Good practices, opportunities, methodologies and recommendations for the incorporation of cross-cutting themes in emergency preparedness and response

The document aims to serve as a guide to support national Red Cross/Red Crescent societies in mainstreaming the cross-cutting themes of gender and diversity, protection, and community engagement and accountability. It is based on an inventory of good practices carried out by national societies, as well as opportunities, methodologies, recommendations and references to incorporate these themes within disaster risk management.

The integration of gender and diversity has been driven by the growing evidence in the humanitarian sector that, ignoring the different specific needs of girls and women and men and boys in terms of age, ability, socioeconomic status, can lead to situations of discrimination in the response or, worse still, accentuate the suffering with a negative impact in the long term. The inclusion of community engagement and accountability has been driven by internal and external evaluations which emphasize the need to increase participation, a number of consultations and communications with communities and to improve the mechanisms available to communicate their opinions and make complaints.