The GenCap Project, established in 2007 under the auspices of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, in partnership with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), aims to strengthen the capacity of humanitarians to undertake gender equality programming in humanitarian action. The IASC Gender Marker is the key tool used by the humanitarian community to assess how gender is incorporated in humanitarian projects. In 2009 the IASC Gender Marker was tested in three countries, and from 2011 its application has been mandatory for projects in consolidated appeals, including Humanitarian Response Plans, Pooled Funds and the CERF.
The revision of the Gender Marker was undertaken based on the feedback and requests received from humanitarian practitioners and stakeholders to enhance the quality and consistency of gender equality programming by deepening gender analysis with the inclusion of age; making the coding simpler and more reliable; and adding a monitoring phase so that measures could be assessed at both design and implementation. The revision has also supported closer alignment of the tool to commitments for protection mainstreaming and accountability to affected populations. The GAM is a diagnostic tool for programming staff with relevance at the organizational, cluster and country levels. These alliances aim to strengthen its usefulness and reinforce the use and sustainability of the GAM.
The revision process has been a collaboration among IASC members, INGOs, NGOs, cluster coordinators and other humanitarian partners. The revision updated the gender equality programming framework including its Gender Equality Measures (GEMs), which are based on the Gender Marker’s ADAPT & ACT Framework . The revision also automated and simplified the coding. The pilots of the Marker have also highlighted the importance of the tool to support learning on gender equality programming by reflecting on how gender and age are considered in the various stages of program design. Feedback received from the pilots and consultations have been systematically incorporated into the refinement of the tool to reflect the various requirements of the humanitarian community. The pilots also confirm the tool is easy to use and deepens understanding of how to improve gender equality programming at both monitoring and design phases of projects.