2014 Annual Narrative Report of IASC Gender Standby Capacity Project
The GenCap Project was established in 2007 as an inter-agency resource under the auspices of the IASC Sub-Working Group on Gender and Humanitarian Action (now the Gender Reference Group and Humanitarian Action) and in collaboration with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). The Project’s aim was to respond to the recognition that gender needed to be better integrated in humanitarian response, and was part of the IASC Humanitarian Reform. The Project deploys Senior Gender Advisors to strengthen the humanitarian system’s capacity in gender mainstreaming and gender equality programming.
This annual narrative report of the GenCap project provides an overview of the main project activities, outputs and impact in 2014 within the three main project focus areas: 1) the deployment of senior experts on mission; 2) gender training delivery and capacity building efforts; and 3) efforts to influence the system towards stronger ownership and awareness of Gender Equality Programming (GEP). 2014 marked the implementation of year one of the Project’s first three year strategy1 (endorsed in March 2015). The annual project strategy meeting (October 2015) was an opportunity to take stock of the strategy implementation in terms of giving stronger emphasis on GenCaps’ strategic advisory role to the HC/HCTs, sustainability of efforts, and the role of the GBV window within the larger project. The strategy was updated to reflect the SC decision to continue GBV deployments throughout 2016 and to make a stronger effort to streamline GenCap and GBV deployments and team building.
In 2014, the project has moved forward on the strategy implementation by giving increased focus to monitoring, preparing the ground for IASC Gender Marker adaptation and gradual handover to the cluster leads, with the main focus of deployments at country level and based on criteria set in strategy. Global level support targeted global clusters and HPC processes with coordinated SRP country support and country missions, and capacity building of Advisors to enable a more strategic engagement with HC/HCTs.
As the GenCap project was established within the framework of the IASC, the SU participated as an observer at most IASC Gender Reference Group (GRG) meetings to stay abreast with policy level debates and advocacy. The GenCap project also provided support to the 2014 review of the implementation of the IASC Gender Policy Statement2 and input to the GRG issued Gender Alerts.