Arlene Griffen

Arlene is a Fijian citizen, with permanent residency status in Australia. Formerly employed as the Greenpeace Pacific Campaigns Coordinator, Arlene is now actively involved in a diverse array of civic and educational NGO’s, being the Citizen’s Constitutional Forum (CCF), Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education and Advocacy (ECREA), and Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN). Involvement in CCF has required Arlene to promote the protection of human rights, the value of cultural pluralism and support for democratic political principled and processes, while her work for DAWN has focus area of concern is also extended through her work with ECREA, which evolved out of the urgent need for peace, reconciliation and trauma management in Fiji after the Speight ‘coup’ in 2000. In this multiplicity of roles and responsibilities, Arlene’s work requires a skilled combination of activism, advocacy, management, co-ordination, research and writing, enabled by her completion on a Masters in Post-Colonial Literature at the University of London as well as a PhD on feminist critique from Macquarie University. In attending the annual training session in Bangkok, Arlene wishes to attain ‘necessary instruction and knowledge’ on human rights standards and skills of advocacy and lobbying through course content and the inputs of other participants.