Bangladesh’s women getting help in coping with natural disasters

Author: Kausik Das

Dhaka, Bangladesh — The Government of Bangladesh is launching a new 3-year project to help women cope with natural disasters, in one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

Government and United Nations representatives sign the project documents at the United Nations conference room. Photo: UN Women/Kausik Das

The “National Resilience Programme” aims to help sustain the country’s human and economic development through gender-responsive disaster risk management that meets the needs and concerns of women and girls.

UN Women, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Office for Project services (UNOPS) will implement the project jointly with the Ministries of Disaster Management and Relief; Women and Children Affairs; Planning; and Local Government, Rural Development and Co-operatives.

The parties spent 1.5 years designing the project, which a UN Women representative said is the first disaster management project in Bangladesh with gender concerns as the key focus.

The USD 12.4 million project is being funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), and the Bangladesh Government. It will run from July 2017 to September 2020.

Representatives of the Government and the United Nations agencies signed the project launch documents at a ceremony in Dhaka on 31 July.

The project will try to strengthen gender-responsive disaster risk policies and management at the national level; the ability of public institutions to create resilient, gender-responsive infrastructure systems; women’s leadership in disaster management decisions and investments; and community-level preparedness, response and recovery.

The project is designed to help achieve the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and Bangladesh’s Seventh Five-year Plan, for 2015-2020.

Bangladesh is very vulnerable to natural disasters because of its geographical location, low-lying deltaic landscape, numerous rivers and monsoon climate. The country has been repeatedly hit by floods, cyclones, earthquakes, drought, tsunamis.