83902 Working Paper 4 NAD Nias MDF-JRF Working Paper Series: Lessons Learned from Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Indonesia More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction Women displaced by Mount Merapi’s eruptions participate in a meeting to discuss resettlement plans for their community. Photo: Fauzan Ijazah Working Paper 4 NAD Nias MDF-JRF Working Paper Series: Lessons Learned from Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Indonesia More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction Published by: MDF-JRF Secretariat The World Bank Office Indonesia Stock Exchange Building Tower I, 9th Floor Jl. Jendral Sudirman Kav. 52-53 Jakarta 12910, Indonesia Tel : (+6221) 5299-3000 Fax : (+6221) 5299-3111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The MDF-JRF Working Paper Series: Lessons Learned from Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Indonesia was prepared by the Secretariat of the Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias (MDF) and the Java Reconstruction Fund (JRF). The World Bank serves as trustee of both funds. The series, consisting of five working papers, was produced under the guidance of Shamima Khan, MDF and JRF Manager. Anita Kendrick, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the MDF and JRF, developed the concepts and managed the production of the Working Paper Series and the Knowledge Notes based on each paper. This paper, Working Paper 4 in the series, is entitled More than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment through Post-Disaster Reconstruction. The paper is based on research and background text written by Mary Ann Brocklesby, World Bank consultant. Shamima Khan provided general guidance, support and oversight of the entire writing and production process. Anita Kendrick, MDF-JRF Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, managed the paper preparation and provided editorial oversight and guidance to the design, content and production process. Gillian Brown, Gender Specialist, and Helene Carlsson Rex, Senior Social Development Specialist, World Bank, provided extensive and useful comments on the text as peer reviewers. Sharon Lumbantobing managed the production process, and Kate Redmond and Devi Asmarani provided editorial support. Other members of the MDF/JRF Secretariat team and consultants provided significant inputs to the working paper on content, design, layout, and production as well as logistical support for the review team: Safriza Sofyan, Deputy Manager of the MDF, along with Akil Abduljalil, Deslly Sorongan, Inge Susilo, Eva Muchtar, Inayat Bhagawati, Nur Raihan, Nia Sarinastiti, Olga Lambey, Amenah Smith, Friesca Erwan, Harry Masyarafah, and David Lawrence. Ola Santo and her team from Studio Rancang Imaji prepared the design and layout of the Working Paper Series and accompanying Knowledge Notes. The MDF Secretariat would like to thank the many partners and stakeholders who cooperated with the review team during the fieldwork and research period. These included representatives of the Government of Indonesia, including line ministries, as well as local governments of Aceh, North Sumatra, and Nias, and donors, partner and implementing agencies, and beneficiary communities in Aceh and Nias. Published by: MDF-JRF Secretariat The World Bank Office Indonesia Stock Exchange Building Tower I, 9th Floor Jl. Jendral Sudirman Kav. 52-53 Jakarta 12910, Indonesia www.worldbank.org Tel : (+6221) 5299-3000 www.multidonorfund.org Fax : (+6221) 5299-3111 www.javareconstructionfund.org THE MDF-JRF WORKING PAPER SERIES The Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias (MDF) and the Java Reconstruction Fund (JRF) are widely recognized as having played a significant role in the remarkable recovery of Aceh, Nias and Java, following some of the worst disasters in Indonesia over the last decade. The MDF, and the JRF which is patterned after it, are each considered a highly successful model for post-disaster reconstruction. Key factors in this success have been the leadership provided by the Government of Indonesia and the strong partnership of multiple stakeholders in support of the government’s reconstruction agenda. The two programs have produced impressive results, both in terms of physical reconstruction, and in the less tangible but equally important benefits such as community empowerment, strengthened governance, and communities that are more resilient to future disasters. The experiences of the MDF and JRF have generated many useful lessons and created effective models and approaches that can be adapted and replicated in other reconstruction contexts. The Secretariat of the MDF and JRF, as part of its culminating activities, has prepared a series of working papers to document these achievements and lessons learned. The MDF-JRF Working Paper Series: Lessons Learned from Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Indonesia consists of five working papers covering five key areas. These are: 1) community driven approaches for post-disaster recovery; 2) capacity building in a post-disaster context; 3) reconstruction of infrastructure; 4) promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment through post-disaster reconstruction; and 5) multi-donor trust funds as a framework for effective partnerships for reconstruction. Each Working Paper describes the strategy and approaches adopted by the MDF and/or JRF across its projects, notes the achievements, and draws lessons that will be useful in other post-disaster settings. In addition to the full working papers, a series of Knowledge Notes has also been prepared, providing a short summary of the key lessons and conclusions from each of the longer working papers. This paper, Working Paper 4 in the series, is entitled More than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment through Post-Disaster Reconstruction. It presents lessons from the MDF and JRF’s efforts to facilitate women’s empowerment and gender equality during the reconstruction process. This paper documents a range of good practice examples from the JRF and MDF, and makes experience-based recommendations for the kind of strategies and actions needed to mainstream gender sensitive approaches in future reconstruction efforts. Collectively, the lessons and experiences from the MDF and JRF form a legacy of the remarkable achievements of these two programs and the effective partnerships on which they were based. We hope that the lessons captured in these papers will contribute to future reconstruction and preparedness efforts in Indonesia and other disaster-prone countries around the world. Shamima Khan Manager The Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias The Java Reconstruction Fund TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 THE MDF-JRF WORKING PAPER SERIES 5 THE DISASTERS - A MAP OF INDONESIA 8 A SERIES OF DISASTERS IN INDONESIA 10 ABOUT THE MULTI DONOR FUND FOR ACEH AND NIAS (MDF) 15 ABOUT THE JAVA RECONSTRUCTION FUND (JRF) 20 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 22 CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 28 1.1 Purpose and Focus of the Working Paper 30 1.2 Outline of the Working Paper 33 CHAPTER 2 - WHY GENDER MATTERS IN DISASTERS 34 2.1 Women in Post-Disaster Aceh 36 2.2 Women in Post-Disaster Nias 38 2.3 Women in Post-Disaster Central Java and Yogyakarta 38 CHAPTER 3 - GENDER ISSUES IN THE RECONSTRUCTION RESPONSES 40 3.1 Promoting Gender Equality in the Reconstruction Responses 42 3.2 Gender Mainstreaming in the Reconstruction Responses 44 3.3 Gender and the MDF-JRF 47 CHAPTER 4 - WOMEN’S VOICE: THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN DECISION MAKING, COMMUNITY PLANNING AND PRIORITIZATION OF NEED 52 4.1 Women’s Access to Information 53 4.2 Women’s Voice, Agency and Participation 56 CHAPTER 5 - WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT: INCREASING ACCESS TO RECONSTRUCTION BENEFITS AND JOBS 68 5.1 Women’s Economic Empowerment 70 5.2 Building Resilience 77 CHAPTER 6 - DISASTER RECONSTRUCTION AS AN ENTRY POINT FOR GENDER MAINSTREAMING 82 6.1 Strengthening Attention to Gender in Reconstruction 84 6.2 Supporting Structures, Systems and Mechanisms 86 6.3 Accountability – Mechanisms for Mandating Gender Mainstreaming 88 6.4 Promoting Women’s Role and Empowerment in Reconstruction 88 AnnexES 90 ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS 94 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES 96 THE DISASTERS - A MAP OF INDONESIA December 2004: March 2005: Earthquake & Tsunami Earthquake • 220,000 people perished & missing • 1,000 people perished • 585,000 people displaced • 50,000 people displaced • Estimated damages: US$4.5 billion • Estimated damages: US$390 million ACEH AND NIAS ISLANDS NIAS ISLANDS AND ACEH JAKARTA July 2006: Tsunami • 1,000 people perished • 50,000 people displaced • Estimated damages: US$110 million WEST JAVA May 2006: October - November 2010: Earthquake Volcanic Eruptions • 5,700 people perished • 300 people perished • 40,000 people injured • 350,000 people displaced • Estimated damages: US$3.1 billion • Estimated damages: US$360 million YOGYAKARTA AND CENTRAL JAVA MOUNT MERAPI 10 A SERIES OF DISASTERS IN INDONESIA A Series of Disasters in Indonesia Indonesia is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world. It is vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, floods, volcanic eruptions, and wildfires. Between 2004 and 2010 Indonesia experienced a series of devastating natural disasters which attracted an outpouring of support from around the world. December 2004—Earthquake and Tsunami in Aceh The earthquake and tsunami that struck Indonesia and several other countries in the Indian Ocean region on December 26, 2004 was one of the worst natural disasters in recorded human history. The massive earthquake measuring 9.1 on the Richter scale was centered in the Indian Ocean about 150 kilometers off the coast of the province of Aceh on the northernmost tip of the island of Sumatra. Huge tidal waves fanned across the Indian Ocean, causing death and destruction across Southern Asia including Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, and as far away as East Africa. No country suffered more than Indonesia. Waves towering ten meters high came crashing into the shoreline in Aceh. The scale of physical devastation and human suffering was enormous. In Aceh alone, 221,000 people were killed or missing, and over a half million were left homeless. As many as 750,000 people lost their livelihoods. At all levels, infrastructure was paralyzed or completely destroyed. In minutes, human settlements along the coastline of Aceh and parts of North Sumatra were demolished. People, houses, boats, cars, and buildings were engulfed as the tsunami swallowed everything in its way. Villages were reduced to rubble where minutes before thriving communities had flourished. Many roads, bridges, communications systems, schools, hospitals and clinics collapsed or were severely damaged. Fishermen, farmers and others lost their livelihoods and many businesses were destroyed or could no longer operate. The subsequent assessment of the impact of both disasters, conducted by the Government along with the World Bank and other partners, assessed the damage and needs to be US$4.9 billion.1 This figure was later revised to $6.2 billion. The massive destruction in Aceh seriously affected provincial and local governments already weakened by years of conflict. The tsunami destroyed 21 percent of public buildings and 19 percent of the equipment in these buildings. Approximately nine percent of civil servants perished and at least 21 percent of surviving civil servants were severely affected, impacting their ability to function as a local government. Twenty-seven percent of public records were destroyed. The replacement value of these losses was estimated to be over $81 million. Prior to the tsunami, governance in Aceh already faced numerous challenges, including lack of institutional capacity and inefficient delivery of public services such as health and education, especially in the rural areas. The tsunami exacerbated these challenges to say the least, and the 1 All $ amounts in this report refer to US dollars. 11 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Many people were saved from the tsunami by taking refuge in Aceh’s Grand Mosque. They Photo: could only watch helplessly as the torrent raged through the streets, carrying debris and Antara News victims along with it. Agency provincial and local governments were not in a position to manage the immense and extensive recovery effort that would be required. The national government stepped in urgently to take the lead in the reconstruction process. March 2005—Earthquake in North Sumatra and Aceh Just three months later on March 28, 2005, another massive earthquake measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale struck Aceh and the neighboring province of North Sumatra. This quake devastated the Nias islands in the province of North Sumatra, located in the Indian Ocean 130 kilometers off the western coast of Sumatra just south of Aceh. The island of Simeulue, part of the province of Aceh off the western coast of the mainland, was also hard hit. This second disaster resulted in the death of nearly 1,000 people and the displacement of nearly 50,000 survivors. The earthquake wreaked more havoc on an already ravaged area. The physical damage was severe. Approximately 30 percent of buildings were destroyed. The destruction rendered transportation and other critical infrastructure inoperative, including the major ports linking the remote island populations with the mainland. Nias and Simeulue stood among the poorest areas of Indonesia prior to the disasters and were only further isolated by the destruction of the earthquake. These two disasters devastated two areas of Indonesia that were already grappling with multiple challenges. The province of Aceh was in the grip of an internal conflict between the Acehnese 12 A Series of Disasters in Indonesia Many roads, bridges, communication systems, school and other infrastructure collapsed or sustained Photo: such serious damage that they could no longer be used as the result of the disasters. Much of the IREP-IRFF coastline of Aceh was swallowed by the sea and most ports were annihilated. Team separatist rebel movement and the Indonesian military. This conflict, stretching over thirty years, had paralyzed development and economic growth, and had seriously weakened both public and private sector capacities. At the time of the December 2004 tsunami, poverty in Aceh was 28.4 percent, substantially higher than the national average of 16.7 percent.2 The districts of Nias and South Nias on Nias Island ranked among the poorest districts in Indonesia. Poverty, largely attributable to the isolation of the island, was approximately 31 percent at the time of the March 2005 earthquake.3 These dual challenges of poverty and isolation created an extremely difficult operating environment for reconstruction in Nias. The local governments, already weakened by the conflict in Aceh and isolation in Nias, were initially overwhelmed by the disasters. Recognizing this, and recognizing the magnitude of the reconstruction task at hand, the central government created the Agency for the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of Aceh and Nias (Badan Rekonstruksi dan Rehabilitasi Aceh dan Nias, widely known as the BRR) to manage reconstruction. This special agency was based in Aceh and led by a minister-level appointee who reported directly to the President. 2 World Bank 2008 3 Indonesia Central Statistics Agency National Social Economics Survey 2005-2007 13 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and May 2006—Earthquake in Java Disaster again struck Indonesia on May 27, 2006, when an earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale hit the island of Java, resulting in extensive damage in the province of Central Java and the Special Region of Yogyakarta. The earthquake hit one of the most densely populated areas in Asia, claiming more than 5,700 lives and destroying over 280,000 homes. Damage to private houses made up more than 60 percent of the total destruction, which also affected small and medium enterprises, a large number of them home-based industries. While infrastructure suffered comparatively less damage, hundreds of thousands of homes and smaller structures were destroyed. Many houses in the area had been built without proper reinforcement and with low quality building materials, resulting in more deaths and damage than would normally be expected from an earthquake of this magnitude. Approximately 40,000 people were injured in the earthquake. Thousands of people were trapped and buried beneath their toppled houses and buildings. A joint team led by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), with local governments and the international community, prepared the preliminary Damage and Loss Assessment in order to determine the overall needs for the rehabilitation and reconstruction phase. Total damage and losses from the earthquake were estimated at around $3.1 billion. The economic impact of the earthquake was particularly heavy because of the concentration of home-based industries in the areas destroyed by the earthquake. More than 650,000 workers were employed in economic activities directly affected by the earthquake with close to 90 percent of damage and losses concentrated in small and medium enterprises. Many of the home-based industries in the area’s important handicraft sector were severely affected. Rebuilding homes would also support recovery of home-based businesses and livelihoods. July 2006—West Java Tsunami Just two months later, on July 17, 2006, a second major submarine earthquake struck off the southern coast of Java. The earthquake, measuring a magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter scale, triggered a tsunami that caused widespread damage. The tsunami hit the south coast of West Java, taking more than 650 lives and displacing over 28,000 people. Almost 1,000 people died or remained missing and more than 50,000 people were displaced. Damage and losses reached an estimated $112 million. Ciamis district, West Java, was the worst affected. Along the coast of Ciamis alone, close to 6,000 families were displaced. The tsunami caused economic destruction in the fishing villages and tourist resorts along the south coast of West Java, where large numbers of fishing boats were lost and the small fishing ports destroyed. October and November 2010—Mount Merapi Volcanic Eruptions On October 26, 2010, disaster hit Java once again when Mount Merapi, a volcano located on the border between Yogyakarta and Central Java, erupted. This was followed by seven additional major eruptions, with the last one occurring on November 11, 2010. For two long weeks, the eruptions 14 A Series of Disasters in Indonesia spewed hot gas into nearby villages and hot lava accompanied by hot gas flowed into several rivers. The clouds of hot ash and poisonous gas combined with heat clouds at temperatures of 600 to 800 degrees Celsius incinerated everything they reached, including livestock, crops and trees that were essential to the livelihoods of evacuees. Ash rain, which blanketed everything in fine volcanic dust, was found in cities across Java. All villages within 20 kilometers of the crater were evacuated. Along with massive damage to local infrastructure, approximately 2,900 houses were destroyed and 350,000 people were displaced and accommodated in evacuation camps. Due to timely evacuation, casualties were limited but still almost 300 people perished and more than 500 were injured. The eruptions impacted areas in the province of Central Java and the Yogyakarta Special Region, including some communities that had been affected by the 2006 earthquake and were still in the process of rebuilding. These eruptions resulted in widespread damage to housing and local infrastructure, as well as loss of livelihoods. During the eruptions, volcanic debris mixed with rain flowed down the slopes of Mount Merapi as massive mud flows. In Java this is known as “lahar dingin” or cold lava and is made up of ash and sand from the eruption which when combined with rain turns into thick, slushy rivers of mud that gather up everything in the way. Cold lava surged down the mountain burying entire villages, farms and fields. Huge boulders, trees, houses, livestock, motor bikes, and cars were carried away by the mud. Several villages located in the danger zone near the volcano were relocated to safer areas. Facing the Future The numerous disasters since 2004 are a stark reminder that Indonesia is highly prone to natural hazards. Improvements in early warning systems are expected to save lives, as will ensuring that homes and other structures are built to seismic resistant standards. Many of the homes destroyed during the earthquakes were found to have used poor quality materials and building techniques, both of which contributed greatly to the number of lives lost and the high level of damage. Through the recovery and reconstruction efforts following these disasters, Indonesia has learned many lessons. It has created institutions and put systems in place for disaster risk reduction. As a result of the recovery and reconstruction process communities across Aceh, Nias, and Java are more resilient to face future disasters. 15 ABOUT THE MULTI DONOR FUND FOR ACEH AND NIAS (MDF) Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and The Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias (MDF) was established in April 2005, in response to the Government of Indonesia’s request to coordinate donor support for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of affected areas following the December 2004 earthquake and tsunami, and the subsequent March 2005 earthquake. The MDF pools $655 million in contributions from 15 donors. These funds amount to nearly ten percent of the overall reconstruction funds. At the request of the Government of Indonesia, the World Bank serves as Trustee of the MDF. Grant funds are provided to projects which are implemented by government and non-government agencies and communities, with partner agencies providing oversight. Partner agencies include the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank. Under the MDF portfolio, 23 projects were financed in six outcome areas: (1) Recovery of Communities; (2) Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of Large Infrastructure and Transport; (3) Strengthening Governance and Capacity Building; (4) Sustaining the Environment; (5) Enhancing the Recovery Process; and (6) Economic Development and Livelihoods. These projects reflected the priorities of the Indonesian government throughout the reconstruction process. The MDF was coordinated by the Government of Indonesia, initially through the Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Aceh and Nias (BRR), which was set up to manage the reconstruction and recovery effort. After the BRR closed in April 2009, the National Development Planning Agency, Bappenas, took on this critical role. The MDF is governed by a Steering Committee with representatives from the government, donors, the trustee, and civil society. The Steering Committee is supported in its work by a secretariat. MDF Contributions MDF Donors Contributions (US$ million) European Union 271.31 Government of the Netherlands 146.20 Government of the United Kingdom 68.50 World Bank 25.00 Government of Sweden 20.72 Government of Canada 20.22 Government of Norway 19.57 Government of Denmark 18.03 Government of Germany 13.93 Government of Belgium 11.05 Government of Finland 10.13 Asian Development Bank 10.00 Government of the United States 10.00 Government of New Zealand 8.80 Government of Ireland 1.20 Total Contributions: 654.67 16 About the Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias (MDF) The MDF provides a successful model for post-disaster reconstruction based on partnerships between government, donors, communities and other stakeholders. The partnerships created by the MDF have played a key role in the strong performance of the program and robust results achieved. Pooling resources through the MDF has resulted in the harmonization of donor efforts and provided an important platform for policy dialogue for many stakeholders. The MDF has filled gaps in the reconstruction in line with government priorities and has brought together key government players, donors, and members of civil society and communities. The MDF’s strong support for coordination of the overall reconstruction effort has resulted in huge multiplier effects so that the MDF’s impact has been able to exceed the value of its contributions. The MDF Portfolio The MDF’s portfolio was designed to meet the changing needs of Aceh and Nias as they progressed from recovery to rebuilding infrastructure to laying the foundations of economic development. Consisting of 23 projects in six outcome areas, the projects were implemented by government and non-government partners, including national and provincial governments, agencies of the United Nations, international development institutions, and non-governmental organizations. Environmental sustainability, gender, capacity building and disaster risk reduction were important cross-cutting elements of the MDF program throughout its life cycle. 