Where are the Women in Haiti's Reconstruction?

Huairou Update, April 12, 2010

April 7th, 2010 - Women and gender issues were glaring in their absence from the March 31st Haiti International Donors' Conference held in New York when billions of dollars were pledged to finance Haiti's reconstruction.  Haiti's National Plan of Action, the blueprint guiding reconstruction efforts and resource allocation, was based on a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA). The PDNA resulted from a two month process led by the Government of Haiti and involving more than 250 people from the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union and the Inter-American Development Bank. Despite this large scale effort, the resulting PDNA failed to address gender dimensions of Haiti's proposed strategies for reconstructing macroeconomic, social, environmental policies, as well as infrastructure and governance. 

To amplify Haitian women's voices, a collective effort involving more than 100 international women's organizations and networks held a press conference and parallel event across the street from the Donors' Conference on March 31st 2010. At the event, they released a Gender Shadow Report (http://tinyurl.com/ycke9h2) that provides a gender analysis of and response to the PDNA. The report is introduced by an open letter to donors demanding the inclusion of Haitian women's voices in the reconstruction process and attention to gender issues in all policies and budget allocations.

Describing the Gender Shadow Report as an instrument for putting words into action, Kathy Mangones, UNIFEM's Haiti country program coordinator, declared that "women's leadership and participation in Haiti's reconstruction" is the only way to "create more stable, inclusive and democratic societies."  Acclaimed Haitian-American writer, Edwidge Danticat called the Gender Report "vital for transparency, equality and women's and girls' rights" and a significant step toward "ensuring that women's voices and grassroots' voices are part of the reconstruction conversation." Marie St-Cyr, a Haitian human rights advocate, criticized the PDNA: "We are concerned that even though it talks about cross-cutting issues, it is a lot of rhetoric. We want commitment from the Haitian government and the international community to genuinely integrate women and women's organisations in all processes."  

Nigel Fisher, the UN's Senior Representative for the PDNA and President & CEO of UNICEF Canada deemed the PDNA's attention to gender as 'insufficient' and consultations with civil society, human rights advocates and women's networks as "incomplete." Echoing Fisher's concerns, Winnie Byanyima, Director of the Gender Team, Bureau for Development Policy, UNDP stated that "the enemy of equality is urgency that prevents a serious analysis of how to bridge inequality." 

The most pressing questions focused on implementation. Fisher gave assurances that recommendations made in the Gender Shadow Report would be acted upon and that a gender analysis would be incorporated into planning and implementation strategies. Mr. Fisher emphasized the importance of sex disaggregated data and gender responsive budgeting (GSB) for ensuring accountability to women and gender issues in Haiti's reconstruction.

It is lamentable that now, ten years after the United Nations Security Council adopted its first Resolution (S/RES/1325) on women, peace and security, that core commitments to increase women's participation in peace-building and ensure their protection have yet to be translated into programs, instruments and policies in Haiti. The Gender Shadow Report calls for urgent actions to remedy these transgressions, including:

• The allocation of dedicated funds, which promote and protect women's human rights and strengthen gender equality. This includes support for rebuilding and strengthening the capacity of key gender equality actors in Haiti, including the Ministry of Women'sCondition and Rights, the women's movement and networks;
• The dedication of special measures to ensure women and particularly heads of households (30 % of all household are held by women) are driving and benefiting from private sector and livelihood initiatives as well as infrastructure support, which include as well women's priorities for schools, housing, markets, and shelters that increase the security and safety of women;
• The participation of gender equality experts and advocates in all sectors from sanitation to agriculture and assurances that the priorities, needs and voices of women are visible and supported in all sectors;
• The introduction of gender equality markers and other gender responsive budgeting tools.

"We need to continue making a lot of noise as it fades from the general conversation. Business as usual is not an option" Danticat said. "Haitian women and women's organisations ought to be at the center of Haiti's reconstruction."       

To read the Gender Shadow Report visit: http://tinyurl.com/ycke9h2

To read the open letter to the donors visit: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5095/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2402

Huairou Update, April 12, 2010

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Huairou Update, Vol. 73, February 19, 2010

Launch of “South Asian Network of Grassroots Women's Leaders for Community Resilience" Kathmandu, Nepal

A South Asian network of grassroots women's leaders for community resilience, and a national grassroots women's network in Nepal were launched last week in Kathmandu following a four day workshop on advancing and supporting the leadership of grassroots women in sustaining and scaling up their capacity to reduce risks and vulnerabilities in their communities and build a culture of resilience.

This workshop, "Advancing Grassroots Women's Leadership in Community Resilience, was held by the Huairou Commission, generously hosted by Lumanti, and sponsored by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, held from February 8- 11, 2010 in Kathmandu, Nepal. Over 30 participants from 13 organizations based in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal gathered to exchange lessons learned on resilience, support one another as grassroots leaders and build an action plan for the coming year.

The launch of the two networks -- the South Asian grassroots women's network, and the launch of a National Nepal grassroots women's network-- is a result of a series of initiatives undertaken by the by the Huairou Commission with the support of GROOTS International throughout the last year, including, the grassroots Academy in Cebu City, an exchange in India with Nepal and Bangladesh grassroots women's leaders, the action research Hyogo Framework for Action and the training of trainers network.

Throughout the week grassroots women exchanged lessons learned on esilience and climate change adaptation, supported one another as grassroots leaders and built an action plan for the coming year. The South Asian grassroots women's network was unanimously created to bring grassroots women together to share and transfer their strategies, and set priorities and actions on advancing grassroots leadership while building resilience to disasters and climate change.

When we have seen each other's work we learned the value of different work and further understood the roles of women in disasters and communities and how to strengthen their leadership-- C. Kasthuri, CCD.

