Age, Gender, Diversity & Disability Inclusion

An AGD Approach 

Considerations

All individuals have a unique profile and capacities. In humanitarian response, it is important to take these differences into account – both as they may result in specific protection risks, and because they can often be leveraged to improve the situation of individuals and communities.   

Humanitarian actors should seek to ensure that all individuals in affected communities have access to their rights, equal to others. By analysing Age, Gender, and Diversity (AGD) as interlinked personal and contextual characteristics, we can understand better the protection risks and capacities of individuals and communities – and address and support these more effectively.  

An AGD approach is not an “add on”, but a core element of fair and equal humanitarian assistance.  

Barriers to Inclusion

There are key attitudinal, environmental, and institutional barriers to inclusion of gender, age, and diverse characteristics in humanitarian action, such as: 

• Attitudinal Barriers: Negative attitudes and discrimination on one hand, or over-protection on the other hand, can be caused by a misconception of gender, disability or older age, among others.
  • For example, people in the community might believe that a woman, older person, or a person with disabilities cannot participate in the response due to pre-existing biases or misconceptions regarding their capacity. Parents might hide a child with disabilities at home because they think that disability is a source of shame. Factors such as disability, age and gender are not isolated: the intersection between them can create multiple forms of discrimination. 
• Environmental Barriers: Barriers include physical barriers to accessing the built environment or services, and barriers to information and communication.  
  • For example, if only one format is used to provide information on humanitarian services, instead of different formats, such as tactile signing, sign language, audio, or images, this could be a barrier. Similar barriers could apply in contexts where diverse linguistic groups coexist, and information is disseminated only in one language. Information barriers may be less visible than physical barriers, but it is important to detect them, as they can exclude large groups of people. 
• Institutional Barriers: Laws, policies, and procedures (including those of humanitarian organizations) can lead to either intended or unintended discrimination against certain groups.  
  • These may separate women, older people, and persons with disabilities from many aspects of community life, such as employment, political participation, education and/or social services. 

Cluster Responsibilities

A CCCM Cluster should: 

• Seek to understand differing risks and capacities of individuals from the affected population, based on their age, gender, and diversity characteristics. Including in: 
  • Needs assessments – through disaggregation of data by sex, age and disability at a minimum. 
  • Needs analysis – including the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO). 
• Include age, gender, and diversity analysis in CCCM strategic planning. Including in: 
  • CCCM Response Strategy. 
  • Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP). 
• Promote AGD approaches in CCCM activities delivery, and undertake collaborative work with specialized stakeholders and local organizations to support specific groups. For example: 
  • Promoting AGD approaches in community engagement. 
  • In coordination with Organizations of Persons with Disabilities, identify barriers faced by persons with different impairments but also enablers to their inclusion in displacement sites and draft guidance or action plans for CCCM actors. 
  • Approach Child Protection actors to ensure the views and specific needs of children – including adolescents, are taken into consideration in the response.  

Use existing expertise and reach out to specialist organizations in the response to support these aims. Gender Advisors often work with inter-cluster coordination groups to support AGD analysis in the HNO and HRP. Other clusters, e.g. Protection Cluster and GBV Sub-Cluster, might give guidance and share resources. 

Thinking more broadly can help move AGD analysis from a paper-based exercise to a practical approach. For example, CCCM actors might have good practice approaches to share with other Cluster members. Specialist organizations might provide resources, examples, or even trainings for humanitarian partners. Map and reach out to local and national organizations who work with specific groups – e.g. women’s organizations, Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) – who are willing to share their local expertise, and support their inclusion in Cluster meetings, activities, and access to humanitarian funding.  

Guidance & Examples

Age

Age can improve or decrease a person’s capacity to exercise their rights. Risks affect a person differently depending on age, and the context they are in. In different contexts, diverse roles, responsibilities and constraints may be attributed to certain ages, impacting the individual’s life and leading to situations of exploitation or discrimination. For example, children may be asked to  provide financial support to their families,  and older persons may not be engaged in employment opportunities while they were previously productive contributors in their societies.  

Children: In some humanitarian response CCCM practitioners engage in, over 50% of the displaced population are children. It is essential that CCCM responders take into consideration their specific needs, as well as the risks they may face during displacement – e.g. risks of violence, abuse and neglect, dangers and injuries. Child Protection concerns must be mainstreamed and integrated into CCCM strategies, activities and planning throughout the response. CCCM partners should engage with Child Protection actors to ensure activities and services are accessible to children and appropriate to their development stage – e.g. 0 to 5, 5 to 12, 13 to 17 years old. Participation of children should be fostered in the response, and two-way communication systems put in place. In addition, child safeguarding measures among partners should be effective to ensure a Do No Harm approach. See Toolkit Section 9.4 Child Protection for more recommendations.  

