Gender and Humanitarian Assistance
The perspective of gender equality was not incorporated in most humanitarian works until 1998 (Read 2018). The humanitarian agencies would intervene in emergency situations without considering the implications of gender differences. The importance of including a gender perspective in humanitarian works was not popular before this period (Stoll 2017). In 1998, the United Nations’ Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) developed a policy that aimed at incorporating a gender perspective in humanitarian affairs. The office oversees the operations of most of humanitarian agencies and have influenced those agencies to incorporate the perspective while intervening in emergency situations. There is need to ensure gender equality in humanitarian assistance. Extensive research has revealed that a situation of emergency has different impacts on women and men (Asad, 2015). For instance, women are more at risk of magnetron and ill health due to their unique sexual and reproductive health needs. It follows that an intervention plan would only be effective if it considers the unique needs of the population while offering humanitarian assistance.
There are numerous advantages of ensuring that the perspective of gender is included in any form of humanitarian works (Strid and Verloo 2018). In addition to ensuring that gender equality is achieved, it helps increase the effectiveness of the humanitarian intervention. There are several ways in which gender equality can be achieved when offering humanitarian assistance. As Baines (2017) observes, one of the ways would be carrying out a need assessment to identify the unique needs for each gender/people group. Once identified, intervention can be done accordingly. The second way is ensuring that both men and women are involved in the peace building process after a conflict (Stoakley, Brown and Matthew 2017). Another would be ensuring that both genders are involved in making decisions concerning them (the people affected by the situation of emergency). Vulnerability in emergencies is dependent on the nature of the population. Certain groups of the population are likely to be more vulnerable than others. For instance, children under the age of five years are at higher risk of being malnourished than other members of the population. This assignment will focus on the evolution of gender equality in humanitarian context. The following will be discussed: gender and humanitarian assistance; how Conflicts affect men and women in differently; achieving gender equality in humanitarian action; integrating the perspective of gender in humanitarian action; sexual violence that is perpetrated against female humanitarians and gender-based vulnerability during emergencies.
Gender is used here to mean the state of being either being male or female as shaped by social and cultural factors. Humanitarian assistance refers to the act of offering help to individuals or communities in times of stress. Such stress causes the individuals/ communities have no ability to meet their basic needs such as water and food. Some examples are wars and famine The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is the one that is mandated with the assistance that is offered by the United Nations in during humanitarian crisis. The office is under the United Nations secretariat. Individuals and organizations learn new things with time. Due to the learning that is acquired, future activities are likely to be done better. This has been the case with humanitarian assistance. As we will see in this section, the role that gender plays in humanitarian assistance has been appreciated with time. For a humanitarian assistance program to be effective, it is very important to appreciate the great role that gender plays in shaping humanitarianism response. The office mentioned above works with a wide range of humanitarian assistance providers to ensure that the providers carry out their work in a way that is both effective and informed. Agencies offering humanitarian assistance could either be governmental or non-governmental (Ticktin 2014). One of the mandates of the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is to ensure that those responding to a crisis/disaster ensure that they involve a gender dimension in their work.
Evolution of Gender Equality in Humanitarian Context
Humanitarian works have been going on for a long time. It is worth noting that the issue of gender has not been traditionally viewed as important until in the last couple of years (Kirby 2015). Traditionally, it has been thought that the issue of gender was not had no significant impact on humanitarianism response. It is worth noting however, that extensive research has revealed that the issue of gender is very important in such responses and if an intervention is to truly succeed, then it must be sure to include a gender perspective in their work (Malkki 2015). In the year 1998, the humanitarian segment of the Agreed Conclusions of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) requested that all policies being made concerning humanitarianism include a gender perspective. The request was made to the Emergency Relief Coordinator after a realization of the important role that gender plays in humanitarian response. Although it is right to conclude that the role of gender in humanitarian assistance has not been appreciated for long, there are major strides that have been made in the last couple of years (Kataja 2017). In addition to appreciating the important role of gender in humanitarian assistance, ECOSOC has also noted the importance role that women could play in peace building and reconciliation after a national disaster or conflict. Due to the 1998 move to ensure that the issue of gender is addressed in humanitarian assistance, the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) of the United Nations established a committee that was mandated with ensuring that the issue of gender was included in humanitarian interventions. Some of the achievements that the committee made soon after being put in place was to produce a background paper that would be used to guide the integration of gender in humanitarian assistance. In addition, the committee also developed some guidelines providing how the concept of gender could be integrated in the process of consolidated appeals. To ensure that the guidelines were effective, they were first tested and found to work.
