Over the past decade the need to address the gendered consequences of humanitarian crises has driven a growing body of policy commitments. In 2013, the Call to Action on Protection from Gender-Based Violence in Emergencies launched by a group of like-minded donors focused attention on the high levels of gender-based violence (GBV) in crises and the importance of preventing, rather than just mitigating, it.^[1] In 2016, the World Humanitarian Summit agreed a series of commitments to action on universal access to sexual and reproductive health; GBV prevention; gender-responsive humanitarian programming; and compliance with humanitarian policies and frameworks.^[2] While no explicit commitments to funding were made in the Grand Bargain agreed at the World Humanitarian Summit, a Friends of Gender Group comprised of Grand Bargain signatories has sought to mainstream gender equality and women’s empowerment across Grand Bargain workstreams.^[3]

Wider global efforts to galvanise action on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls have gathered momentum since the World Humanitarian Summit, including by G7 members in 2018 in the Whistler Declaration on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls in Humanitarian Action.^[4] There have been subsequent pledges to make gender equality a global priority and to mobilise international resources to prevent GBV and better meet survivors’ needs within the Global Compact on Refugees and within the 2019 UN Security Council resolution 2467 on ending sexual violence in conflict. In 2019, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and partners convened the Oslo Conference, its first ever thematic humanitarian conference on GBV. At the conference 21 donors pledged over US$363 million to GBV prevention and response.^[5]

More recently, notable substantive action and further pledges have been made with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. These have included, for the first time, UN OCHA providing rapid-response funding for GBV prevention, channelling US$25 million to 11 countries through the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) in 2020. Notably, at least 30% of this assistance had to be channelled through women-led national and local NGOs.^[6] Most recently, in 2021, commitments totalling US$40 billion were made to resource women’s and girls’ rights through the Generational Equality Forum, which set a five-year course towards greater gender equality.^[7] The financial pledges were made towards six Action Coalitions and the Women, Peace & Security and Humanitarian Action Compact was agreed.^[8]

This body of policy commitments and financial pledges indicate both a growing awareness of the need for more concerted action to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls within humanitarian response and a strong rhetorical commitment to act and provide more financial resources. These commitments have of course been made in the context of an evolving context of humanitarian crises, not least the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has driven growing need, impacted how assistance can be provided and influenced the funding choices made by humanitarian actors.

The UN OCHA Global Humanitarian Overview published in December 2021 estimated that a total of 274 million people will require humanitarian assistance and protection across 63 countries in 2022, an extra 39 million compared with the previous year.^[9] The climate crisis, food insecurity and armed conflicts are, among other factors, behind this figure, the highest in decades. In protracted crisis contexts, Covid-19 has acted as an extra layer of disruption, deepening and expanding vulnerability and compounding pre-existing needs among those experiencing humanitarian crisis.

While there has been an increased policy focus on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in humanitarian settings, and in particular on GBV, as humanitarian crises have worsened, gender-related needs have continued to grow. Covid-19 has compounded this situation. There have been rising incidences of GBV globally (not just within humanitarian settings) during the Covid-19 crisis – the so-called ‘shadow pandemic’ of GBV – while progress towards gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls has been reversed. The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women and girls have been widely explored by literature and surveys published in 2020 and 2021 (Appendix 2: Bibliography) however, only a handful of publications have looked at how these factors manifest in a humanitarian context.^[10]

Where research has focused on humanitarian settings, a number of impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are evident. Perhaps most widely reported are the rising protection risks and a worldwide spike in incidences of GBV. In this regard, women and girls living in humanitarian contexts have been particularly affected. An International Rescue Committee (IRC) survey of women from refugee, displaced and post-conflict settings across Africa found a significant increase in GBV: 73% of respondents observed a rise in intimate partner violence; 51% cited more cases of sexual violence in their communities; and 31% reported incidents of harassment and sexual violence when travelling to water points.^[11] This IRC study also highlighted limited support for those experiencing GBV with resources channelled to address the health emergency.

