HUMANITARIAN TAKEAWAYS: GENDER |
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Dear friends of CHA,
we would like to share with you our very first issue of Humanitarian Takeaways – a collection of materials selected and summarised for you.
The primary aim of Humanitarian Takeaways is providing you with summarised research articles and reports on a chosen topic. This is complemented by summaries of relevant news, blogs, and opinion articles, as well as podcast and event recordings. Every issue of Takeaways will concentrate on one of the CHA focus areas: German humanitarian policy and strategy; digitalisation; locally led humanitarian action; climate change; anti-racism and decolonisation; the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus; and gender equality in humanitarianism.
We are starting off with gender equality and feminism! Regrettably, they are still often seen as ‘soft issues’, something that concerns only women, or just as mere buzzwords. We will keep repeating: feminism is about accounting for and changing the power structures, and humanitarian action definitely needs that. We therefore hope for a truly feminist perspective in German humanitarian aid, given Germany's new Feminist Foreign Policy.
The war in Ukraine is currently in focus, and here, too, feminist humanitarian responses are crucial. A feminist lens helps to provide aid in a nondiscriminatory manner and to take into account specific needs of different groups, such as reproductive healthcare and protection from gender-based violence. Like in all humanitarian contexts, it is also key to meaningfully include women’s and other marginalised voices into decision-making and consultation processes.
We hope that you will find this collection of materials interesting, and that it provides you with some valuable takeaways! As this is the first issue of Humanitarian Takeaways, please SUBSCRIBE if you wish to keep receiving it.
Lastly, please let us know if you have any observations or suggestions, including article recommendations – we would really appreciate it!
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Research articles and reports |
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By Megan Daigle (March 2022)
Article length: 25 pages
(Sub)topics: gender norms; humanitarian knowledge and evidence; leadership and organisational structures; humanitarian principles; locally led humanitarian action.
This paper is part of a three-year Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) research project examining change in gendered norms and roles in displacement. Despite being key for inclusive, effective, and principled humanitarian action, the understanding of gendered norms and roles in a given context is not prioritised among humanitarians. In this paper, Megan Daigle discusses some important implications for humanitarian response:
First of all, sometimes the evidence exists but has been overlooked or not counted as 'humanitarian' or 'gender' knowledge. There is thus an urgent need to reexamine existing knowledge and the internalised biases regarding its validity. Additionally, qualitative research is needed to fully understand the gender dynamics, as opposed to 'big data'.
Secondly, despite the prevailing perception that humanitarians can choose whether they want to undertake gender work, they are intervening in gendered relations simply by being present. Humanitarian leadership and hiring practices reflect the patriarchal, heteronormative, colonial, and neoliberal thinking that humanitarian sector is shaped by.
Thirdly, it needs to be recognised that gender justice is not a technical fix – it is political. Critical questions regarding the meanings of gender and principled humanitarian action need to be asked. The author notes that while international actors brought up neutrality as a reason to shy away from 'sensitive' topics, the local and national actors did not report these concerns. According to the author, humanitarian principles should not be used as an escape from hard conversations, and their purpose is weakened if they are understood as constraints.
Finally, humanitarian leaders should first bring a gender lens to their own organisational structures, policies, and programming to rightly target the right people. That means investing in gender training and learning. Furthermore, appropriate local and national organisations should be positioned as leaders in humanitarian responses and empowered with funding and authority.
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By Women's Refugee Commission (March 2022)
Article length: 61 pages
(Sub)topics: feminist and place-based humanitarianism; transformation of humanitarian system; intersectionality; accountability to affected populations; funding; knowledge production; leadership.
By breaking down the components of feminist and place-based* humanitarianism, this report re-conceptualises the localisation agenda with a more feminist frame and identifies feminist and place-based strategies that might transform how we view responses to conflict and forced displacement.
According to the authors, the three most pressing issues of current humanitarianism relate to politics, ethics, and power. The current humanitarian system excludes other forms of humanitarianism than Western donors, UN agencies, and international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs). It also over-focuses on lifesaving assistance, which often works to sustain, rather than transform, the systems of structural injustice.
The key challenges of the formal humanitarian system can be clustered into four buckets, which are 1) neglecting structural causes of conflict and drivers of forced displacement; 2) over-reliance on one-size-fits-all approaches that don't account for different crises impacts, and thus might blindside intersectional understandings; 3) marginalisation of agency, competences, and capacities of place-based actors; 4) lack of accountability to affected populations.
The concept of transformation is built across four pathways that need to work together: 1) legitimising lived experiences and place-based knowledge, which includes developing new research formats and frameworks, and challenging existing definitions of 'knowledge'; 2) reclaiming the narratives from foreign actors and building new ones, including investing in different forms of storytelling; 3) realising and building on the collective agency of communities, while prioritising feminist leadership; and 4) refocusing the funding mechanism of the sector on affected communities – re-conceptualising risk, changing due diligence processes, and building new and alternative funding structures.
