem has grown exponentially, but solutions to it have not.

This Centre for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW) aims to transform our understanding of the problem by examining the structural drivers that cause and compound violence against women, and pioneering new, evidence-based approaches to radically improve policy and practice across Australia and the Indo-Pacific.

Headquartered at Monash University, the CEVAW network comprises 13 Chief Investigators from six Australian universities, and 45 Australian and international partner organisations. The Centre mobilises Indigenous and survivor-centred approaches, interdisciplinary collaborations, and Indo-Pacific partnerships to deliver scalable approaches to eliminate violence against women across the legal, security, economic, health, and political systems of Australia and the region.

The Australian National University is part of the network, through Chief Investigator Professor Bina  D'Costa from the Department of International Relations in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs.

Research focus

The Migration and Trafficking research stream, led by Professor Bina D’Costa at ANU, forms part of the seven-year research partnership at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellent for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW).  CEVAW is the world’s first Centre to address the full range of forms of violence against women across Asia and the Pacific.

Contributing to broader research on the contexts in which violence occurs and is experienced, this research seeks to identify how changes in socialisation, institutions, technology, civil societies and community practice in specific contexts can reduce violence happening or mitigate impacts.  There is focus on Indigenous and First Nations women, and LGBTQAI+ people.

Phases

Two initial interrelated research projects within the Migration and Trafficking stream based at ANU are underway in the first three years: one together with Rohingya communities in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia, and another focused on women in climate-induced migrant and displaced communities in the Pacific.

Research aims

The projects seek to develop, articulate, and centre indigenous methodologies and survivor-centric approaches to understanding trafficking and smuggling dynamics. Gender justice, from the perspectives of those most affected, is also considered as part of these dynamics.  Intersecting with other research streams across the centre this work informs better understandings of protection from violence, extreme forms of exploitation and abuse, violence from colonialism, forced migration, and racism through de-colonial approaches.

A prevention of “violence against women” community knowledge network is being set up that can translate research into policy change. The focus is at the community-level with action research exploring:

  • relationships between communication, knowledge, networks, and sector reform to prevent and reduce violence experienced by forcibly displaced and trafficked/smuggled Rohingya populations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Australia.
  • the key dynamics of violence and climate-induced displacements in Fiji and Papua New Guinea and/or other Pacific communities.  
  • explore how traditional social awareness programs that target violence, early/forced marriage and trafficking, work in extreme conditions.
  • how, in the context of climate-induced migration, activities to mitigate or prevent violence against women is undertaken and how related knowledge is produced.
Legal info session for Sydne Rohingya community Aug 2024
Legal info session for Sydne Rohingya community Aug 2024

Legal education session for Sydney Rohingya community

Dr Zoe Bell, post doc scholar in the Migration and Trafficking research stream at CEVAW ANU, is engaged with the Australian Rohingya Women's Development Organisation (arwdo.org). In August 2024, together with the wonderful people at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness and the Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS), a legal education session was held together with Rohingya community members in Sydney. 

With ongoing atrocities targeting the Rohingya in Rakhine state Myanmar, there was interest to hear from Stateless Legal Clinic Director Katie Robertson and RACS Solicitor Emily Pullen about options for family reunion, visas and citizenship. Despite the rain, the event was well attended, and people appreciated the opportunity to speak directly with the lawyers and representatives following the session.

Australian Rohingya Women's Development Organisation are a key project interlocutor, as work in this research stream seeks to centre perspectives from affected community groups from various contexts in the research design and direction.

Key people

Prof Bina D'Costa

Bina D'Costa-bigsmile-lores.jpg

Michelle Godwin

Michelle Godwin
Michelle Godwin