* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Women and girls must participate at all levels of decision-making in humanitarian action
By Stephen O'Brien and Margot Wallström
On December 12th, elected United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took an oath to duty. In his remarks to the General Assembly he made it clear that achieving gender parity, empowering and protecting women and girls will be high on the international agenda. Better protecting women and girls from gender-based violence is particularly crucial in humanitarian action. The U.N.'s emergency relief office OCHA posed three questions to Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström and United Nations humanitarian chief and relief coordinator Stephen O'Brien (head of OCHA) to highlight the next crucial steps that we need to take to make this a reality.
1. What are the key game changers to ensure that gender-based violence prevention and response in emergencies is prioritized?
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström:
There are three measures that are essential if we are to achieve the fundamental change needed:
1. We need to put the question on top of the agenda. Gender-based violence (GBV) must be seen as a life-threatening issue and be prioritized from the onset in an emergency. It is a violation of both human rights and international humanitarian law. We need a combination of both integrating GBV prevention and targeted actions, to build capacity.
2. All actors active in humanitarian emergencies need to make concrete commitments to prevent and respond to GBV. Now over 60 partners have made more than 300 commitments within the framework of Call to Action against Gender-based Violence in Emergencies. The Call to Action initiative - currently led by Sweden - is an example on how to coordinate, hold ourselves mutually accountable and inspire each other to do more and to do better to achieve real impact on the ground. As part of this, for example, Sweden has committed to only fund humanitarian interventions that include a gender analysis with sex and gender disaggregated data.
As a member of the Security Council next year, we will push for increased transparency and reporting on GBV.
3. GBV is deeply rooted in gender inequality. Promotion of women and girls as actors is key. It is important to address the root causes found in gender norms and discriminatory structures at the local and global levels. We must also engage men and boys in this work.
4. Finally, it is crucial that perpetrators are held accountable.
United Nations humanitarian chief and relief coordinator Stephen O'Brien:
Firstly, strong leadership and accountability for action across the humanitarian sector is fundamental to preventing and responding to gender-based violence. Leaders must fully commit and insist on adopting a gender-responsive approach to prevention, mitigation and emergency response as well as addressing the gender inequalities that lead to exclusion and discrimination in the first place. Without this leadership, we will only achieve change in fits and starts.
Secondly we must implement the Secretary-General’s ’Agenda for Humanity’, which calls on leaders to ensure that women and girls participate at all levels of decision-making in humanitarian action; that all forms of gender-based violence in emergencies are addressed; and that gender-equality programming – becomes the norm.
At the World Humanitarian Summit leaders made more than 500 financial, policy and operational commitments to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment. Of these, more than a third address sexual and gender-based violence and reproductive health rights. It is now time to deliver on these commitments and track our progress to ensure accountability.
2. Global investments in gender equality and GBV programming are still inadequate. Why is this so?
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström:
Despite some progress, we still need to raise awareness of discrimination against women and girls and of gender-based violence. We need to see these as issues that both threaten lives and sustainable peace and security and that are present in all situations, including in emergencies. One of the main reasons for funding still being inadequate is that this awareness is lacking.
In order for humanitarian aid to meet the humanitarian needs of women and girls we also must ensure that they are given equal possibilities to participate and influence on humanitarian needs assessments, programming and implementation.
In order to make headway we need to have better data – disaggregated by sex and age. GBV is still stigmatizing and the number of unknown cases is assumed to be large.
United Nations humanitarian chief and relief coordinator Stephen O'Brien:
I agree wholeheartedly with Foreign Minister Wallström's points. I reiterate that humanitarians and Governments must gather and analyse sex and age-dissaggregated data, so that we can understand and recognize what the problems are, particularly when it comes to risks and vulnerabilities. With this data we will get a full sense of the gendered risks and of the different ways that emergencies impact women and girls. We will also get a sense of the often unrecognized contributions that women and girls have to make to crisis response across the board. However, we must also note that the demands for evidenced data on GBV as a prerequisite for funding can undermine GBV programming: the assumption should always be that GBV risks and vulnerabilities exist even when solid data is unavailable.
3. What should humanitarian stakeholders do differently to ensure protection of women and girls in emergencies and humanitarian action? How can this be measured?
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström:
As a donor we need to make demands of our partner organizations. All organizations must see GBV as a core protection issue and implement the Inter-Agency Standing Committee guidelines.
We still lack data on the humanitarian system’s response to GBV. Monitoring and evaluation must be improved to measure results and share lessons learned.
Engaging local actors is critical for an efficient humanitarian response. OCHA has a crucial role in this work.
United Nations humanitarian chief and relief coordinator Stephen O'Brien:
OCHA is fully committed to prioritize GBV programming especially through ensuring humanitarian leadership and coordination tools fully embrace GBV initiatives. OCHA will continue to work with and fund a diversity of groups, including women’s groups from across civil society, as a basic standard in this programming. Further, by implementing our own GBV policies OCHA will continue to implement the global Call to Action.
When it comes to system-wide change, the Secretary-General’s ’Commitments to Action’ report gives a clear picture of the gender commitments made at the World Humanitarian Summit to implement the Agenda for Humanity. It also outlines one of the centrepieces for accountability, which is the Platform for Action, Commitments and Transformation (PACT) which will serve as an active hub for information-sharing and reflection on action against commitments over the next few years.