Older persons: Today, about 12.5% of the world’s population is aged 60 or more, and the population of older persons is growing by 2% each year – considerably faster than the population as a whole. The concept of old age itself must be understood in broad terms. In many countries and cultures, being considered old is not necessarily a matter of age, but it is rather linked to circumstances such as being a grandparent, or showing physical signs such as white hair. In many emergency-affected contexts where people live in hardship, many of the conditions usually associated with older age, such as disability and chronic disease, are present at earlier ages. As such, while the UN definition of old age is those aged 60 years and above, using a cut-off point of 50 years and over may be more appropriate in many contexts where humanitarian crises occur. Data disaggregation will be critical to understand the percentage of older people in a given context (using Sphere recommended age groups of 60-69, 70-79, and 80+ years), and needs assessments can help understand their specific requirements – e.g. in terms of access to services, including health services, social and economic needs, as well as skills and capacities and potential discrimination they face.  

Gender

Gender influences different roles, responsibilities, and degrees of power in society. These can contribute to unequal access and barriers to protection, assistance, and services – for women and girls, and also for men and boys. The way in which sites are managed and coordinated during humanitarian crises affects women, girls, men, and boys differently. 

Women and girls take on important roles in their communities and families and contribute in various ways to strengthening protection and solutions. However, negative gender roles ascribed to them often ensure that they face specific, severe, and wide-spread barriers to accessing their rights, including fewer opportunities and resources, lower socio-economic status, less power and influence, numerous forms of discrimination, and heightened protection risks, including of SGBV (sexual and gender-based violence). 

Men and boys can be agents of change for rights promotion, including increasing gender equality and preventing SGBV. Displacement creates protection risks for men and boys, including trafficking, forced recruitment, and certain forms of violence, including SGBV.

A CCCM Cluster should promote gender-sensitive CCCM programming that integrates gender perspectives into all aspects of CCCM policies and programmes and management of displacement sites. This might include supporting capacity-building and training for staff, promoting consideration of gender in all site management activities (including physical access to services, safety in sites, GBV prevention and risk mitigation, access to information and feedback mechanisms), and promoting equal participation in site governance and committees. See Toolkit Section 9.3 Gender-based violence for information and guidance on GBV. 

A CCCM Cluster should also ensure a gender-sensitive approach in its own work, including in needs assessment and analysis and strategic planning (see Toolkit Section 5. HPC for tools to support gender analysis in HNO and HRP), and in monitoring of the response. Advocacy and technical support is also an importance aspect: consider collaboration opportunities with Cluster partners and technical experts and gender-focused organizations in the response to provide training, resources, and technical guidance for CCCM teams.  

Diversity

Diversity refers to ethnic background, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, disabilities, health, social status, cultural perspectives, and other personal characteristics that vary from person to person.  

People belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, or indigenous groups often experience discrimination and marginalization. They are frequently excluded from participation and encounter obstacles to expressing their identity, factors which are compounded in displacement. They are likely to be affected both by the immediate events leading to their displacement and by the long-term legacy of discrimination.  

Persons who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and other diverse identities (LGBTIQ+) face complex challenges, threats, and barriers, and are often exposed to discrimination, abuse, prejudice, and violence due to their sex, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity. This is often severely compounded in situations of displacement.

These differences must be recognized and respected by CCCM actors, and their impacts on people’s participation, needs, access to services, and wellbeing understood and addressed in CCCM implementation.  

Disabilities

Persons with disabilities include women, men, girls and boys with long-term physical, intellectual, or sensory impairments which, in interaction with various barriers, may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. Persons with disabilities tend to be disproportionately affected during crises. They may face greater difficulties in accessing humanitarian services, engaging in participation mechanisms, and being involved in decision-making mechanisms. They often remain invisible in the responses, due to several barriers: attitudinal barriers due to stigma and discrimination, physical and communication barriers, and misconception over capacities and skills. For a humanitarian response to be effective, everyone must be included – this includes persons with disabilities, who represent more than 15% of the population globally. 

CCCM practitioners can contribute to mitigating the barriers persons with disabilities face and support their inclusion in the response by fostering partnerships with their representative organizations, raising awareness on their rights and building capacities of CCCM partners, removing physical barriers and improving accessibility of services, and fostering their meaningful participation in the response.  

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