IASC has continued to make huge strides in ensuring that the gender perspective is included in the humanitarian responses. In the month of May 2017, the committee developed and issued a policy statement which is aimed at guiding the integration of gender in to humanitarian affairs. The committee has urged the organisations concerned with humanitarian aid to adopt the policy. Among to their things, the policy includes some strategies that can be used to ensure that the issue of gender is successfully integrated the process of offering aid. The modern crisis has become more sophisticated and complicated. This is especially due to the increased use of firearms. According to Lombardo and Rolandsen (2016), this makes emergency situations complicated and harder to intervene. Currently the committee is looking in to a way of offering humanitarian response in the contemporary complex emergencies while ensuring that the issue of gender is included in the responses. Another area of concern to the committee is that of Conflicts. The committee believes that in all these cases, it is very important to ensure that the issue of gender is adequately addressed (O’Manique and Fourie 2018).
Conflicts and Gender Equality
There is a reason why it is important to ensure that the perspective of gender is considered during humanitarian assistance. The reason is that women and men are affected differently by an emergency (Noble et al. 2017). It is therefore fair to ensure that their needs are addressed differently to ensure fairness and gender equality. This is best explained by the fact that more than 80% percent of people living in refugees and camps around the world are women and children. In a nut shell, if a humanitarian response to a crisis is to be effective, then it is necessary to consider gender, as women and men are affected differently by war and crisis. The following section will look in to the aspects of difference between men and women in situation of crisis.
As seen in the discussion above, it is very important to consider the perspective of gender while offering humanitarian assistance. This section is going to discuss the differences among men and women that necessitate the inclusion of such a perspective. It is worth noting that both men and women are affected by conflicts, wars and other emergency situations. However, the impacts are usually different. Extensive evidence has revealed that the impacts of an emergency situations are not gender neutral. As observed in the previous section, most of the people who live in refugee camps around the world are women and children. Let us analyse the situation. When there is an emergency such as war, most men are either fighting or have been killed. This leaves the women to lead and take care of their households. In a normal society, men are the leaders of the households. It follows therefore that there is a dramatic transfer of the role of protecting and fending for the household to the women (Malkki 2015). It is usually a very hard situation for the women since they are many factors that prohibit them from being able to carry out those roles efficiently. For instance, a war may confine the women and the children to their homes. Human rights, for instance the right to life, are usually at risk of violation for both men and women during emergency situations. The state of violence associated with a crisis however makes the women more vulnerable to rape and sexual harassment. This puts the women at risk of more conditions. For instance, rape may lead to spread of sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS. In addition to this, such actions may lead women with pregnancies that they neither wanted nor planned for.
A situation of crisis also leads to curtailing access to health services. This would affect women and girls more due to the unique aspects of their reproductive health. (Djamba and Kimuna 2015). For instance, a pregnant mother may go for days without attending the antenatal clinics. This increases the chances of infant and maternal mortality. It is also common for women and children not to get enough nourishment in emergency situations since the little food aid may largely be used to feed the man of the home. This would mean poor nutritional status for women and the children. Another group of women that is likely to be affected negatively is the lactating mothers. Lactating mothers need access to adequate food and health care. This would ensure optimal health and nutrition status for them and their babies. The situation of emergency does the opposite however. It contributes to a poor nutrition status and increases the chances of infant mortality.
Achieving Gender Equality in Humanitarian Action
According to Piot (2015), most societies define the identity of a woman as being either a mother or a wife. In a war situation, many women lose their husbands. This leaves them windows and with the responsibility of providing and protecting the household. In most households, it is the men who fend for the households. The loss of a husband therefore makes the woman vulnerable to poverty and other social problems. Poverty is associated with poor health status and increased chances of mortality.
To ensure that there is gender equality when intervening in humanitarian crisis, it is important to ensure that the gender perspective is considered. The humanitarian agencies should employ strategies to ensure that as much as possible, they endeavour to reduce the vulnerability of the different groups by intervening proportionately. It is also important to ensure that both men and women are involved in the process of reconciliation or peace restoration. It is not only fair but vital to ensure that both men and women contribute to the process of peace building. It is wort noting that some humanitarian agencies such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has ensured that their intervention programs have gender sensitive strategies.
There are various measures that can be employed to ensure that gender equality is achieved during humanitarian aid/interventions. This section will discuss some measures that the humanitarian agencies can carry out to ensure that they observe the perspective of gender in their work. The first measure that can be taken is to carry out an assessment aimed at revealing the kind of violence that is being perpetrated against women. After the identification, the agency could find possible measures to ensure that the situation is brought under control. For instance, they may seek legal intervention, provide medical support or provide food and other materials.
