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Placing Refugees at the Center of Decision Making

From Monday Developments

By Megan McKenna

When communities are displaced, women, young people, the elderly and minorities are often marginalized. They seldom get a chance to participate in decisions that directly affect their lives, which can put them at greater risk of harm.

The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children is working with the UN refugee agency to help ensure that refugee girls, boys, women and men of all ages and backgrounds have a chance to participate substantively in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the agency’s policies and operations. The “mainstreaming” of age, gender and diversity into the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) work will promote gender equality and the rights of refugees of all ages.

“One of the main goals of UNHCR’s age, gender and diversity mainstreaming is to strengthen the voices of refugees in UNHCR’s overall planning process, which will improve their protection, and UNHCR’s operations as a whole,” says Dale Buscher, director of the Women’s Commission protection and participation program.

UNHCR will discuss directly with refugee women, men, girls and boys the protection risks they face, the underlying causes and proposed solutions, as well as the capacities of the refugee community to address these issues and the resources available. The outcome of these discussions will form the basis of UNHCR’s strategy and response in a refugee crisis.

“Mainstreaming means that all UNHCR staff will have to take responsibility for promoting gender equality and the rights of refugee women and children,” Buscher says. It will also further bolster UNHCR’s Agenda for Protection—a series of actions to improve the rights of refugees and asylum seekers worldwide—by supporting a rights and community-based approach to working with refugees, Buscher says.

UNHCR launched a mainstreaming pilot project in fourteen countries in 2004 following three key evaluations covering women, children and the community services function. The evaluations found low participation by refugees in UNHCR programs, particularly among women and children, a lack of coordination among protection, program and community services staff, an absence of analysis with partners and an overall lack of accountability within the agency’s operating structure. An April 2005 UNHCR report on the pilot project recommended that mainstreaming continue in the eight countries evaluated and be rolled out widely across UNHCR.

The report found that some changes for the better had already occurred in the pilot countries, but called for wide-ranging strategies to overcome the many obstacles to consistent and effective mainstreaming.

“The age and gender mainstreaming pilot involves a massive organizational change exercise,” the report stated. The complexities of mainstreaming “are being addressed, not with case studies and theories, but directly with operational teams who are in many cases coming together for the first time to discuss concepts and practices without hierarchy.”

UNHCR will establish multifunctional teams together with its partners to promote understanding of and accountability for mainstreaming through coaching and training. The teams will comprise national and international staff and include protection, program, field and community services staff. A participatory assessment with refugees will be conducted in the fall of each year and the results will feed directly into UNHCR’s programming cycle. UNHCR staff will also receive training on how to analyze the different impacts protection risks have on refugees.

The Women’s Commission is providing technical input into UNHCR’s mainstreaming methodology, facilitation, implementation and evaluation. The Women’s Commission will also participate in trainings for UNHCR and NGO staff on conducting participatory assessments with displaced populations and author two desk studies analyzing other UN agencies’ approaches to gender mainstreaming. Additionally, the Women’s Commission is undertaking research and drafting resource materials for UNHCR and its partners to strengthen areas inadequately addressed in the mainstreaming process—the role and inclusion of men in promoting gender equality and the explicit targeting in the assessment phase of at-risk women and girls, which include female heads of household, single women without support structures, unaccompanied minors and rape and torture survivors.

“UNHCR’s age and gender mainstreaming process is a historic opportunity to ensure refugee women and children’s place in the decision-making process from the beginning,” Buscher says. “They are the experts on what will work best to improve their lives and protect their rights and we applaud UNHCR for taking this important new step. We look forward to seeing real changes in the lives of refugee women and children worldwide.”

Megan McKenna is the Senior Coordinator, Media and Communications, at the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children