UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality for women as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.  Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world.

The programme “Strengthening Gender-Responsive Disaster Management in ASEAN,” implemented by UN Women in close collaboration with the ASEAN Secretariat aims to ensure that key relevant ASEAN sectoral bodies are supported with evidence based policy research and relevant technical capacity to integrate gender and protection framework to mitigate and prevent sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). More specifically it aims to ensure that a protection (including SGBV and child protection), gender and inclusion lens is integrated in the design and implementation of the new ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) Work Programme 2021-2025.

Research from past disasters in Thailand have demonstrated the differential and disproportionate impact of disasters on women and girls, as well as the challenges that they face in gaining equitable access to relief and assistance.[1] In large scale events such as flooding in 2011, relief operations across provinces were male dominated, with women’s voices absent from policy making, and the assessment team did not find examples of gender-sensitive approaches employed in distributing aid.[2]

Thailand’s National Disaster Risk Management Plan (2015) highlights the importance of taking into account gender in damage and needs assessments to ensure response meets the needs of disaster affected people, however, limits the scope of meeting gendered needs to prioritization of women and children in evacuations. As part of the work to strengthen the evidence base for gender-responsive disaster risk reduction and preparedness, and to ensure evidence is available for policy-making at national and regional levels, the programme is seeking a consultant to develop a gender and disaster risk profile for Thailand. The gender and disaster risk profile developed should present evidence on gender dimensions of disaster risks (in particular exposure to hazards, vulnerability, and capacity), the root causes and structural constraints of gender inequalities and their impact on risk, and act as a reference tool for policy-making on disaster risk management as well as in designing responses that leave no one behind.

[1] APEC Gender Equality Focal Points Network (2011). “Women in Times of Disaster: The Integration of Gender Issues and Gender Perspectives in Disaster Management Thailand Study – The Case of the Indian Ocean Tsunami”.

[2] Ministry of Finance, Royal Thai Government and The World Bank (2012). Thailand Flooding 2554: Rapid Assessment for Resilient Recovery and Reconstruction Planning.