The second way would be including both men and women when developing camps for refugees and internally displaced persons. Extensive research reveals that when both men and women are involved in such planning, the women are likely to less vulnerable (Gill and Schlund 2016). The planning should also ensure that there is adequate food material and water. Another measure would be registering men and women differently. This would help ensure that both groups are both given a chance to deal with what is affecting them. The other measure would be distributing the food to the women. According to Hilhorst, Porter and Gordon (2018), when women are given the food to share to the rest of the family members, there is a high likelihood that the food will be shared according to vulnerability. This is likely to explain why the World Food Program has a policy that ensures that more than 80% of the food that is supplied for relief goes directly to the hands of women (Malkki 2015).
There are also other measures that would ensure that vulnerability is reduced in the long term. Some of these measures include offering vocational training and supporting households to be food secure through practicing sustainable agriculture. Education opportunities should be to both girls and boys. When it comes to supporting sustainable agriculture, the woman of the house should receive the funds to support the same. When the funds are managed by women, they are likely to be utilized well.
Integrating Gender Perspective in Humanitarian Action
Some other measure would be creating awareness locally and internationally about the gender issues. Another technique that would be of great importance, is to ensure that appropriate training is carried to equip the staff working with the humanitarian agency with appropriate skills necessary in ensuring gender equality (Cornwall and Rivas 2015). When the staff are equipped with the skills of ensuring that the gender perspective is considered, chances of achieving gender equality in humanitarian assistance increases. Training the staff would be a very important strategy in ensuring that gender equality is achieved. This would probably explain the collaboration of the Canadian and British governments to come up with a module that will be used to train people in peace keeping mission on how to ensure that the issue of gender equality is addressed. In a nutshell, there are many ways of ensuring that gender equality is maintained during humanitarian assistance works.
As seen from the previous section, gender matters in humanitarian assistance. This section will look at the integration of a gender perspective in humanitarian assistance. In addition, some of the contemporary policy will also be addressed. The main policy that is used to guide integrate a gender perspective in humanitarian affairs is that developed by the United Nations department of Emergency Relief. It was developed in 1998 and started being enforce in May 1999. The policy has undergone several modifications since then. According to Read (2018), before the policy was developed, there were some background facts that were considered. These are going to be discussed next. One of the factors was that situations of complex emergencies and disasters affect the different members of the society differently. When it comes to gender, there are different impacts that the situation will have on women, men and children. The second factor of consideration is that men in situations of war and conflicts, men are mainly involved in fighting and combat, while women and children form the largest proportion of the vulnerable civilians (Falk and Hermle 2018). This is evidenced by the overwhelmingly large number of women in refugee camps all over the world. This leaves such women with the role of heading their households and carrying out other responsibilities solely. Thirdly, the rights of women and children are affected in a direct way during emergency situations. Fourth, nutritional and health needs of women and children are usually not considered during emergencies. The fifth factor was guided by research and studies. Extensive research reveals that when the gender perspective is considered, interventions are more likely to succeed (Kaufman and Williams, 2016).
In the light of the above factors, the following principles relating to gender equality in humanitarian assistance were developed. First, is the principle of ensuring that both men and women receive equal protection in situations of emergency. The principle also emphasizes on the importance of ensuring that the rights of women and children are not violated (Unit and Women, 2015). The second principle is concerned with ensuring that both men and women are equally represented in the process of peace building and reconciliation. In addition, both genders should also be involved in making decisions at all levels of the humanitarian intervention (Christie 2017). The third principle is concerned with giving women’s organizations and groups an opportunity to intervene at the various phases of a humanitarian response.
Sexual Violence Against Female Humanitarians
The last section of the policy identifies the actions to be carried out to ensure that the above-named principles are achieved/observed. The first action is to ensure that humanitarian agencies formulate specific strategies geared at ensuring that the perspective of gender in integrated in the interventions (Kataja 2017). The second is developing adequate capacity for gender mainstreaming in the intervention programs (Burns 2015). The final action is ensuring that the activities carried out in ensuring gender mainstreaming in an intervention program are collected together in a report. As Giametta (2015) observes, this would help in monitoring and evaluating the progress being made as far as the issue of gender integration in humanitarian assistance is concerned. Monitoring and evaluation would help in identifying strengths and areas for improvement.
