Although disasters are quick to strike, their consequences can linger for months and years. In disasters, responders did not always think through how human rights may be affected by their interventions. All too often the human rights of disaster victims are not sufficiently taken into account. These violations could be avoided if both national and international actors took the relevant human rights guarantees into account from the beginning. Thus, there is a need to raise awareness and implement human rights approaches through guidelines.
This policy statement sets out actions for IASC coordination bodies to ensure gender equality in all IASC work towards more effective and coherent humanitarian action. The policy statement builds on the IASC 1999 “Policy Statement for the Integration of a Gender Perspective in Humanitarian Assistance”.
