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Site Planning: Guidance to reduce the Risk of Gender-Based Violence

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World
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IOM
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Introduction

i.1 What is this guidance about?

This booklet on site planning and the reduction of gender-based violence provides practical guidance for measures which can be taken to reduce risks to affected populations around camps and sites.

The primary purpose of any site is to reduce risks to health, security, privacy and dignity. This booklet recognizes that protection of women and girls, men and boys, is deeply rooted in universal human rights, and is expressed as such in key resources for humanitarian response, including The Sphere Project, and the mandates of UN humanitarian agencies, international organisations, the Red Cross movement, and international and local NGOs, as well as many national governments. However, establishing practical programmes that link rights with identified needs is highly dependent upon the context. This booklet is based on consensus for best practices.

Camps can play different roles in different types of disasters, and within different comprehensive shelter and settlement programmes. For example, camps built as a response to natural disasters should be as small and as close to the area of reconstruction as possible. On the other hand, camps built as a response to armed conflict would preferably need to be at a safe distance from the conflict.
However, this is not always possible and camps’ locations normally depend on people’s perceptions of safety. In general, the distance from conflict areas as well as from damaged houses or livelihoods needs to be considered when assessing potential site locations.