Beyond GBV, loss of income and livelihoods and increased food insecurity have especially increased for populations living in humanitarian contexts since the pandemic, with women disproportionately affected. According to UN Women, 435 million women and girls would have experienced extreme poverty in 2021 – that is living on less than US$1.90 a day – an increase of 47 million on the previous year. The same source estimates that 58% of women worldwide who work in the informal sector lost on average 60% of their income in 2020, making women the main victims of the loss of livelihoods due to the socioeconomic fallout.^[12] The 2021 UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report The State of Food Insecurity in The World alerted that the pre-existing gender gap in food insecurity became 10% larger in 2020.^[13]

Other research highlights the impact on children and adolescents of school closures and loss of household income to support education, which are driving growing illiteracy rates in crisis settings.^[14] Girls have been more severely affected, with gender norms in crisis contexts meaning male students are more likely to continue in their education.^[15] With lower levels of school enrolment, girls became more at risk of forced marriages^[16] and rising incidences of teenage pregnancy.^[17] Finally, it is evident that the pandemic has also reduced access to healthcare^[18] while the loss of income noted above has combined with increasing costs of and reduced access to hygiene and sanitary materials.

This report seeks to explore how the increased commitments to action on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, alongside the growing levels of gender-related needs in humanitarian settings, have impacted the humanitarian funding provided. The report examines how much funding has been committed for gender-related humanitarian programming, how this funding has been channelled, and how much is therefore reaching local and national actors. It also explores which are the largest donors of gender-related funding.

This report seeks to provide analysis on international funding for gender-relevant humanitarian programming by developing a new methodology to track this funding at a global level. The analysis draws on funding data from 2018 to 2021 reported to the UN FTS.^[29] It includes GBV funding reported to the Global Protection Cluster,^[30] complemented by a keyword search methodology applied on FTS funding flows. The keyword search scans financial flow descriptions for key words or phrases in three languages (English, French and Spanish) to identify those that are ‘gender relevant’.^[31]

The study takes a broad concept of gender, focusing on equality and empowerment, and refers to women and girls as well as other gendered impacts of crises, including issues of sexual orientation and gender identity (see Box 1.1 for definitions).

In line with the IASC definitions^[32], gender-relevant funding is split into that which is:

• Gender-specific funding, which has a key focus on addressing gender-related needs and advancing gender equality.
• Gender-mainstreamed funding, which seeks to implement programming in a way that is considerate of gender-related needs.

All GBV funding under the Global Protection Cluster is classified as ‘gender specific’ as sectorally it has a key focus on addressing gender-related needs. For flows outside of this cluster, the analysis defines two classifications of keywords: major and minor. Major keywords attempt to pick up flows with a ‘gender-specific’ focus. For example, ‘women empowerment’ and ‘sexual and reproductive health’ are defined as major keywords (or phrases) and thus a flow with one of these in the description would be marked as gender specific. In contrast, minor keywords attempt to pick up ‘gender-mainstreamed’ flows that consider differing gender needs in programming, but where gender-related needs are not the key focus. For example, if a flow description contains ‘women and girls’ as standalone (e.g. does not contain ‘men and boys’) it would be classed as a gender-mainstreamed flow.^[33] Following classification of flows with major or minor keywords, the largest identified flows on the FTS (over $10 million) are checked manually to ensure they are correctly categorised as ‘specific’ or ‘mainstreamed’.

Funding identified through the keyword search methodology is split into ‘specific’ and ‘mainstreamed’ according to the logic outlined above for major and minor keywords. GBV funding under the Global Protection Cluster is included as gender-specific funding, labelled in the analyses and charts as ‘GBV funding’.

In addition to this quantitative analysis, interviews with 23 experts in gender programming and financing and a literature review of over 100 publications were conducted (Appendix 2: Bibliography).

The body of this report presents the findings from this analysis of gender-relevant international humanitarian assistance over the period 2018 to 2021. It explores the total volumes of gender-relevant assistance provided. For funding specifically targeting GBV and gender needs, it examines which donors are contributing the most funding, the locations where this funding is being targeted, and which actors are the primary recipients, including the extent to which local and national actors can access this type of resources. Finally, it concludes by examining how gender-relevant humanitarian funding is currently being reported and tracked, and the improvements that could be made to ensure greater transparency.