Attachments
I. Background
Protecting human rights and promoting gender equality is central to humanitarian action. The needs of women, men, girls, boys, people with disability and gender diverse people are different and distinct, and often these differences are even more pronounced during humanitarian crises. Addressing gender equality during a humanitarian crisis therefore implies planning and implementing humanitarian programming ad-dressing the specific needs of diverse groups in a community.
Despite significant efforts and increased awareness within the humanitarian community, there is evidence indicating that gender equality and women’s empowerment is still inadequately and inconsistently integrated within sectoral programme cycles in humanitarian responses. As such, there has been an increasing effort to better integrate gender equality and strengthen participation of women, men, girls, boys, people with disability and gender diverse people in humanitarian programming, taking full account of their differentiated needs. This is supported by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Gender in Humanitarian Action Handbook1, IASC 2008 Policy Statement on Gender Equality, and the IASC Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action, among others. A Global IASC Reference Group on Gender in Humanitarian Action (Gender Reference Group/Gender RG/GRG) was formed in 2006 as a community of practice to support the integration of gender equality and women’s empowerment in the humanitarian action system.
Bangladesh is ranked as ninth in the World Risk Index (2022), indicating the country’s extreme exposure and high vulnerability to natural hazards. Women and girls in Bangladesh have been found to be disproportionally impacted before, during and after disasters due to persistent gender inequalities, gender-based discrimination and violence, which are often reinforced, perpetuated and exacerbated by disasters. Pre-existing gender inequalities and women and girls’ resultant lower resilience mean that they face greater barriers in responding and adapting to, as well as recovering from disasters. In the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh for instance, 90 % of the deaths were among women.
The Government of Bangladesh has committed through global and regional platforms, such as the World Humanitarian Summit, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, among others, to better integrate gender equality into humanitarian and development programmes. Linkages clearly exist between disaster preparedness and response, and the resilience and development agendas and therefore synergies need to be identified with these existing initiatives to advance gender equality and fulfil commitments made.
With the endorsement of the Department of Women Affairs and the Humanitarian Coordination Task Team (HCTT) in Bangladesh, the Inter-Cluster Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group was established on 22nd February 2017 to ensure effective mainstreaming of gender equality in humanitarian action. The Group consists of gender focal points of various thematic clusters under the HCTT.