Mereseini Rakuita

Mereseini Rakuita is a visionary champion of gender equality and women’s rights in Fiji and the Asia-Pacific region. She is currently the Principal Strategic Lead for the Pacific Women program at the Pacific Community (SPC), driving SPC’s work on gender equality and empowerment
of women and girls within SPC and across the Pacific region. She holds a concurrent and complementary role as global chairperson for FP2030, a global movement dedicated to advancing the rights of people everywhere to access family planning services.

She was the youngest female politician to be elected to parliament in 2014 and was subsequently appointed as the first female Minister for Lands and Mineral Resources (2014– 2016). She has previously served as Acting Permanent Secretary for Justice and Anti-corruption with oversight of operations in the Elections Office (2012–2013), a State Solicitor (2009– 2013)—the highest ranked female legal advisor to the Government—and Chairperson of the Telecommunications Authority of Fiji (2008), the first and youngest Fijian woman in all these roles during tenure. As legal advisor to Government, she practiced extensively as a barrister and solicitor within the Fijian court system.

During her tenure as Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation, she introduced and rolled out a number of inclusive and gender-sensitive policy and legal reforms.

She was keen to go about these reforms with a whole of government, whole of population, evidence-based and transformative approach to drive forward achieving gender equality at the heart of the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Those include the roll out of a whole of population consultation for the development of Fiji’s National Action Plan to Prevent Violence Against All Women and Girls, which is cited as a best exemplar globally; the introduction of Transformative Gender Mainstreaming Institutional Capacity Development across government with a focus on gender-responsive budgeting; and strategic investment in gender statistics.

In 2019, she was elected as Chair of the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing Platform for Action +25 review.

Ms. Rakuita holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the Australian National University and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Tasmania in Australia. She was admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory in 1997 and Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of Fiji and Commissioner for Oaths of the High Court of Fiji in 1998.

Ms. Rakuita was born on the island of Vanua Levu in Fiji and has three children.