The core group of leaders of the South Asian network includes Godavari Dange Bhimashankar (SSP), Gita Bohora (Himawanti Nepal), Menuka Prasai (Jyoti Nagar disaster management committee representative), Razia Rezaie (STARS), Renuka Kukule Kankanamge (Resource Center for the Urban Poor), and Pramoda Bardh (Lumanti).

Several grassroots leaders stated, that "this network will help us to understand each other's problems so that we can support each other for developing solutions (we can teach and train one another to solve problems." Grassroots women identified at least 50 practices that they have initiated in their communities ranging from emergency preparedness and response in rural and urban settlements, to long term resilience building strategies such as, reducing health risks, changing cropping patterns to ensure incomes and food security and improving access to basic services and local infrastructure. Specifically though, based on the expectations of the women present, the network would encourage the exchange of:

Community Markets: We cannot obtain our goals individually-- we need to work jointly in a network for advocacy and community based work."
-Reunka Kukule Kankanamge, Resource Center for Urban Poor, - Sri Lanka.

One of the practices that most groups wanted to learn more about was the RCUP's Community Markets. Organized in five districts of Colombo with 25 small women's groups, 1000 women connect to each other through microenterprise and sell their products (including crafts, mats, household items, and food products from their urban kitchen program) at a monthly market bazaar organized by the federation. Any surplus is sold to the market vendors. Well publicized, and items sold below market price, these five markets generate enough income to contribute to savings (20% of net income) and loans (20% of net income) programs that invest in settlement funds and distribute loans for small businesses and relief. The banks accounts are in women names, and yearly women can collect the accumulated savings (average is 50,000 Sri Lankan Rupees). Because the root causes of disaster vulnerability lie in development failures, this community market and saving and credit's cooperative reconfigures social relationships to generate and protect equitable access to resources through credit and increases the economic empowerment of women.

The Community Action Plan is another innovative practice that is well established by the Sri Lankans. Resource Center for the Urban Poor (RCUP) in partnership with NGO, Sevenatha, has been working with the municipal government for the last 5 years to assess the community's needs, and act on their priorities involving infrastructure and basic services. Governments do not invest in informal settlement's basic services, and the impacts of disasters increase in magnitude-- the CAP program however address these issues by working in partnership with the communities to address their needs and priorities.

The Municipal government has contracted women's groups (present at the meeting) to pave roads, construct drainage systems, and build an electric system which links all the houses (52) in the settlement. The contracts from the government (a value of 600,000 rupees each) are licensed and managed to the women in RCUP who employ and contribute labor to the projects. Interestingly, in addition to the amount given by the government, the RCUP also collects 500 rupees from each home or one days labor to ensure that there is community ownership in the projects. As is well documented, when communities are invested in public infrastructure, crime rates go down and living standards increase. Not only has the government publically awarded RCUP with distinctions for making their settlements safer, but says Renuka, "previously my husband would not allow me to work, but as a result of all the success, he's now doing work for me!"

Community Disaster Resilience Fund (CDRF)

The CDRF, which is an initiative of GROOTS and the Huairou Commission, recognizes that women from self-help groups do not receive untied funds for development or disaster management work, and thus, the CDRF channels small funds to grassroots women's groups for them to identify their priorities and capacity for DRR. Established in 2008, activities include livelihood and asset strengthening, protection of natural resources, and hazard mapping as a basis for planning and dialogue with authorities.

Communities from Bihar, every year faced the same problem. A series of floods would wipe out all their crops (which was not only a source of food but livelihoods) and because of the damage they were forced to camp out on the highway for months at a time. Recognizing the level of unpreparedness, the women's saving and credit cooperatives took initiative. Forming a committee- Kanchan Seva Ashram-(that includes grassroots women, bank officials, and farmer's club members) they used this process to form a task force, create sub groups to create awareness about the impact of disasters. They selected 5 villages in the district that are most affected each year and distributed 5000 rupees --only to women-- to do community risk mapping, create a revolving fund for livelihood generation, making it clear that the CDRF was not for emergency relief but for preparedness. Groups purchased rice and vegetable seeds, and rather than plant it in an open field susceptible to flash floods, they created roof top gardens to protect their livelihoods long term. The bank official (on the committee) also contributed a loan for vegetable cultivation. This has increased the diversity in food production for families in the community, and income generation by selling their produce at the local markets.

The groups rotate the fund twice a year and have leveraged 500,000 rupees to invest in further income generating activities, community plans on resilience and women's leadership and capacity.

As a result of this presentation, the national grassroots women's network of Nepal plans to replicate a version of the CDRF. Each group pledged 5000 NR, with a total of 35,000 NR of seed monies for the fund. Bindu Shrestha, one of the leaders of the cooperative networks, affirmed that by July all the women's cooperatives (20) in Kathmandu would have relief funds based on the ideas she learned at the workshop.

Women's Saving and Credit Cooperatives

Bankers used to look at groups badly-they were never interested in linking with us. When we started forming groups and ensuring that the accounts were well kept, we went to the bank and negotiated with them, telling them 'if you can't give money to women you shouldn't be running a bank.' As a result we were given a 50,000 rupee loan and have formed a federation with 5000 women.-- Godavari Dange Bhimashankar from SSP.

To participate effectively in reducing the vulnerability and impact of disaster the greatest strength of women is their organization, network and their unity-effective components of DRR. Different types of women's saving and credit cooperatives were explained in the workshop, but Razia Rezaie a grassroots leader from Afghanistan indicated that she would like to learn more about Nepal's model.

