Emergency|Humanitarian Aid
Gender Assessment Cash and Voucher Assistance Feasibility Study in the Solomon Islands
Feasibility study partner CARE Australia commissioned a qualitative gender-sensitive analysis to inform the overall development of the Solomon Islands Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) Feasibility Study. The gender analysis was conducted with the support of Oxfam, Save the Children, World Food Programme, CARE Australia, Live and Learn and World Vision with funding support from DFAT through the Australian Humanitarian Partnership (AHP) Disaster Ready Program. The study’s gender analysis is the first evidence produced in the Pacific region that examines the effect of CVA on women’s well-being and empowerment, aligned with the “Agenda for Collective Action” that was agreed following the Cash and Learning Partnership (CaLP) symposium on “Gender and Cash and voucher assistance” in Nairobi, Kenya in February 2018.
There is a growing body of research on the effects of cash and voucher assistance on protection and women’s empowerment outcomes in relation to development programming; however, less so in humanitarian settings and particularly relating to short-term CVA. Cash and voucher assistance is considered to be one of the most significant recent developments in humanitarian assistance, in addition to being poorly understood in some regions, including the Pacific. As a result, it is likely that many interventions fail to capitalize on opportunities to foster positive gender impacts or possibly lead to negative externalities, including gender-based violence affecting women and girls. For these reasons, the rise in CVA in humanitarian programming must be accompanied by an equal interest in ensuring CVA does not cause harm to women and girls or lead to a deterioration of gender relations in the home. It is important to undertake a gender analysis to understand context-specific gender norms and the implications of CVA on men, women, boys, girls, and other vulnerable groups in order to inform effective and high-quality programming. Read More...
There is a growing body of research on the effects of cash and voucher assistance on protection and women’s empowerment outcomes in relation to development programming; however, less so in humanitarian settings and particularly relating to short-term CVA. Cash and voucher assistance is considered to be one of the most significant recent developments in humanitarian assistance, in addition to being poorly understood in some regions, including the Pacific. As a result, it is likely that many interventions fail to capitalize on opportunities to foster positive gender impacts or possibly lead to negative externalities, including gender-based violence affecting women and girls. For these reasons, the rise in CVA in humanitarian programming must be accompanied by an equal interest in ensuring CVA does not cause harm to women and girls or lead to a deterioration of gender relations in the home. It is important to undertake a gender analysis to understand context-specific gender norms and the implications of CVA on men, women, boys, girls, and other vulnerable groups in order to inform effective and high-quality programming. Read More...
Initial Rapid Gender Assessment Report Papua New Guinea 2015 El Niño
A Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) is designed to provide information about the different needs, capacities and coping strategies of women, men, girls and boys in a crisis. The objective of this RGA is to provide an overview of the gender relations between men, women, boys and girls in those Papua New Guinea’s highland provinces affected by drought and frost as a result of the 2015 El Niño event.
This initial gender analysis and subsequent recommendations will serve to inform CARE International in PNG’s (CARE PNG) programming response to the 2015 El Niño event in ways which respect the different needs of women, men, girls and boys in El Niño affected communities in Papua New Guinea. Read More...
This initial gender analysis and subsequent recommendations will serve to inform CARE International in PNG’s (CARE PNG) programming response to the 2015 El Niño event in ways which respect the different needs of women, men, girls and boys in El Niño affected communities in Papua New Guinea. Read More...
Rapid Gender Analysis Tropical Cyclone Winston
strongest storm ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. The damage caused by the TC Winston was extensive and has affected 167 of Fiji’s 300+ islands. Forty-three people lost their lives as a result of the cyclone. The Fiji Government estimates that 350,000 people—40% of the total population—have been affected by the cyclone. Of those affected, 120,000 are children under 18 years and 36,000 of these children are under 5 years of age.1 UNFPA estimates that 5,600 women in the affected areas are pregnant and 600 babies will be born per month in these areas over the next year.2 The total damages caused by Tropical Cyclone Winston are estimated to be US$460 million across a range of key sectors.
Women, men, boys and girls, and minority groups, will experience differing immediate and longer term impacts from Tropical Cyclone Winston. This Rapid Gender Analysis is intended to ensure these differing needs and priorities are taken into account in order to deliver an effective response that meets everyone’s needs. The analysis begins with an outline of gender equality and women’s empowerment in Fiji based principally on secondary data. This is followed by some of the potential gender-differentiated impacts in key sectors where Live and Learn and CARE will be working, along with initial recommendations to ensure Live and Learn and CARE implement a gender-responsive response to TC Winston. Response and recovery efforts will be considerably enriched as more data from affected areas becomes available and a detailed social and gender analysis is undertaken of the impacted areas and beneficiary communities Read More...
