Integrating rights and equality in disaster preparedness and response: Insights from six countries

The report evaluates how Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka integrate human rights and gender equality into disaster management. Using the FIRE framework, it finds that while national policies often recognize these rights, implementation at local levels is uneven and frequently lacking. Key barriers include restrictive social norms, lack of disaggregated data, and under-resourced institutions. The authors provide ten recommendations to improve inclusivity, emphasizing the need for meaningful participation of marginalized groups and stronger collaboration between disaster management agencies and human rights institutions.

• The integration of human rights and gender equality in disaster preparedness and response is inconsistent across the six studied countries, often appearing well-mainstreamed at the national policy level but weakly applied at the local level.
• Most of the six countries have established legal foundations for rights integration through national constitutions and the ratification of international human rights treaties, though translating these to ground-level implementation remains a major challenge.
• Social norms, particularly patriarchal values and the perception of women's roles as primarily reproductive and caregiving, continue to drive inequality and increase vulnerability in disaster contexts.
• There is a systemic lack of disaggregated data by social group (such as gender, age, and disability) across all six countries, which hinders the ability to understand specific vulnerabilities and establish baselines for policy interventions.
• While national policies generally mandate the participation of women and marginalized groups, in practice, this participation is often treated as a 'head-counting exercise' rather than a meaningful governance process, and can be exclusionary at the local level.
• Governance for gender equality is generally more integrated into national disaster systems than human rights governance, and there is a lack of independent third-party accountability for disaster-related complaints.

APA

Boyland, M., & Anschell, N. (2023). Integrating rights and equality in disaster preparedness and response: Insights from six countries. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/drr-rights-six-asian-countries-sei2023.023.pdf

Chicago

Boyland, Michael, and Nicole Anschell. Integrating rights and equality in disaster preparedness and response: Insights from six countries. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2023. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/drr-rights-six-asian-countries-sei2023.023.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Boyland |first1=Michael |last2=Anschell |first2=Nicole |title=Integrating rights and equality in disaster preparedness and response: Insights from six countries |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=April 2023 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/drr-rights-six-asian-countries-sei2023.023.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{boyland2023integrating, author = {Boyland, Michael and Anschell, Nicole}, title = {{Integrating rights and equality in disaster preparedness and response: Insights from six countries}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2023}, month = apr, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/drr-rights-six-asian-countries-sei2023.023.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }