Gender Standby Capacity - GenCap
Background
The Gender Standby Capacity Project (GenCap) is a collaboration between the Inter-agency Standing Committee (IASC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). GenCap seeks to build capacity of humanitarian actors at country level to mainstream gender equality programming, including prevention and response to gender-based violence, in all sectors of humanitarian response. A pool of gender advisers ready for deployment to Humanitarian Coordinators’ offices, GenCap’s goal is to ensure that humanitarian action takes into consideration the different needs and capabilities of women, girls, boys and men equally. It is a critical part to building inter-agency capacity on the integration of cross-cutting issues into the cluster approach.
Since the first group of GenCap Advisers in Humanitarian Action were recruited to GenCap in May 2007, the roster has grown to hold 26 gender experts. By October 2008, 23 GenCaps have been deployed to support 18 country teams in applying gender equality programming in humanitarian action.
Expanding partnerships
GenCap is also in discussion with the Protection Standby Capacity (ProCap) and other standby arrangements such as NRC, CANADEM and AusCare and to ensure linkages and build new partnerships.