* The authors use the term place-based 'to signal a different conceptualisation from the "local" used in the drive towards "localisation"' (p. 21).
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By Gender and Development Network (December 2021)
Article length: 14 pages
(Sub)topics: Women, Peace, and Security; Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus; gender-responsive humanitarian action; Covid-19 response; locally led humanitarian action; gender-based violence; participation.
This briefing explores the connection between humanitarianism and the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, which offers a framework for cross-sectoral work across the four pillars of prevention, protection, participation, and relief and recovery. The authors argue that the WPS agenda pushes action on gender within the humanitarian sector itself, as well as provides humanitarian actors with a platform to demand the fulfilment of obligations to gender justice by governments, donors, international institutions, and humanitarian agencies. Dismissing the WPS agenda thus limits gender-responsive humanitarian action.
The separation between humanitarianism and peacebuilding is artificial and reflects a lack of understanding of how women, girls, and gender-diverse people actually experience humanitarian crises. By contrast, cross-sectoral working modalities foster gender-responsiveness and can help strengthen principled humanitarian action. Investing in policy and programming approaches cutting across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus is therefore key.
Decision-making tables must be transformed so that they include women- and girl-led organisations, LGBTQIA+ and gender-diverse groups, people with disabilities, ethnic and religious minorities, racialised groups, as well as older women and youth. Creating spaces for meaningful participation also means facilitating visa and entry clearance processes to participate in conferences and policy fora, a well as ensuring access to technologies to make online decision-making processes and consultations inclusive.
Participatory gender and conflict analysis must take place while working together with national governments, local authorities, and civil society. At the same time, dedicated, long-term, and flexible funding to organisations led by women, girls, and gender-diverse people is key for reshaping power relations in crisis response. Specific funding is also needed for collecting disaggregated and intersectional data, and the transparency of gender funding should be increased.
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By Megan Daigle, Sarah Martin, and Henri Myrttinen (May 2021)
Article length: 10 pages
(Sub)topics: sexual and gender-based violence; race; colonialism; aid security; HEAT trainings.
This article explores how colonialist notions of ‘stranger danger’ play out in aid security. To do this, the authors undertake a review of security manuals, aid worker chat groups, interviews with aid workers, and their own experiences.
Although sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against aid workers is seen as emanating mainly from ‘the field’ and perpetrated by individuals unknown to the victim (the ‘racialised others’ – armed actors and the local population), the available evidence suggests that aid workers are more likely to be assaulted by their own (international) colleagues.
Humanitarianism remains very much dominated by the romanticised figure of the white male humanitarian, and most at risk are the aid workers confronted with intersectional marginalisations – non-white (especially local) staff, staff of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions and sex characteristics, as well as people with disabilities.
The perception of ‘stranger danger’ is reflected in the design and delivery of security guidance and training to the aid workers. The so-called hostile environment awareness trainings (HEAT) mostly focus on ‘hard’ threats, leaving out interpersonal conflict or harassment, and include simulations that involve trainers and actors playing the roles of (stereotyped) attackers.
According to the authors, '[t]hese experiences paint a vivid picture of threat as “foreign” (or rather, non-western) and difference as fair game for harassment’. In addition to possibly being the cause of anxiety and trauma, HEAT trainings thus overlook intersectional threats as well as hinder a wider discussion on the threats and risks in the aid sector.
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News, blogs, and opinion articles |
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By Ragnhild Nordås, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan (Political Violence and a Glance, 06/04/2022)
In this article, Ragnhild Nordås provides several reasons why we can predict a wave of cases of sexual violence in Ukraine. These include the history of abuse within the Russian military; the forced recruitment of young Russians into war; as well as the war entering into a phase in which troops come into closer contact with civilian populations and start to hold territory. Therefore, there is a need to seek documentation and systematically screen the refugees for information about sexual violence by trained professionals; to address sexual violence in all discussions of ceasefires, peace agreements, and support to Ukraine; and to provide survivors with medical, financial, and moral support.
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By Ruchi Kumar (Al Jazeera, 31/03/2022)
In Afghanistan, 95 percent of the population is not eating enough food, and almost 100 percent of women-led households are experiencing hunger. Since the Taliban's return to power, nearly 60 percent of women working in the media – more than 90 percent of whom were sole family breadwinners – have lost their jobs. Due to mothers not being able to pay for their antenatal and postnatal care, maternal mortality and morbidity rate is increasing tremendously, and child mortality is getting affected, too.
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By Chen Reis, Director of Humanitarian Assistance Program, University of Denver (The Conversation, 28/03/2022)
Chen Reis underlines the challenge of preventing and responding to sexual violence in refugee contexts. Female interpreters trained to assist those experiencing sexual violence can provide essential support to refugees in new countries. Additionally, refugee women themselves need more than information about risks and how to report assault – they need money in order to solve housing problems and thus avoid unsafe situations.
