Maria Nailevu

Representative of the Women's Committee for Oceania

Maria Nailevu was the former Management Collective Member to Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality, grassroots and diverse feminist collective in Fiji working with at risk and marginalised women, including Lesbians, Bisexual, Transmasculine and gender non-confirming people (LBTI) women.

She is a grassroots activist and social organiser in Fiji and the Pacific. Maria comes with more than 10 years of business management and gender and climate justice activism.

Her work includes supporting the Pacific Urgent Action hub for Climate Justice, Pacific Islands Climate Action Networks (PICAN) and WGC/COP23 related climate change and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) work, focal point to EU subproject on Access to Justice and Sexual Gender Based Violence emergent work.

Maria was the Program Chair for the 2018 Pacific Human Rights Conference held in Fiji.

She also have experience in the area of SRHR and was part of the first LBTI research in addition to community facilitation and online advocacy.

Her work with community and women-led organization allows her to work closely with urban poor, rural and remote communities, social mobilizing and linking to key global intergovernmental spaces including the global Conference of Parties (COP) climate change negotiation process.

In 2019, Maria was the Pacific representative to the first Global LBQ Conference held in Cape Town, South Africa.

At present, she is engaged in the area of social and development justice and promoting community empowerment within the area of Extractive and Mining.

Maria has a Diploma in Business Management, a Cert IV in Youth Work and a Post Graduate Cert in Gender Studies.

organisation: Link (Country)