Gender Reference Group

WHS Outcomes 20% of all commitments made to the WHS targeted actions for GEWE or mainstreaming gender Consensus on the need to draw on the skills, expertise, and abilities of local women and women’s groups. Central to empowering women and positioning them as central actors, leaders, and agents of change in humanitarian action. Summit Outcomes: 20% of all commitments made at the Summit were either targeted actions for gender equality and women and girl’s empowerment or mainstreaming gender. Commitments were made to ensure that women and girls’ leadership, rights, protection, and needs are centrally addressed in humanitarian programming; that women’s groups are better funded and supported; that women and adolescent girls have access to quality, comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care; and that holistic actions to prevent and respond to gender based violence becomes the norm in emergencies. Consensus also emerged at the Summit on the need to draw on the skills, expertise and abilities of local women and women’s groups. This was seen as central to empowering women and positioning them as central actors, leaders, and agents of change in humanitarian action. To truly realize these commitments, and turn the humanitarian system into one that demonstrably works for and with women and girls requires existing frameworks and coordinating mechanisms to support and guide actors on monitoring and implementation.

IASC Gender Policy Update The GRG conducted in 2015 a review of the IASC’s 2008 Gender Policy Statement. It found that: The policy was inconsistently implemented across the IASC A lack of gender in humanitarian action capacity with the IASC and HCTs, and the absence of an accountability mechanism Important institutional changes – such as the TA – failed to adequately reflect the commitments of the As the GRG Chair, UN Women will also lead on the revision of IASC’s 2008 Gender Policy and create an accountability framework. GRG Current Review Process: The recent review of the IASC Policy, completed in 2015, foreshadowed many of the findings of the WHS Synthesis Report and the complementary analysis and recommendations in the January 2016 SG’s Report on the WHS. The review of the IASC policy found the policy was at best inconsistently implemented by IASC members, for example through lack of integration of the policy into the HPC. It also found that a lack of gender in humanitarian action capacity within the IASC and in HCTs, and the absence of an accountability mechanism contributed to the lack of implementation. It report found few concrete changes achieved on the ground that could be attributable to the policy. As chair of the GRG, UN Women will lead on the process of revising the IASC’s 2008 Gender Policy and create an accountability framework, the IASC Gender Handbook, and the IASC Gender Marker.

Key Items to Consider An update of the policy will assist the humanitarian coordination system to compliment the core WHS commitments by: Update and establish steps and defined roles and responsibilities to ensure the use of SADD and context-specific gender analysis, throughout the HPC process. Ensuring inclusion of local and national women’s groups and gender expertise in clusters Ensuring that humanitarian country teams gender focal points are filled and are at sufficiently senior levels Establishing targets to ensure that humanitarian country teams achieve gender parity in staffing at all levels Creation of an Accountability Framework Next Steps: These report and the current updates to IASC policies and tools are thus ideally timed to align them with the Agenda for Humanity and support the implementation of the women and girls commitments made at the Summit. A critical component of these will be the creation of an accountability framework for the IASC policy, to ensure incorporation of the policy’s objectives into all aspects of the IASC’s work. By aligning these updated policies to WHS principles, the GRG can mainstream the WHS across the humanitarian system.   The GRG can also provide support and advise to assist the humanitarian coordination system with implementation of the core commitments, including by: putting in place steps and defined roles and responsibilities to ensure that all the policies, needs assessments, plans and monitoring and evaluation that clusters and humanitarian country teams conduct are gender responsive and are based on sex and age disaggregated data and a context specific gender analysis; ensuring that membership of the clusters include significant numbers of local and national women’s groups and gender expertise; ensuring that humanitarian country teams gender focal point positions are filled and are at sufficiently senior levels; establish targets to ensure that humanitarian country teams have in place targets to achieve gender parity in staffing at all levels

Process Conduct an Expert Group Meeting. Establish a Steering Committee made up of key stakeholders. Conduct a series of consultations with identified key stakeholders, including: IASC Working Group and Secretariat IASC Member Agency representatives; Global Cluster Coordinators; Identify comparable Accountability Frameworks to identify best practice and working models for adaptation. Present outline of policy revision content and potential accountability frameworks to IASC Working Group for comment and endorsement. Process Conduct an Expert Group Meeting to establish the scope, parameters and areas of focus for the policy update and the accountability framework. Establish a Steering Committee made up of key stakeholders. to guide the process of updating the policy and developing the accountability framework. Also, Field Cluster Coordinators; Humanitarian Coordinators; IASC Subsidiary Bodies