Attachments
Since July 2024, the Women Empowerment in Humanitarian Action (WEHA) held three online sessions and one face-to-face meeting in Gaziantep.
During the 25 July session, 19 participants representing 10 organizations and 11 sector/working group/task team – namely: Protection, Health, WASH Sectors; GBV and Child-Protection Sub-Sectors; Age and Disability Inclusion Task Team; Cash Based Interventions, 3RP National Protection and Economic Empowerment Working Groups; PSEA Network; Area Base Coordination Group… attended. Former WEHA Chair, Duygu Arig, opened the meeting and introduced the new Chair, Rim Aljabi, UN Women Programme Specialist for Crisis Response.
The main issues discussed during the meeting were:
• In accordance with SET inter-Coordination Group (SET ICG),
WEHA will continue to function as a technical working group for mainstreaming Gender Equality during the transitional phase. UN Women aims at strengthening the presence of WEHA and ensure that gender is mainstreamed within the responsibility of the Hub’s focal points,
• To integrate gender perspectives into all humanitarian actions and reports, it is important to collect Sex Disaggregated Data (SDD) that takes into consideration ‘Age’ and ‘Disability’. This will help to ensure that women and men have equitable access to services during humanitarian response.
• WEHA will continue to collaborate with the Local Humanitarian Forum (LHF) and continue to support the UN Country Team (UNCT) and UNCT+ (that includes International and local NGOs).
• Expand WEHA approach to the Refugee Response and address the Gender and Age Marker (GAM) to influence the 3RP programming, especially the protection sector.
A session was held on 15 August, in which the following themes were discussed:
• Update WEHA’s TORs to reflect more commitment and working towards inter-sector approach. The TORs highlighted and endorsed the newly updated ‘IASC Policy on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls in Humanitarian Action’ 2024. It also referred to the importance of local, national and government representation in WEHA at ad-hoc level; reflecting on the coming SET coordination mechanism; and a focus on commitment of WEHA members1 .
• Discuss the joint Gender Mainstreaming in Humanitarian Response Report which aims to assess the impact of humanitarian response on women and girls affected by the earthquake in 2024 per sector. This will rely on the latest surveys and research carried out.
• Participants shared their recent research.