The Women’s Resilience to Disasters (WRD) programme is fully funded by the Government of Australia and proposes a comprehensive package to strengthen the resilience of women and girls with the goal of ensuring that the lives and livelihoods of women and girls are resilient to disasters and threats, contributing to sustainable, secure, and thriving communities.

The WRD programme will initially be implemented in Kiribati, Vanuatu, and Fiji. Programme implementation will be driven at country level and supported by regional and global components.

The country components will provide targeted action to strengthen women’s resilience and build gender-responsive systems, advancing different elements of the WRD depending on the national context, policy priorities, existing initiatives, needs, and capacities.

At the regional level, the focus will be on knowledge management, advocacy, and gender and disability support for regional mechanisms, movements, and coalitions, including the Pacific Resilience Partnership.

The global component will advance gender-responsiveness in global DRR and climate processes, provide technical support, ensure global knowledge sharing and advocacy on women’s leadership for disaster resilience, and provide a platform for sharing good practice for gender-responsive resilience and voices from the Pacific.

The expected Outcomes for WRD are two-fold:
1) Prevention, preparedness, and recovery policy frameworks, systems, processes, and tools are gender-responsive, and implemented as a result of local women’s and girls’ advocacy; and
2) Women and girls have voice and agency to withstand multiple hazards, recover from disasters, and increase their resilience to future disasters and threats.

At the country level, the WRD Programme will work with government ministries, UN agencies and regional partners, and CSOs including women’s organisations.

The programme’s principles are localization and ownership. In line with these principles, women’s organizations and DRR and resilience stakeholders will be key partners in programme implementation and monitoring and evaluation. The programme will contribute to key international processes and frameworks, including Agenda 2030, the Sendai Framework, the WHS outcomes, and the Humanitarian- Development-Peace Nexus.