Women and girls are more likely to be victims of sexual violence during conflicts when compared to men. This section is going to focus on the sexual violence against female humanitarians. The aim is to demonstrate the disadvantaged position of women during conflicts. It is sad to imagine that sexual violence is perpetrated to female humanitarians. According to Buss et al. (2014), this may be done by either individual from the community being aided or the co-workers. As Olivius (2016) observes, there have been numerous cases of sexual abuse to women humanitarianism. There is a non-governmental organization that is concerned with ensuring that such cases are reduced/eliminated. The organization is called Report the Abuse and it was founded by Megan Nobert. Megan Nobert was a victim of sexual harassment while working as a humanitarian assistant. She was working at South Sudan when one of her colleagues drugged her and sexually exploited her. When she realized what had happened, she reported the matter to the appropriate authorities including the leaders of the UN organization she was working for. All that happened was a series of questions but not action was taken against the perpetrator. It was this experience that motivated her to start the organization to help women who might undergoing through the same struggles as her. She was astonished to realize that there were many such women who had decided to keep quiet since they reported, and nothing was done about the complains.
In addition to helping women who have suffered sexual violence, the organization is also concerned with helping humanitarian organizations with the best practices to adopt too prevent sexual violence towards female humanitarian assistants. The organization carries out surveys to determine the number of women that are affected and the circumstances under which they are sexually abused. Through these online surveys, it has been possible to develop concrete findings and recommendations. The United Nations Inter-Agency Committee discussed the findings in a meeting held in 2016. According to Fiddia, Lewis and Cole (2017), the committee has shown great interest in ensuring safety of women during humanitarian assistance programs. Nobert was invited to the meeting and she shared her thoughts, findings and progress. The committee appreciated her work and promised to support it. It would therefore be true to conclude that the international community has realized the importance of putting appropriate measures to prevent sexual violence perpetrated against female humanitarians.
Gender-Based Vulnerability in Emergencies
Conclusion
As discussed in the previous sections, the impacts of an emergency are different for different genders. Since most of the vulnerability has been discussed in the previous sections, this section is only going to highlight the vulnerability in brief. In an emergency the nutrition status and health of children under the age of 5 is usually affected negatively (Baker, 2017). This group of children are actively growing and need enough nourishment for proper growth. In emergency situations, there is usually a shortage of food and water making the children more vulnerable. The other category of vulnerable people are the pregnant and lactating mothers (Bohnet, 2016). They have unique needs that might not be met during an emergency. For instance, pregnant mothers may not have an opportunity to attend the antenatal clinics. According to Burnet and Kanakuze (2018), women in general are also more vulnerable since they are mostly the ones left as civilians and therefore vulnerable (in case of a war). Men are mostly in the combat.
Humanitarian work has been going on for a long time now. Human beings are the only social animals endowed with reason and they care for each other by the virtue of being human. The role that gender plays in humanitarian assistance was not appreciated for many years. The role started being appreciated officially in the year 1998 when the United Nations office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs set to develop a policy on the same. The policy was formed, and it has revolutionized the way humanitarian assistance was traditionally carried out. Extensive evidence revealed that a humanitarian intervention is more likely to succeed and be effective if the perspective of gender is considered.
There are certain reasons that make it necessary to consider the perspective of gender in humanitarian assistance. One is that women and children are more vulnerable to malnutrition and illness when compared to other members of the population. There is also the factor of being left as civilians prone to war/conflict when men are involved in the fighting/combat. If women are mandated with the responsibility of sharing relief food, then those who need the food most are likely to get their fair shares. This is not likely to be the case if the role was delegated for men. There are many forms of emergencies. These may be brought by wars, conflicts, droughts and famine. There are also other natural and man-made disasters. Whatever the nature of the disaster, it affects individuals and groups in a population differently based on gender and other factors. To ensure fairness and gender equality, it is important that the humanitarian agencies consider and integrate the perspective of gender when intervening.
There are several mechanisms that can be used to ensure that gender equality is observed in humanitarian response. One includes carrying out a needs assessment to identify whether are any unique need for any gender or group in the population. After identification, intervention should be sought accordingly. The other way would be involving both men and women to give their input concerning building of refugee camps or homes for internally displaced people. The other way would be through offering vocational education and equipping households to be food secure. Sexual violence against female humanitarians is despicable. Despite this however, there have been many reported cases of such abuse. There is one main organization that deals with ensuring that such cases are minimised. The organisation is referred to as Report the Abuse and is mainly concerned with helping women who have been victims of such harassments. In addition , the organisation also advises humanitarian organizations on ways to ensure that such cases are minimised. The leader of the organisation is a lady and she undergone through such abuse while working with a United Nations organization as a humanitarian in South Sudan. Despite reporting the incident, nothing was done about it. This motivated her to start the organization to ensure that such cases are reduced or eradicated.
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