The savings and credit cooperatives in Kathmandu are supported by Lumanti. In the last five years, the original 6 cooperatives have increased to 20 cooperatives with more than 10,000 members and 300 women in leadership roles. Bindu Shrestha explained that typically the culture of Nepalese women's work is to be involved in agriculture production. Yet the location of the slums and an increase in flooding has resulted in lower levels of food production. These cooperatives account for that by providing skills development and enterprise training in alternative livelihoods. Cooperatives are an essential part of DRR as they are not only focused on savings and credit but improving their community through investments in infrastructure and basic services, including but not limited to, constructing roads, retaining walls, toilets, retrofitting houses, water harvesting and constructing drainage systems.

Lumanti, hosted a field visit to Narayan Tol, an informal settlement in Kathmandu, which further affirmed that women's cooperatives and resilience are interwoven, as women - through their saving and credit cooperative- have built a retaining wall to provide flooding in their community, constructed a drainage system, bio-filter sewage treatment unit, toilets and community kitchens.

As a result, the district government has awarded their cooperative with the highest distinction among all the cooperatives in the district. Wanting to increase the programs the cooperatives offer, Bindu, discussed how upon hearing SSP's health mutual model she would like the cooperatives to launch a similar fund.

Health Mutual Community Based Fund
"We never talk about insurance, just better health" --Nasim, SSP

Grassroots women leaders are the driving force behind the Community Based Health Mutual Fund in India which was launched in 2006 to hold health providers accountable, raise awareness, and address the health needs of the community. Working collectively together, by helping women access public and private health care, this program provides low cost services and preventive health measures for more than 15,000 members.

Grassroots women's leaders must mobilize members in the community to participate in the fund (through education and awareness raising) and work with health care providers (both public and private) for them to provide health care at cost to members who are part of the fund. Members pay 100 rupees (2USD) per year, which entitles them to up to 80% reimbursement of hospital costs, discounted services within the network of service providers and 24/7 referral services from Arogya Sakhis (community health workers). Membership in the fund has reduced household health expenditures through discounted services, claim reimbursement for emergency hospitalization, preventative health camps and education and a community run health referral system. This fund is a solidarity effort, improving resilience by empowering women to take proactive control over the health of themselves and their families, while institutionalizing partnerships with government officials to ensure that resource mobilization is improved and accessible to members of the communities involved.

Practice sharing affirmed that women are already actively engaged in monitoring and improving access to basic services; negotiating for safe and secure housing; connecting families and communities to government entitlements and poverty reduction programs; and pioneering sustainable livelihoods and natural resource management approaches to improve the resilience in their community. Embedded in these practices is the idea that while helping communities to withstand the onslaught of natural disasters, women are also empowering themselves and advancing their leadership. "Whenever a disaster comes, it breaks all the barriers that exist in a community because women come together as a network. The most important message I am taking from this meeting, and from my experience, is that when women organize they can reduce the risks and vulnerabilities in their communities and build capacity to scale up their work. As a result of forming a committee in my community, we are more informed and in the event of a flood we can direct officials and NGOs where the vulnerable people and places are, how many people are located in the area. Instead of someone telling us what to do we are telling them."

Networking, Partnership and Policy
Despite all the successes that organized groups of grassroots women have had it became clear throughout the sessions that they cannot do it alone. That is, partnerships, with NGOS, local, national and regional governments, help them to gain recognition, scale up and support the work that grassroots women are already doing to invest in long term development. Specific criteria listed by the women for multi stakeholder relationships included, coordination, resource mobilization, technical support, policy advocacy, transfer practices, visibility of their work. By generating effective and sustainable partnerships with local authorities and disaster management authorities it informs and reduces the vulnerability of poor communities and ensures that local stakeholder platforms bring grassroots women's priorities and practices to the forefront of national DRR and poverty reduction policy and programming.

The South Asian grassroots women's network on resilience will serve as a sub-regional hub in the UNISDR's Community Practitioner's Platform led by GROOTS and the Huairou Commission. This platform is intended to convene community based experts and practitioners, who live and work in poor, disaster prone communities, to represent their own advocacy priorities, including pressing for the formalizing and resourcing of community and grassroots women's roles in policies and programs that advance pro-poor, community-driven resilient development. Grassroots women in this sub regional network have developed advanced and innovative practices to reduce the vulnerability of their communities to disaster and climate change in South Asia and as such, will be key stakeholders in this policy platform.

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Huairou Update, Vol 70, February 12, 2010
February 2010

South East Asian Grassroots Leadership Meeting for Resilience Building

Grassroots women leaders put intensive amounts of time and energy into their community work, and their work is closely interwoven with their personal lives, such that support among and for leaders of these groups is a key aspect of women's empowerment. Thirty women from South East Asian countries held an intimate gathering in the Philippines this week to build their relationships as women leaders working toward increased ongoing networking in their region, with a focus on community resilience work. The meeting began by focusing on the accomplishments and challenges for grassroots women leaders of grassroots organizations or people's organizations.

Several SE Asian countries are located in the Asian "ring of fire," a geographic region particularly susceptible to disasters. The participants in the meeting shared their work within this context of ongoing threats and vulnerabilities. They shared practices and discussed future activities within the theme of resilience as a broad concept representing community capacity to be resilient to a wide range of crises and disasters. The group presented strategies to oppose evictions, carry out savings and credit and build resilience to disasters such as typhoons, heavy snows and flash floods. Together, they decided to continue networking as they carry out local activities and exchanges between countries to develop their resilience work.

Participants represented grassroots organizations and supporting NGOs from Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand.

