Locations
Our Focus
Journey Towards Gender Transformative Change for Recovery and Resilience
See how UNDP is collectively addressing the root causes of gender inequality in fragile and crisis settings, working towards transformation and resilience.
- An integrated approach to economic recovery and gender-based violence prevention
- Improving lives through gender-responsive data and analysis
- Utilizing innovative methods to change gender-related social norms and behaviours
- Convening an internal Women, Peace and Security Coordination Group for knowledge exchange
- Organizing the Gender and Crisis Huddle Series
Integrating gender-based violence (GBV) prevention into Women's Economic Empowerment programme enables UNDP to:
- transform social norms and address the power dynamics that are at the root of gender inequality, and in turn, prevent the inadvertent harm that can be caused by women's economic empowerment;
- address the intersecting needs of women and men and break out of siloed ways of working, which presents an opportunity for creativity and innovation;
- reach more people including GBV survivors who can be harder to reach with stand-alone GBV programmes due to the underreporting nature and ease funding deficits through cost-sharing within larger sectoral programmes;
- accelerate achievements across all the Sustainable Development Goals as GBV is often a silent or ignored barrier to development.
This model has been piloted in Lebanon and Iraq, producing promising results. Read more about the project results here and the lessons learned to end gender-based violence through integration here.
UNDP is now scaling the solution in different crisis contexts.
UNDP is working to strengthen data-driven crisis response planning that is informed by the specific needs and vulnerabilities of individuals and communities most affected by fragility and crisis. Ongoing efforts include supporting initiatives on gender-responsive conflict analysis in Sudan, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Guinea-Bissau to advance the Women, Peace and Security agenda.
UNDP is exploring and experimenting with innovative methods to address gender-related behaviors and social norms. We are implementing programmes that are informed by behavioural science and yielding positive impacts through non-violent communication (NVC) trainings.
UNDP’s Women, Peace and Security Coordination Group brings together over 170 practitioners working at the national, regional and global level on all aspects of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. At the monthly meetings, experts in and outside of UNDP come together to share knowledge on policy, programming, research, lessons learned, and guidance that takes a transformative approach to addressing root causes of inequalities.
The WPS Coordination Group is a vital learning platform for members to share good practices and challenges, with the aim of collectively enhancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in crisis contexts. Previous discussion topics include: gender-responsive conflict analysis in Myanmar and Sudan; synergies between the WPS and Youth Peace and Security agendas; engaging the private sector in gender-responsive disaster management; UNDP’s support for 1325 National Action Plans in Iraq and Yemen; and a women’s economic empowerment and gender-based violence prevention project in Iraq.
UNDP’s Gender and Crisis Huddle is an interactive speaker series focused on development responses to acute crisis contexts from a gender equality perspective. By bringing together UNDP colleagues working on different aspects of crisis response at the country, regional, and HQ level, the Gender and Crisis Huddles aim to facilitate solutions-oriented dialogue between and among different teams, and identify practical, transformative and gender responsive interventions.
These Huddles allow for more in-depth discussions on some of the most intractable gender issues facing crisis country teams through the participation of key actors, including senior leadership from country offices, local CSOs and women’s groups, and technical experts at the HQ level. By focusing this broad range of expertise on the challenges and opportunities that acute crises present for gender equality, the series hopes to support comprehensive and transformational engagements that can prevent the roll back of development gains and build resilience to future shocks and fragility. Countries covered so far are Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine, and Myanmar.