Rowena Dacsig of UN Women Myanmar gives a presentation on characteristics of a gender and diversity based response plan to the group at the Training Workshop on Mainstreaming Gender Humanitarian Action, on 29 March 2023. Photo: IOM Republic of Korea

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Seoul, Republic of Korea — More than 40 practitioners from across the humanitarian field attended a workshop on how to mainstream gender in the sector, held at the end of March in Seoul. The training underlined the importance of committing to gender equality at every stage of emergency operations.

The Training Workshop on Mainstreaming Gender in Humanitarian Action was hosted by the UN Women Centre of Excellence for Gender Equality (the Centre) jointly with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and with support from the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Held from 28 to 31 March 2023, it brought together a total of 42 representatives from non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, government institutions, and other relevant organizations with backgrounds in humanitarian action based in the Republic of Korea (ROK).

Led by the three experts from UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, the workshop consisted of two parts: a two-day basic training, which introduced core concepts and gender mainstreaming throughout the humanitarian programme cycle, and a back-to-back advanced training for another two days with more practical exercises to design gender-sensitive humanitarian support.

The training was part of efforts of the UN Women Centre of Excellence to strengthen the capacity of the national humanitarian community to advance a more comprehensive understanding of gender aspects of humanitarian programming, specifically on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.

Rowena Dacsig, a programme specialist from the UN Women Myanmar country office, shared her field experience in that country. Rowena explained the concept of negative coping mechanisms noting how in some extreme circumstances without any access to humanitarian assistance, women and girls are resorting to sex work while men and boys are joining armed groups for financial assistance and for their survival.

The participants also engaged in several breakout exercises in work groups of four to five people, including an analysis of case studies and a simulation exercise on how to carry out a gender-integrated humanitarian response in sectors of WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene), protection, education, nutrition, and food security and livelihood, resulting in the development of an action plan on gender and humanitarian action.

A CSO representative gives a presentation on a case study to the group at the Training Workshop on Mainstreaming Gender Humanitarian Action, on 29 March 2023. Photo: IOM Republic of Korea

The ‘Power Walk’ activity, for instance, involved participants taking diverse roles of internally displaced persons, such as an elderly woman with young children to look after, a man in his 40s who is a community leader, in the context of Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh, home to the largest Rohingya refugee camp in the world. The activity was designed to acknowledge how intersectional identities, such as gender identity, age, and disability status, must be taken into account when working on humanitarian projects and tailoring interventions.

The participants also exchanged their own experiences and expertise from their daily humanitarian practice. After the training, the participants committed to sharing what they learned from the training with their organization and expressed their interest in continuing the conversation with UN Women and IOM on gender and humanitarian action for future work.