Grassroots Women's Leadership

Women reflected on the pride and passion they feel about their community work and the challenge for women to balance domestic work with community work and the changes in their relationships with husbands as a result of their empowerment as women. They expressed pride in the accomplishments of raising families and in the accomplishments of building grassroots organizations that strengthen community development. They noted achievements such as becoming autonomous from support NGOs, stopping evictions and acquiring secure tenure and engaging with government on a range of issues, such as achieving legislation on violence against women. The group also identified ongoing challenges, most notably the needs to gain support from local and national governments and to develop young leaders to sustain their grassroots organizations.They used the Leadership Support Process to reflect on their own lives as women leaders and to discuss what it means for women to support each other in their leadership.

Planning for Community Resilience
Under the topic of community resilience, groups came up with plans for deepening their work, next steps on resilience and connecting within the region. They analyzed how disasters are affecting them, and how they might begin or strengthen their mitigation and resilience measures. Groups decided to give more priority to waste segregation and tree planting in Mindanao, Philippines in order to mitigate the effects of flash floods in their communities. From Indonesia, the grassroots leaders emphasized the importance that community mapping has held in their word. They will continue to do mappings of their communities with their community members, collecting data on demographics, vulnerabilities and resources. In Indonesia, they have used mapping as a way to organize communities against evictions and to be aware and prepared for dealing with other disasters. Finally, the mapping tool serves to demonstrate the knowledge and vulnerabilities of the community to local authorities, supporting community advocacy for appropriate mitigation measures to be taken in their communities.

The Thai leaders agreed that the eviction threats faced in their communities are like a kind disaster or crisis, and that the work they do in their organization is building resilience to these threats. They affirmed that the foundation for community resilience work is to have communities that are organized with strong women's leadership, then they can be ready to collectively respond. They are currently working to expand the women's group within their mixed organization. They shared their ongoing work of stopping evictions, struggling for secure land tenure and participating in the development of a welfare system for the urban poor. The meeting energized them to plan to have more disaster response preparedness in the communities where they are organized.

All of the groups expressed the need for increased networking with grassroots women's organizations in other countries in order to discuss the issues, share practices and work on resilience building together. Preliminary plans were made for possible peer exchanges between Korea and Thailand, and between the Philippines and India. All groups made commitments to next steps that they would carry out in their country as a follow up to this meeting. The next steps are part of a process toward consolidating the network of groups.

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HC Update, June 26, 2009

Center Staging Grassroots Women's Contributions to Disaster Risk Reduction

GROOTS and Huairou Commission Make High Level Impact
at UNISDR's Global Platform on DRR in Geneva June 16-19 2009

"I ask you all to take action in your particular capacities to make disaster risk reduction gender sensitive, and ensure that women become active participants in disaster risk reduction rather than being stereotyped as passive victims. The acceleration of community resilience and livelihood protection: mature methodologies and extensive civil society capacities are available, but these need more systematic support and stronger government-civil society partnerships."

-Mr. John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Emergency Relief Coordinator, and Chair of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

The opening statement of John Holmes at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva (June 16- 19) speaks to the centrality of women's community based organizations as leaders and innovators of resilience strategies and practices. He stressed the Platform is an opportunity to set up structures for citizen participation & partnerships with government authorities. Echoing these remarks, the 13 person, 10 country delegations of GROOTS International and the Huairou Commission, supported by UNDP Gender Team, pressed a pro poor grassroots women's agenda to implement the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) by ensuring that local communities disaster risk and vulnerability reduction strategies are recognized and integrated into core decision making processes. Both the Huairou Commission and GROOTS will be developing three year plans to further the gains we have achieved in Geneva.

The Platform was a strategic entry point for grassroots women's voices to be heard- and recognized- namely through:

• Opening Statements: Prema Gopalan from SSP (India) and Haydee Rodriguez from Cooperative Las Brumas (Nicaragua) spoke on behalf of Huairou Commission and GROOTS International, respectively. http://www.preventionweb.net/globalplatform/2009/programme/statements/(full statements)

•   The Human Dimension of Climate Change Adaption - The importance of local
     and institutional issues: Maite Rodriguez from Fundacion Guatemala      (Guatemala) was a panelist
•   NGO Steering Committee: Suranjana Gupta (GROOTS) is one of the steering
    committee members
•   Hyogo Hard Talk: Maite Rodriguez was a panelist, Carmen Griffiths from CRDC     (Jamaica) and Suranjana Gupta were embedded speakers
•   Plenary High Level Panel 3: Organized: Enabling Community Resilience     through Preventative Action: Ana Lucy Bengochea from El Comite (Honduras)     was the keynote speaker and Sandy Schilen (GROOTS) was the rapporteur http://www.preventionweb.net/globalplatform/2009/programme/videos/wednesday/
•   Launch of the Views from the Frontline Report: Suranjana Gupta was a panelist
•   Roundtable 5: Disaster Risk Reduction - Creating Synergies at the     Grassroots:Carmen Griffiths was a panelist, and Angel Marcos from     CEPREDENC was a panelist and Suranjana Gupta was the rapporteur
•   Informal Plenary: Margareta Wahlström Assistant Secretary General for Disaster     Risk Reduction chaired the Informal Plenary each day, and facilitated the     sessions to be an engaging and provocative dialogue each day for input into     ISDR. Our delegations participated daily, and the final summary report is     reflective of our input.