Women, men, boys and girls, and minority groups, will experience differing immediate and longer term impacts from Tropical Cyclone Winston. This Rapid Gender Analysis is intended to ensure these differing needs and priorities are taken into account in order to deliver an effective response that meets everyone’s needs. The analysis begins with an outline of gender equality and women’s empowerment in Fiji based principally on secondary data. This is followed by some of the potential gender-differentiated impacts in key sectors where Live and Learn and CARE will be working, along with initial recommendations to ensure Live and Learn and CARE implement a gender-responsive response to TC Winston. Response and recovery efforts will be considerably enriched as more data from affected areas becomes available and a detailed social and gender analysis is undertaken of the impacted areas and beneficiary communities Read More...
Cyclone Pam Vanuatu Rapid Gender Analysis
In the aftermath of Cyclone Pam, Vanuatu has declared a State of Emergency across all six provinces. Shelter, food, health and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are key needs. The United Nations estimates that the majority of Vanuatu’s population, spread over 22 islands, has been affected by Tropical Cyclone Pam. Understanding the impact of Cyclone Pam on women, men, boys and girls is crucial to deliver an effective response.
CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis of Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu analyses the different needs, capacities, and coping strategies of women, men, boys and girls. CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis is built-up progressively; using a range of primary and secondary information to understand how gender roles and relations may change during a crisis. CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis of Cyclone Pam, including its recommendations, will be revised as more information becomes available. Read More...
CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis of Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu analyses the different needs, capacities, and coping strategies of women, men, boys and girls. CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis is built-up progressively; using a range of primary and secondary information to understand how gender roles and relations may change during a crisis. CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis of Cyclone Pam, including its recommendations, will be revised as more information becomes available. Read More...
Fiji Gender, Disability & Inclusion Snapshot COVID-19, TC Yasa and TC Ana
Fiji is facing unprecedented challenges as a result of the compounded effects of COVID-19, Tropical Cyclone (TC) Yasa and TC Ana. TC Yasa was a category five cyclone with winds up to 345 kilometers per hour which made landfall over Fiji’s second largest island, Vanua Levu on 17 December 2020. TC Yasa was not the only major cyclone in 2020 as TC Harold had hit Viti Levu and the islands to the east as a Category Four cyclone on 8 April 2020. In the midst of response and recovery efforts for these cyclones, coupled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fiji was hit again by another tropical cyclone, TC Ana, on 31 January 2021. Read More...
MAGNIFYING INEQUALITIES AND COMPOUNDING RISKS The Impact of COVID-19 on the Health and Protection of Women and Girls on the Move
More than one year into the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic—with some countries seemingly on their way out of the crisis while others enter new waves—evidence of its impact is growing. COVID-19 is increasing short-term humanitarian needs and negatively affecting longer-term outcomes for marginalized populations and people in vulnerable situations, significantly setting back hard-won development gains, magnifying inequalities, and compounding risks. Among those worst affected are the more than 80 million people worldwide—approximately half of whom are women and girls—who have been forcibly displaced by drivers such as persecution, conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations.1
The majority of forcibly displaced people live in resource-poor countries with weak public health and social protection systems, and economies that have been hard-hit by the pandemic.2 Yet, to date, there has only been limited research around the unique ways in which women and girls on the move are affected.3 This despite predictions of significant impacts on access to, and use of, basic health services—including for sexual and reproductive health (SRH)—and the overall protection environment, including increases in prevalence and risk of gender-based violence (GBV).
Placing gender at the center of its humanitarian and development responses, CARE undertook new research in Afghanistan, Ecuador, and Turkey between April and May 2021 to better understand how COVID-19 is impacting the health and protection of women and girls on the move. The three countries represent different types of forced displacement across multiple regions: internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugee returnees in Afghanistan; more recent migrants and refugees due to the Venezuelan crisis in Ecuador; and longer-term Syrian refugees living under temporary international protection in Turkey. The primary data collected for this research included more than 1,000 surveys with women on the move and from host communities, to allow comparison; 31 focus group discussions (FGDs) with women and adolescent girls; and 45 key informant interviews (KIIs) with government actors, health and protection service providers, humanitarian organizations, and CARE staff. Read More...
The majority of forcibly displaced people live in resource-poor countries with weak public health and social protection systems, and economies that have been hard-hit by the pandemic.2 Yet, to date, there has only been limited research around the unique ways in which women and girls on the move are affected.3 This despite predictions of significant impacts on access to, and use of, basic health services—including for sexual and reproductive health (SRH)—and the overall protection environment, including increases in prevalence and risk of gender-based violence (GBV).
