{"id":515,"date":"2016-05-11T13:49:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T13:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wpoffice\/enfold-fitness\/?page_id=515"},"modified":"2026-02-27T09:26:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T09:26:34","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/gewe.arabwatercouncil.org\/?page_id=515","title":{"rendered":"Background"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Background.<\/strong><\/h1>
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The Gender Equality and Women\u2019s Empowerment Voluntary Stakeholder Group on Disaster Risk Reduction, Arab States, which participated in the Africa-Arab Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction in Tunis, Tunisia October 9- to 13, 2018, affirmed its commitment to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015, with particular focus to section 36 a (i) of the Sendai Framework 2015, which calls for the participation of women as critical to managing risk and designing and implementing disaster risk reduction and related policies, plans and programs and for strengthening women\u2019s capacities for preparedness and alternate livelihoods post-disaster. Guided by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women 1979, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change 2015, the SDGs 2015 and the UN Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration 2018, the plan of action of the Arab States Gender Equality and Women\u2019s Empowerment Voluntary Stakeholder Group also seeks to address gender responsive climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, and migration to achieve inclusive sustainable development goals.<\/p>\n

The Gender Equality and Women\u2019s Empowerment Voluntary Stakeholder Group and its Plan of Action developed prior to the Tunisia meeting and finalized in Tunisia in support of governments to implement SENDAI were endorsed by the Arab governments at the fore-mentioned platform.<\/p>\n

There are gender-based differences in the ways men, women, boys, girls prepare for and reduce risks; are impacted by, cope with, mitigate and adapt to disasters, climate change, environmental degradation, social and economic losses. These gender-based differences, in impacts and contribution to survival, are anchored in pre-existing gendered roles and attributes, sex and gender-based discrimination and inequality, and other interacting forms of marginalization such as economic status, age, disability, race and ethnicity, immigration status, nationality, geographical location, child headed households resulting from conflicts, deaths due to HIV\/AIDS, other epidemics who are mostly headed by girls, and etc., with disproportionate impacts on women and girls. They are manifested in varied ways across contexts, but there are commonalities, demonstrated for example, by greater female deaths on average in disasters, including older women, women and girls with disability, who may be left to perish because of social stigma, and a perception of them as liabilities; greater economic impacts on women than men; increased workloads, fatigue, loss in time and income-generating opportunities due to long hours of travel to forage for food, fuel and water; sexual and domestic abuse and violence; greater difficulties for women, especially pregnant women, older women, women and girls with disabilities to move to shelters; greater marginalization from access to material and non-material resources for relief, recovery and reconstruction; and lack of representation on decision-making mechanisms. This directly affects women\u2019s resilience and ability to cope with disasters, climate change, and environmental degradation.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/main><\/div><\/div>

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Although women and girls are differently and disproportionately impacted in disasters from men and boys, they are not just victims, but are frontline first responders and key agents bringing their resources to drive family and community survival, preparedness, risk reduction, recovery and adaptation.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/p>\n

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\nWomen and girls from a range of excluded groups are best positioned to represent their own interests and work with governments at all stages of the policy process to ensure that their priorities are addressed in formulating, implementing, financing, monitoring and evaluating prevention, preparedness and response interventions. This ensures tailored interventions that address gender equality and women\u2019s empowerment and maximizes the investment in these linked agendas. Women constitute half the population and, in some countries, more. Including different categories of women and their priorities in developing and implementing well-resourced policies, plans and programs addressing these related issues will contribute robustly to sustainable development. Finally, disaster risk reduction and response, climate change mitigation and adaptation and environmental protection cut across various policy fields requiring intentional policy coherence, collaboration and co-ordination between institutions from multiple sectors, including ministries\/departments of agriculture, environment, disaster management, national women\u2019s machineries, CSOs, gender specialists in these areas, and youth.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>

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Human mobility is a crucial component of risk and resilience, and effective climate change mitigation, adaptation interventions and DRR provide communities the choice to live where they are, or to move. However, disasters, climate change induced events, environmental depletion together with a range of other gendered development processes and conflict have also been important drivers of migration. Women have in this context migrated independently, or with their families as a survival strategy; and in some contexts, greater numbers of men have migrated, leaving women and children behind. As migrants, women face disproportionate discrimination at all stages of the migration process which includes lack of pre-departure information, inaccessible pre-departure training, fewer assets to move than men rendering them susceptible to exploitative recruiting agents, traffickers and debt-bondage; labour market discrimination in the form of fewer decent jobs for women, contract substitution, lower wages than men; lack of access to social and financial services; lack of liberty and freedom of association; vulnerability to all forms of violence, for which services including life-saving assistance to survivors and risk mitigation for families and communities are often unavailable and inaccessible; lack of reintegration services and safe avenues for remittance transfer and productive investment; lack of support services for families left behind that also places burdens on women.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>
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While human rights violations at all stages of migration and of displaced persons compromises sustainable development, well-managed gender-sensitive migration can reduce risks and build resilience, contribute to disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and support sustainable development. The Gender Equality and Women\u2019s Empowerment Voluntary Stakeholder Group, Arab States, recognizes the past and current efforts of government and non-government actors to address DRR, climate change, ecosystem management and migration and the need for continuing support to these efforts, from a gender equality and women\u2019s empowerment perspective.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gewe.arabwatercouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gewe.arabwatercouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gewe.arabwatercouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gewe.arabwatercouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gewe.arabwatercouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gewe.arabwatercouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":981,"href":"https:\/\/gewe.arabwatercouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/515\/revisions\/981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gewe.arabwatercouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}