Closing Plenary: Haydee Rodriguez was a key note speaker at the closing plenary of the forum.
Key themes emerging from the Platform:

1.   Disaster and disaster risk are opportunities to empower affected communities       & a chance to set up structures for citizen participation & partnerships with       government authorities
2.   Poor marginalized communities are forced to struggle against their exclusion       when disasters strike (indigenous, pastoralist, women and geographically       isolated groups especially) and take action to be seen as leaders in DRR and       disaster response--not victims or passive,dependent beneficiaries of state       driven actions and programs.
3.   Wealth of evidence from around the world that grassroots women in poor       communities organize & lead across relief, recovery and risk reduction       (managing resources, adapting to climate change, mobilizing community       actions). The challenge is how to facilitate, formalize & scale up their       involvement & turn their "A-Z practical knowledge in disaster management" into       formal roles & responsibilities
4.   Traditional knowledge of at risk communities is key to effective early warning       and long term resilience building programs
5. Protecting & promoting sustainable livelihoods is central to facilitating       resilience and reducing vulnerability in poor disaster prone communities but it       is a sorely neglected element of DRR and disaster response. Investment in       Capacity Building Needs to Focus on Community Based Actions

Investment in Capacity Building Needs to Focus on Community Based Actions
'Women's Views from the Frontline,' was launched at the Platform; this action research was undertaken by the Huairou Commission as part of the global assessment on the Hyogo Framework of Action to ensure that grassroots women's voices informed the outcomes of the larger study, but also to create an entry point for grassroots women's organizations to engage local government on the local implementation of the HFA. Suranjana spoke to the need to reframe the DRR planning and programming agenda to be inclusive by engaging grassroots women's organizations who represent citizens' platforms, knowledge and action networks, and whose practices are linked to reducing vulnerability in the context of poverty reduction and DRR and need to be transferred and scaled up. Partnering with local governments to promote a collaborative approach to pro poor DRR is one way to create inclusive linkages in policy making.

As a follow up action to the First Global Platform on DRR in 2007, The Community Disaster Resilience Fund is an initiative of GROOTS International, ProVention Consortium and the Huairou Commission, endorsed by the National Disaster Management Authority of India and CEPREDENAC in Central America, and launched in 7 states in India, Guatemala and Honduras. It is a mechanism that channels funds directly to community based organizations and is a demonstration of how community based women's groups & poor people's organizations can fast track local HFA implementation in partnership with local governments & disaster management authorities. More information can be found here.

The final summary report on ISDR by IISD which mentions our delegates and our input can be found at: http://www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/sd/ymbvol141num2e.pdf

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Grassroots Survey on Global Disaster Policy

LOCALIZING HYOGO FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION: SOME EARLY LESSONS FROM THE GRASSROOTS

HYOGO FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION
Hyogo Framework for Action was a historic cooperative agreement, signed on by representatives of 168 countries in Kobe, Japan in 2005, with the objective of achieving "Substantial reduction of disaster losses, in lives and in the social, economic and environmental assets of communities and countries"- by the year 2015. The five priorities of action indentified by HFA were as follows:

1. Ensure that disaster risk reduction is a national and a local priority with a strong institutional basis for implementation
2. Identify, assess and monitor disaster risks and enhance early warning
3. Use knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels
4. Reduce the underlying risk factors
5. Strengthen disaster preparedness for effective response at all levels

WHY DOES LOCAL MATTER?
Living in vulnerable areas, being the possible victims and first responders to any kind of disasters, local communities have the highest stake in the overall task of reducing their risks. Within local communities, women, in such scenario, are further marginalized and deprived of any kind of recognition for the multiple roles they play in the overall communal resilience. The current programming around HFA is led by the central administrations. In such a scenario, ensuring local communities and women's involvement is essential to:

• integrating traditional and indigenous knowledge and practices into all DRR initiative
• identifying and promoting existing good practices in the community
• maximizing opportunities for empowering the traditionally marginalized like women, children, disabled, PLWHA etc.
• creating accountability and transparency mechanism for implementation programs
• creating accurate account of vulnerabilities faced by different section of the community due tradition, practice, location etc.
EVALUATING IMPACT
A grassroots inquiry into the status of HFA implementation was designed as a parallel evaluation to support and boost the grassroots and women's representation in the 'Views from the Frontline' survey designed by the Global Network for Disaster Reduction, Geneva. The process was envisioned as an action tool, more than a mere evaluation, participants are using it as a tool for promoting civic engagement around DRR at the local and national level.

The process involves:
• Focused Group Discussions on HFA and survey implementation covering over 1100 women and community representatives in few of the most at-risk communities in 16 countries across, Asia, Latin America and Africa
• Approximately 100 local and senior level government officials and over 40 local civil society organizations interviewed
• Some of the most vulnerable communities in Latin America, Asia and Africa represented

EARLY RECOMMENDATIONS
Some early recommendations emerging from the results obtained so far from countries like Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, India and Bangladesh is listed below:

1. In national DRR plans, provide local communities and organized women groups with resources and decision making powers

2. Recognize the role of empowered women's organisations and their practices in DRR decision making at the local level

3. In national DRR policies, adequately address underlying risk factors like food security, land use planning, climate change adaptation etc.

4. Inform and educate local and senior government officials on HFA and importance of partnering with local communities - (Peru)

5. Eliminate assumptions like illiterate communities are not capable of being a part of DRR planning - (Bangladesh)

6. Provide adequate support for indigenous communities in the form of education material in local languages, more resources and recognition of their traditional practices- (Bolivia)

The evaluation process is expected to be completed by end of March, 2009. The final report of the survey, complete with qualitative and quantitative analysis, is to be released conjunction with the second Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction meeting, to be held in Geneva from 15th to 19th June, 2009.

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“Grassroots Women at the Heart of Harmonious Cities”

Huairou Commission at the World Urban Forum IV

The World Urban Forum IV, under the theme Harmonious Cities, convened from 3-6 November in Nanjing, China. The Huairou Commission with its delegation of over 25 women from around the world highlighted the fact that grassroots women are at the heart of harmonious cities and sustainable urbanization!