1. Recovery of Communities (5 projects totaling $202 million) The first group of MDF projects supported recovery of communities, with a focus on housing and local infrastructure. Using a community-driven approach and implemented by government, these programs enabled disaster survivors to re-establish their communities and begin rebuilding their lives. • The Community-Based Settlement Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Project, better known as Rekompak, used a community driven approach to rebuild homes and local infrastructure in Aceh and Nias. Implemented by the Ministry of Public Works (MPW) and managed by the World Bank, Rekompak rebuilt nearly 15,000 houses and restored basic infrastructure to 180 villages. • The Community Recovery through the Kecamatan Development Project (KDP) was part of a national program and partly funded by the MDF. Through KDP, the MDF assisted communities in Aceh and Nias to plan and manage the reconstruction of rural infrastructure, schools, clinics, and other public buildings. It also provided business training and loans. The project was implemented by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) and managed by the World Bank. • The Community Recovery through the Urban Poverty Program (UPP) provided support for reconstruction to urban communities to rehabilitate and develop community infrastructure in municipalities in Aceh. UPP repaired urban infrastructure, rebuilt schools and other public buildings, and provided scholarships. The project was implemented by the MPW and managed by the World Bank. 17 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and • The Kecamatan-Based Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Planning in Nias Project (KRRP) was a community-based recovery and planning project for reconstruction in Nias. Implemented by the MoHA and managed by the World Bank, it rebuilt houses, schools, public buildings, and village infrastructure. • The Reconstruction of Aceh Land Administration System (RALAS) restored land property rights and a computerized land records management system. Over 220,000 land title certificates were issued, nearly one-third to women. The project was implemented by the National Land Agency (BPN) and managed by the World Bank. 2. Recovery of Large Infrastructure and Transport (7 projects totaling $217 million) The MDF, working in partnership with the Government of Indonesia, contributed significantly to the reconstruction of large infrastructure in Aceh and Nias. These projects restored transportation links and critical infrastructure, thereby improving people’s lives and providing new economic opportunities. • The Banda Aceh Flood Mitigation Project (BAFMP), implemented by Muslim Aid and managed by the World Bank, repaired pumping stations, flood valves, and drainage systems damaged by the tsunami to protect the central business area of Banda Aceh from storm and tidal flooding. • The Infrastructure Reconstruction Enabling Program (IREP) and its companion project, the Infrastructure Reconstruction Financing Facility (IRFF), planned, designed, and built strategic infrastructure such as roads, water systems and bridges in Aceh and Nias. Co-financed by BRR, the projects were implemented by the MPW and managed by the World Bank. • The Lamno-Calang Road Maintenance Project (LCRMP) maintained a key road from Lamno to Calang to ensure overland access to tsunami-affected communities on Aceh’s west coast. The project was implemented by the UNDP. • The Sea Delivery and Logistics Progamme (SDLP) met the urgent recovery transportation needs for construction materials in Aceh and Nias. Implemented by the WFP, it also provided training for better management of ports and disaster-risk reduction. • The Tsunami Recovery Port Redevelopment Programme (TRPRP) rehabilitated damaged ports in Aceh and Nias so that equipment and materials could be supplied to isolated communities. The project, implemented by the UNDP, also provided designs and technical support for reconstructing major sea ports. • The Rural Access and Capacity Building Project (RACBP) helped residents of participating districts in Nias effectively use improved rural transport infrastructure and services to take advantage of economic opportunities and social services. Implemented by the ILO, it also included a cultural heritage component. 18 About the Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias (MDF) 3. Economic Development and Livelihoods (2 projects totaling $58 million) Restoring livelihoods is an important part of disaster recovery. These projects strengthened important sectors that provide employment and income to Aceh and Nias, paving the way for long- term economic growth. • The Aceh Economic Development Financing Facility (EDFF) promoted post-tsunami economic recovery. Managed by the World Bank, the EDFF was implemented by the Ministry for Development of Disadvantaged Areas (KPDT) and the Government of Aceh. The project provided sub-grants to support growth in key sectors including coffee, cocoa, rice, meat and fisheries. • The Nias Islands Livelihoods and Economic Development Program (LEDP) provided training to improve technical and business skills for livelihoods and overall economic development. Implemented by KPDT and managed by the World Bank, the project also developed skills within local government for implementing livelihoods programs in Nias. 4. Strengthening Governance and Capacity Building (3 projects totaling $40 million) The MDF encouraged good governance and strengthened the capacity of local communities and district governments. It encouraged the development of civil society organizations involved in the reconstruction process. • The Capacity Building for Local Resource-based Rural Roads (CBLR3) strengthened the capacity of district government and small-scale contractors to undertake local road works. The project was implemented by the ILO. • The Support for Poor and Disadvantaged Areas Project in Aceh and Nias (SPADA) project, implemented by KPDT and managed by the World Bank, strengthened local participation in development planning, promoted private investment and job creation, and improved health, education and dispute resolution services. The project complemented a national program funded by a World Bank loan. • Support to Strengthen the Capacity and Role of Civil Society Organizations (CSO), implemented by the UNDP, built the capacity of local civil society organizations in Aceh and Nias to enhance grass-roots participation in the reconstruction process. 19 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and 5. Enhancing the Recovery Process (4 projects totaling $56 million) In order to strengthen government capacity to manage the recovery effort, the MDF provided technical assistance and operational support to BRR and other government agencies. • The Aceh Government Transformation Programme (AGTP) provided strategic support to the government of Aceh to provide the capacity and institutional strength to take over projects, resources, and assume oversight of reconstruction and recovery programs after the closure of BRR in April, 2009. The project was implemented by the MoHA and Provincial Government of Aceh and managed by the UNDP. • Making Aceh Safer through Disaster Risk Reduction in Development (DRR-A) established disaster risk reduction in Aceh’s local government agencies, its public and private partners, and local communities. The project was implemented by the MoHA and Provincial Government of Aceh, and managed by the UNDP. • The Nias Island Transformation Programme (NITP), managed by the UNDP and implemented by the MoHA and local governments in Nias, enhanced district capacity to successfully complete the recovery process and reduce risks from future natural disasters. • Technical Assistance to the BRR and Bappenas (TS-R2C3), managed by the UNDP, the project supported BRR in managing the overall recovery process. After BRR closed in April 2009, the project worked with Bappenas and was referred to as Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Completion and Continued Coordination (TS-R2C3). 6. Sustaining the Environment (2 projects totaling $57 million) Throughout the recovery process, the MDF committed to protecting the environment. The MDF played an important part in post-disaster cleanup and long-term waste management. It also worked to protect the ecosystems of Aceh and Nias. • The Tsunami Recovery Waste Management Programme (TRWMP) helped local government clear, recycle and dispose of tsunami waste, rehabilitate waste management infrastructure, and implement sustainable solid waste management systems. It also promoted livelihoods related to waste management. The project was implemented by the UNDP. • The Aceh Forest & Environment Project (AFEP) worked closely with communities, civil society and government to protect the Leuser and Ulu Masen forests from illegal logging and promoted sustainable forest management. Managed by the World Bank, the project was implemented by Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and Leuser International Foundation (LIF). 20 ABOUT THE JAVA RECONSTRUCTION FUND (JRF) About the Java Reconstruction Fund (JRF) Following a request from the Government of Indonesia, the Java Reconstruction Fund (JRF) was established to respond to the May 27, 2006 earthquake that struck near Yogyakarta, and the tsunami that hit the southern coast of West Java Province in July 2006. The JRF was later extended to respond to volcanic eruptions of Mount Merapi in October and November of 2010. The JRF program closed on December 31, 2012. The JRF is based on the successful model of the Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias. Seven donors supported the JRF with contributions totaling $94.1 million. The donors are: the European Union, the Governments of the Netherlands, United Kingdom, the Asian Development Bank, Canada, Finland and Denmark. The World Bank serves as Trustee of the JRF. Following the government’s priorities, the JRF supports the recovery of communities and livelihoods, and increases disaster preparedness. The JRF was coordinated by the Government of Indonesia, initially through the Government’s National Coordinating Team (NCT) and the National Technical Team (TTN). After the mandate of the NCT and the TTN ended in 2008, the JRF worked with the National Planning Agency (Bappenas) and the Provincial Planning Agencies (Bappeda) for the overall coordination of the reconstruction. Using a governance structure similar to the MDF, the JRF was governed by a Steering Committee with representatives from the Government of Indonesia and donors. Bappenas co-chaired the Steering Committee, along with the European Union as the largest donor, and the World Bank as Trustee. The Steering Committee is supported by a secretariat. Through shared staffing and expertise with the MDF for Aceh and Nias, the secretariat achieved efficiencies of scale, resulting in reduced program administration costs. The JRF portfolio consisted of five projects which drew from the MDF’s experience and used a phased approach to address: (1) Transitional Housing; (2) Restoring Housing and Community Infrastructure; and (3) Restoring Livelihoods. The World Bank had a supervisory and oversight role on all JRF projects as the partner agency. JRF Contributions JRF Donors Contributions (US$ million) European Union 51.17 Government of the Netherlands 12.00 Government of the United Kingdom 10.77 Asian Development Bank 10.00 Government of Canada 6.53 Government of Finland 1.99 Government of Denmark 1.60 Total Contributions: 94.06 21 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and The JRF Portfolio The JRF portfolio followed a phased approach to reconstruction, adopting lessons learned from the MDF. Early support focused on meeting housing and community recovery needs and subsequent support focused on addressing economic recovery. The JRF prioritized disaster risk reduction in all its programs. Five projects were supported: • Transitional Housing Projects (2 projects totaling $2.3 million). The JRF financed two transitional housing projects, implemented by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and Cooperative Housing Foundation (CHF) International and managed by the World Bank. The projects provided nearly 5,000 transitional shelters. • The Community-based Settlement Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Project (1 project totaling $75.1 million), better known as Rekompak, made up most of the JRF funding allocation. Following the model established in Aceh, it used a community driven approach to rebuild homes and local infrastructure in earthquake affected areas of Yogyakarta Special District, and Central Java, and later, parts of West Java affected by a subsequent earthquake and tsunami. After the 2010 eruptions of Mount Merapi, the project was expanded further. Implemented by the Ministry of Public Works (MPW) and managed by the World Bank, the project rebuilt over 15,000 houses and completed over 4,000 local infrastructure projects. • Livelihood Recovery Projects (2 projects totaling $17.1 million): - The Livelihood Recovery in Yogyakarta Special District and Central Java project contributed to the Government of Indonesia’s initiatives to assist micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) affected by the earthquake to revitalize their businesses and re integrate affected low-income communities into economic life. The project provided access to finance, developed loan work-out strategies for defaulting borrowers, restored capacity and improved competitiveness of medium-sized companies in Yogyakarta and Central Java. The project was implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and managed by the World Bank. - The Access to Finance and Capacity Building for Earthquake Affected Micro and Small Enterprises project, implemented by the IOM and managed by the World Bank, supported the recovery of micro and small enterprises in Yogyakarta and Central Java to enable them to reach their pre-earthquake capacity. It provided asset replacement, marketing support, and techical assistance. The project worked with over 4,000 micro and small enterprises (MSEs), over 40 percent run or owned by women. 22 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Executive Summary Reconstruction processes in the wake of a disaster are a window of opportunity to address gender and other social inequalities. Disasters create legitimate reasons to do things differently: to introduce new polices, programs and legislation and support progress towards women’s empowerment and gender equality. Both men and women are vulnerable to disaster impacts, but gender inequalities create distinct disparities. For example, women suffer more seriously from psycho-social trauma, long-term displacement, loss of homes and jobs and chronic poverty. Following recent disasters in Aceh, Nias and Java, work and care responsibilities increased dramatically for women survivors. Women were less able to access information or to share assets and benefits equitably with men, and were less likely than men to have their voices heard in setting the agenda for reconstruction. The experiences of the Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias (MDF) and the Java Reconstruction Fund (JRF) offer valuable lessons about strategies and actions to support gender equality, women’s empowerment, and mainstreaming gender sensitive approaches in reconstruction efforts. Experiences in Enhancing the Role of Women under the MDF and JRF Programs Improved and sustained outcomes in housing and infrastructure: Women’s active participation and greater control over decisions through community driven approaches led to positive changes in the design and selection of housing and local infrastructure. This improved quality and cost efficiency and increased ownership and satisfaction, thereby enhancing willingness to sustain and maintain new assets. Faster economic and livelihood recovery and increased productivity: Women made up over 40 percent of the workforce, working mainly in small and medium enterprises and in agriculture (often as unpaid family labor). Economic regeneration was accelerated by women’s participation in livelihood recovery. In Java, women managed nearly 50 percent of the JRF livelihood recovery supported enterprises. Strengthening of women’s legal rights: Women are particularly vulnerable to the loss of land and property rights post-disaster. Almost 30 percent of the land certificates issued in Aceh under the MDF were for women, strengthening the livelihood security of women-headed households, and opening up their access to credit and productive assets. A community driven approach to the adjudication of land rights was established, which has set future patterns for land adjudication. More representative decision making: Women’s active participation in local decision-making processes increased social cohesion and made local institutions more representative. Outcomes changed as a result, leading to an increase in provision of public goods such as water, sanitation and health clinics. Women reported positive impacts on the levels of women’s involvement in village and public affairs. Men recognized the benefits of women having a more active voice in public affairs. 23 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Enhanced resilience for women and communities: Women’s active involvement in reconstruction, community settlement planning, livelihood recovery and disaster risk reduction increased their resilience in case of future disasters. Women learned skills and gained knowledge that enabled them to build and maintain their livelihoods and cope with losses. Women were more responsive than men, for example, to the importance of earthquake safe construction practices and principles, and to build soft skills such as knowledge networks, marketing, and business skills. Promoting Women’s Participation and Access to Benefits Experiences from the MDF and JRF reveal a number of opportunities as well as challenges for advancing gender equality in decision making and benefit sharing. Access to information can be a major barrier to women’s participation. Throughout the reconstruction process, community meetings and notice boards were the main mechanisms for information exchange and triggering women’s participation in reconstruction efforts. But in communities where levels of trust were low, and in those with higher levels of rivalries and factionalism, women’s ability to access information was highly dependent on their access to village leaders. More powerful members of communities controlled information flow, leading to dissatisfaction with access to information. Social capital plays a part in open information flow —the stronger the levels of mutual trust, the greater the circulation of information. Projects which tapped into strong local networks, particularly those linking women, were most effective in helping women to rebuild their lives by supporting women’s access to information. Psycho-social stress undermines women’s capacities to participate meaningfully in project activities. Infrastructure and economic development projects, which are a large proportion of post- disaster reconstruction, generally do not incorporate strategies and actions aimed at addressing the psychological impacts of trauma, and specific measures are needed to do so. One MDF project implemented by the Canadian Cooperative Association (CCA) focused initially on peace building, counselling and sensitization activities. Starting with small savings and loans groups, the project was able to build the trust, confidence and emotional security of participants to re-engage with profitable livelihood activities, and only later supported major economic development for women through cooperative development. A clear lesson is that building into a project a response to alleviate the impacts of psycho-social trauma will require extra time and resources. However, better understanding of the impacts of disaster will help identify respectful and sensitive starting points for different and incremental levels of support. Failure to do so will exclude the most affected women and will undermine potential benefits not only for the women involved, but for the overall recovery as well. There are trade-offs between operating at scale and ensuring participation of poor and marginalized women. Large-scale community infrastructure projects with ambitious delivery 24 Executive Summary targets often do not have the flexibility, time and resources to reach and involve poorer and isolated women meaningfully in decision-making. Such projects can, however, coordinate interventions with smaller organizations which have the mandate and capacities to work with marginalized women. The Kecamatan Development Project (KDP), for example, used non-MDF funds to support PEKKA (the Program for Women-Headed Households in Indonesia), a complementary program that worked exclusively with poor, vulnerable and marginalized widows. This enabled both projects to work to their strengths and bring a greater number of poorer women into community planning processes. Formal partnerships and linkages between projects to address gaps in delivery to marginalized and disadvantaged women is a smart investment. These partnerships improve project outcomes and open up space for strengthening the role of women in the overall reconstruction process. Strengthening women’s voice in reconstruction processes requires focused and active facilitation. Setting head count targets and encouraging women to be present and to speak is necessary for increased involvement of women, but not sufficient to empower them to exercise leadership. The impact of such targets alone on women’s ability to engage meaningfully in community planning and decision making is modest, leaving women, especially poor and disadvantaged women, consistently dissatisfied with their limited opportunities. When projects used active facilitation strategies (e.g., women-only meetings, a longer time spent on mobilizing women, women facilitators, or house visits) to enrich the quality of women’s participation, women’s role in project decision making and in implementation was enhanced. Support to build women’s skills and capacities for resilient livelihoods is an investment for the future. Livelihood and community recovery programs that committed time and resources to developing soft skills, such as knowledge networks, marketing, and business expertise, were more likely to build resilience among women, providing them with competencies, knowledge and skills to cope with possible future disasters. More needs to be done to ensure women’s equal participation in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). There were missed opportunities to harness women’s commitment to DRR in reconstruction interventions, and to involve them in sustaining community resilience for the future. Building the capacity of project staff to include gender mainstreaming in DRR planning or gender-sensitive communication strategies is necessary to optimize women’s impact in future reconstruction. Key Lessons for Promoting Women’s Equality through Reconstruction • Make gender equality a fully integrated objective of reconstruction strategies. Projects need to be designed and implemented with a clear objective to improve gender equality and women’s economic empowerment for better quality outcomes. Budgets should be realistic, gender equality linked to indicators and accurately monitored, and exit strategies must accommodate women’s needs. Specific gender-based actions arising from project objectives must be fully funded, supervised and evaluated. 