Women's visions and practices at the center of post-conflict reconstruction processes to design inclusive and sustainable homes, cities, and human settlements

This event presents methodologies aimed at promoting gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment in planning processes for the reconstruction of homes, infrastructure, and services, in cities and settlements destroyed by war. In particular, it proposes the design of processes that make full use of women's skills, their capital of knowledge and creativity, from the humanitarian emergency phases, to build, in the post-conflict phase, resilient and sustainable cities. Women’s active participation is required for the recovering of cities from the devastating impacts of war, improving in a holistic way, the quality of the built environment and the lives of all its inhabitants, starting with housing.
The crisis in emergencies and conflicts is a crisis of women. Since the beginning of the war a wave of women, many of whom are mothers with children and elderly relatives, have mobilized in search of safety, in underground shelters, or facing risky journeys, including those related to trafficking and sexual violence, to find a safe place to live with their children, away from bombs and battlefields. Many are the challenges faced: finding ways of livelihood, employment, access to basic services, care for children, the disabled and the elderly, especially, housing in which to live. Many women have become urban animators for the resilience and physical and social reconstruction of their communities because the war is not only destroying entire territories, buildings and lives, but is also tearing apart the social fabric.
Governments are recognizing the value of the extraordinary efforts of women. Ukraine for instance has adopted legislative initiatives for gender-sensitive public policies including gender budgeting, and the need for women’s active participation in reconstruction efforts, through the State Strategy to Ensure Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men to 2030 and the second National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security 2020-2025.
Therefore, if post-war reconstruction processes are also to be an opportunity for profound change that address pre-existing urban problems, and shows the world the start of a new model of urban development, it must start addressing gender inequality in cities.
To rebuild equitable, resilient, sustainable, and peaceful cities, national and local governments, donors, and other stakeholders must put women at the center of reconstruction planning and implementation, recognizing the value and foresight of their thinking about ways of living and designing homes, cities, and territories, as well as their innovative practices.