Huairou Commission members featured in a dozen events, from Roundtables to Dialogues to Networking events. Its primary Networking Event, held on 5 November, highlighted grassroots women leaders and organizers in a panel discussion. Huairou Commission members from the organization LUMANTI in Nepal, DAMPA, in the Philippines, CEPROMUR of Peru and GROOTS Kenya of Kenya, shared a variety of strategies and innovations arising from grassroots women, focused on improving urban settlements.

Huairou Commission member Lorna Chavez, President of Legazpi Slumdwellers Federation/Chair of Bicol Urban Poor Coordinating Committee in the Philippines, spoke eloquently at the Women's Roundtable, sharing the importance of women in sustainable urbanization. She focused on disaster risk reduction, sharing the outcomes of the Huairou Commission Grassroots Women's Asian Academy held in Cebu City, the Philippines, the week prior to WUF.

The Cebu City Academy held prior to the WUF was focused on building disaster resilient communities, and its outcomes were featured prominently throughout the World Urban Forum's deliberations, in particular during a Networking Event hosted by GROOTS International, Huairou Commission's anchoring member. During its Networking Event, GROOTS shared outcomes of the Cebu Academy as well as past Grassroots Academies, showing the importance of this strategy in furthering and disseminating grassroots women's knowledge and practices.

Huairou Commission featured prominently in its role as a key partner to UNHABITAT's initiative, the Global Land Tool Network. The GLTN is an innovative partnership venture of the UNHABITAT, focused on the development of large scale land tools that are gender sensitive and pro poor. The Huairou Commission, together with the GLTN, organized two side events, on the issue of scaling up land tools, and how this can be done from a grassroots woman's perspective, as well as developing further the gender criteria and determining pilot projects to test them. Both events were very successful and provided much substance to the further development of gender sensitive land tools. Huairou Commission also shared their work as a part of the GLTN Roundtable, where strategic intervention on the gender mechanism and the grassroots mechanism were shared.

Innovative solutions to make cities safer for women were shared during Women in Cities International (member network of the Huairou Commission) event on gender, local governance and violence prevention. Further security issues were presented by Tessie Fernandez of Lihok Philippina (Huairou Commission member) and others during a UNHABITAT Seminar Series on Urban Innovations on urban safety and the poor in Asia.

Marilu Sanchez of Estrategia, a large scale grassroots organization based in Lima, Peru and long time Huairou Commission member, shared anti- eviction strategies during a training event jointly organized with Institute of Housing Studies (Netherlands) and others. Ms Sanchez spoke eloquently on the importance of dialogue and interaction with affected communities- a strategy which featured prominently during the responses to the trainers challenge to develop guidelines against evictions. Another training event focused on the Huairou Commission member developed and promoted strategy of Local to Local Dialogues. Local to Local Dialogues are enabling strategies which create space for local communities to join with local authorities in together developing solutions to urban problems. The strategy has been successful in a number of countries, including Philippines, Kenya and Uganda. Trainers at the event were all grassroots organization leaders. Though held on the last day of the World Urban Forum, attendance was high and feedback positive over this innovative, grassroots women developed strategy for use in creating sustainable and harmonious cities!

The World Urban Forum IV, despite challenges of its own, proved a successful forum for sharing and learning innovative and unique strategies towards sustainable urbanization. Grassroots women and organizational leaders were able to raise their voices and highlight their innovations, to underscore that grassroots women should not be treated as beneficiaries but as key actors in urban development. Huairou Commission's participation at the World Urban Forum once again underscored that at the heart of harmonious urbanization are poor community based women, and their contributions must not only be acknowledged, they must be made a part of all decision making and development of urban policies and projects.

Huairou Commission is currently drafting a full report of all relevant activities at the World Urban Forum IV, which will be soon posted on the Huairou Web - keep an eye out for these important further details!

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2008 Dubai Award winners announced!

Huairou Commission member UPLINK in Indonesia to be one of twelve recipients for post-tsunami work in Aceh

An independent jury of five international experts met in Dubai on 12 - 13 November, 2008 to select the 12 winners for the seventh cycle of the Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment (DIABP).

The selection was made from a list of 48 initiatives, which had been short-listed out of nearly 500 submissions by the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) which met in Dubai last month. The winners were all deemed to have made outstanding contributions to improving the quality of life in cities and communities.
The International Jury comprised of Ms. Banshree Banerjee, Urban Management Consultant from India, Dr. Beacon Mbiba, Rural and Urban Planner from Zimbabwe, Dr. Paolo Saldiva, Professor at the University of Sao Paolo, Brazil, Eng. Abdulla Mohammed Rafia, Assistant Director-General of Dubai Municipality for Environment and Public Health Services, and Dr. Roberto Ottolenghi, Urban Development and Management Consultant from Italy.

The 12 Winners were announced during a Press Conference held on 13th November, 2008 and attended by H.E. Eng. Hussain Nasser Lootah, Chairman of the DIABP Board of Trustees and the Acting Director General of Dubai Municipality, Mrs. Wandia Seaforth, UN-HABITAT Best Practices Programme and Mrs. Banshree Banerjee, Chair of the International Jury.

During the Press Conference, Eng. Lootah emphasized that the Jury based their decisions on criteria of tangible impact, partnership, and sustainability and also took into account considerations of leadership and community empowerment, gender equality and social inclusion, and innovations that can be replicated.

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The First Asian Grassroots Women's Academy on Resilience in Cebu City Begins

Cebu City, Philippines

Oct 28, 2008

On the night of October 22nd, the Mayor of Cebu City inaugurated the Grassroots Women's Academy, "Empowering Grassroots Women to Build Resilient Communities at a special dinner hosted by the City for participants of the Asian Grassroots Academy on "Empowering Grassroots Women to Build Resilient Communities."