25 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Rosmawar was able to set up her own kiosk and buy some land with a loan obtained through the Photo: MDF. Many women used microfinance capital to set up their own small businesses. Tarmizy Harva • Integrate gender analysis and gender-disaggregated data into post-disaster needs and loss assessments. Damage and Loss Assessment after the disasters need to be gender-sensitive for responsive programming to the different needs of men, women, boys and girls. This is critical so that: a) there is a shared baseline for implementing agencies, and b) information is available to mainstream gender issues into the national recovery and reconstruction strategy. • Develop sector-wide and theme-based gender analysis as early as possible after a disaster. Complementary to the Damage and Loss Assessment, sector-based gender analyses can inform early recovery and reconstruction and support better coordination and linkages between different sector interventions, and support the transition from recovery to development. • Strengthen operational gender expertise. A major gap for agencies working on reconstruction was the lack of experienced operational gender experts for post-disaster reconstruction, especially in housing and reconstruction. Such expertise is essential to mainstream gender into infrastructure and livelihood recovery projects. • Institutionalize gender in operational procedures, supervision and support systems. Routine and fully-budgeted supervisory support needs to include performance indicators and review, coaching and mentoring, and gender support networks. Operations manuals of implementing agencies should include clear guidelines for addressing gender issues in 26 Executive Summary A tsunami-affected homeowner in Aceh reviews her land title with staff from the National Land Photo: Agency. Almost 30 percent of land certificates issued under the MDF’s RALAS projcet were issued to Kristin women as sole or joint owners. Thompson management systems, operational procedures, and reporting, including monitoring and evaluation. • Provide funding for special programs with gender focus to complement regular reconstruction projects. More flexibility in funding for special initiatives to enhance gender-focused outcomes is needed. Examples include special programs to improve targeting to the poorest women or projects aimed at strengthening supervisory support for field based staff. • Mainstream gender equality objectives into procurement and contracting. Procurement measures can include, giving preference to tenders that include quotas in staffing to achieve gender balances at senior and junior levels, and are in compliance with gender mainstreaming requirements of the procurement authority. Standardized contracts can be extended to include clauses on gender balances in the hiring of the workforce, provide for gender parity in payment and remuneration, and include special measures for enabling women’s participation. 27 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and • Include quantitative and qualitative gender sensitive indicators in results frameworks. Future reconstruction efforts will benefit from stronger gender indicators tracking the quality of women’s participation and gender quality results in access to benefits and jobs, and need to go beyond gender disaggregated data. Conclusions Promoting women’s empowerment in reconstruction requires the commitment and effort of all stakeholders. Gender equality must be facilitated at every level – in the international aid community, in national and local government, and in projects and communities. Policies and encouragement are not enough; additional investment and support are needed to turn good intentions into outcomes. This is not just a moral obligation; it is quite simply “smart economics.” Everybody benefits. The experience of promoting women’s equality and empowerment was uneven in the MDF and JRF reconstruction processes, all providing lessons for the future. A range of good practice examples abound throughout the programs. At the same time, processes and mechanisms for actively involving women in decision-making and implementation could have been better institutionalized. Barriers to women’s involvement are generally high, but the costs of ignoring gender in disaster reconstruction are potentially enormous in terms of overlooked damages, needs and priorities that exacerbate poverty and inequalities. As good practice lessons from MDF and JRF project’s experiences show, when women are active participants in reconstruction with a voice to shape the design and management of reconstruction, there are better quality outcomes for everyone. Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 29 In the wake of a disaster, reconstruction processes are a window of opportunity to Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and address gender and other social inequalities. Disasters engender socially acceptable and legitimate reasons to do things differently: to introduce new polices, programs and legislation and support progress towards women’s empowerment and gender equality. The scale of the response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami provided a unique moment. The Government of Indonesia (GoI), in its commitment to “Build Back Better,” grasped the opportunity, first in Aceh and Nias and later in Java. Gender equality was one of the guiding principles adopted by the GoI and its donor partners in its reconstruction plans. Despite many constraints, advances towards gender equality were acknowledged in the reconstruction processes.1 This working paper documents best practices and lessons learned from the MDF and JRF’s experiences promoting gender equality and empowering women through post- disaster reconstruction. It focuses on a particular set of reconstruction interventions in Aceh, Nias and Java: community infrastructure, housing and livelihood recovery. The paper explores the level of gendered change and the extent to which women’s voices and agency impacted on reconstruction in the MDF and JRF funded projects. What is Gender Equality? “Equality between women and men (gender equality): refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men will become the same but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Gender equality implies that the interests, needs and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of different groups of women and men.” Source: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/conceptsandefinitions.htm 1 Pennells 2008; UNIFEM 2011; Care et. al. 2007 The MDF and JRF empowered women to take an active role in reconstruction. These women in Aceh were involved in early community- based efforts to clear debris and restore basic infrastructure. Photo: Kristin Thompson 30 1.1 Purpose and Focus of the Working Paper Chapter 1 - Introduction The purpose of the paper is a practical one: to contribute to international understanding about what works well or what doesn’t work in promoting women’s empowerment and gender equality in relation to community and livelihoods recovery in post- disaster contexts. These are interventions where women, particularly in housing and infrastructure, have frequently been marginalized in reconstruction processes.2 They are also areas where, because women’s roles have so frequently been undervalued, the potential for transformative change in terms of promoting gender equality, creating equitable and more representative decision making, and increasing economic productivity for women post disaster is greatest. The working paper focuses particularly on the experiences and lessons learned from projects in two outcome areas of the MDF and JRF funding portfolios: community recovery projects comprising eight projects which supported reconstruction and rehabilitation of community infrastructure—roads, drainage, housing and public buildings, and livelihood recovery projects, comprising four projects aimed at contributing to the GoI’s efforts to rebuild livelihoods post-disaster. All of these projects included elements in their design, implementation and institutional arrangements to promote the participation of women in project activities and as direct beneficiaries. The 12 projects selected for this paper are summarized below. MDF and JRF projects working to ensure women’s participation in disaster preparedness processes are also included in this study in order to ensure their lessons for future programs are captured.3 Three specific aspects are explored: • Participation in community planning and prioritization of needs – the extent to which women were able to raise their voices, make choices and take part on equal terms with men in decision-making processes during reconstruction. • Economic empowerment of women – the impact of women’s access to employment through labor opportunities in reconstruction. • The impact of women’s involvement on overall project outcomes in terms of influencing policy change in and design and implementation of reconstruction efforts. MDF and JRF Community and Livelihood Recovery Projects MDF – Community Recovery Projects: Under the MDF, there were five projects aimed primarily at the recovery of communities. Four of these used a Community Driven Development (CDD) approach and were supervised by the World Bank. Integral to the 2 Chew and Ramdas 2005; Delaney and Shrader 2000; World Bank 2012c 3 A literature review, stakeholder interviews and 25 participatory interest group discussions involving 207 women and 92 men in selected sites across Aceh, Nias and Yogyakarta and Central Java were carried out as research for the paper. 31 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and These women, members of a rice farmers group benefitting from the Nias LEDP, are proud Photo: that they could go “back to school” for technical training provided through the project. MDF LEDP organized women-only livelihoods groups in addition to mixed-gender farmers groups Collection such as the one in which these women are members. CDD approach are a range of mechanisms—block grants to communities to plan and build small-scale infrastructure, open and transparent decision-making between local government and communities, user-friendly complaint-handling mechanisms, targets for women’s participation as beneficiaries and staff—aimed at gender equitable community- led reconstruction. The biggest – the Kecamatan Development Project – a large and significant long-term project across rural Indonesia, had been active in Aceh since 1999 and also operated in Nias. The Urban Poverty Program was KDP’s sister project operating in urban and peri-urban municipalities. Like KDP, UPP was part of a wider project across Indonesia, operating in Aceh before the tsunami. Both KDP and UPP were scaled up in both the area and size of their operations under MDF support. A third community- driven project, the Community-Based Settlement Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Project (CSRRP), widely known by its Indonesian acronym Rekompak, envolved out of the UPP and supported the Goverment of Indonesia to rebuild housing and community infrastructure post-disaster in Aceh. The Nias Kecamatan-based Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Planning Project – KRRP used a combination of the KDP and Rekompak approach for housing and community reconstruction adapted to working in the remote, hard-to-reach rural areas of Nias. Another MDF project on community recovery was the Reconstruction of Aceh Land Administration System (RALAS), which aimed to support the reconstruction of property rights and issuing of land title certificates to women and men. The RALAS project also provided support to the reconstruction and development of land institutions in Aceh with attention to the land administration systems. 32 The MDF also funded three projects as part of its reconstruction of infrastructure, Chapter 1 - Introduction that contained elements of community participation combined with mechanisms to support the active participation of women in project activities. Two of these were the ILO implemented local road rehabilitation projects: Capacity Building for Local Resource- based Rural Roads Project (CBLR3), implemented in Aceh and Nias, and the Rural Access and Capacity Building Project (RACBP) in Nias. The third was the Tsunami Recovery Waste Management Programme (TRWMP) implemented in Aceh and Nias. TRWMP was developed to address the public health and environmental concerns of the disasters. It transitioned into a program focused on building capacities of local government for sustainable municipal solid waste management, creating long-term employment opportunities in recycling, and rehabilitating Aceh’s waste management infrastructure. JRF – Community Recovery Projects: Rekompak was replicated in Java under the JRF for housing reconstruction and community planning and reconstruction of community infrastructure. Building on successes and learning from the implementation lessons of Rekompak MDF, it focused on providing transitional shelters for the survivors of the earthquake and volcanic eruption, seismic-resistant permanent houses, community resettlement plans, and community infrastructure. MDF Livelihood Recovery Projects: MDF supported two separate projects. The Aceh Economic Development Financing Facility (EDFF) supported initiatives for economic development and poverty alleviation through development of a variety of key commodities. It also provided assistance to the Government of Aceh in project management and capacity building. The Nias Livelihoods and Economic Development Project (LEDP) facilitated post-disaster recovery and poverty alleviation, working through local government to empower and build the capacities of poor rural households to sustain livelihood opportunities. JRF Livelihood Recovery Projects: JRF funded two complementary projects aimed at supporting livelihood recovery in earthquake-affected areas in Yogyakarta and Central Java. The GIZ-implemented Livelihood Recovery Project supported micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) affected by the earthquake by providing access to finance, micro-credit and technical assistance. Gender inclusiveness was embedded in all components of the project with targets set for women’s participation, access to benefits and inclusion in the management and decision-making processes of the project. The IOM-implemented Livelihood Recovery Project in Java used a participatory community mobilization approach that provided training and technical assistance, business support, and replacement of equipment and tools. Women were targeted both as beneficiaries and as key actors in the capacity building activities to improve linkages between MSEs, local governments, NGOs and the private sector. 33 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and MDF and JRF Rekompak projects promoted women’s empowerment and participation in Photo: all aspects of community planning and decision making. Here a group of women display Rosaleen a model for the proposed reconstruction of their settlement based on the Community Cunningham Settlement Plan (CSP) which they helped their community develop after the eruptions of Mount Merapi. 1.2 Outline of the Working Paper Following the introduction, Section 2 examines gender issues in disasters and the different gender contexts in Aceh, Nias and Java. Section 3 considers the institutional responses to gender issues in Indonesia and specifically in the MDF and JRF. Section 4 explores the main lessons learned with regard to the role of women in community planning and the prioritization of needs. Section 5 addresses the experiences and lessons learned about women’s economic empowerment and the access to benefits under community and livelihood recovery projects. The final section looks ahead to the design of future post disaster projects and programs in the light of the lessons learned about the role of women in reconstruction under the MDF and JRF. Chapter 2 WHY GENDER MATTERS IN DISASTERS 35 Gender matters in disasters. Pre-existing structures, systems and social conditions Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and determine that natural disasters will affect some members of the population more, and in different ways, than others. Gender is one of the differences that influence how individuals are affected as well as their capacities to survive and withstand the impacts of disaster. While both men and women are vulnerable to the impacts of disaster, pre- existing gender inequalities create distinct disparities in how men and women are affected in the aftermath of disaster. Natural disasters, on average, kill more women than men, and women are likely to die from disaster impacts at a younger age than men.1 More women than men died in the disasters that hit Aceh, Nias and Java, creating long-term gendered demographic imbalances.2 In Aceh, it is estimated that two thirds of those who died in the in the 2004 tsunami were women, the majority of whom were young girls and older women. These women were most impacted because their childcare responsibilities and livelihood activities were at home, while men were more likely to be away from home. In Aceh, many of the men were fishing out at sea, and out of immediate danger.3 Cultural norms prevented many women from having learned to swim; when the wave hit, the attempts of women to save their children and the elderly prevented many of them from escaping the waves themselves.4 Of the major disasters covered by the MDF and JRF, only in the 2010 Mount Merapi eruptions were more of the fatalities men than women.5 Post-disaster, women—particularly poor and older women and those marginalized by, for example, ethnicity, culture, or belief—are at greater risk than men of psycho- social trauma, long-term displacement, loss of homes and jobs and chronic poverty.6 Increased rates of domestic violence, alcoholism amongst men and underage marriages are often recorded post disaster, all contributing to violations of women’s rights and their capacities to demand appropriate support and response.7 1 Neumayer and Plumper 2007. 147 natural disasters between 1981 and 2002 were analyzed. The study also found that when economic and social rights are realized for both sexes, disaster-related deaths for women are not significantly different to those of men. 2 Exact figures for the mortality rates of men and women do not exist. Estimations were largely based on the ratio of survivors. 3 Mazurana et al. 2011 4 UNIFEM 2006 5 Government estimates suggest high mortality levels amongst men after the Mount Merapi eruption was mostly due to the fact that more men remained behind in the danger zones to safeguard property and livestock. Almost all women and children evacuated to safe areas. 6 ILO 2000; WB 2011b; UNIFEM 2006; Pennells 2008; GoI 2011; Chew and Ramdas 2005. 7 Chew and Ramdas 2005; ILO 2000 A group of women in Nias constructing a village road. The local resource-based approach for rural roads construction used in two projects implemented by the ILO provided women with opportunities to learn new skills and engage in paid work that had not been open to women before. Photo: Akil Abduljalil 36 Taking into account the differences in impacts on women, as well their differing needs, Chapter 2 - Why Gender Matters In Disasters rights and contributions, is increasingly recognized as essential for planning effective post-disaster recovery and reconstruction.8 Gender matters because gender-blind responses that overlook what the realities of disaster mean to both women and men risk perpetuating existing inequalities and reducing the impacts of reconstruction. Gender roles can and do change post-disaster as a result of death, displacement, loss of possessions and social connections and even, as happened in Aceh, loss of the whole community. Post-disaster aid may either further women’s equality or undermine women’s rights if pre-existing gender dynamics are not fully understood and addressed. In the three areas of Aceh, Nias, and Java the conditions, roles and responsibilities of women and men were very different and significantly affected women’s abilities to access support and take part in reconstruction processes. These differences were not fully appreciated by external agencies in their interventions, a concern explored in later sections. 2.1 Women in Post-Disaster Aceh Thirty years of conflict in Aceh profoundly affected gender relations. While outside agencies attempted to make distinctions between conflict and tsunami-affected areas, for the Acehnese there was no real distinction. Most households in some way had been affected by both the impacts of the conflict and the tsunami. While men had a higher profile during the conflict, women’s roles, both direct and indirect, were often overlooked. Women were involved sometimes as combatants or as front-line support, and more frequently in maintaining their communities and households as well as providing shelter and support for combatants when they returned home. Pre-tsunami, an estimated 23 percent of households were women headed, significantly higher than the national average of around 11 percent.9 Conditions for women were harsh; their mobility was restricted by curfew, road blocks and fear. The conflict exposed women to high levels of gender-based violence. Social networks were severed, trust within and between communities broke down and women’s already traditionally limited public roles became even more restricted. Both women and men suffered high levels of psycho-social trauma due to the conflict that was compounded by the devastation of the tsunami. Post-tsunami, political space opened up, enabling the ending of the conflict. In August 2005, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the GOI and the Aceh Independence movement. The resulting peace process ran in parallel with reconstruction. Over time the BRR encouraged greater donor involvement in areas of Aceh not immediately affected by the tsunami, given that the whole province was affected in many ways. 8 World Bank 2012c; UNIFEM 2006; ILO 2000 9 Vianen 2007 37 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Community-based reconstruction projects such as Rekompak encourage and facilitate Photo: the participation of women. Holding separate meetings for women helped ensure that Kumala Sari women’s voices were heard. In 2002 Syari’ah law in Aceh was officially recognized by the GoI. The law strengthened the role of the Ulama, or Muslim clergy, in determining and influencing issues relating to religious, cultural and educational affairs. Depending on how the law was interpreted at local levels there were significant impacts on women’s lives. In some parts of Aceh, for example, reports indicated that curfews for women had been introduced, as well as the policing of “inappropriate dress and behaviors” by women.10 Acehnese women, particularly unmarried women, were traditionally involved in unpaid subsistence work in agriculture or fisheries. At the time of the tsunami there had been a noticeable shift for women from unpaid work to self–employed, low-profit work. These were often in informal home-based micro enterprises because of childcare and household responsibilities. Limited access to markets and capital as well as restricted mobility during the conflict had greatly limited livelihood opportunities for women outside the home.11 10 Nowak and Caulfield 2008 11 Vianen 2006 38 2.2 Women in Post-Disaster Nias Chapter 2 - Why Gender Matters In Disasters Gender relations on Nias Island are patriarchal and deeply unequal. Men control assets, decision making both domestically and publically, and dominate wage employment. Women have no customary inheritance rights, work predominantly as unpaid family laborers on the family farms and plantations, and have limited access to education and health services. Illiteracy rates for women are high—on average 40 percent, rising to 70 percent in remote rural villages. Men control expenditure within the household; women can only spend the money they actually earn, largely through petty trading. There are very few opportunities for women to work in the cash economy; less than 40 percent have waged work.12 Underlying the gender inequalities is the tradition of dowry (jujuran) or bride wealth. Before marrying, men will pay jujuran of between 70 -100 million rupiah in gold, goods and money.13 Jujuran shapes gender relations. Women are perceived as a commodity— the property of their husband’s family—and are expected to work for the family including taking responsibility of paying off the jujuran debt. While jujuran is slowly dying out in urban areas and among the better educated, it remains a strongly held tradition in rural Nias where the majority of the population lives, significantly contributing to gendered inequalities and livelihood insecurity. The isolation and poverty of Nias have resulted in high levels of out and circular migration among men and younger women in search of jobs and a better life. Older women with family and childcare responsibilities are left behind, but without the powers to control household income and expenditure, or engage in public fora. High rates of gender-based violence are reported, but exact figures are difficult to quantify. 