Moving Forward with the Gender Equality Objective of the Call to Action Road Map

In recent years, humanitarian actors increasingly have come to understand that crises have differential impacts on people based on their gender. For women and girls, crises can exacerbate prevailing gender inequalities and heighten their harmful consequences. They may face additional barriers to accessing aid and to participating in decision-making processes that affect their lives and livelihoods. Many find themselves at increased risk of gender-based violence (GBV).

To address these challenges, humanitarian actors have taken important steps to develop policies, guidance, and tools to integrate the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls into humanitarian preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery.

This issue brief focuses on one particular initiative—the Call to Action on Protection from Gender-based Violence in Emergencies—which aims, in part, to address the linkages between gender inequality and GBV.