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By Latanya Mapp Frett, President and CEO, Global Fund for Women (African Diaspora Network, 25/03/2022)
Latanya Mapp Frett discusses the need for feminist funding – flexible funding and resources that go directly to feminist activists who know how to use it – to shift power to historically marginalised communities including women, girls, and gender non-conforming people. The solutions already exist locally, and innovation is required in learning to listen and leverage insights to better support them, not to derive top-down solutions or 'tell' communities what they already know.
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By Memory Kachambwa, Executive Director of Femnet (The Guardian, 23/03/2022)
Visa denials, lack of adequate resources to fly and stay for the meetings, language, time and space granted to deliberate specific issues, the international jargon, difficulties in accessing digital spaces – these are some of the the issues hindering women's participation in high-level events. To have a say in the debate, Africa CSW was set up as an alternative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women (14-25 March 2022) and convened 60 representatives from 18 African countries in Nairobi.
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By Colum Lynch (Foreign Policy, 18/03/2022)
In response to a Twitter post with a photo of the all-male and mostly white WFP Lviv team, the WFP employees wrote a letter to WFP's Executive Director and his top management. The letter, signed by more than 250 staff, argued that 'it reflects the entrenched problem that WFP is still in essence a mainly white, male-dominated club, particularly in emergencies'.
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Is something missing?
Send us your feedback – we are eager to hear it:
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Podcasts and event recordings |
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A webinar organised by Women Now for Development and Global Fund for Women (11/03/2022)
This webinar revolved around the findings of the report 'Feminist and Women’s Organisations in Syria', which was recently published by Women Now for Development (WND), Global Fund for Women (GFW), and Impact. The report seeks to generate an in-depth understanding of the common challenges and opportunities for collaboration and effective partnership amongst feminist and women's organisations (FWOs) in Syria.
Jelnar Ahmad (Impact) discussed the main challenges referred to in the report that are encountered by civil society organisations, and especially FWOs. These challenges include obtaining legal recognition from local authorities or having any form of umbrella protection; scarce funding and competition for funds and available resources, which creates divides and hinders collective work; as well as the donor agenda being more influential than the needs and the visions of the FWOs.
Mona Zeineddine (WND) highlighted the importance of having a trust-based relationship with FWOs; provision of meaningful safe spaces; recognition of own positionality; and coming up with comprehensive feminist monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning (MEAL) tools. Additionally, Dr Maria Al Abdeh (WND) emphasised that while
economic and financial needs in Syria are very much seen as humanitarian, women on the ground are trying to think about them in terms of empowerment and independence. Dr Al Abdeh also underlined the importance of knowledge production by Syrian women's organisations, and the need to fund meetings that are not results-based to enable platform/movement building.
Lastly, Zahra Vieneuve (GFW) stressed that for funding to be impactful it needs to be flexible, core, multi-year, and with no strings attached. Funders, therefore, need to ask themselves if they are doing everything to make sure that their funding is contributing to decolonising philanthropy, is anchored in antiracist principles and practices, and that it is challenging the status quo. Unfortunately, many of them still systematically exclude women from their funding and decision-making, and due diligence procedures pose a huge problem in this context.
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A podcast episode with Tina Tinde, Head of Delegation at Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Niger (Trumanitarian, 02/10/2021) |
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Inclusion Rider: Tina Tinde on gender, inclusion, and safeguarding
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In this podcast episode Tina Tinde, Head of Delegation at Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Niger, speaks about the responsibility of privileged groups to step up for justice and equality; the necessity to prioritise gender expertise and internally work on gender equality; the importance of reaching out to local women's associations; and the need for donors to be strict on gender issues.
According to Ms Tinde, there is no lack of principles, policies, or tools on gender equality – the problem lies within the implementation. If we want to start doing well on gender equality and advancement of women, everybody has to work on it internally, it has to be on the agenda.
Gender expertise is key (and shouldn't be viewed as a hobby): 'If you want to have a high-level discussion with the host government on finances and budget, you definitely speak with your finance boss before; and then if you want to have a high-level discussion with the government about the gender issues, what do you do if you’ve never worked on gender issues?' When you are not a gender advisor, when you haven't worked on it, you need one; and then you need to put it into the budget.
Ms Tinde strongly opposes the assumption that gender equality work only comes from the West, and emphasises the importance of consulting and working with local women since they are the experts. Additionally, the funding that major organisations provide to humanitarian crisis areas should focus much more on developing local mechanisms: humanitarian organisations can do very little if there is no justice system or service providers.
Sexual harassment is happening 'left, right, and centre', and the humanitarian sector, like many others, hasn't been able to get rid of the male entitlement to women and girls' bodies. Although the #metoo / #aidtoo campaign has shed light on the issue, systems have not changed enough, and the resistance is massive. Donors should therefore have it as a top priority and be strict. It has to start internally – having sexual harassment legislation conversations, so that people would know their rights.
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