Gender, disaster management and mitigation policies || Newspapers (Arabic)

On the occasion of the international day for mitigating risks from disaster and which was dedicated this year to gender equality, As Safir newspaper published a report by Fadi Hamdan, the director of the Centre for Disaster Management focusing on the gendered impact of risks resulting from disasters.  Hamdan concluded in his study report that risk reduction needs to take gender differences into consideration.
According to the same study, the main causes for increased risks from disasters are poverty, environmental degradation, unregulated constructions and poor governance. The study indicated the need to assess the impact of each of these causes and the ways in which their impact is gendered so that we are able to develop an appropriate risk mitigation policy and suggest solutions.
Two key causes were addressed in details namely rapid and unregulated construction which impact poor women and men and environmental degradation which greatly affects agriculture. The study indicated that losses in harvests lead to increasing poverty and unemployment within the agricultural sector with a particularly harsher impact on women. Indeed, and according to the national study of the level of household livelihoods of 2007 which was published by the Ministry of Social Affairs and the UNDP, the agricultural sector secures 4.6 % of employment for the total of 8.1% of women out of the total 7.2% of the labor force.
Since disaster risk management policies often focus on specific economic sectors, there is a serious threat that women's real role is overlooked in such policies especially in the case of women who are considered to be outside the mainstream job market.  In Beirut for instance, 13% of poor women are recognized as "working", 7.1% are considered to be unemployed and 79.3% are considered to be outside the job market.

In the North, 5.6% of poor women are recognized as "working", 0.21% are considered to be unemployed and 94.2% as being outside the job market.  The figures for South Lebanon are 7.9%, 2.3% and 89.8% respectively.
Women considered to be outside the job market are accounted to as follows by Mohafazat:
65.5% in Beirut
76.4% in Mount Lebanon
88.4% in the North
89.8% in the Bekaa
82.6% in South Lebanon
80.3% in Nabatyen
and 79.9% as an aggregate figure for Lebanon

Hamdan indicated that disaster mitigation policies should take into consideration the capacities of communities as a whole including women who constitute 50% of all communities.  

He suggested a number of interventions that take gender into consideration, namely:

• Consider disaster mitigation as a national priority and ensure that policies and national strategies take into consideration the gendered impact of disasters and rely on the capacities of women
• Identify, evaluate and monitor risks and consolidate early warning mechanisms: identify gaps, evaluate the gendered risks and use communication policies which are able to target and reach all women
• Raising awareness, education and training on mitigating risks resulting from disasters: developing national awareness raising policies which take gender into consideration and build up teams able to identify women and men who are at risk and how to reach out to them
• Mitigating risks in key sectors: ensure that policies aiming at securing continuity of work include strategies to ensure the continuity of women-headed small and medium enterprises
• Consolidate readiness and response to disasters: identify appropriate partners from civil and women organisations and build their capacities to respond to disasters

Source: Assafir