Project Overview and Management
GenCap’s mission is to facilitate and strengthen the capacity and leadership of humanitarian actors to undertake and promote gender equality humanitarian programming. Specifically GenCap aims to ensure that the distinct needs of women, girls, boys and men of all ages are analysed and taken into account in humanitarian action at global, regional and country levels. In 2016, this was achieved through three core activities, namely: i) deployment of senior gender experts; ii) gender training delivery and capacity building; and, iii) building ownership and awareness in Gender Equality Programming (GEP). The Project objectives and activities were guided by the 2014-2016 GenCap strategy.
Project Governance / Management
The GenCap Project operates on a tri-partite governance and management structure:
- The GenCap Steering Committee (SC) provides leadership and strategic direction and oversight of the project. The SC also approves requests for deployment and roster membership, and includes the following organisations: Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
The GenCap Inter-Agency Standby Capacity Support Unit (SU) serves as the secretariat to the SC and is responsible for managing the project and donor relations. The SU is hosted by OCHA and funded through OCHA’s budget.
NRC is responsible for roster management, which includes recruitment, employment, deployments and staff welfare. In addition, NRC is responsible for the capacity building of roster members in accordance with the grant agreement with OCHA, and the delivery of Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) training. Roster members are deployed under personnel support agreement between NRC and UN agencies (IOM, OCHA, OHCHR, UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNRWA, UN-Women, WFP and WHO).
Roster Membership
As of 31 December 2016, the GenCap roster included 30 advisers (26 women and 4 men). All members have fluent English; 14 speak French; 6 speak Spanish; and, 2 are Arabic speakers. Geographic representation includes advisers from Europe (9), North-America (6), Africa (7), Asia (3), Australia and Oceania (3), Latin America (1), and the Middle East (1). Efforts to ensure diversity, taking into consideration language proficiency, gender and geographical origin, continue to be a focus for recruitment processes.
Deployment requests
The process is coordinated under two annual calls for ‘deployment requests’, which are distributed by the Steering Committee members within their respective organisations. Organisations interested in hosting a GenCap develop the request, with the endorsement of the Resident / Humanitarian Coordinator (RC/HC). In 2016, deployments requests were made in July and November. Deployments are prioritised based upon urgency of need; presence of relevant humanitarian frameworks; and potential impact of the intervention, On-going deployments are reviewed regularly by the SC to establish any changes in context.
2016 GenCap Highlights
In 2016, GenCap deployed senior gender advisers to 21 field locations at country and regional level, including to L3-declared crises (Iraq and Yemen). GenCap advisors in Jordan (Syria crisis), Cameroon, Fiji, and Yemen supported Humanitarian Country Teams (HCTs) to implement gender sensitive humanitarian programming. Three senior gender advisers also supported global policy-development processes on gender mainstreaming in humanitarian action
Specific GenCap country level achievements include:
Jordan (Syria crisis): GenCap provided technical support to the UN and partners responding to the Syrian refugee crisis. Support included gender analysis, gender capacity strengthening, programme planning and monitoring. GenCap also supported the Sector Gender Focal Points Network to participate in the piloting of the new IASC Gender and Age Marker (GAM) tool, and to contribute to a review of the IASC Gender Handbook in Humanitarian Action.
Yemen: GenCap contributed to capacity-building of national gender trainers, experts, and gender focal points (in Arabic) through a ‘training of trainers’ workshop and intensive one-to-one and small group mentoring activities. The GenCap adviser also delivered training courses in project design and monitoring, with over 40 cluster partners and gender focal points. In addition, the staff of 13 international and national organizations were trained on and tested the IASC GAM.
Sudan: GenCap supported the HCT to incorporate a sustainable approach to gender equality programming, and contributed to the development of HCT Gender Commitments. GenCap helped establish an ad-interim inter-agency Gender Task Force co-chaired by OCHA and UN-Women. In addition, GenCap supported two gender-sensitive projects in south Kordofan funded by the Humanitarian Fund and developed context specific gender guidance across the Humanitarian Program Cycle (HPC). As a consequence, a suite of gender indicators was developed together with sector focal points.
Senegal: GenCap conducted an analysis on how gender was mainstreamed in the humanitarian response, identifying a number of gaps related to gender equality programming, gender analysis and a deficiency in Sex and Age Disaggregated Data (SADD). The findings were communicated to field offices in Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali and Niger, thus raising awareness on gender-sensitive programming.