2.3 Women in Post-Disaster Central Java and Yogyakarta Gender relations in Central Java and Yogyakarta are understood in terms of domains. Women are highly influential in, and at times control, the private domain of home and household. Men dominate the public domain of work, politics and community decision- making. Economic growth, changes in patterns of employment and urbanization have all contributed to blurring the boundaries between these domains, particularly in the urban areas of Yogyakarta and central Java. Nevertheless, “… women in Javanese society are... (still) known as a man’s ‘koncowingking,’ or the husband’s ‘friend in the back’.”14 This sense of different domains has influenced the role women play in public decision making. It is expected that they will be represented by their husbands, but that the husband will have been influenced by the women in the household in relation to the 12 Salkeld 2007 13 Families will sell assets including land holding and significantly impoverish themselves in order to meet the bride price, especially poor rural families whose daily income is typically 25,000 Rupiah per day (Salkeld 2007). 14 JRF Annual Report 2009 39 views he holds and the decisions he takes. When there is no husband, women are largely Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and absent or silent within public fora, especially in rural areas. Within the household women have a great deal of control over household budgeting and expenditure and maintain their own assets (gold or livestock, for example). Women expect their husbands to give them the income from employment or the sale of assets. Women play an important role in maintaining household security, working as unpaid family labor, or as day laborers on farms. Many rural households, owning little land, have diversified livelihood activities into low profit home-based industries in order to survive. These industries, such as batik making, running food stalls, and mobile catering, to name a few, are dominated by women, who were severely impacted by the loss of their livelihoods post-disaster. While there are high levels of out and circular migration by men in rural areas, women are less able to move because of childcare responsibilities, restricted public networks and, for poorer women, lower educational levels. The result is high numbers of de-facto women-headed households; in some of the communities affected by the earthquake and volcanic eruptions, over 30 percent of the households were headed by women.15 The tradition of “gotong royong” (self-help and mutual cooperation) is strong in central Java and played a significant role for both men and women in accelerating livelihood recovery. However, in some communities, particularly those displaced by the disaster, there was evidence that “gotong royong” was under considerable strain, causing social tension and distrust between community members.16 These social tensions impacted most on the poorest and most disadvantaged—mostly women, who, as a result, experienced difficulties in accessing information about, and support for rebuilding their lives. External agencies did not necessarily respond to the changing dynamics or adjust their intervention strategies, thus sometimes inadvertently reinforcing social divides and exclusion. 15 Herianto et al. 2007 16 Malau and Pennells 2008 Chapter 3 GENDER ISSUES IN THE RECONSTRUCTION RESPONSES 41 Women are frequently portrayed as passive victims of disaster. Evidence indicates Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and otherwise: women actively fight for their communities’ survival.1 Despite the trauma, women are able to maintain their normal responsibilities, more so than men, who in some cases are violent or manic in response to post-disaster trauma.2 Women mobilize their own formal and informal social networks and kinship groups to meet needs, organize shelter and care for affected members of their extended families. In the immediate aftermath of disasters in Aceh, Nias, and Java, women survivors were essential partners with men in their communities, taking responsibility for the sick and injured, supporting children, foraging for food, finding water and keeping the household together. Their designated social roles as caregivers and nurturers naturally extended to risk management, to secure life and to maintain the life support systems. “We were all frightened and traumatized, both men and women. We worked together to protect our family, and looked after the children. It wasn’t just the men doing the work. We took it in turns to keep our houses safe, and both men and women went looking for food. In fact it was us women who were most active in finding food. The men were too frightened to go to the farms.” Women’s Participatory Interest Group Discussion (PIGD) Nias Island The emergency response post-tsunami did not consult women effectively and as a result, the subsequent design and implementation of reconstruction efforts in many cases did not adequately address women’s needs. Damage and loss assessments3 (DALA) were mostly conducted by male-dominated teams relying on information 1 Enarson and Hearn Morrow, 1998; World Bank 2012a 2 Chew and Ramdas 2005 3 These are sometimes also referred to as Damage, Loss and Needs Assessments (DLNA) Home-based industries were greatly affected by the earthquake that hit Yogyakarta in May 2006. The JRF’s livelihoods recovery programs provided an opportunity for women to learn new skills and develop business opportunities that helped them increase incomes and build their confidence to engage more actively in their communities. This woman is part of a group of weavers who produce a traditional cloth called lurik. Photo: IOM Collection 42 from primarily male-headed households.4 There were some improvements after the Chapter 3 - Gender Issues in the Reconstruction Responses 2006 earthquake in Yogyakarta and Java, but the DALA processes remained male dominated with limited consultations with women. In both disasters no clear sex and age disaggregated data was collected. This created a critical gap in developing programming responsive to the different needs of men, women, boys and girls, one that was not entirely closed during the reconstruction process. Emergency operations coordinated through the Government of Indonesia in Yogyakarta before and after the Merapi eruptions in 2010 learned from the earlier experiences and collected more comprehensive sex-disaggregated data which was used to better target assistance.5 The Merapi emergency response also benefited from the earlier coordination mechanisms to ensure gender sensitivity in emergency response such as the gender working group, set up by the government during the earthquake in Yogyakarta and Central Java. A well-organized civil society, working in cooperation with government, consulted widely with women and men survivors. As a result women volunteers and police officers were strongly represented in the emergency operations, a contributory factor explaining the lower levels of gender-based violence compared to other disaster situations.6 The disasters and subsequent response presented an opportunity for change in the lives of some women: a chance to access benefits in their own right, earn money and demand support for themselves and their families. However, the sudden influx of support, which was not always distributed equitably between households and between women, fuelled existing social tensions and created jealousy between those women who gained project-based benefits (cash, equipment and training) and those who did not. The lack of social and gender analysis by external agencies prior to extending support often led to the poorest and least connected women being excluded from the more lucrative benefits of reconstruction.7 3.1 Promoting Gender Equality in the Reconstruction Responses There were strong commitments to promote gender equality and integrate gender concerns into the rehabilitation and reconstruction process for Aceh and Nias. The Government of Indonesia’s Master Plan for Rehabilitation and Reconstruction made gender a cross-cutting issue with a focus on improving the economic opportunities for women and the special needs of women headed households. But, driven by the “tyranny of the urgent,”8 and under enormous pressure to respond quickly with huge 4 Government of Indonesia 2011 5 Malau and Pennells 2008 6 Government of Indonesia 2011 7 Salkeld 2007 8 Delaney and Shaffer 2000 43 amounts of resources, attention to gender equality objectives were not prioritized in Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and reconstruction. As a result, gender equality objectives came after other commitments, such as rebuilding the infrastructure. Donors and civil society, especially women’s advocacy organizations in Aceh, played a significant role in bringing gender issues back to the forefront of reconstruction efforts once the emergency phase was over in Aceh and Nias. In April 2006, concerns about limited progress led the BRR to establish multi-stakeholder gender working group to develop a gender strategy. BRR’s “Promoting Gender Equality in the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Process” strategy document was launched in September 2006. It confirmed commitments to gender equality and outlined a gender mainstreaming strategy in the formulation of policies, planning and implementation in all sectors, including economic development and infrastructure. The BRR Gender Policy was a significant milestone for the mainstreaming of gender equality perspectives and women’s concerns into the GoI’s goal of “Build Back Better”. It aimed at improving equality after reconstruction by transforming gender roles and relations. Key components of the strategy with the best opportunities to progress transformational change were the focus on: • women’s empowerment – ensuring women’s active participation in reconstruction efforts, and • women’s economic empowerment – promoting women’s access to economic opportunities and an emphasis on equal distribution of economic resources. These are the two areas that, globally, are the most challenging elements of gender equality to address9 and in Indonesia are the two areas of gender equality where progress had been slow overall.10 However, the gender strategy was only partially put into action. BRR’s division for Women’s Empowerment was tasked with coordinating, supporting and supervising the implementation of the policies and strategies formulated in the strategy. BRR also had a gender specialist and senior-level technical support from UNIFEM. However, the operational structure of BRR meant that BRR’s gender competence was largely at the margins of the reconstruction process, limited to specific women’s empowerment issues. The women’s empowerment unit had few resources and little influence on large-scale interventions, into which MDF funds were channeled,such as housing, infrastructure, and economic development. These 9 World Bank 2012a 10 Schaner 2012 44 sectors suffered from a lack of clearly articulated gender equality objectives linked to Chapter 3 - Gender Issues in the Reconstruction Responses a budget and gendered outcome indicators. Moreover, there was reluctance within these sectors to focus on activities specifically targeted at women as this was seen as counter to mainstreaming, although specific actions targeted at women can be both complementary to and reinforcing of gender mainstreaming activities.11 These issues reduced the effectiveness of efforts to ensure an operational gender focus in implementation. The gender commitments made in Aceh and Nias were carried forward to the relief and reconstruction responses after the earthquake and volcanic eruptions in Central Java and Yogyakarta. Gender equality commitments were again made in the master plans for rehabilitation and reconstruction. There was no specific overall gender strategy and local government and line ministries were responsible for implementing the Master Plan, including the gender equality objectives. Based on lessons learned from Aceh, mechanisms to operationalize these commitments were set-up at an early phase of the disaster response. Gender working groups, for example, were established much earlier in the recovery phase. In practice, however, the gender working group had limited influence over housing and reconstruction. Coordination mechanisms between the different areas of support proceeded with inconsistent and under-supported gender equality focus, missing opportunities to promote a gender equality framework. 3.2 Gender Mainstreaming in the Reconstruction Responses Mainstreaming of the gender equality objectives proved challenging in all three reconstruction processes. A number of factors help explain why. No common understanding of what mainstreaming a gender equality perspective meant in post-disaster reconstruction: Lack of institutional understanding and the need to implement quickly undermined any consistent efforts to mainstream gender equality issues. Only projects with pre-existing gender action plans such as the MDF- supported KDP and UPP projects or those with strong institutional incentives, such as health and education or the JRF-supported GIZ livelihoods recovery project did so. However, it’s unrealistic to expect technical experts such as engineers or managers to implement policies they don’t fully understand; they deserve guidance and technical support. There are two aspects to this. Firstly, it is necessary to identify specific activities within each sector that support progression towards women’s empowerment and gender equality. The BRR’s strategy paper provided a set of actions and an intention 11 World Bank 2012a 45 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and All of the MDF’s community driven projects made provisions for including women’s Photo: voices in community planning for reconstruction. Schedules were sometimes adjusted to Vicki accommodate women’s household and childcare responsibilities. Peterson to take them forward but without the resources and technical expertise to do so. Secondly, the process of gender mainstreaming is a holistic one requiring investments in capacities, programming resources and the systems and mechanisms for diagnostics, supervision, monitoring and staffing. It also takes time. Lack of time was cited as the primary reason for not mainstreaming gender in design and early implementation, even in projects designed years after the initial disaster when speed of delivery was no longer an issue. Yet international experience indicates that gender sensitivity speeds up rather than slows down transition from relief to reconstruction and transition to development.12 12 Byrne and Baden 1995; Delaney and Shaffer 2000; World Bank 2012c and d 46 Chapter 3 - Gender Issues in the Reconstruction Responses What is Gender Mainstreaming in Disaster Rehabilitation and Reconstruction? Mainstreaming gender into disaster recovery and reconstruction is “…the process of taking into account the needs, concerns and capacities of women, men and other gender groups in disaster planning and disaster response”13 Gender mainstreaming requires a cross-cutting approach. Effective gender mainstreaming requires an analysis specific to gender, context and sector intervention; for example, taking into consideration the gender dimensions of livelihood recovery in central Java or the analysis of the differential needs, concerns and capacities of women, men, boys and girls for housing reconstruction. Gender mainstreaming also encompasses policy and operational procedures and requirements, and institutional processes, mechanisms and systems which extend to both staffing arrangements and the monitoring of disaster reconstruction practices. Limited sex disaggregated data and gender sensitive indicators: Sex and age disaggregated data and gender-sensitive indicators are the basis of effective gender- sensitive monitoring. Neither was explicitly required in the three master plans for rehabilitation and reconstruction. In Aceh, for example, only four of the BRR’s 191 key performance indicators asked for sex disaggregated data. These were output level indicators about the number of women reached.14 Little changed in Yogyakarta and Java: headcount statistics remained the way of tracking women’s involvement. Specific indicators tracking women’s empowerment or progress towards gender equality objectives were not in place. Moreover, information gaps around governance, gender equality, participation and governance in all program areas undermined capacities to track progress towards women’s empowerment and limited the effectiveness of the reconstruction response. An evidence base from which to tailor programs to the specific needs and vulnerabilities of men and women needs more than numbers. It needs explicit gender performance and outcome indicators and a requirement for sex/ age disaggregated data in all sector programs. Implicitly, it needs gender competencies supporting all programs. 13 United Nations Economic and Security Council E1997. Line 30. Paragraph 40 14 Pennells 2008, 14 47 Insufficient human resources devoted to gender mainstreaming: A major gap across Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and the GOI and agencies working on reconstruction was the lack of experienced operational gender experts for post-disaster reconstruction, coupled with the low numbers of women in senior positions, particularly in infrastructure and housing. A common frustration for project staff, including community facilitators, was that they wanted to do more to facilitate women’s empowerment, for example, but lacked the practical skills and expertise to do so. Gender expertise, when available, was often focused towards gender advocacy, essential but not sufficient to mainstream gender into infrastructure and livelihood recovery processes. A further constraint­ —particularly in Aceh and Nias where local capacities were much weaker than in Java—was the unintended dilution of capacities of local civil society organizations (and to some extent what was left of local government) with operational experience in implementing gender-sensitive programs. The better working conditions and salaries of international organizations led to the most experienced staff leaving and few opportunities for local organizations to replace them or strengthen their own institutional gender capacities. The implications for long-term sustainability are profound. Gender equality mechanisms cannot be institutionalized through individuals; strong organizations that can carry forward the lessons learned post- reconstruction are necessary. Women’s empowerment, for example, takes time, much longer than the typical 2-5 year timeframe of reconstruction projects. It needs structures in place to nurture, sustain and build on gains made. A lesson for future disasters is that mechanisms which require short-term projects to work through local NGOs will be more effective in sustaining advances in gender equality. 3.3 Gender and the MDF-JRF Gender and strengthening the role of women in reconstruction through promoting women’s empowerment was one of the cornerstones of MDF and JRF policies guiding project approval, monitoring and review. The Recovery Assistance Policy (RAP) of the MDF, approved by its Steering Committee, outlined the actions that projects were expected to take in order to promote gender concerns in design, implementation and monitoring.15 However, the structures, systems and capacities of both the MDF and the JRF were not optimized to promote gender equality or actively support projects to meet their gender objectives. The lack of an overarching gender-mainstreaming strategy within the funds themselves linked to a dedicated budget and staff resources certainly limited the ability to pro-actively advance gender equality concerns within the project portfolios. Neither program employed a dedicated gender technical advisor within their secretariats. Despite the availability of funds and a high level commitment to gender mainstreaming, the absence of in-house gender expertise limited the ability to operationalize a gender focus across the program. By design, the MDF and JRF relied on their partner and implementing agencies to provide the 15 MDF. Recovery Assistant Policy. March 2006 48 gender expertise and oversight. This was challenging in practice: these agencies also Chapter 3 - Gender Issues in the Reconstruction Responses did not have adequate full-time gender specialists as resources for the projects, and time and resource constraints meant that gender monitoring and oversight was not applied consistently across all the projects in the two portfolios. There were a number of posible interlinked actions which could have been implemented that would have strengthened considerably the gender dimensions of MDF and JRF’s portfolios. These include: Explicit gender equality objectives: The majority of the community and livelihood recovery projects did not explicitly identify gender equality objectives in their design. This meant that there was no defined gender objective for the activities A handicraft producer knitting a handbag from agel leaves in Tuksono village, Yogyakarta. Photo: Home-based industries run by and employing women were supported through livelihood IOM projects financed by the JRF. Collection 49 implemented, even when there were stated actions such as women only meetings, Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and targets for women’s participation or gender trainings and capacity building. The lack of gender equality objectives meant that both financial and staffing resources were limited or time constrained because gender equality activities were subsumed under broader objectives. It also resulted in weakly defined gender-sensitive indicators and monitoring processes. Results Framework informed by gender baselines and indicators: A social and gender baseline provides the means to measure gender progress and with it the changing role of women in reconstruction. It allows the results frameworks to be tailored to context and realistic gender-sensitive outcomes and indicators in accordance with projects. Neither fund established their own gendered baselines, relying solely on the data from the damage and loss assessments and funded projects. However, with few exceptions (KDP, UPP, GIZ Livelihoods recovery and TRWMP for its livelihoods component) project baselines, when they existed, had little in the way of socially disaggregated or gender- specific data. Social and gender indicators were also inconsistent and not necessarily aligned with the Results Frameworks which were also inadequate in gender sensitive indicators. Where they did exist they were often output-and target-orientated (e.g. number of trainings, number of women participating in meetings, etc.). A required mix of output and outcome indicators providing gender information on, for example, gender equality, participation, and women’s empowerment would have been much stronger. The lack of such indicators led to under reporting of positive gender-focused results. For example, innovative approaches towards strengthening information flows to women in project areas that enhanced the level and quality of women’s participation under the Capacity Building for Local Resource-based Rural Roads (CBLR3) project were not adequately reported and captured in results frameworks. Conversely, some projects had no formal data for analyzing changes in women’s voice and agency. Less than 50 percent of the Aceh Economic Development Financing Facility (EDFF)’s sub- projects had a gender baseline or gender-sensitive indicators. They were unable to provide gender sensitive data that would have allowed EDFF to assess the extent to which women’s empowerment had been progressed by project activities. Practical operational gender technical reviews of projects: An acknowledged weakness of the technical reviews was the generic, abstract gender review of project proposals. Donors often took the lead, through the MDF and JRF’s Technical Review Groups (TRG), in ensuring a gender focus was incorporated into project proposals at review and approval stage. While donor attention had a positive impact in supporting improved attention to gender in project designs, this is not the most effective way of operationalizing a commitment to gender focus in projects. External agencies like donors by necessity can only play a limited role. They cannot and should not be available for routine technical guidance on gender issues. This was the role of the partner agencies, but with no mechanism to enforce compliance and few internal resources devoted to gender within the secretariats, the operational aspects of addressing gender were often overlooked or not fully incorporated into the design, systems and processes of projects. 50 Gender focus in operational manuals: Operational manuals are the key organizational Chapter 3 - Gender Issues in the Reconstruction Responses document in government departments and international agencies for ensuring gender and social inclusion issues are addressed. Clear guidelines and steps about what to do and how to do it in relation to any social and gender objectives in the project design need to be laid out in the operational guidelines. If this does not happen, capacities and resources to meet those objectives are severely undermined. The lack of such information in operational manuals is a major reason why lessons learned about what works in strengthening the role of women in reconstruction are not institutionalized and embedded in agency practice. Neither the MDF nor the JRF embedded gender issues in their own operational manuals. Nor were there mechanisms to enable secretariat staff to review and monitor project operation manuals. KDP, UPP, KRRP, Rekompak, and the GIZ livelihoods recovery project all integrated gender issues in their operational manuals. The other projects either omitted gendered guidelines or addressed them partially, for example, in community mobilization processes or staffing. Accountability mechanisms: There are three key administrative tools for empowering policy prescription and making attention to gender issues mandatory in disaster reconstruction: Memoranda of Understanding (MoU), procurement, and contracting. Gender equality objectives were not mainstreamed into any of these instruments for the MDF and JRF, resulting in weak institutional capacities to hold implementing agencies and projects to program policy, or project objectives relating to gender. In the absence of such formal accountability mechanisms, however, joint monitoring missions with donors and partner agencies were a valued way of informally influencing attention to gender and social issues. Gaps in gender mainstreaming in the first phase of ILO’s CBLR3 project were addressed in this way, leading to changes in project strategy, and a considerable increase in women’s involvement in the project’s subsequent phase. However, the process was highly dependent on the interests and capacities of donors and managers. Gender mainstreaming was often a low priority for the government agencies implementing these projects in a difficult reconstruction setting in which they faced significant implementation challenges beyond mainstreaming gender. The role of the funds: Based on the institutional structure of MDF and JRF, ensuring that gender equality was promoted and gender issues were mainstreamed was not the responsibility of the Steering Committee or secretariat. Partner agencies and the Government of Indonesia (which was represented by BRR in the case of Aceh and Nias) had more direct responsibility for ensuring that projects addressed gender and the role of women. The role of the funds and specifically their respective secretariats was one of oversight and supervision. However, this may have been a missed opportunity to provide a strategic overview for gender issues and a coordinating role between their different projects. 51 Despite the constraints in mainstreaming gender in the reconstruction processes, Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and significant advances were achieved in enhancing the role of women in the MDF and JRF programs. Policies changed—the GoI’s championing of women’s legal rights through the joint titling initiatives is one example. Programs changed—for example the acceptance of women’s employment in non-traditional areas such as road building. Attitudes towards women’s roles in reconstruction also changed with a growing awareness inside and outside of government of women’s right to participate as leaders and shapers of reconstruction. These developments are explored in the following sections. A key lesson learned is that future reconstruction programs will need systems, capacities and staff focused on gender issues to support women’s empowerment. More effective oversight requires a pro-active staff in place with the competence to generate and support explicit gender quality result statements, gender-focused performance indicators, clear operational guidelines and strong accountability mechanisms. Putting these resources and mechanisms in place from the outset of every reconstruction program will provide the institutional support to allow women to play a greater role in future post-disaster recovery situations. Chapter 4 WOMEN’S VOICE: THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN DECISION MAKING, COMMUNITY PLANNING AND PRIORITIZATION OF NEED 53 Ensuring that women have an active and meaningful voice in community planning and Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and the prioritization of needs is a recognized challenge in post disaster reconstruction.1 The urgency of disaster response sometimes overrides policies that exist to ensure women are empowered to participate actively in planning and implementation. This is particularly true for infrastructure, where the push for speedy delivery of essential infrastructure undermines gender equality in planning and delivery.2 This section explores the strategies and processes used by MDF and JRF projects in their efforts to address the challenge of ensuring women’s participation and to strengthen the role of women in community planning and the prioritization of needs. It looks at what worked and what was less successful in supporting women to access information about reconstruction opportunities and strengthening women’s voice, agency and, participation. In spite of structural and operational challenges and limitations, the MDF and JRF projects by and large had positive experiences in these areas. 4.1 Women’s Access to Information There is no easy way to improve information flows to women. Projects depend on village leaders and community facilitators to spread information. In post-disaster situations where communities have been displaced and social cohesion fractured by loss and trauma, reaching women is doubly difficult. Work and care responsibilities increased dramatically for women survivors in all three regions. They were the primary support for sick and frightened children, the injured and elderly and for keeping the household functioning.3 All of these responsibilities gave women, especially the poorest women and those heading households, little time to attend community meetings or participate actively in reconstruction. Mobility and security, always barriers to women’s participation, become major stumbling blocks to accessing information. Road and pathway blockages increase fears of accidents or attack and make it difficult to move around or get to community meetings. Poor and isolated women are especially disadvantaged because of their social and spatial distance from village leaders. 1 See for example: ILO 2000; Pan American Health Organization N.D. ; World Bank 2012c 2 For a detailed review of the MDF’s experiences in implementing post-disaster reconstruction of large infrastructure see Multi Donor Fund 2012a 3 Asian Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development 2005; Malau and Pennells 2008 Women like Ibu Dalimini became more empowered and confident as they contribute to their household incomes through the production and marketing of eco-friendly batik. Photo: GTZ collection 54 Achievements Community Planning and Prioritization of Need Chapter 4 - Women’s Voice: The Role of Women in Decision Making, Projects which tapped into strong local networks, particularly those linking women, were most effective in supporting women’s access to information that could help them rebuild their lives. Social capital plays a part in open information flows—the stronger the levels of mutual trust, the greater the circulation of information. In Java, as the text box below describes, community facilitators linked into the villages’ own innovative information system to bring women information about project activities. On Nias, recognizing that the women were not learning about work opportunities open to them through community meetings, RACBP spread the word through the Sunday church services, which are heavily attended by women. Notices were read out in church and facilitators waited outside churches to talk to women about project opportunities. KRRP facilitators, in one large peri-urban neighborhood in Nias, went to choir practices, attended predominately by women, to ensure that women received information about housing reconstruction. “Barefoot Texting” - Getting Project News to Women In one Central Java village, JRF project teams found an extraordinary yet practical way to get information to women who were often hard to reach: through mobile ice cream sellers. The dynamic community leadership helped turn these vendors, present in every village, into a vital community asset offering a “barefoot texting” service. Village leaders and project facilitators called the ice cream sellers together when there was community news or important project information to disseminate. Once briefed, the vendors called out the messages as they walked through the village selling ice cream. In this way, women and children who wouldn’t normally attend village meetings or check information boards were able to access important information about reconstruction projects for their communities and their families. Challenges Getting access to information was a major barrier to women’s participation in MDF and JRF projects. Throughout the reconstruction process, community meetings and notice boards remained the main mechanisms for information exchange and triggering women’s participation in reconstruction efforts. But in communities where levels of trust were low, and in those with higher levels of rivalries and factionalism, women’s ability to access information was highly dependent on their access to village leaders. A community score card on access to information on MDF project activities in Aceh and Nias revealed that over 70 percent of the women surveyed, most of whom were poor or living in isolation, felt dissatisfied about their access to information about reconstruction projects. They rarely attended community-wide meetings and it was the more powerful members of their communities who controlled information flows. In Central Java, a group of landless women commented: 55 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and The MDF’s Aceh Economic Development Financing Facility (EDFF) helped farmers like this Photo: woman improve cocoa production and increase their incomes. Mosista Pambudi “We live in the north of the village; it’s too far from Pak Lurah’s house (head of the village); we don’t have time to go and look at the notice board and nobody comes to tell us women what is happening.” PIGD, Central Java In Nias, the remoteness of communities and the poor infrastructure made accessing information for women especially difficult: “We don’t get much information. We didn’t know what was happening, unless our husbands told us. The distance makes a difference. The further away from the village head the harder it is to get to know about projects to get support. Meetings were at night and we couldn’t get to them; it was too far, too dangerous to go out and anyway we couldn’t leave our families.” Women’s PIGD Nias 56 Projects missed opportunities to capitalize on locally generated innovations by Community Planning and Prioritization of Need Chapter 4 - Women’s Voice: The Role of Women in Decision Making, mainstreaming into project systems. No project, for example, had gender-specific communication strategies, addressing the different information needs of men and women. Even those that used women-only meetings to organize project activities relied on community-wide meetings and the largely male village and hamlet leadership to circulate project-wide information or trigger initial involvement in reconstruction efforts. 4.2. Women’s Voice, Agency and Participation Defining Agency and Voice Voice and agency are closely-linked terms. They refer to the ability to speak out, be heard and take action. “Agency is about one’s ability to make choices and to transform them into desired outcomes. Across all countries and cultures there are differences between men and women’s abilities to make these choices, usually to women’s disadvantage”.4 Voice is shorthand for a process of dialogue, communication and negotiation. Those who have voice can negotiate for their own benefit, and in some cases, the benefit of those they represent. People who have no voice (many women, for example) have no power. Gender inequalities affect women’s ability to express their opinions and concerns or participate in decision-making which affects their lives.5 Agency and voice are instrumental in empowering women and progressing gender equality. Women’s agency influences their abilities to build up their social networks, enhance their human capital and take up economic opportunities. Their ability to raise their voice together to make choices and decisions, for example in determining priorities for community reconstruction, has the potential to transform gender relations and by extension, society.6 Women’s involvement in traditionally male fields such as construction, starting small businesses and contributing to discussions on reconstruction or community settlement planning are all areas that can potentially increase women’s agency, their decision-making skills and legitimacy to speak out and be heard in public fora. 4 World Bank 2012a, 32 5 Brocklesby et al. 2010 6 World Bank 2012a 57 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and The JRF and MDF livelihood programs helped transform women’s livelihoods in the Photo: aftermath of disasters. This woman, a member of a batik producers’ group in Central Java, IOM went from being a pieceworker to businesswoman with JRF’s assistance. Collection Strengthening women’s voice in reconstruction processes requires focused and active facilitation. Setting head count targets and encouraging women to be present and to speak is necessary for increased involvement of women, but not sufficient to empower them to exercise leadership. The impact of such targets alone on women’s ability to engage meaningfully in community planning and decision making is modest, leaving women, especially poor and disadvantaged women, consistently dissatisfied with their limited opportunities. When projects used active facilitation strategies to enrich the quality of women’s participation, not only did the overall number of women involved increase, their role in project decision-making and implementation was also strengthened. Achievements Higher levels of women’s participation benefitted the whole community. Women’s active participation led to higher levels of satisfaction with the quality and design of both community infrastructure and private housing. Rekompak projects in all three regions for example, recorded higher satisfaction rates than other housing projects. In Java, 97 percent of all community participants surveyed in an evaluation were satisfied with rehabilitated housing and infrastructure. 58 Women’s participation led to changes in priorities, design and delivery of projects. In Community Planning and Prioritization of Need Chapter 4 - Women’s Voice: The Role of Women in Decision Making, Rekompak, women’s involvement led to changes in housing design, such as kitchen areas and sanitation; in KDP/KRR/UPP women’s participation led to a broadening of priorities from roads and ditches to water supply, sanitation and health clinics. IOM’s livelihood recovery project, after listening to the priorities and needs of women, changed meeting times and delivery of trainings across their implementation. In fact, IOM transferred responsibility for catering during training to local women, adding to income opportunities in the area. “It’s different now, better. Women talk more in meetings. It’s good to have their ideas; their thinking is different and it helps us make better decisions.” Men’s group, Nias Island Active involvement of women increased local institutional representativeness and social cohesion. In Java, for example, a post-project survey of IOM’s livelihood recovery project showed positive impacts on the levels of women’s involvement in village and public affairs with substantial decision-making powers of women to have increased from nine percent to 21 percent according to IOM’s 2012 post-implementation impact survey. Men recognized the benefits of women having a more active voice in public affairs. Participation in community recovery strengthened women participants’ social solidarity and networks. Involvement in building their houses, constructing roads or community infrastructure, helped women regenerate and expand their social networks which had been fractured or destroyed by disaster and conflict. This was particularly true in Nias and Aceh where extreme gender disparities had constrained women’s mobility and circles of friendship and support. Thirty years of conflict in Aceh had compounded women’s isolation and restricted their involvement in most forms of public life. Building new friendships through projects built social capital and was a valued part of the healing process. “We have friends now; the project brought us together with women from other villages. It has increased our confidence and solidarity. Before (during the conflict), we never left our village; it was too dangerous. Now, we can move about, it’s easier, knowing we have friends from outside.” Women’s PIGD group Aceh “We have built friendships and relationships with women we didn’t know before and they will last, making us stronger.” Women’s PIGD Group Central Java 59 Strategies that Worked Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and The projects’ insistence on including women in leadership committees and setting targets for levels of women’s participation led to higher levels of women’s participation than in comparable projects. The trend across all projects was towards greater gender equality in decision-making with approximately 25 percent of village management leaders being women. There were differences between projects and within projects between different communities relating to the different contexts and social dynamics of communities. In Aceh and Nias for example, there were disparities in women’s participation between different districts in TRWMP’s cash-for-work program. Overall (in 13 districts) women comprised 19 percent of the 700 workers—the daily average, but women were highly visible in Aceh Barat (48 percent), Aceh Besar (42 percent) and South Nias (42 percent). However, in Aceh and Nias, by 2007, more than 1.1 million women (over 65 percent of the total) had participated in community-level planning activities of MDF post-tsunami projects according to the MDF 2007 progress report. The KDP project recorded average participation levels of 46 percent for women in Aceh, significantly higher than the 30 percent government targets. In Java, both livelihood recovery projects exceeded their initial targets of 30 percent representation of women. About 44 percent of the GIZ and 42 percent of the IOM beneficiaries receiving technical assistance under the JRF livelihoods recovery projects were women and close to 57 percent of the micro-credit borrowers were women, significantly higher than the percentage of women involved in government income generating projects. Women-only meetings built confidence and agency. In post-disaster situations women’s agency is severely constrained and opportunities to facilitate women’s empowerment compromised by weakened organizational capacities or limited resources. In these circumstances, women-only meetings are an important mechanism for strengthening women’s agency. The projects which institutionalized women-only meetings in implementation had, for example, higher levels of women’s participation and provided a space for women to develop the skills and confidence to engage actively in mixed public fora. “I learned to be strong in the women-only meetings, to give my opinions. It helped when we met together in community meetings (with men). The other women supported me and I felt brave to speak out. Everybody listened; they took me seriously.” Central Java women’s PIGD The level of women’s participation in Rekompak increased significantly in Aceh once women-only meeting were established, a lesson taken forward to housing reconstruction in Java. Only the CDD projects (KDP, KRRP, UPP, Rekompak) under the MDF and JRF did this. The other projects relied on special training sessions for women or maintained joint men and women’s meetings. 60 The cultural and social barriers for women to speak out in all three regions made it Community Planning and Prioritization of Need Chapter 4 - Women’s Voice: The Role of Women in Decision Making, especially difficult for poorer women to exercise their voice in these settings. The two local-resource based roads projects—CBLR3 and RACBP—did not organize separate meetings for women, and women reported they didn’t participate fully in the project meetings. As a result women often felt unable to ask directly for information, seek support or make complaints through project structure. “ We would have liked separate meetings for women, so we can be free to talk, to give our opinions; when we are in general meetings with men, we can hardly speak, even though we do get some time specially for us to speak during meetings, we are not brave enough to speak out.” Nias women’s PIGD Projects that adjusted the time taken to mobilize and engage women were more effective in supporting women’s active participation. Creating a secure and enabling environment for women to engage as active participants in community decision-making after a disaster takes time. Time enables socialization processes to be more flexible, to include house-to house visits and working within remote neighborhoods or the places women congregate. In Aceh and Nias, projects initially underestimated the amount of time needed to mobilize and build the confidence of women, who rarely attended community meetings. The extra time burdens of women and other context-specific constraints were not necessarily factored into mobilization processes. Changes could be made. TRWMP, for example, adjusted its mobilization period by months in its first phase of implementation in order to reach women and men, which increased overall participation rates. The application of this lesson was uneven across projects. Project systems and ambitious targets for delivery make it difficult to change procedures. In Java, the IOM livelihood recovery project, for example, recognized that the time allocated for assessment selection and socialization of women was insufficient to support active participation. While unable to change procedures under JRF funding, it has established a longer period for socialization in its follow-up projects. In CDD projects, such as KDP or Rekompak, operational guidelines set out the days available for mobilization and engagement. These can only be changed formally and at national level. When community cohesion is strong and the village leadership committed to women’s involvement, the time allocated is enough. In more challenging communities, the lack of time led to a focus on meeting the 30 percent head count target at the expense of facilitating women’s voice and agency. “We had to get the houses built in a certain period of time. Sometimes it was just too difficult to get women actively involved. We just didn’t have the time to reach them and bring them to meetings. As long as we got the [women’s] signatures on the list and met the 30 percent target it was OK.” Rekompak staff member 61 There are trade-offs between operating at scale in reconstruction and ensuring the Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and participation of poor and marginalized women. Large scale infrastructure projects, like Rekompak, KDP, UPP, and KRRP with ambitious infrastructure delivery targets, did not have the flexibility, time and extra resources to reach and involve poorer and isolated women meaningfully in decision-making processes. In Aceh, for example, the normal planning cycle (in non-disaster areas) for KDP was shortened to enable faster delivery of much-needed assistance. This compromised facilitation processes and led to lower participation levels and involvement of the poorest women. Big infrastructure projects do have possibilities to coordinate interventions with smaller organizations with the remit