Focussed crisis aid to help women and girls
UK government’s call to keep girls and women safe in crisis tested by Typhoon Haiyan.
War and natural disasters are devastating enough, but for thousands of women and girls living through these hellish situations across the globe, things can and unfortunately do get worse.
UN statistics suggest that of the total population affected by Typhoon Haiyan, an estimated 47,600 women are at risk of sexual violence, with an additional 2,250 estimated to be at risk in the evacuation centres where they have taken refuge.
Rape, sexual violence, human trafficking and child marriage have become the sadly inevitable consequences of populations put under pressure, all of which are more likely to impact on women and girls in developing countries, particularly in the event of a crisis.
According to government sources, 18 months after the earthquake in Haiti sexual abuse and exploitation had become widespread, mainly because girls and women could not get the goods and services they needed to survive.
During the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa, girls as young as nine were married off so that families could receive their dowries in kind before their livestock – the dowry – died.
In Syria right now, violence towards women and children is escalating as the conflict rages on.
And as the global aid effort got under way in the Philippines last week, the UK’s International Development Secretary Justine Greening told an international summit of humanitarian agencies that there has been a ‘serious gap’ in disaster planning – a hole where protecting girls and women should have been.
The event, in London and chaired by Greening and Sweden’s International Development Minister Hillevi Engström, served to gain international agreement on the best ways to protect women and girls in a humanitarian crisis.
“When a country is hit by disaster, as we have seen in the Philippines, girls and women are particularly vulnerable.
“The international community learns more with every response, but I want to make sure we are prioritising the needs of girls and women,” Greening said.
“They may seem simple but things like lockable toilets, safe access to firewood, or adequate lighting can make a huge difference,” she continued.
To coincide with the meeting, CARE International UK released a report that highlighted the huge gap in gender-specific spending in emergencies worldwide.
Writing for the Huffington Post UK, the Senior Policy Advisor at CARE International UK, Howard Mollett, said that to date, the UK had managed to spend just 0.5 per cent of aid funding on projects that addressed gender equality or violence against women and girls.
The target set by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is for 15 per cent of all post-conflict funding to address gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Plan International’s report ‘Double Jeopardy: Adolescent Girls and Disasters’, released in October, claims that teenage girls are at most risk during a humanitarian crisis.
“Emergencies have an immediate traumatic impact but prolonged humanitarian crises also have a lasting effect for young women which shape the rest of their lives – bringing an abrupt end to their education and forcing them into poor and ill-informed decisions like early marriage, dangerous work and sex work.
“We must pay more attention to the risks they face,” said Plan International’s CEO, Nigel Chapman.
The research found that girls are 14 times more likely to die in an emergency than boys, and if they do survive they are more likely to be removed from school and least likely to return.
It also claims girls are given less food when it is scarce, and are more vulnerable to violence, rape, and HIV infection.
Disasters and emergencies also increase the likelihood they will be forced into childhood marriage, domestic work, or prostitution, and while the risks they face increase, access to sexual and reproductive health services decreases.
Gender-specific measures have already been taken in response to the Philippines crisis; all aid partners are required to assess the risk of violence to women and girls and address their specific needs. The UK has deployed a protection specialist to assist with this.
The UK has also supplied solar lanterns with built-in mobile phone chargers for remote and vulnerable communities, which will allow women and girls to move around more safely after dark as well as improve channels of communication.
Last week the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) announced £21.6 million in new funding to specifically target women and girls in emergencies.
This includes £3 million to support the UN’s work in Syria to establish safe spaces for women and girls and to increase the capacity of health services; £4 million and £1.6 million for projects in Lebanon and Jordon respectively, to reduce the burden on vulnerable families so they do not need to rely on child labour, early marriage or ‘survival sex’; and £4 million for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to provide support to survivors of sexual violence in situations of violence.
Around £9 million goes to DFID’s own programmes with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, to empower girls to be able to protect themselves better in humanitarian situations.
Richard C. W. Miller, executive director of Action Aid UK, said that empowering women in the face of disaster is imperative.
“Whilst women’s security during emergencies is vitally important, if the government wants to see real change, it must also look at tackling the root causes of violence against women before crisis breaks,” he wrote for the Huffington Post UK’s Blog.
“Put simply, a society that tolerates violence against women and girls generally is a society that will be even more violent towards women and girls during war, famine or environmental disaster.”