Placing gender at the center of its humanitarian and development responses, CARE undertook new research in Afghanistan, Ecuador, and Turkey between April and May 2021 to better understand how COVID-19 is impacting the health and protection of women and girls on the move. The three countries represent different types of forced displacement across multiple regions: internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugee returnees in Afghanistan; more recent migrants and refugees due to the Venezuelan crisis in Ecuador; and longer-term Syrian refugees living under temporary international protection in Turkey. The primary data collected for this research included more than 1,000 surveys with women on the move and from host communities, to allow comparison; 31 focus group discussions (FGDs) with women and adolescent girls; and 45 key informant interviews (KIIs) with government actors, health and protection service providers, humanitarian organizations, and CARE staff. Read More...
Community Scorecard in Emergencies Learning Brief
To be effective and equitable towards global populations, humanitarian organizations must adhere to the core standards and principles on quality humanitarian response. Since the inception of ideas on the centrality of local participation in aid in the early 2000s and the more recent evolution of that concept into accountability towards affected populations, the humanitarian community has sought to turn this doctrine into reality.
Accountability in humanitarian response requires that organizations carry out their efforts in an ethically and legally responsible manner that is inclusive of the communities they are seeking to serve. Of UNICEF’s nine Core Humanitarian Standards (depicted here to the right), three specifically refer to mechanisms of accountability towards affected peoples: response is based on communication, participation and feedback; complaints are welcome and addressed; actors continuously learn and improve. In practice this could include centralizing the voices of affected peoples by engaging communities in needs and performance assessments and decision-making. Achieving this is often hindered by the constraints inherent to conflict settings such as lack of localization of assistance, communication between actors, and exploration of needs.
CARE’s Community Score Card
Seeking to actualize these principles of community participation and accountability into our programming, CARE developed the Community Score Card as part of a project aimed at developing innovative and sustainable models to improve health services. Working in crisis settings requires an understanding of the lived experiences of people, the power dynamics, and micro-politics that inform humanitarian response approaches. It also requires bridging the gap between civil society organizations, local and national governments, international non-governmental organizations, and impacted communities. Social accountability approaches do this by connecting citizens with those responsible for providing services. The Community Score Card (CSC) is a participatory social accountability mechanism for assessment, planning, monitoring and evaluation of services. Designed for ease of use and adaptation into any sector with a service delivery scenario, the CSC brings together users and providers of a particular service or program to jointly identify service utilization and provision challenges, mutually generate solutions, and work in partnership to implement and track the effectiveness of those solutions in an ongoing process of quality improvement. The CSC has five phases: (I) planning and preparation; (II) conducting the scorecard with the community; (III) conducting the scorecard with service providers; (IV) interface meeting where the all parties present their findings in the presence of duty-bearers and then jointly develop action plans; and (V) monitoring of the action plans and evaluation of overall process. Read More...
Accountability in humanitarian response requires that organizations carry out their efforts in an ethically and legally responsible manner that is inclusive of the communities they are seeking to serve. Of UNICEF’s nine Core Humanitarian Standards (depicted here to the right), three specifically refer to mechanisms of accountability towards affected peoples: response is based on communication, participation and feedback; complaints are welcome and addressed; actors continuously learn and improve. In practice this could include centralizing the voices of affected peoples by engaging communities in needs and performance assessments and decision-making. Achieving this is often hindered by the constraints inherent to conflict settings such as lack of localization of assistance, communication between actors, and exploration of needs.
CARE’s Community Score Card
Seeking to actualize these principles of community participation and accountability into our programming, CARE developed the Community Score Card as part of a project aimed at developing innovative and sustainable models to improve health services. Working in crisis settings requires an understanding of the lived experiences of people, the power dynamics, and micro-politics that inform humanitarian response approaches. It also requires bridging the gap between civil society organizations, local and national governments, international non-governmental organizations, and impacted communities. Social accountability approaches do this by connecting citizens with those responsible for providing services. The Community Score Card (CSC) is a participatory social accountability mechanism for assessment, planning, monitoring and evaluation of services. Designed for ease of use and adaptation into any sector with a service delivery scenario, the CSC brings together users and providers of a particular service or program to jointly identify service utilization and provision challenges, mutually generate solutions, and work in partnership to implement and track the effectiveness of those solutions in an ongoing process of quality improvement. The CSC has five phases: (I) planning and preparation; (II) conducting the scorecard with the community; (III) conducting the scorecard with service providers; (IV) interface meeting where the all parties present their findings in the presence of duty-bearers and then jointly develop action plans; and (V) monitoring of the action plans and evaluation of overall process. Read More...
