Samoa is among the countries to have the highest prevalence of violence against women, with an average of one in four women to have experienced violence.  

The E le Sauā le Alofa, or Love Shouldn’t Hurt project is a four-year project that started in 2020 in collaboration with Dr. Jenevieve Mannell from the University College London, Samoa Victims Support Group, National University of Samoa, and SBS.

The goal of the project was to understand how to reduce violence against women in Samoa and develop solutions in collaboration with community members. 

The Love Shouldn’t Hurt project is part of a broader research study called the EVE (Evidence for Violence Prevention in the Extreme) project which intends to understand how local communities address and reduce violence against women in the world’s highest prevalence settings. 

To conduct the study, 20 trusted community members went to their communities and conducted individual and group conversations discussing the cause of violence against women and how to prevent it. 

10 villages from both Upolu and Savai’i were chosen to participate in the study and a total of 1,169 people were interviewed, with almost 60 per cent being women.  

These conversations revealed problems such as abuse of power from men, women being undervalued in Samoan culture, poor communication between couples, and family conflict as causes of the violence. 

After these interviews revealed the causes, a workshop activity was developed with village representatives to finalise a pathway to creating change. 

“Giving them ownership over this [workshop] process and some guidance from what had happened internationally and what worked but being clear these were international interventions,” Dr. Mannell said. 

“We were trying to see whether they resonated with the Samoan people and what would be relevant to the community.” 

Some of the community-led solutions found for Samoa would be community intervention by putting fines for instances of violence against women, encouraging matai to lead by example, working with men to value women’s role, supporting women’s empowerment, family and couples counseling, and evening prayers to help create discussions. 

Overall the research findings suggest that it is possible to reduce violence against women and girls using community-led solutions which allow villages to spearhead their own solutions to issues affecting their community. 

“There’s a lot of solutions here and we can prevent violence if we do it effectively as a community,”  Dr. Mannell said.