and capacities to work with marginalized women. However, there were few examples of this kind. KDP was an exception. It used off-budget non-MDF funds to support a complementary Program—PEKKA—which worked exclusively with poor, vulnerable and marginalized widows (see box bellow). This enabled both projects to work to their strengths and bring a greater number of poorer women into community planning processes. However, other large scale infrastructure projects such as Rekompak could not take advantage of this linkage. Their village selection criteria, requiring that they were the sole large scale housing project, while aimed at avoiding duplication, forced PEKKA to exit villages where the bigger housing projects worked. While overall more houses were built, the unintended consequence was that the most vulnerable and marginalized were unnecessarily excluded. The lesson for future reconstruction processes is that formalized partnerships and linkages to address gaps in delivery to women is a smart investment. It improves project outcomes and opens up space for strengthening the role of women in the overall reconstruction process. Strengthening Support for Poor and Highly Vulnerable Widows In Aceh, the Program for Women Headed Households in Indonesia—PEKKA— offered KDP a complementary approach to large scale infrastructure programs and providing a route for highly vulnerable women to begin to exercise their voice in public, including in community planning processes. Funded directly by the Japan Social Development Fund, it was implemented and linked into the KDP. With over 1,200 members in Aceh, the project aimed not only to provide micro- credit for small businesses and scholarships for child education, but also training in vocational and leadership skills. The aim was to empower highly vulnerable women in Aceh. These women were already often marginalized within their own communities and, post-tsunami, were becoming more marginalized with the implementation of Shariah law. PEKKA had a clear focus on empowering women, not just economically through livelihood support, but also socially. From the start, PEKKA had the aim of ensuring that a “rights” perspective was equally valued alongside the project’s other development goals.7 7 Stakeholder Interview and “Indonesia Women Headed Household Program (PEKKA)” available at: http://www.worldbank.org/ pekka and “The Widows of TampoekBlang” available at: http://go.worldbank.org/Q4FBFYK2407 62 Strategies that Fell Short Community Planning and Prioritization of Need Chapter 4 - Women’s Voice: The Role of Women in Decision Making, There are limited strategies for increasing the voice and agency of poor and disadvantaged women. The general experience of poor and disadvantaged women throughout the reconstruction process was as project beneficiaries and not as active participants in community planning.8 Leadership positions were largely held by women of higher social status, or who were relatives of the male village leadership. Effective targeting for promoting active inclusion of poor and marginalized women requires careful analysis of the social differences between women: the context-specific barriers faced by poor, marginal and highly vulnerable women (e.g. status, ethnicity and family circumstances); and implementation strategies linked into robust monitoring systems as well as ongoing training and support for staff. Only KDP and UPP conducted the kind of analyses needed to address social exclusion. The majority of projects in the MDF and JRF portfolio had gender training for staff and/or contractors. However, training and support systems did not address for example power imbalances within communities or specific A Tale of Two Villages In one village in Central Java, Rekompak’s support was hugely beneficial for women participants following the earthquake of 2006. The women reported their satisfaction with the project: “With the housing assistance we feel happy, safe and comfortable... our village is better; we have an evacuation walls, retaining roads and we know what to do if there is ever another earthquake.” Women were actively involved in the design, implementation and monitoring of the reconstruction processes. In a meeting with some women from the Rekompak group, their pride and confidence in their new knowledge and skills was obvious. Separate meetings, strong support from Rekompak facilitators to help women get their views across and engage activity in reconstruction, and the village community settlement planning process were critical to women’s empowerment. Underpinning the whole process was a strong, dynamic village leadership. The village head, and unusually a female hamlet head, were determined that everybody—women and men—should be involved in building their village back better. For them, it made no sense to treat men and women differently: their village was an area of high out- migration with many homes run by the women left behind. To leave women out of the planning and decision making for reconstruction would have unnecessarily excluded households and eroded the strong spirit of “Gotong Royong” (cooperation and mutual support) holding the community together. It was a different story in another village in Java. Devastated by the eruption of Mount Merapi in 2010, the community was forced to abandon their homes and start again in a different location some distance from their home village. 8 Aceh Community Research Project 2005; Care et. al. 2007; OPM 2009 63 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Slowly, they began building back their lives; but women’s participation in the reconstruction process was limited. They were largely satisfied with the support they got for building their houses, but knew little about the processes of planning, implementing and monitoring. “It was mainly the men who did the building, not us. We helped a bit.... We talked about what we wanted with our husbands and they represented us at community meetings. We never had a separate meeting for women, or if there was, we never heard about it.” The women did not feel they had an active role in reconstruction and worried that they were ill-prepared for the future. “We would have liked to be involved in community settlement planning, but there wasn’t any and no, we didn’t have any evacuation drill training.... It would help; if we know what to do we can help protect our families, ourselves and our communities. If we don’t know what to do we will just panic.” The remoteness of the village, coupled with a short time frame for reconstruction, undermined the amount of time Rekompak’s facilitators could give to community facilitation or supporting women’s involvement. Equally, the village leadership had little interest in actively involving women. The 30 percent target for women’s representation in project meetings and the requirement that a woman was included in the leadership team were viewed as conditions that had to be met in order to get external support. As they admitted: “They [women) don’t talk much [at the meetings] and it’s more important they attend community meetings when there are issues important to them like child health.”9 techniques for addressing equity between women and reaching marginalized women. There is also no way of knowing precisely how far most projects were able to reach and include poor and marginalized women as project monitoring systems, even when indicators were sex disaggregated, as project monitoring systems’ did not track wealth or social differences between different groups of women. Gender sensitive accountability: Accountability is not gender neutral. Women and men use different strategies and mechanisms to raise concerns or hold projects to account. Hotlines, texting complaints and complaint boxes—the standard methods of formal complaint—are more problematic for women. Partly this is because their access to information is more limited. Women much more than men were uncertain of their rights to hold projects to account, make complaints, or seek redress. A review of accountability mechanisms in the MDF reported that most women, particularly poorer and disadvantaged women, were unaware that complaint boxes or hotlines existed.10 Cultural norms and expectations of women’s role in communities also prevented women from vocalizing their concerns. 9 PIGDs with women and men and field notes 10 OPM 2009 64 Community Planning and Prioritization of Need Chapter 4 - Women’s Voice: The Role of Women in Decision Making, Hermawati, a civil servant in Banda Aceh, supervised the construction of her own Photo: earthquake-resistant house, where she lives today with her husband and children. In Nur Raihan spite of the horror of the disasters, she feels safe in her new home. Strengthening women’s access to information and building trust through women-only meetings and trainings was far more effective in opening up space for women to raise issues and voice any concerns about project activities. “We never complained; we were all scared we would get called stubborn or aggressive, so we kept quiet.” Women’s PIGD Aceh Strategic responses to social and gender dynamics. Globally, few interventions embed systems and mechanisms designed to optimize women’s voice and agency in post- disaster situations where the barriers to women’s involvement are high and there are few or no positive drivers for women’s participation in reconstruction processes.11 Key contextual drivers for women’s active participation include, for example, strong dynamic village leadership, social and cultural acceptance, good local facilitators, the absence of men because of migration or conflict or the presence of charismatic women leaders in communities. The level and quality of women’s participation is often highly 11 ILO 2006; Delaney and Shaffer; Chew and Ramdas 2005; ALNAP 2006 65 dependent on these drivers. When the drivers are few, the same project, using the same Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and implementation processes, will have very different outcomes. In these circumstances, as the story of two villages in the box featured illustrates, women may be involved, but as passive beneficiaries rather than active decision-makers and shapers of project interventions. The challenge for projects is in addressing the social and gender dynamics which cause these disparities. A number of lessons emerged from the experiences of the MDF and JRF: • Context specific gender analysis is essential to support projects to develop and tailor their facilitation processes. This is because it helps identify drivers for and barriers against, women’s participation and develop context-specific strategies. Only KDP and UPP consistently undertook context-specific analysis and adjusted their strategies. UPP, for example, after early difficulties in engaging with women post-tsunami, began to post their community facilitators within communities to enable closer contact and rapport building with all sections of communities. • Invest in staff capacities to facilitate women’s empowerment processes in challenging contexts. Investing in the capacities of community facilitators was recognized as one of the most valuable expenditures for effective implementation. In all projects, greater investment in the form of support and mentoring was given to the hard skills – engineering, business development and marketing for example – rather than the soft skills of engagement and facilitation. In practice the balance tipped towards facilitating the delivery of outputs and away from the process of empowerment. Both are equally important and require appropriate investments. Gender training and sensitization were not followed up with supervision, coaching and monitoring, which undermined the steps made towards enhancing the quality of facilitation processes. • Flexible budgetary mechanisms enable pro-active responses to disparities in levels of participation. In the large infrastructure projects such as the CDD programs or TRWMP that operated through government, it became clear that front-line government staff follow rules and guidelines set nationally; they do not have the mandate to reallocate resources or staff to address disparities in implementation plans or build capacities to address implementation weaknesses. In Aceh for example, implementation challenges in Aceh Besar – including engaging women participants – were much higher than in Pidie. Levels for women’s participation in Aceh Besar fell well below the 30 percent target. However, KDP could not move more staff into Aceh Besar or alter the time allotted for mobilization for each community without parliamentary approval. Off- budget support to the PEKKA program was one solution. 66 Ensure women’s equal rights to participation in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Community Planning and Prioritization of Need Chapter 4 - Women’s Voice: The Role of Women in Decision Making, planning. There were missed opportunities to harness women’s commitment to DRR. The average participation of women was low at 25 percent - lower than the more typical 30 percent target for women’s participation in reconstruction projects. Many women, often the poorest, and women-headed households were left out of the DRR discussions, particularly in Yogyakarta, Central Java and Nias. Setting head count targets of less than 50 percent missed the opportunity to ensure key actors – the women – were fully aware and involved in sustaining community resilience for the future. Leaving women out of Community Spatial Planning (CSP) and DRR planning also undermines women’s rights. The Indonesian Law no. 24/2007 on disaster management explicitly promotes non- discrimination of all citizens in protection and participation in DRR planning and decision- making. Bringing women into DRR on equal terms with men to ensure all citizens’ rights are fulfilled will require proactive, gender sensitive mechanisms.12 “ We (women) should be equally involved in disaster preparedness. What will happen if we don’t know what to do? There should be separate meetings for the women, and then we will know what to do. We can protect our families, ourselves and our communities.” Women’s PIGD Yogyakarta Strategies for targeting and including women as equal partners were only fully articulated in the MDF’s DRR-Aceh project. DRR-Aceh had a robust gender mainstreaming plan and senior-level commitment to involve women in community-level DRR. Strategies included house-to-house visits, holding meetings with women with their children present, and working through trained women facilitators. Experience showed that even with these measures, involving all women, especially those most vulnerable to the impacts of disaster (poor and marginalized women, the elderly and disabled), was challenging. Greater investment in time and resources, (for example in supporting staff operationalizing gender mainstreaming in DRR planning or gender-sensitive communication strategies) will be necessary if such inclusion is to be improved. 12 The National Action plan for Disaster Risk Reduction 2010-2012 refers to Law No.24/2007. The plan includes gender mainstreaming in one chapter but does not promote gender mainstreaming for the entire plan (GOI,2011) 67 Key Lesson Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and The key lesson from MDF and JRF is that strengthening women’s voice and agency in community planning requires focused and active facilitation. Setting targets, encouraging women to be present and to speak promotes increased involvement of women but is insufficient to encourage decision making and leadership in reconstruction processes. Longer time for mobilization, robust support systems for facilitators and investments in identifying and overcoming the barriers to women’s participation are all needed, if women are to be empowered to engage meaningfully in reconstruction. Chapter 5 WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT: INCREASING ACCESS TO RECONSTRUCTION BENEFITS AND JOBS 69 Typically, in disasters men’s access to the benefits of reconstruction is greater than Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and women’s. Women are less likely to receive direct government or donor assistance in their own right, normally receiving benefits as part of a household. Men’s livelihood recovery is also given higher priority than women’s. Through gender stereotyping the types of jobs available are held to be men’s work: housing, road building; infrastructure development generally benefits more men than women. Men are likely to be more mobile, moving away from their home area to seek job opportunities; women’s household and reproductive duties restrict their ability to seek work.1 In consequence, women’s economic empowerment is compromised and they recover more slowly from the economic impacts of disaster. The story is not that different for post-disaster Aceh, Nias and Java. Livelihood gains were modest and economic insecurity increased with the highest economic losses faced by already poor and economically insecure women. In Aceh, for example, more than 80 percent of men had recovered paid employment by 2008, while less than 50 percent of women of working age were earning income in the agriculture or other sectors of the cash economy.2 In Yogyakarta and Central Java, poor women, over-represented in low- profit home-based industries, suffered the double loss of their homes and livelihoods after the earthquake. Poverty levels increased in both Aceh and Nias while nationally poverty levels were decreasing. Rural women working on family farms lost one of their few income earning opportunities, sometimes for years, because of land degradation post-tsunami. Women headed and orphan-headed households were significantly impoverished with least access to work or income earning opportunities.3 Despite the modest gains for women’s economic security post-disaster, there were some successes across the projects within the MDF and JRF portfolios in empowering women through access to infrastructure and livelihood opportunities. This section explores the range of tangible benefits women gained from their involvement in the MDF and JRF community and livelihood recovery projects. There were two distinct areas in which women benefited: • Economic Empowerment – access to jobs, income, housing, equipment, materials, skills and knowledge • Building resilience - decreasing women’s vulnerability to the impacts of disaster and future disaster. 1 Nowak and Caulfield 2008; Correia 2001; PAHO N.D.; World Bank 2012c. 2 TRIPP 2008 reported in Pennells 2008 (32) 3 ACARP 2007 Technical assistance provided under the MDF’s Economic Development Financing Facility helped farmers, including this woman in Nagan Raya, Aceh, improve their crop yields, and their incomes. Photo: Mosista Pambudi 70 This section also explores the challenges livelihood and community recovery projects Increasing Access to Reconstruction Benefits and Jobs Chapter 5 - Women’s Economic Empowerment: faced in building resilience and supporting women’s economic empowerment. Lessons for future reconstruction processes are identified. 5. 1 Women’s Economic Empowerment Women’s legal rights were strengthened through the provision of joint land titling. After a disaster, women are highly vulnerable to the loss of land and property rights. Existing gender inequalities and male bias in government departments can lead to women losing their claims and being dispossessed of their land and property.4 A well- functioning, gender sensitive approach to land and property rights is recognized as critical for maintaining social cohesion, protecting the rights of women and facilitating equitable access to housing and other property assets in post-disaster situations.5 The RALAS project, although it faced significant implementation challenges, established women’s rights to land titling, a right hitherto not enjoyed in Aceh. A total of 222,628 land certificates were distributed of which 63,181 were issued in the name of women or jointly in the name of women and men. Land certificates for women accounted for almost 30 percent of the total issued. Efforts to safeguard land rights for women helped strengthen the livelihood security of women-headed households, opening up access to credit and productive assets for them. BPN, the Indonesian Land Agency, also pioneered a community driven approach to the adjudication of land rights, in collaboration with local NGOs, which has set patterns for land adjudication that can be applied in future disasters. Women’s livelihood recovery was accelerated and income boosted beyond pre- disaster levels. The best practice livelihood recovery projects demonstrated that careful investment in market analysis, business development and expanding women’s business networks with local government and financing agencies can yield good results despite the challenges of working in post-disaster reconstruction environments (see box following). IOM’s support to a women’s batik producers group in central Java, for example, turned the group, which comprised 169 women batik makers, from being low paid piece-workers for large businesses into business women in their own right. Investments in equipment, skills and business development has transformed them into highly skilled batik producers targeting the high-quality batik market and selling nationally and internationally, with an annual turnover of IDR 19 million or about $2,100. Pre-disaster, individual batik producers were content with a monthly income of IDR 50,000-IDR 60,000, five or six dollars. The project has brought substantial increases in income to these women along with their sense of empowerment. 4 World Bank 2011; Fitzpatrick 2008a 5 World Bank 2011a 71 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and “...we learned how to build a house. Now we know what to do. We didn’t know before and certainly never thought it possible. Imagine, women like us …ibu rumah tangga (homemakers) … can learn how to build a house. It’s usually a man’s job.” Women’s PIGD Central Java The Women of Koperasi Wanita Serba Usaha Hareukat Poma Koperasi Wanita Serba Usaha Hareukat Poma, a women’s cooperative supported through PESAT (Integrated Social Economy in Aceh) produce Emping Melinjo – a small crisp cracker – for sale around their district. They are supported by the Canadian Cooperative Association in partnership with an Acehnese NGO, PASKA, under the umbrella of the Aceh Economic Development Financing Facility project (EDFF) . Since joining the PESAT project, the cooperative has received an emping press for cracker production, as well as training in small business development and marketing, and on women’s rights and gender. Production of the emping has increased eight fold since the start of the project in 2010. The membership has grown to nearly 200 members. Job opportunities for women are few in this part of Aceh. The Koperasi has given women choices, allowed them to build a business and start to diversify their livelihoods. Small loans are also given to individual women to start their own businesses such as small food stalls, shops and selling clothes. Incomes have risen from about IDR 300,000 to IDR 500,000, or around $30 to $50 per month. Women acknowledge they benefit from far more than just the business opportunities: “I only got as far as junior high school; now I feel I am getting an education. There were many projects that came after the tsunami. This one was different. It gave us lots of information, lots of meetings for women. We had lots of training and support. And we gained hope for the future. Women are starting to know their rights, to speak out. Life has changed for the better”.6 Income, skills and capacities for women in non-traditional work areas increased significantly. The two ILO road projects—CBLR3 and RACBP, as well as the CDD projects KDP, UPP, KRRP—demonstrated nationally in Indonesia that women can work to the same standards and quality as men in challenging post-disaster situations. They have 6 Brocklesby 2010; and field notes. 