Gender Equality in the Earthquake Humanitarian Response for North West Syria

This newsletter captures the latest updates on the implementation of the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) in Lebanon. The newsletter includes the key highlights and achievements of the WPHF programme partners' towards enhancing women’s participation in the Beirut Port Explosion’s response and recovery process.

UN Women and OCHA jointly examine the extent to which issues of gender equality were factored into various stages of the 2020 Flash Appeal in response to the Beirut port explosions.

This report presents the results of the independent evaluation of UN Women’s ‘Strengthening the Resilience of Syrian Women and Girls and Host Communities’ (“Madad”) programme and offers lessons and recommendations for future programming on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Synthesis report includes country specific annexes for Iraq, Jordan and Turkey.

This guidance note seeks to assist policy and programme actors to conduct rapid assessments that are fully responsive to gender and intersectionality. It is focused on three critical steps: the development of assessment surveys/questionnaires, their implementation, the analysis of findings and resulting recommendations.

This document outlines UN Women’s response plan for the 2020 Beirut Plan – a plan that works across the humanitarian-development-peace and security nexus to provide immediate relief to those in need, and to ensure that longer term recovery and reconstruction both addresses the needs of women and girls, and promotes gender equality.

This brief summarizes challenges and recommendations of the impact of the recent pandemic of COVID-19 in Tunisia on gender-based violence, access to justice, women and health, and women's leadership and political participation.

This brief paper jointly developed by UN Women and WHO summarizes principles and recommendations to those planning to embark on data collection on the impact of COVID-19 on violence against women and girls. It responds to the needs and challenges to adhere to methodological, ethical and safety principles in the context of the physical distancing and staying at home measures imposed in many countries.  

Crisis management or emergency situations such as COVID-19 can have serious impacts on the lives of women and girls, if gender dimensions are not considered. Issues such as care work, economic autonomy, physical or sexual violence, women's participation in decision-making, disaggregation of data by sex, gender analysis, and irregular migration are just some of the areas of concern that must be part of an effective response to the health crisis that the world is going through right now.

Are we on track to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls? This report brings together the latest available evidence on gender equality across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, underscoring the progress made as well as the action still needed to accelerate progress.

Humanitarian needs continue to grow with nearly 132 million people in need of assistance in 2018, due to conflict, persecution, and natural disasters. The average humanitarian crisis now lasts more than nine years, and periods of forced displacement more than seventeen. Women and girls who make up approximately half of this 132 million face daily discrimination and violence. The breakdown of protection mechanisms and destruction of essential services and economic structures in crises hits the already marginalized hardest.

The world is rapidly changing. Families, and the role of women and girls within them, are also changing. Today, there is no ‘standard’ family form, nor has there ever been. In order for laws and policies to support families and meet the needs of all their members, they must evolve and adapt. Progress of the World’s Women assesses the scale and scope of transformations in family life and their implications for gender equality and women’s empowerment.