The Kautilya Society blog

In many humanitarian situations, attention to gender equality can be lost in the rush to save lives. Recognising and addressing women’s rights in humanitarian work is key in contributing to the primary humanitarian aim of saving and protecting lives. It is vital to understand and be aware of how emergencies affect women and girls differently from men and boys. In wartime, men are often primary casualties, while women are targeted and subjected to physical and sexual violence that can lead to death, disease and social exclusion. Women in situations of armed conflict, civil unrest, or natural disasters often lose their capacity to sustain their family’s livelihood. Women often still carry the responsibility of meeting their family’s day-to-day survival needs, but with greatly limited access to resources. Women may also face increased vulnerability to violence by their own family members or strangers.

It is important to ensure gender equality in humanitarian work since:

o emergency interventions and life-saving strategies have a greater impact when there is understanding of men’s and women’s different needs, interests, vulnerabilities, capacities and coping strategies;

o aid interventions must support and not diminish the role of women, impact on her workloads, access to and control of resources, decision-making power, and opportunities for skills development;

o aid interventions must enhance equal rights and opportunities for both men and women;

o effective humanitarian aid must ensure increased protection from violence, coercion and deprivation, particularly for women and girls, but also for specific risks faced by men and boys;

o Humanitarian work can also provide a useful entry point to promoting gender equality, as it can enable new roles and responsibilities to be given to women and men, and also help to promote lasting changes in gender relations.

Minimum standards include:

o Active involvement of women in the design and targeting of humanitarian programme activities (type and amount of food to be distributed, distribution of food rations directly to female household members, etc.);

o Including issues of dignity, for women and girls in particular, in all humanitarian assessments (clothing needs, menstrual protection, bathing facilities, etc.)

For the first time, IANSA, Oxfam, and Safeworld have estimated the economic cost of armed conflict to Africa’s development. Around $300bn since 1990 has been lost by Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda.

This sum is equivalent to international aid from major donors in the same period. If this money was not lost due to armed conflict, it could solve the problems of HIV and AIDS in Africa, or it could address Africa’s needs in education, clean water and sanitation, and prevent tuberculosis and malaria.

Research estimates that Africa loses around $18bn per year due to wars, civil wars, and insurgencies. On average, armed conflict shrinks an African nation’s economy by 15 per cent, and this is probably a conservative estimate. The real costs of armed violence to Africans could be much, much higher.

See the full paper can be found by following this link -africa missing billions

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