72 set a benchmark for the active recruitment of women, particularly poor women and Increasing Access to Reconstruction Benefits and Jobs Chapter 5 - Women’s Economic Empowerment: women headed households, into short-term reconstruction projects. In Aceh and Nias in particular, income earning opportunities for women are few and for poor women heads of households, working on road building and maintenance is a significant opportunity to earn money. Women’s main concern was that the work was not permanent. In house building, women’s hands-on involvement through Rekompak (although not consistent in all locations – see chapter 4) was highly valued by women for the new skills and capacities they developed. Women’s economic security was strengthened. Livelihood recovery programs and reconstruction jobs which committed time and resources to building soft skills such as knowledge networks, marketing, and business skills, went beyond livelihoods recovery. They provided women with the skills and knowledge for greater economic security and in the long-term more resilient livelihoods. Whatever crises or disasters may happen in the future, women in these projects feel they now have the competence, knowledge and skills to cope with and mitigate against losses. For women, capacity building and technical assistance were perceived as their asset building for the future, (for example, TRWMP’s An-Nisa project or the women’s involvement in small business cooperatives in Aceh under EDFF). A woman batik producer, supported through the IOM livelihoods recovery project, observed: “We were given help through training, new knowledge, equipment, not money. That’s much better. These are assets that stay with us. You give us money, you give us credit and we will spend it on life, then it’s gone and we have nothing left.” Women’s PIGD Central Java Women packaging emping crackers. Improved quality control, marketing and promotion Photo: helped the women of Serba Usaha Hareukat Poma Cooperative sell their products across Tarmizy Aceh and Medan. Harva 73 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and The Women of An-Nisa The women of An-Nisa’Wal Athfal meet every day in three locations across Aceh Barat, one of the areas of Aceh worst affected by the disaster. These women gather to make handicrafts from recyclable material such as coconut fiber, cloth, and pandanus leaves. An-Nisa is much more than simply a business to sell handicrafts; it brings together disadvantaged poor women to improve their lives and the lives of their families. These foundation in Aceh’s west coast was selected for support under the MDF’s Tsunami Recovery Waste Management Program (TRWMP) and implemented through TRWMP’s partner, Terre des Hommes. “Our focus is on the housewife,” said Dasni Husin, founder and executive director of An-Nisa’Wal Athfal. “No one is concerned for them. We give them knowledge and training so they can help themselves.” Today, orders are pouring in for the handicrafts. Coconut fiber mats are their most popular item, but pandanus leaves tissue boxes come in a close second. The demand was so great for the handicrafts that the women have opened a new store with a prominent showroom and visibility in the community.7 Challenges to Promoting Women’s Economic Empowerment Opening up new space for women in the cash economy and non-traditional areas of work. The new job opportunities for women in all three regions were few (e.g. waste recycling, roads maintenance and brick making). Most livelihood opportunities for women centered on their traditional domestic roles such as handicrafts, snacks and cake production.8 Projects—particularly the EDFF in Aceh and LEDP in Nias, could have supported more activities that open up new spaces in the cash economy and non-traditional areas of work for women. In Aceh, for example, the post-tsunami housing boom provided women with less than half of one percent of their livelihood opportunities. In Nias, the only sector which saw more than a rise of one percent in job growth for women was the service sector.9 Infrastructure and housing were two areas where potentially jobs for women could have been created; building on their involvement in community infrastructure projects. RACBP’s site supervisors’ training for road construction and maintenance on Nias offers one successful example. It was targeted at both young women and men, but 50 percent of the applications were women, demonstrating a clear interest by women for work in a non-traditional area. However, less than 30 percent of the final trainees were women; the rest failed to meet 7 Wright, L. 2012. Pulling the Purse Strings: The Economic Liberation of Women in Aceh Barat. http://wml4aceh.wordpress.com 8 Care et. al. 2007; Alnap 2006; Malau and Pennells 2008 9 TRIPP 2008 reported in Pennells 2008 (32) 74 the technical requirements for entry because they, through entrenched discrimination, Increasing Access to Reconstruction Benefits and Jobs Chapter 5 - Women’s Economic Empowerment: had lower educational attainments than the male applicants. Lengthening the period of training and providing extra inputs to bring women up to the same standard as the men could have helped to improve this situation. Men who had worked on roads with women in Nias commented: “Yes women can be supervisors, they could do the same as men, they could do it with training and long apprenticeships. Look at ILO (RACBP): it has taken on women as staff after they have worked on the roads and learned what to do. More could be supervisors, they just need to learn.” Men’s PIGD Nias Supporting sustainable businesses and livelihoods for women. The best practices for supporting women’s livelihood recovery were not applied consistently within projects and across all projects. The lacks in systems and processes to enhance women’s voice and agency (gender analysis, support systems for staff, monitoring and evaluation etc.) negatively affected project abilities to systematically support livelihood recovery for women. Additionally, as the following box illustrates, there was too little attention to the viability, sustainability and potential for expansion of businesses for poorer women and women living in areas where livelihood opportunities were already limited pre-disaster, with only constrained access to markets. Too often, time was not invested upfront in market and gendered livelihood analysis,10 or the challenges women face in translating training, capacity and financial support into a sustainable livelihood. Getting the timeframe right for women’s livelihood recovery. In challenging environments, in normal development processes, two to three years of support—the average length of time for most livelihood recovery projects—is considered too short. In post-disaster environments, when women’s ability to recover economic security is known to be more time consuming than men’s, the short time frame significantly undermines progress towards women’s economic empowerment and ultimately sustainability. Successful interventions either had much longer time frames, for example CCA’s PESAT project which worked for seven years with its constituents and made a clear distinction between recovery and development, or the project was aided by highly context-specific factors, as in the case of IOM’s batik group in Kebon Indah village, Java, which boasted a niche product based close to existing markets. Talented women with the potential to upgrade their skills and a dynamic supportive local leadership willing to invest in women’s livelihood development. Introducing innovative non-traditional opportunities will take even longer. The An-Nisa group started immediately post-tsunami and built up slowly. TRWMP’s successful intervention with women waste pickers began through 10 A general lesson learned from the post-reconstruction processes in Aceh, Nias and Java, has been the need to coordinate baseline livelihoods and economic data collection and market analysis across a sector and through donors. This will be more effective in establishing the context for livelihood recovery efforts. 75 cash-for-work in the immediate recovery phase and continued into livelihoods recovery, Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and transforming women waste pickers from day laborers into independent women running their own recycling businesses, a timeframe of seven years. One staff member observed: “Any innovative activity requires at least two or three years of support upfront before starting on serious business development, compared with something people have done all their lives... We underestimated the socialization; we underestimated the time it would take.“11 Looking forward, the lessons from Aceh, Nias and Java suggest that livelihood recovery interventions for women with the potential to progress economic empowerment and sustain gains need to: • Start early within six months post disaster and develop incrementally; • Be based on a gender-focused livelihood analysis, and have defined gender end objectives and exit strategy; • Focus initially on building confidence, skills and knowledge; and • Expand activities in phases over a five to seven year time frame, distinguishing between recovery, strengthening economic security and developing sustainable livelihoods. Protecting women’s land and property rights: The institution of joint land titling was an important step towards establishing women’s land rights as central to gender equitable reconstruction processes. Overall in Aceh, close to 30 percent of land titles were issued solely or jointly to women, although the number was much lower in some areas.12 The environment was highly challenging in Aceh. As a consequence of 30 years of conflict, there was a deep distrust of government institutions and their legitimacy especially in relation to tenure and land ownership. The situation was compounded programmatically by limited gender-sensitization, no gender mainstreaming strategy and no initial analysis of the gendered nature of land and tenure regimes in Aceh which prevented RALAS from capitalizing on the opportunities for strengthening women’s land rights post-disaster. 11 Interview given to the social sustainability review team of the MDF (OPM 2008). 12 While the overall figure was close to 30 percent, in some parts of Aceh, the figure fell well below 10 percent (Fitzpatrick 2008a). 76 Increasing Access to Reconstruction Benefits and Jobs Chapter 5 - Women’s Economic Empowerment: Sustaining Livelihoods Benefits In 2010, women in Jemowo Village, a remote village some 20 kilometers from the nearest town in Central Java, decided to start up a snack producers business producing cassava chips for sale with support from a JRF livelihood recovery project. Cassava chips are a much in-demand snack throughout Java, for daily consumption and for weddings and other social occasions. Four separate groups were established involving women from all income groups and hamlets in the village. The project provided IDR 1.5 million or $150 to buy equipment and IDR 500,000 or about $50 as capital start-up costs, divided equally between women, to buy supplies. The groups received training in snack production, product development, packaging and small business skills. At first, breaking into the market and selling their snacks was challenging. It took six months before the orders started coming in for two of the groups. Local people started to buy their snacks and place orders. Now these two groups are supplying a mini market in the nearest town. They are proud of their achievements, are investing in new equipment and product lines and they have hope for the future. The other two groups are no longer functioning properly. These were the groups from the poorer side of the village. Many of their members have migrated to Kalimantan, in eastern Indonesia, with their husbands in search of work and better life opportunities. The snack business didn’t suit their needs. The women left in Jemowo observed: “The time for support was too short; we needed longer training and more marketing skills. It was hard for the other women, they didn’t have the time and the savings to invest in the business the way we did.”13 There are a number of inter-linked lessons for future reconstruction efforts. These include: • Use community adjudication processes, including community mapping of land and land ownership by men and women, to allow more legal space for locally negotiated solutions that apply forms of custom. These processes tested in Aceh by local NGOs in collaboration with BPN were a relatively successful component of RALAS. Evidence suggests that, rather than the provision of national or religious law alone, these locally defined processes may support more equitable outcomes for women.14 13 Women’s PIGD Group Central Java 14 Fitzpatrick 2008a; World Bank 2011 77 • Understand the priorities of local women and men. Land titling was a national policy Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and prescription; local Acehnese priorities for both men and women related to inheritance and tenure rights. The two issues are not in opposition. The differences highlight the need for dialogue and sensitization of land administration staff to local realities. • Develop a gender mainstreaming strategy. A gender mainstreaming strategy within government agencies administering land including provision for women frontline staff and community facilitators is needed as well as sex-disaggregated data, gender sensitization of staff and on-going support for staff. • Investment in sensitizing and awareness raising. The awareness of local and religious leaders as well as community members about the rights and obligations relating to land claims, tenure and inheritance will improve overall impact. • Develop a gender-sensitive communication strategy. Access to trustworthy information delivered directly to women was identified as a key component to successful fulfillment of land rights as well as raising awareness amongs religious and community leaders, administration staff and community members (men and women).15 5.2 Building Resilience Women’s active involvement in the building of their house contributed to the healing process. For significant numbers of women the loss of their house in a disaster is particularly serious, exacerbating psycho-social stress. The denial of rights, voice and agency outside the home while confined to low-profit industries within the home means that losing one’s home is likely to impact women’s sense of self and identity far more than men.16 In Java, where most women have more decision-making power in the home than in public life, the loss of home is significantly disempowering. Being actively involved in the design and building of their homes through Rekompak helped the healing process, bringing order to the chaos and giving women back some control over their lives. “We had choice...we could design the house ourselves, add to it if we wanted to, and we had the money. Rebuilding the house was like rebuilding our lives. The houses were better—they were stronger; we were stronger.” Women’s PIGD Central Java Increased women’s bargaining power within households builds economic resilience. On an individual level, some women indicated that earning income through infrastructure and livelihoods projects led to greater respect and social empowerment within the household. It gave them confidence to demand more time for their work and activities outside the home. 15 World Bank 2011; Fitzpatrick 2008 16 Enarson and Hearn Morrow 1998; Nowak and Cauldfield 2008 78 Increasing Access to Reconstruction Benefits and Jobs Chapter 5 - Women’s Economic Empowerment: “At first they (the husbands) didn’t like us going out to meetings, spending time away from the home. There were lots of arguments. Some of them tried to stop us. We weren’t going to stop. We drew up a schedule, showed them what we were doing and why, and this way helped them understand the benefits of our work. We talk more now. They respect our skills and knowledge.” Women’s Livelihoods PIGD Central Java In Nias, where women had very few opportunities to earn money before the disaster, some women involved in the CLBR3 roads project said: “It’s our money, we let our husbands know but we don’t hand it over. They respect our choices. They listen to us more now that we bring our own money home.” Women have traditionally been involved in scavenging. The MDF’s Tsunami Recovery Waste Photo: Management Programme (TRWMP) helped to provide livelihood opportunities in recycling Kristin and other waste-related activities, as well as to build public awareness about recycling and Thompson good practices related to management of waste. 79 Increased social status for women in some livelihood recovery projects increased Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and significantly. Women in infrastructure projects did not generally perceive that their social standing in communities had changed either positively or negatively. The short time frame for the projects and limited follow-up may be contributing factors. Women who had moved through reconstruction onto livelihood recovery projects noted positive impacts on their social status. Women waste pickers, some of the poorest and most marginalized women in Aceh who graduated from cash-for-work to developing small businesses in waste recycling, valued the increased social standing. Participation in the project had brought greater respect from men and the wider community members. Women participants of the CCA cooperatives sub-project of EDFF, which supported women through loans, training and business development, reported a similar story. “Before, I was just one of the women; nobody knew me. Now, within the cooperative men and women have equal rights. Our ideas are more acceptable to everyone; we can go and talk to the village leaders and to the cooperative department. People know who I am; they respect me. I feel proud.” PIGD, Pidie, Aceh In the JRF livelihood recovery programs, women’s involvement could lead to greater public recognition from local government, the village leadership and community members. In a GIZ livelihoods recovery project working in a remote village to help women develop a snack business, participation had linked the women into the district development forum and led to them become respected members of their community. However, women involved with some of the micro-credit groups with limited training and follow-up reported no change in their social status. Building community resilience to future disaster was enhanced through DRR. Women are more conscious than men of the need for DRR and are prepared to invest significantly in disaster preparedness in order to protect themselves and their families.17 In all three regions, women involved in DRR activities perceived opportunities to learn practical measures for disaster preparedness as a significant benefit. Women, for example, were more responsive than men towards acknowledging the importance of earthquake safe construction practices and willing to invest their time and resources into applying these principles.18 In Java, women saw the community settlement plans (see box following) as a collective asset which contributed to greater security and peace of mind. 17 ILO 2000; World Bank 2012c 18 Government of Indonesia 2011:3 80 Increasing Access to Reconstruction Benefits and Jobs Chapter 5 - Women’s Economic Empowerment: “When the earthquake struck, we panicked. We didn’t know what to do. Now we have a plan, we will know what to do. We don’t feel so anxious for the future.” Women’s PIGD Central Java Community Settlement Planning Over 265 villages were supported through Rekompak to develop Community Settlement Plans (CSPs). CSPs help villages map out the profile of their community (population, boundaries, livelihoods etc.) and identify future infrastructure and socio-economic needs. On average, 25 percent of the participants in CSP meetings were women. Disaster preparedness and mitigation is a key activity. Communities work together to plan DRR strategies for future disasters and militate against potential impacts. In some villages, for example, the planning has resulted in helping some households relocate to safer places in their village away from the threat of landslides.19 Challenges in Building Resilience The most critical challenge to building women’s is resilience related to actively responding to psycho-social impacts. Trauma affects both women and men’s abilities to take advantage of economic and other opportunities for recovery. Post-disaster psycho- social trauma and stress was reported more frequently by women in all areas. In Aceh, for example, approximately 100,000 people were identified as suffering from mental illness post-conflict and disaster, the majority of whom were women.20 In cash for work projects in Aceh, for example, there were reports of participants “working ineffectively in a mute daze.... and IDPs suggesting they felt like invisible bystanders ..... not together enough to be asked their opinions.”21 Women themselves reported the emotional impacts of disaster on them. 19 Rekompak Implementation Notes April 2011. 20 Official figures do not capture the true picture of psycho-social gender differences. Men are less likely to report trauma: gendered stereotypes of male roles as the head and protector of households stops many men seeking help. Men are more likely to respond to their distress with behaviors such as gambling, alcoholism and violence towards women (ILO 2000; Chew and Ramdas 2005; Government of Indonesia 2011). 21 Pennells 2008 (20) 81 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and I couldn’t do anything for at least a year...longer..., I just wanted to stay safe with my family. I couldn’t think properly, I didn’t have the energy to work outside. I don’t think I could have joined (the livelihoods recovery project) earlier. I couldn’t have coped.” Women Participant PIGD Central Java Infrastructure, housing and economic development projects in post-disaster situations generally do not incorporate strategies and actions aimed at addressing the impacts of trauma. Usually it is special projects or health and education programs which integrate counseling and other support activities into their work.22 Rebuilding houses did undoubtedly support the healing process and the longer timeframe that Rekompak took in mobilizing and supporting community members enabled both men and women, to some extent, to identify their own level of engagement. However, by not actively addressing the impacts of psycho-social stress there were missed opportunities to identify small incremental steps that could overcome the specific barriers created by stress that inhibited women’s active involvement. Two projects did actively respond to women’s trauma and adjust their implementation strategies to enable participants to benefit fully from the activities: DRR-Aceh and the CCA-supported PESAT under the EDFF. CCA’s work was funded in two phases. In the first phase of 4 years (funded by CIDA) CCA, mindful of the high levels of psycho-social stress, focused on peace building, counseling and sensitization activities. Slowly, starting with small savings and loans groups, it was able to build the trust, confidence and emotional security of participants to re-engage with profitable livelihood activities. Only in the second phase of its work, funded by the MDF, did it begin supporting major economic development for women through cooperative development. There are lessons for future infrastructure and economic development interventions. Building a response to alleviate the impacts of psycho-social trauma into a project will require extra time and resources. However, better understanding of the psycho-social impacts of disaster will help identify respectful and sensitive starting points for different and incremental levels of support. Failure to do so will lead to the most affected women self-excluding and undermine the potential benefits for both the women involved and the regional economy. 22 Chew and Ramdas 2005 Chapter 6 DISASTER RECONSTRUCTION AS AN ENTRY POINT FOR GENDER MAINSTREAMING 83 The experiences of reconstruction in post-disaster Aceh, Nias and Java offer useful Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and lessons about the capacities, support structures, systems and mechanisms necessary to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in future reconstruction processes. To do so necessitates two inter-related actions: • Making gender equality a full objective in post-disaster reconstruction—that is, identifying interventions that progress gender equality and empower women economically or increasing women’s agency, and • Mainstreaming gender concerns throughout the DRR process from response to reconstruction—that is, establishing the systems, mechanisms and processes that enable a gender equality perspective to be operationalized. Indonesia took a major step forward in national disaster-preparedness with the publication of the Post-disaster Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Guideline (2010) and the Indonesia Post-Disaster Needs Assessment Guideline (2011). Included within these guidelines is the requirement to address the socio-economic impacts of disaster on women and men during the initial needs assessment process. However, they both fall short in providing guidance on how to operationalize this requirement or mainstream gender in to disaster preparedness and response: a lacuna that needs to be addressed for effective operations in future disasters. Aside from contributing to international best practice, these lessons from MDF and JRF may provide the basis for the development of a national gender-sensitive operation manual. Based on the experiences of the MDF and JRF, this section highlights practical ways in which an institution can make sure that men and women are involved before, during and after disasters happen. Good practice is being added to all the time, and work indicates three main routes to take to bring gender issues to the forefront of disaster management.1 These include: Focusing – involving men and women equally when preparing for disaster, responding while a disaster is occurring, and in the rebuilding process after it has passed. 