Attachments
17 December 2024, Hilton Ankara
The meeting was opened by Ms. Asya Varbanova, UN Women Country Director who talked about the importance and critical need for the Women Empowerment in Humanitarian Action Working Group (WEHA WG) to ensure that gender perspectives are mainstreamed in the different sectors. The work of WEHA is a continuous progress and the checklist is a live document that should be upgraded on regular basis and implemented on the ground. In 2025, WEHA will continue to collaborate with all members, to identify and reflect the new status, needs and challenges of women and girls in the resilience and recovery phases. As we phaseout of the humanitarian response into recovery, we need to recommit continuing to work stronger to incorporate a gender lens in our humanitarian and response actions. For by including a gender perspective in all our work, we ensure that we reach all those in need and no one is left behind. UN Women will always be available to collaborate and coordinate to provide the needed technical and advisory support to the UN Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), partners and sectors on how to ensure that the humanitarian and recovery response are tailored to address the specific needs of women and girls.
20 WEHA members from the different humanitarian sectors and technical working groups attended the meeting (Economic Empowerment, Education, Food Security and Livelihood, Health and Nutrition, WASH, Shelter and Non-Food Items, Protection, Child Protection, Disability Inclusion Task Team, PSEA network). Furthermore, the UNCT Inter Coordination Group (ICG) contributed to updating the checklists. A representative from the Humanitarian Programme at the British Council also attended the meeting.
Nadide Kozan Manguel, WEHA coordinator, started by providing a background information on how WEHA emerged, and how it evolved over time. The WEHA Working Group is in line with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Policy and Accountability Framework on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls (GEEWG) in Humanitarian Action, which first emerged in 2017, with latest updates in 2024. The WEHA WG offers technical and advisory support to the UNCT+ to ensure that the earthquake response is tailored to address the specific needs of women and girls, strengthen the dimensions of women’s empowerment across the sectorial earthquake response, and Leaves Noone Behind (LNOB).
Öznur Subasi Sener, is the national consultant hired by UN Women to assess the status and needs of WLOs/CSOs who were involved in the earthquake response, and ensured that services and aids were provided equally to affected women and girls. She conducted seven Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with 50 CSOs/WLOs in four earthquake-affected areas (Gaziantep, Adıyaman, Kahramanmaraş, and Hatay). The survey questionnaire included both the role of the CSOs/WLOs during the earthquake response, and in preparation of the recovery process. The questionnaire also looked into CSOs/WLOs involvement with CSO and/or GEEWG based networks and platforms. During the meeting, she presented the initial findings from the FGDs which can be summarized as follows: CSOs/WLOs were quick in the earthquake respond. Almost all CSOs/WLOs changed their mandate and activities to respond to the humanitarian crisis, and most included: protection, GBV and MPHSS in the response. A considerable number of local grassroots CSOs/WLOs were established to respond to the earthquake humanitarian crisis. However, this does not guarantee the CSOs/WLOs sustainability as they face a number of challenges including lack of financial, human resources, and institutional capacity. All the CSOs/WLOs stated that the resources have runout long before the humanitarian response is over. Therefore, they face challenges in continuing their support to earthquake affected women and girls amid lack of resources and capacities. Only a few CSOs/WLOs are engaged in CSO related platforms and only two are WEHA members. Öznur also presented some of the best practices shared from the field.
Rim Aljabi, WEHA lead, briefed participants on the purpose of the WEHA Gender Mainstreaming Checklists, how and why they are evolving. She stressed the fact that the checklists are not meant to replace any existing checklists, but rather they complete other ‘crosscutting’ checklists.
She presented the ‘key gender considerations’, and ‘success stories’ for each of the eight sectors. This was followed by a comprehensive look into the main findings reached when she engaged with the different sectors in updating the checklists. One of the main findings is the lack of Sex, Age, and Disability Disaggregated Data (SADDD). Lack of SADDD leads to lack of gender analysis on the actual needs and concerns of earthquake affected women and girls. This is turn leads to exacerbating pre-earthquake vulnerabilities, increasing unmet needs and care burden of women and girls, increase in GBV and exploitation cases … among others. The findings also included the important role of WLOs in the earthquake response despite the challenges they face.
From the eight checklists, Rim extracted twelve Minimum Standards (MS) for Mainstreaming Gender into Humanitarian and Crisis Response and recovery. The first MS is the ‘mindset’. i.e., to believe in the importance of having a gender perspective at all levels of the humanitarian/recovery response.
Feedback from the participants and follow ups on ‘What is next’:
- The consultant will meet with WEHA members to understand more on how the sectors collaborate with CSOs/WLOs to respond to the needs of women/girls affected by the EQ.
- Several new success stories on what have been achieved per sector were shared, especially activities related to recovery.
- Agree on standardized terminology to ensure language sensitivity,
- Develop Joint Minimum Standards among WEHA and other technical working groups including GBV, protection, PSEA and KRG,
- Ensure that all sectors are familiar with how to mainstream gender at each level of the program cycle, to ensure that Gender is not ‘dropped out on the way’
- Coordinate with each sector, to understand and address their specific needs,
- Coordinate with 3RP to adjust the checklists to meet refugee needs,
- Continue with collecting success stories from each sector to include in the Joint report,
- Collaborate further with CSOs/WLOs
The message shared with WEHA member is that “Nothing is achieved alone; it is a team effort!”