Rapid Assessment on COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake by Urban Marginalised Population in Bangladesh
As of 31 March 2021, there have been 127,877,462 confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide, including 2,796,561 deaths in 223 countries as reported by WHO. Bangladesh had 6,11,295 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 9,406 confirmed deaths till the end of March 2021. In response to this situation, the administration of the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine officially started on 7 February 2021 in the national hospitals and health complexes all over Bangladesh. Despite acute demand for the vaccine, a great deal of misinformation and misconception is also apparent among general people. With the ongoing vaccine administration, it is very important to understand community acceptance of COVID-19 vaccinations.
People’s knowledge, attitudes and perceptions towards COVID-19 are of utmost importance for Government and policymakers to address all barriers to vaccine uptake and ensuring that everyone has access to vaccine. With these contexts, this survey aims to identify the overall COVID-19 vaccination perceptions among the urban marginalized population in Bangladesh based on three main objectives:
Understanding the knowledge and practice related to COVID-19 prevention
Assessing the knowledge and perspective regarding COVID-19 vaccination
program
To know the status of vaccine uptake among marginalized population
The urban marginalized population were purposively selected, as they are more likely to be unaccounted for or have the least access to the COVID-19 vaccine administration process. In this survey, researchers captured only the population that are direct service recipient of the Urban Health Programme (garment workers and people who inject drug) and other groups who are available around the catchment areas of the service centres of the facilities. Read More...
People’s knowledge, attitudes and perceptions towards COVID-19 are of utmost importance for Government and policymakers to address all barriers to vaccine uptake and ensuring that everyone has access to vaccine. With these contexts, this survey aims to identify the overall COVID-19 vaccination perceptions among the urban marginalized population in Bangladesh based on three main objectives:
Understanding the knowledge and practice related to COVID-19 prevention
Assessing the knowledge and perspective regarding COVID-19 vaccination
program
To know the status of vaccine uptake among marginalized population
The urban marginalized population were purposively selected, as they are more likely to be unaccounted for or have the least access to the COVID-19 vaccine administration process. In this survey, researchers captured only the population that are direct service recipient of the Urban Health Programme (garment workers and people who inject drug) and other groups who are available around the catchment areas of the service centres of the facilities. Read More...
Promoting Economic Resilience of Syrian Women (PERSEVERE) Annual Project Results Report (April 2020 – March 2021)
“Promoting Economic Resilience of Syrian Women” (PERSEVERE, CAD$8,497,675) is undertaken with the financial support from the Government of Canada, provided through Global Affairs Canada. It aims to enhance the resilience of displaced and conflict-affected Syrian women, including women with disabilities. Led by CARE Canada and implemented by the Syria Resilience Consortium (SRC), CARE, and Humanity & Inclusion (HI), PERSEVERE is designed to contribute to this goal through the following Intermediate Outcomes:
1) Women, including young and older women as well as women with disabilities, participate more actively in community economic governance; and
2) Community members, institutions, and response actors actively support the inclusion of Gender, Age and Disability (GAD) consideration in economic governance. Initial project learning and methods are meant to be shared across the whole of Syria and other SRC members and introduced to wider response actors contributing to resilience.
This year, the program has been continuing to support inclusion of women and persons with disabilities in livelihood activities. More women have been provided with in-depth training to support other women to expand and grow their businesses. Read More...
1) Women, including young and older women as well as women with disabilities, participate more actively in community economic governance; and
2) Community members, institutions, and response actors actively support the inclusion of Gender, Age and Disability (GAD) consideration in economic governance. Initial project learning and methods are meant to be shared across the whole of Syria and other SRC members and introduced to wider response actors contributing to resilience.
This year, the program has been continuing to support inclusion of women and persons with disabilities in livelihood activities. More women have been provided with in-depth training to support other women to expand and grow their businesses. Read More...
Somalia: Cash Transfers via Mobile Money for Maternal Child Health Services
This study is part of a larger multi-country study by CARE entitled “Cash and Voucher Assistance for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Outcomes: Learnings from Colombia, Ecuador, Lebanon and Somalia.”
CARE Somalia has used Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) in its programs for over ten years. This includes CVA for food security and livelihoods, nutrition, WASH, and education, as well as multipurpose cash transfers. Since 2018, with support from Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) (now the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)), CARE Somalia has been implementing a food security and Livelihoods, health, nutrition, protection and WASH program. With BHA support, CARE currently supports 19 MCH facilities across Somaliland and Puntland that target children and pregnant and lactating women (PLW). Read More...
CARE Somalia has used Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) in its programs for over ten years. This includes CVA for food security and livelihoods, nutrition, WASH, and education, as well as multipurpose cash transfers. Since 2018, with support from Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) (now the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)), CARE Somalia has been implementing a food security and Livelihoods, health, nutrition, protection and WASH program. With BHA support, CARE currently supports 19 MCH facilities across Somaliland and Puntland that target children and pregnant and lactating women (PLW). Read More...