1 See, for example, World Bank 2011 Women such as this mother in Aceh, shown with her three children, were actively involved in rebuilding their homes under the MDF and JRF’s Rekompak project. The community-based approach to housing reconstruction engaged women in all phases of reconstruction. Photo: Tarmizy Harva for MDF 84 Supporting – supporting Government, support agencies and/or fund management Chapter 6 - Disaster Reconstruction as an Entry Point for Gender Mainstreaming while they weave gender sensitivity into the way they work: their management systems, operational rules and reporting structures, including monitoring and evaluation. Accountability– Developing ways of making staff responsible for mainstreaming gender issues, including penalties if these are ignored. 6.1 Strengthening Attention to Gender in Reconstruction There are five areas of support which together address gender equality objectives and significantly strengthen efforts to mainstream a gender equality perspective in reconstruction projects. • Making gender equality a full objective in reconstruction projects. These will need to be selective and tailored to the specific intervention. For example infrastructure projects can include an explicit objective aimed at empowering women and men to engage equally in non-traditional skill areas such as waste management, house building, and road maintenance. All projects have opportunities to increase women’s agency through focused objectives designed to build women’s capacities to take on leadership positions and engage meaningfully in decision-making processes. Gender equality objectives will need to be matched with realistic budgets, linked to indicators, monitored from measureable baselines and including a gender focused exit strategy. There will need to be specific actions arising from the objectives which are fully funded, supervised and evaluated. • Mainstreaming gender into disaster preparedness and management plans. There are now widely available guidelines for mainstreaming gender into disaster preparedness.2 There are also the experiences of the numerous DRR projects implemented in Indonesia post-Tsunami and earthquake in Aceh, Nias and Java, including DRR-A, which advanced the process of gender mainstreaming in the national guidelines. Key institutional mechanisms for mainstreaming gender into DRR operational plans include: access to full-time gender technical staff, explicit gender equality indicators, sex-disaggregated data bases nationally and by sector and a fully resourced and budgeted gender-mainstreaming strategy • Integrating a gender analysis in Disaster Loss and Needs Assessments. Integrating a full sex and age disaggregated assessment of the differential losses, impacts on and needs of women, men, girls and boys is critical as it provides: a) a shared baseline for all implementing agencies and b) the information needed to mainstream gender issues into the national recovery and reconstruction strategy. A gender assessment also needs to assess the higher-level sociocultural context of existing gender relations 2 See, for example, the Gender and Disaster Risk Management set of Guidance Notes produced by the World Bank in 2012 85 and institutions in the disaster area including those in the remaining bureaucracy and Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and administration. This provides a shared understanding, often missing in international or non-local staff and organizations, of the cultural and social norms which determine gender roles and, how agencies can work with these norms to promote women’s active participation. • Establishing a global pool of disaster-focused gender experts. More investment is needed in developing a global pool of operational gender experts who can provide advice on what needed to be done to ensure the lessons already known are implemented. Practically, this requires the technical experts with the knowledge, seniority and experience to, for example: develop indicators to track increases in women’s agency; influence procurement processes; influence and refine operational manuals; and develop gender-sensitive mechanisms which fit with and support existing sectoral and administrative procedures and systems. • Developing open-source sector-wide and theme based gender analyses as early as possible post-disaster. These analyses, developed for use by all implementing agencies, are complementary to the damage and loss assessments. Sector-based analyses can inform early recovery and reconstruction across the whole sector and initiate the transition links from recovery through to development. For example, identifying the different roles, responsibilities, needs and barriers to participation of women, men, boys and girls in relation to housing or waste recovery and management. The results of the analyses support better coordination and linkages between different sector interventions. Thematic analysis provide the opportunity of addressing cross-cutting issues such as the psycho-social impacts of the disaster on women, men, girls and boys or assessment of interventions supporting women’s economic empowerment. The results of this can support adaptations to a range of sectoral projects especially in the infrastructure sector, which does not normally make use of non-technical thematic analyses to inform project design. • Including gender focus in technical review of project proposals. Future reconstruction projects will be greatly strengthened by technical reviews providing realistic and concrete gender appraisals, including operational strategies giving clear examples of what can be done to support gender-based outcomes. Some examples are: strengthening women’s role in decision-making, performance and outcome indicators for tracking women’s empowerment or gender-sensitive tracking of accountability mechanisms. A review of operations manual prior to project start is also required, embedded in the designed gender principles and strategies within operations. 86 6.2 Supporting Structures, Systems and Mechanisms Chapter 6 - Disaster Reconstruction as an Entry Point for Gender Mainstreaming The range of supporting measures which can strengthen institutional response to the differing needs of women and men in post—disaster reconstruction include attention to design and diagnostics, staffing and capacities of staff and implementation financing, systems operational rules and reporting, including M&E. The table below outlines practical organizational measures, identified during the process of lesson learning, which can support institutions mainstream a gender equality perspective and embed good practice lessons. Sample Gender Sensitive Measures for Mainstreaming Good Practice Lessons Institutional Mechanisms Gender Sensitive Measures and Processes Enhancing Staffing and • At fund management level, recruitment of senior gender Capacities technical assistance (operations) to carry out high-level diagnostics, oversight, advocacy and review • Routine and embedded supervisory support (coaching, mentoring, training district-wide meetings and exchange visits), fully budgeted for strengthening gender sensitivity and capacities to implement gender mainstreaming strategies for front line and management staff • Performance indicators and reviews to incorporate gender- sensitive indicators • Incentives and affirmative action to recruit and retain women staff in senior and middle technical positions in infrastructure and livelihood recovery. e.g. road shows to universities to encourage women to apply for reconstruction jobs; separate job adverts for men and women to avoid gender biased assumptions; placing women frontline staff nearer their families • Affirmative and mentoring support for women technical staff and supervisors with lower qualifications than male staff to promote gender parity Design and Diagnostics • Sector and theme-based gender/poverty analysis • Disaggregated data by sex and age at baseline • Gender sensitive qualitative and quantitative indicators incorporated into the results framework • Gender strategy including the application of locally defined and proven ways of promoting women’s rights, developed for project with clear end objectives and fully budgeted within project financing • Long lead time for mobilization of communities embedded into design to help overcome, for example, psycho-social and entrenched social norms undermining women’s participation 87 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and Implementation systems and • Operational guidelines to include clearly defined processes operational rules for mobilizing women, reaching and engaging with poor and disadvantaged women, addressing the barriers to women’s participation and promoting women to leadership and supervisory positions • Joint work plans and performance targets for technical and social mobilization frontline staff to avoid silo working and parallel work streams • Mechanisms to mandate and encourage operational co-operation with other organizations; e.g. off-budget financing; procurement or contracting procedures requiring resource allocations for advancing partnerships and linkages; direct or sub-contracting of small local gender- focused organizations to provide targeted support to poor and highly disadvantaged women to enable them to participate in reconstruction Reporting systems • Internal participatory and qualitative reporting—through routine meetings and quarterly reporting aimed at capturing and scaling up “smart practices” which, for example, facilitate active participation of women in decision making, information sharing, skills and knowledge development • Supervision and review visits carried out in partnership with implementing agency and to include as standard a gender/ social technical adviser • Gender exit strategy aimed at embedding lessons learned into the institutional systems of partner organizations developed at mid-point of project and integrated into overall exit strategy • Monitoring system to track gender based impacts of accountability mechanisms, social inclusion of poor and disadvantaged women in benefit sharing, and decision- making etc. Financing • Gender sensitive budgets and budgetary tracking to trace and address gender disparities in resource allocations where appropriate. • Greater use off-budget financing to increase flexibility in addressing gender concerns, or running special Programs (such as reaching the poorest women) and strengthening supervisory support for front line staff (training, coaching, exchange visits etc.). Off-budget financing may not be necessary in every situation; before taking the decision to use off-budget funding, a clear analysis of the national bureaucratic and administrative systems and procedures will be necessary. 88 6.3 Accountability – Mechanisms for Mandating Gender Chapter 6 - Disaster Reconstruction as an Entry Point for Gender Mainstreaming Mainstreaming There are three accountability mechanisms that are already in use to enforce fiduciary probity and environmental sustainability post disater. These useful tools could easily be applied to ensure gender equality measures are fully met by supported projects. • Memoranda of Understanding – Drawing up protocols within MoU detailing the broad requirements to ensure the interventions address gender issues (e.g. disaggregation of all data by sex and age; gender expertise and agreed balance within the management teams). • Procurement - Incorporating gender equality into procurement processes as far as it is consistent with national and/or agency rules and regulations. Procurement is a powerful tool for holding institutions to account for agreed gender-sensitive policies. Procurement measures include, for example, giving preference to tenders which have gender strategies; quotas in staffing proposals for achieving gender balances at senior and junior levels, and are in compliance with gender mainstreaming requirements of the procurement authority. Procurement is a way of enforcing local capacity building in gender issues by requiring external or international agencies to work directly with local gender-focused organizations with a clear strategy of supporting local agencies to carry out work on gender and inclusion issues. Procurement waivers which have been tested in Indonesia to ensure flexibility and swift response post-disaster can also be extended to include attention to gender issues, for example affirmative action to employ women staff into senior positions. • Contracting - Incorporating gender equality requirements into the obligations of contractors, where appropriate to the performance of the contract. For example, standardized contracts for the sub-contracting of road building and infrastructure rehabilitation have been developed by the ILO and can be extended to include clauses detailing gender balances in the hiring of the workforce including managers and supervisors, provision for gender parity in payment and remuneration and special measures for enabling women’s participation (for example, raising the age of eligibility for training and apprenticeships; on-site child care facilities). 6.4 Promoting Women’s Role and Empowerment in Reconstruction Women can be powerful agents of change in the reconstruction process. Good- practice lessons from MDF and JRF project’s experiences show that when women are active participants in reconstruction, and exercising their voice to shape the design and management of reconstruction, there are benefits for everyone. These include: • Improved and sustained outcomes - Women’s inputs and active participation led to changes in the design and selection of housing and local-infrastructure improving quality and cost-efficiencies. In turn, women’s greater control over the process 89 increased individual and communal ownership and satisfaction, enhancing willingness Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and to sustain and maintain new assets. • Faster recovery of local economies and productivity gains – Women made up over 40 percent of the workforce working largely in small and medium enterprises and in agriculture (often unrecognized as unpaid family labor). Strengthening their skills and talents to actively participate in livelihood recovery helped accelerate economic regeneration. In Java, nearly 50 percent of the of the JRF livelihood recovery supported enterprises were managed by women contributing to GOI’s revitalisation of the local economy. • More representative decision-making – Women’s active participation in local decision-making processes increased social cohesion and made local institutions more representative of a range of voices. The active involvement of women in community planning changed policy, leading to the increase in provision of public goods such as water, sanitation and health clinics, all of which mattered more for women. • Enhanced community resilience - Increasing women’s emotional, physical and livelihood security through active involvement in reconstruction, community settlement planning, livelihood recovery and DRR paid dividends for national and local resilience to future disaster. Women gained the competencies, knowledge and skills to cope and mitigate against losses, vital in situations where there are high levels of male out-migration, such as central Java, or Aceh during the post-tsunami housing boom. The experience of promoting women’s equality and empowerment was uneven in the MDF and JRF reconstruction processes, all providing lessons for the future. A range of good practice examples emerge from the two programs. At the same time, processes and mechanisms for actively involving women in decision making and implementation could have been better institutionalized. Barriers to women’s involvement are generally high, but the costs of ignoring gender in disaster reconstruction are potentially enormous in terms of overlooked damages, needs and priorities that exacerbate poverty and inequalities. Understandably, the focus of reconstruction was on reaching large numbers of beneficiaries and on deliverables: houses built, infrastructure rehabilitated, small businesses revived. While necessary and important, this focus too often overshadowed the potential for and development of qualitative improvements in women’s empowerment. The key lesson from the MDF and JRF is that promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment requires active facilitation at every level: the international aid community, national and local government, projects and communities. Policy prescriptions and encouraging women to be present and speak are not enough. Post-disaster gender equity needs additional investment and support: this is not just a moral obligation; it is, quite simply, “smart economics”. As good practice lessons from the MDF and JRF project experiences show, when women are active participants in reconstruction with a voice to shape the design and management of reconstruction, there are better quality outcomes for everyone. ANNEXES 91 The Framework of Analysis and Methodology Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and The framework of analysis informing the working paper on the role of women in reconstruction study is underpinned by three interlinked components. 1. Non-discrimination and Equity of Access are fundamental rights guaranteed for women and men in Human rights Law to which Indonesia and its donor partners were signatories1. This component explores the extent to which, and how, MDF and JRF Programs were able to promote fair and equitable access for women to their services and benefits during the reconstruction phase. It focuses on what lessons can be learned about the approaches and strategies used by projects to enable women to fulfill their rights, take part and benefit from the interventions. 2. Participation, voice and accountability: Community participation was a prominent feature of the MDF and JRF programmatic support: the majority of its supported programs included some element of community consultation. The extent to which women survivors are able to participate in the decision-making, management and development of projects has a major impact on the form their role takes in reconstruction and their levels of satisfaction with reconstruction efforts.2 This component explores the extent to which women’s voices were heard and responded to by MDF and JRF projects as well as how and at what levels; (policy making; management, field, beneficiaries) projects were accountable their women constituents. 3. Inclusion of women and in particular, vulnerable and disadvantaged women: Attention to the social inclusion of all women, irrespective of their status, ethnicity, levels of disadvantage and vulnerability is vital to the effectiveness and sustainability of reconstruction processes. Reconstruction efforts, by overlooking and directly discriminating against women can perpetuate and even reinforce existing patterns of vulnerability and disadvantage.3 The final component looks at the systems, mechanisms and processes that the MDF and JRF and 1 The Universal declaration of Human Rights 1948; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, (ICESCR), 1966; the Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The master plans for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Province (NAD) and Nias Islands, North Sumatra and, Central Java and Yogyakarta were also guided by the broader policy framework of. Indonesia’s National Medium term Development Plan (NMDP) 2004 – 2009. The NMDP was underpinned by the GOIs commitment to the rights-based Millennium Declaration and the meeting the 8 MDGs, including MDG 3 – promote gender equality and empower women. 2 World Bank 2011; World Bank 2012f 3 ILO 2000; UNESC 2005, Rolnik 2011, World Bank 2012f Women paddy farmers take a break from a training to improve planting techniques delivered in Nias with support by LEDP. Many of the farmers also received household financial management training; almost 700 women benefitted from learning how to better save and spend household funds. Photo: LEDP Project 92 Annexes Housing group members in Aceh meet to discuss and monitor progress. Rekompak contributed Photo: to viable and sustainable communities by empowering beneficiaries to make decisions regarding Kristin their future. Thompson their Programs used to address: (a) social diversity amongst women in communities; (b) the structural barriers preventing different groups of women from taking part in, and benefiting equitably from project interventions; and (c) promoting women and gender issues in the systems and structures of the projects and the institutions being supported. Methodology A range of methods were used to inform the study including: • an extensive literature review of MDF and JRF documents as well as published and grey literature of documents relating to gender equality and the role of women in post-disaster reconstruction. • semi-structured interviews with 35 people (18 women and 17 men), comprising government officials, donor partners, senior management and field staff of the MDF and JRF secretariat, and support projects using a standardized checklist of questions. 93 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and • validating information through field visits to selected communities in Aceh, Nias and Java to conduct participatory interest group discussions with a range of women and men. A total of 25 participatory interest group discussions (19 with women, 6 with men) were held involving 207 women and 92 men who had been involved in either infrastructure projects (housing, road rehabilitation and village infrastructure) or livelihood recovery projects. The objective of the field visits was neither research nor evaluation but a chance to listen to, and learn from, the insights provided by women, and men, of their experiences as participants of MDF and JRF Programs. 94 ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS Acronyms and Abbreviations Bappenas National Development Planning Agency BPN Badan Pertanahan Nasional (National Land Agency) BRA Aceh Reintegration Agency BRR Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam – Nias (Badan Rekonstruksi dan Rehabilitasi NAD-Nias) CBLR3 Capacity Building for local response-based rural roads project (ILO) CBO Community-based Organization CDD Community-driven development CSO Civil Society Organization CSRRP Community-Based Settlement Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Project EC European Commission EDFF Economic Development Financing Facility GBV Gender Based Violence GoI Government of Indonesia GIZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH ILO International Labour Organisation IOM International Organisation for Migration IDP internally displaced persons JRF Java Reconstruction Fund KDP Kecamatan Development Project KRRP Nias Kecamatan-based Reconstruction and Recovery Planning Project LEDP Nias Livelihoods and Economic Development Program MDF Multi Donor Fund for Aceh and Nias M&E Monitoring and Evaluation MoU Memorandum of Understanding MSEs Micro and small enterprises MSMEs Micro, small and medium enterprises MTR Mid-term Review 95 Empowering Women through Post-Disaster Reconstruction More Than Mainstreaming: Promoting Gender Equality and NGO Non-Governmental Organization NITP Nias Islands Transition Program OPM Oxford Policy Management PAD Project Appraisal Document PIGD(s) Participatory Interest Group Discussion (s) RACBP Rural Access and Capacity Building Project RALAS Reconstruction of the Aceh Land Administration System Project RAP Recovery Assistance Policy Rekompak Community-based Settlement Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Project TOR Terms of Reference TRWMP Tsunami Recovery Waste Management Program UN United Nations UNDP United Nations Development Program UPP Urban Poverty Project WB World Bank 96 BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES Bibliography and References Aceh Community Assistance Research Projection. 2007. 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