Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia, Nov 28, 2005 (CDERA) - A Saint Lucian Government minister says that if the Caribbean is to reduce the significant losses from disasters both sexes must play a vital role in natural hazard risk reduction programmes.

The Honourable Damian Greaves, Minister of Health, Human Services, and Family Affairs, said gender equality must be an essential ingredient in the formula which disaster managers must use.

The Honourable Damian Greaves, Minister of Health, Human Services, and Family Affairs, said gender equality must be an essential ingredient in the formula which disaster managers must use.

“Gender equality is not merely a desirable by-product of human development; it is a core goal in its own right,” he told the opening of a gender and disaster management workshop in Saint Lucia.

“Gender mainstreaming means being deliberate in giving visibility and support to women’s contributions and addressing the differential impact of strategies, policies, programmes and projects on women compared with men … to have an impact, gender mainstreaming must be everybody’s responsibility, everybody’s job,” he told the more the 48 participants attending from 16 Caribbean states.

The two-day workshop on “Mainstreaming Gender into Natural Hazard Risk Reduction in the Caribbean” was hosted by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA), the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Cross section of participants at the first ever disaster management and gender workshop

In a comprehensive address on the subject, Minister Greaves says that the key to addressing gender equality lies in not making assumptions such as assuming that women’s views are reflected by community leaders or that aggregate data and statistics paint an accurate picture of women’s lives or that what works for men automatically works for women.

“Average household income, for instance, is an abstraction that only exists in the mind of an economist; it does not correspond with the reality faced by millions of women who have little or no control over how household income is used.”

His argument was that if gender is to be mainstreamed in disaster management and contribute to a reduction of losses from disasters then the woman and her views and perspectives must be an integral part of the planning process from day one.

Participants at the Mainstreaming Gender in Natural Hazard Risk Reduction Workshop

Citing several studies by the United Nations Development Programme Minister Greaves said that in crisis situation and recovery, women bear the brunt of the physical and psychological suffering during and after the crises situations.

He called on disaster managers in the region to make a concerted effort to integrate gender into disaster management planning and programmes to achieve natural hazard risk reduction.

The Minister’s unabridged speech can be read at [PENDING]

See also http://www.cdera.org/cunews/news_releases/cdera/article_1457.php