The purpose and scope of this review is to provide an understanding of past and current policies and programme approaches for integrating gender into humanitarian interventions, including actions to prevent and respond to the incidence of sexual and gender based violence. As such, it aims to identify lessons learned and good practice from desk-based policy reviews, interviews with a range of actors, and field visits. An extensive review of selected policy approaches by UN, ICRC, some EU Member States and other donor governments was undertaken. This was reinforced by direct consultations with officials from these organisations as well as INGOs. DG ECHO staff and partners were consulted both in Brussels and in the field sites.
Three field visits were carried out to draw lessons on the challenges and practices on the ground and, to the extent possible, to get insight into different types of crisis (wars and natural disasters) and different phases of emergency response (emergency, LRRD, and disaster preparedness). The sites visited were India (Delhi, Bihar and Orissa), DRC (Goma and eastern Congo), Senegal (Dakar) and Liberia (Monrovia and south east).