Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, Resident Coordinator for United Nations in Bangladesh, and UN Women are conducting a three-day training workshop on Gender in Humanitarian Action and Disaster Risk Reduction in Bangladesh. Organized between 25 and 27 January, the training will provide humanitarian and disaster risk reduction practitioners with an increased understanding of gender equality programming and how to apply it to their respective areas of work.

Training participants include officials from the Department of Disaster Management and the Department of Women Affairs, various non-governmental organizations, and United Nations agencies involved in disaster risk reduction and humanitarian action in Bangladesh. The goal is to develop a shared commitment among different stakeholders to mainstream gender considerations into disaster risk reduction and disaster response activities in the country.

For ADPC, this training marks the first step towards developing program interventions that link the Department of Disaster Management and the Department of Women Affairs in Bangladesh to ensure gender is mainstreamed and integrated into disaster response, recovery plans and policies.

The training is based on the GenCap (Gender Standby Capacity Project) modules on Gender and Humanitarian Action – adapted to the specific disaster response context and framework in Bangladesh – and UN Women’s modules on gender in disaster risk reduction and post-disaster needs assessment.

By bringing together these training components and adapting them to the local context, the expectation is for participants to acquire essential tools and skills for developing strategies to ensure that gender considerations are mainstreamed into humanitarian action and disaster risk reduction across the country.

The training in Dhaka provides humanitarian and disaster risk reduction practitioners an opportunity to share experiences and
discuss furthering gender equality programming in Bangladesh.

Participants engage in interactive presentations on overcoming gender stereotypes.

During an exercise, participants are wearing their 'gender lenses' to discuss gender in humanitarian response.