The Academy brings together grassroots leaders supported by NGO representatives from Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, S.Korea, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and India; and includes grassroots leaders from Uganda, Kenya, Nicaragua, Honduras, Netherlands, US and Canada. In addition, partner organizations such as the Beautiful Foundation, Korea, CAPWIP, UNDP and UNHabitat are also represented at the Academy.

At the plenary on the morning of the 23rd of October, grassroots women shared their experiences of disaster relief, recovery and reconstruction in their communities. It was clear from their presentations that the disaster response had created opportunities for grassroots women to organize themselves to participate in relief recovery and reconstruction.

Grassroots leaders from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India shared their efforts to design and construct houses, restore livelihoods and food security, improve health and sanitation and counter the dependency syndrome after the tsunami. Participants from the Philippines presented their efforts to organize themselves to negotiate with local, provincial and national governments to access resources, services and secure housing for their communities. The common thread running through all these experiences was the better development outcomes for grassroots women as a result of their organized interventions after disasters. Families had safe houses, livelihoods were restored, health and sanitation improved in the community and women's participation in public decision making significantly increased.

In the coming days, the agenda for the Academy includes a day on analyzing disaster mapping as a community tool for organizing, learning and advocacy; a grassroots women's framework on resilience; the creation of a grassroots women's network that can lead the local implementation of the Hyogo Framework of Action; and a Dialogue with local and global partner institutions.
This Academy is also the preparatory event that will enable grassroots women to identify priorities for advocacy at the World Urban Forum in Nanjing in November 2008.

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GROOTS Peer Exchange on Resilience in Honduras

Oct 14, 2008

Community leaders from Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras explored a vulnerable coastal community in Honduras with community members last week to practice the process of hazard mapping. They were led by an experienced mapping team of grassroots leaders from Jamaica. This exercise formed part of a four-day, peer exchange, sponsored by GROOTS International's Community Resilience Program and hosted by the Comite de Emergencia Garifuna.

Grassroots GROOTS leaders in Latin American heard about community mapping from their peers in Jamaica at previous regional meetings of the GROOTS Community Resilience Program. They asked the Jamaicans to provide an in-depth training in an exchange. By mapping, they wanted to better understand how to reduce the impact of disaster in their communities.

"Mapping is a tool to help communities express their needs," explained Carmen Griffiths of Jamaica. "When people don't know how to communicate their own needs, outsiders come in and tell them what they need and what they should do."

During their reflections, participants highlighted the role of mapping in creating information that was generated by the community members; for the use of the community. Ruth Serech an indigenous leader of a national rural women's organization from Guatemala commented, "I thought that mapping was a very technical process. But I see now that when communities do their own mapping, it is different." Instead of paying outsiders to map communities, women could map their own communities in order to understand their weaknesses and identify practices to address these.

Carmen Griffiths drew attention to some points that everyone should keep in mind while mapping communities:

• Let communities teach us about their realities
• Visit the community in advance to prepare them for mapping
• Trust building is a central to the process. Trust is an important part of getting the community involved and mobilized as well as getting accurate information
• Mapping one's own community is different from mapping others' communities
• Start by mapping your own community and invite neighboring community leaders to watch and learn so that they go back and map their own communities.

Participants also had their own insights and lessons from the mapping exercise included:

• Look for community solutions to address problems - buildings, organizations, information
• Use language and words that are easy for everyone to understand
• Include different points of views from inside and outside the community such as children, youth, elderly and local authorities.

Inspired by the organization and the leadership she had seen in the Comite's work, the President of the Fishers' Federation in Guatemala said the exchange had taught her that "it is not enough to know how to draw a map of the community, we have to understand the community's history, their context, and their struggles and how they survived the hurricane.

As governments lay out their plans for implementing the Hyogo Framework of Action they need to move away from the idea that disaster-prone communities are passive beneficiaries of programs and resources. Rather, governments must invest in collaborations with organized groups of grassroots women and their communities to strengthen and scale up their rich repertoire of resilience practices.

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"Learning from the Experiences of Africa: Grassroots women share their knowledge and strategies for responding to HIV and AIDS"

From July 28-31, an historic peer exchange was held in Livingston on the coast of Guatemala, bringing together 26 women from Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Kenya and Uganda. The women came from diverse communities and cultures ranging from rural Mayan communities in Guatemala and Belize, Garifuna from isolated coastal communities in Honduras and from townships of Guatemala, and rural and urban Kenya and Uganda. The women and youth (girls and boys) who participated were leaders of self-help groups, networks and support groups of women living positively, home-based caregivers, nurses, leaders of women's associations, students and promoters of AIDS awareness.

They traveled to come together, in some cases more than 30 hours, to build a common global platform around their experiences and grassroots-led responses to HIV and AIDS. The objectives participants laid out on the first day of the exchange included:

-To learn from the experiences of other countries, particularly Kenya and Uganda, as they have coped with HIV and AIDS;

-To identify concrete practices to learn from one another;

-To deepen relationships among groups, some of which have known each other for many years and some of which were new acquaintances;

-To create a strong message from grassroots women in Africa and Central America and bring that message forward into the International AIDS Conference and beyond.

