IASC Guidance on Engagement, Participation and Decision-Making by Women-Led Organizations in Humanitarian Action
Purpose
There is a lack of consistent reference to, consultation with, and dedicated funding for the meaningful engagement of formal or informal local women-led groups, networks, organizations, movements or initiatives, which contributes to rendering these groups invisible or under-prioritized, and therefore more marginalized in humanitarian action. Various definitions of local women’s organizations, local women-led organizations, or local women’s rights organizations are in use, making tracking of their impact, participation and leadership in decision-making, and access to funding challenging. This is an impediment to the accurate monitoring of support to and accountability for crisis-affected women and girls.
This document seeks to adopt a coherent definition of local women-led organizations (WLOs). A standard, non-normative definition of local WLOs for use by humanitarian actors will aid the meaningful engagement, participation and decision making of women and girls in humanitarian response, whilst also enabling the IASC and humanitarian system and other relevant organizations to track funding to the organizations that represent them. This in turn supports the implementation of the Accountability to Affected People (AAP) principle and the localization agenda.
This harmonized definition will facilitate the channeling of prioritized technical and financial support to local WLOs and aid the tracking of funding and its impact towards the empowerment of crisis-affected women and girls in all their diversity. It will provide consistency in planning, response, financing, monitoring, and reporting at Humanitarian Country Team and cluster/sub-cluster level, more accurate information about how the humanitarian system is meeting the most basic commitment to women and girls and the organizations that work towards advancing their rights and gender equality.
The IASC aligns itself with the definition used by the Grand Bargain and the UN Partners Portal[1] which reads as follows:
Local women-led organization (WLO): An organization with a humanitarian mandate and/or mission that is (1) governed or directed by women; or 2) whose leadership is principally made up of women, demonstrated by 50 per cent or more occupying senior leadership positions.[2]
The above definition does not stipulate or intend to set the agenda for local WLOs. Nor is it the only set of criteria for stakeholders to consider. It is a non-normative definition and stakeholders are encouraged to go beyond these minimum criteria to aim for more progressive and inclusive programmatic standards wherever possible. As such, the next section of this guidance note outlines additional recommended criteria that should be applied to facilitate the inclusion of women and girls in all their diversity, and their organizations, in decision making and implementation, including through financial allocations as part of a gender-responsive approach to humanitarian action.
[1] The Grand Bargain Secretariat uses this definition in its annual self-reporting template that signatories use to report against their commitments. It is also the definition in the United Nations Partner Portal that is designed to facilitate collaboration between civil society organizations and their UN partners.
[2] Aligned with Footnote 29 in the GBV AoR Strategy 2021-2015, this guidance note defines women-led organization in “an inclusive way encompassing both women-led and girl-led organizations, as well as women’s rights organizations.” Please refer to the text boxes on page 2 for additional definitions.