Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women works for the elimination of the discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace, and security. In pursuit of this vision and guided by global norms and standards, the UN Women's Humanitarian Strategy aims to promote gender equality and women's empowerment in humanitarian efforts including in disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery. The Sahel region of Africa is blessed with abundant human, cultural and natural resources. Yet there are deep-rooted challenges environmental, political, and security—that affect its prosperity. Countries in the Sahel have been dealing with successive political and humanitarian crises for years. The situation has left the Sahelian countries increasingly vulnerable to disasters, with a weak ability of households to withstand repeated and increasingly frequent shocks. In this situation, due to the gendered dimensions of disaster risk, women and girls face greater vulnerability and exposure to disasters. Yet they remain poorly involved in conventional disaster risk reduction processes. As part of its Disaster Risk and Reduction work, the UN Women Regional Office for West and Central Africa, focus on prevention and resilience building by ensuring that new and existing disaster risks are mitigated by putting women at the center of disaster risk reduction. UN Women facilitates and promotes the integration of gender equality and women's empowerment through Coordination and Leadership; Capacity Development; Mainstreaming Gender into Data, Analysis, and Advocacy, and Targeted programming. UNWOMEN collaborates closely with UN system partners, national institutions, and civil society organizations. The project: "Strengthening capacities for disaster risk reduction and adaptation for Resilience in the Sahel Region: fostering risk-informed solutions for sustainable development - Sahel DRR/CCA Regional Project, 2019- 2021" is a multi-partners project implemented in the west Sahel countries namely: Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. It is a regional initiative with the aim to achieve that regional institutions and national governments have institutionalized and domesticated risk-informed development planning, programming, and investment for resilience building. As part of its Disaster Risk and Reduction work, the UN Women Regional Office for West and Central Africa UN Women will play a critical role within the Sahel DRR/CCA Regional Project. UN Women will contribute to bringing the understanding of gender dimensions of disasters and climate change in the Sahel Region, as well as proposing means of reducing the vulnerabilities of women and men to disasters through their participation and leadership. The focus will be under: - Output 1 in ensuring the collection and analysis of sex, age, and disability disaggregated data as part of strengthening national damage and loss accounting systems.?
- And Output 2, support ECOWAS in ensuring the mainstreaming of gender into national DRR Strategies and policies and ensure the participation of women in national and regional DRR Platforms under Output 2 and 5.
The expected outcome at the end of the project for UN Women is that gender is mainstreamed into national DRR Strategies and policies in the Sahel. Three key outputs will be achieved: - Increase capacities of DRR actors and women’s organizations on integrating gender into DRR.
- Collection of SADD and gender-sensitive DRR assessments.?
- Improvement of participation of women in DRR planning and dialogue.
UN Women will capitalize the project findings within the bigger frameworks of its other ongoing programs and initiatives in the Sahel such as the G-5 Sahel, the LCBC, and other resilient and peace-building initiatives.
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