Participating Organizations included:
-Nuevo Amanacer, Honduras
-El Comite Emergencia de Garifuna de Honduras
-Honduras Ministry of Health in Trujillo and Santa Fe
-Livingston Health Clinic
-Neighborhood women's groups of Livingston
-Association of Fisherwomen, Livingston
-Julian Cho Society, Belize
-Mayan Youth Coalition, Belize
-GROOTS Kenya
-UCOBAC
-Associacion Ak'Tenamit

This Peer Exchange was made possible by generous financial support from the Open Society Institute.  For more information on this exchange, and the delegations' participation in the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, please contact Shannon Hayes at Shannon.hayes@huairou.org

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Report Back from International Seminar on Women's Safety

Expounding upon the work of the First International Seminar on Women's Safety, which took place in Montreal in 2002 and sought to mobilize participants to actively address issues affecting violence toward women and security, the Huairou Commission attended a 2008 International Seminar, which took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina and operated within the framework of Red Mujer y Habitat America Latina's (LAC HIC) Regional Program on Cities without Violence Against Women, Safe Cities for All.

Hosted by Women and Habitat Latin America, with support from the UNIFEM Regional Office, the three-day meeting was designed to discuss strategies for ensuring women's safety in cities. Jan Peterson, founder and chair of the secretariat of the Huairou Commission, attended the meeting, along with Marisa Canuto from Women in Cities International (WICI) and Maite Rodriguez of the Women in Peace Network and Women and Habitat Latin America. There was also strong participation from the UN-Habitat Safer Cities Program and a number of academic and professional institutions.

The meeting met its objectives and provided ample space for networking opportunities, which were largely appreciated by those in attendance. Networking opportunities enabled attendees to discuss different aspects of their local organizing, including the tactics and strategies women have been employing in their communities and the potential for implementing successful practices on a larger level in cooperation with other networks. The ability and space to learn from the practices of other networks proved to be one of the most important and enjoyable aspects of the seminar. Through collaboration with other organizations, the Huairou Commission was able to strengthen its work and form new partnerships that will certainly herald positive results in the future. The Huairou Commission would like to congratulate Women in Habitat Latin America, and specifically, Liliana Rainero of CISCSA and Anna Falu from UNIFEM for their success in coordinating an impressive and beneficial seminar. A follow-up on the outcomes of the meeting will be made available shortly.

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Kingston & St. Andrew Action Forum Share Methods of Resilience at the Huairou Commission
July 18, 2008 | New York City

"It's hard for us to fight anything in Jamaica because of the corruption", mused Arlene Bailey, as she sat in a meeting with GROOTS and Huairou Commission representatives on Thursday. Bailey was here as part of a delegation from the NGO Kingston & St. Andrew Action Forum, who secured funding to participate from (IANSA), the United Nations Development Project (UNDP) and the International Network on Small Arms to attend 'The Bienneal Conference of States on Small Arms Light Weapons,' at the United Nations. Also attending the meeting as part of the delegation were Godfrey Lothian, Chairman, and Andrew Geohagen, the project coordinator. Both stressed that their work responds to real community concerns. As Lothian explained, "Our work was born out of the needs of communities."

Staffed primarily by volunteers, the Kingston & St. Andrew Action Forum grew out of the UNDP supported Civic Dialogue Initiative in 2004, which promotes dialogue to assist in building community linkages. In the five years since the Action Forum's inception, its volunteers and staff have focused on addressing the most pressing concerns to securing livelihoods and safety in Jamaica. The Action Forum evolved as a response to the crime and violence that has gripped Jamaican communities in recent years, prompting organizers to address the roots of crime as well, particularly high levels of unemployment and pervasive corruption. Since January 2008, it has been reported that eight hundred people have been murdered, a statistic that is in keeping with the annual projection of one thousand murders. For an island population of 2.6 million, these statistics reveal a profound level of violence.

Compounding the difficulties is the fact that political parties are not immune to the problems of civil society. Lothian stated that corruption was a "terribly sad" reality for Jamaicans. In fact, as Bailey reflected, one of the fundamental goals of the Action Forum is to influence policymakers to "coexist with other political parties" adding, "we need to develop our communities."
Apart from fighting corruption, Bailey also spearheads the Fletcher's Land Parenting Association. As violence against children in communities continues to rise, Bailey initiated a response that is intended to empower communities by uplifting youth and reprioritizing values on education, women's empowerment and safety by creating programmatic responses and developing other methodologies.

Since the Action Forum considers women's safety and security to be a fundamental component of their agenda, the work of the Parenting Association and the Action Forum intersect and compliment each other. It has enabled their work to spread across the island, with bases in three parishes and fifty-three communities. As the word of their work gets out, interest in the Action Forum continues to grow.

There have been numerous partnership initiatives with other organizations on the ground, including GROOTS member Sistren Theater Collective. The local UNDP also engaged in dialogue with the Action Forum, focusing on capacity-building and forming the agenda that is currently being presented at the United Nations.

The 'Get the Guns off the Street' campaign was developed in response to the ubiquity of guns in Jamaican communities. Rising levels of violence have prompted community leaders to develop concrete methods to stop the flow of arms into and within Jamaica. Exacerbating the scale of arms acquisition is the prevalence of the Jamaican 'gun for drugs' trade and the Action Forum is focused on the objective of limiting the scope and power of the internal arms trade. As community actors, the organization is doing its part to raise the profile of community responses to violence, yet it is also true that corruption impedes the ability of any community to effectively police its borders. For this, international cooperation is necessary.

The delegation from Kingston and St. Andrew Action Forum came to the small arms conference with the specific objective of networking. While a response to the arms trade in Jamaica may have been suggested, the Action Forum is a relatively new organization that has only recently achieved NGO status. The conference is a tremendous step forward, familiarizing the UN with the work of the Action Forum while also enabling the organizers to bring back new contacts. As Lothian summed it, "Our goal in this conference is to network and gain experience from other actors in the world."

For more information on the Kingston & St. Andrew Action Forum, contact ksaactionforum@yahoo.com