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GENDER, AGE & DISABILITY in Dadaab

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According to the WHO, roughly 15% of the world’s population has a disability and as of 2012, 12% of the global population was over 60 years old.

Older people and people with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to armed conflict and disasters, but discrimination based on disability, age and gender often means those most in need of humanitarian assistance are excluded. 

There is also limited capacity among humanitarian workers to reach these groups; less than 1% of international humanitarian aid3 is dedicated to older persons and people with disabilities. 
RedR’s Gender Age and Disability training in Kenya aimed to build capacity in this area, helping to ensure that humanitarian workers have the necessary skills to build better programmes, allowing them to respond effectively to those most in need. 

In 2017 Diana Kaduka attended RedR UK’s Gender, Age and Disability course in Nairobi.

Diana works in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya, as a Best Interest Determination Determination (BID) and Child Protection Officer for Save the Children. Established by the Kenyan government in 1991 as a temporary haven for 90,000 people fleeing the fighting in neighbouring Somalia, Dadaab is now home to more than 330,000 refugees, many of whom have been there since the camp opened. 

Diana describes the importance of Gender, Age and Disability in her work in Dadaab: 

“Working with children, they come with a lot of issues surrounding them. We are working with children who are boys or girls, and we are working with caregivers who are male or female. Some caregivers are elderly and have disabilities. 
We do a lot of sensitization and awareness on the rights of children, making the community aware of the policy of ‘do no harm’ and everything that comes with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

We conduct Best Interest Determination (BID) whereby we help make important decisions for children. Through BID, we get to interact with not only the child but the caregiver, the neighbour, the block leader and any other person within the network of the child. These are the people who could have different vulnerabilities.”

RedR’s training, supported by XL Catlin, helps participants to recognise the barriers faced by people of different genders, older people and people with disabilities. It analyses how discrimination and violence manifests in emergency situations against different groups and gives humanitarian workers the necessary skills to help change discriminatory attitudes and actions. 

In 2017 Diana Kaduka attended RedR UK’s Gender, Age and Disability course in Nairobi.

What I learned in the training allows me to make more informed decisions for the child. This means working from sex, age and disability data and being specific on the environment and other vulnerabilities surrounding the child.

Diana Kaduka

Save the Children

Ibrahim Mohamed Hussein, 13, during an interview with Diana Kaduka. The conversation was regarding returning to school despite the bullying he was receiving from other pupils because of his disability.
Ibrahim Mohamed Hussein, 13, during an interview with Diana Kaduka. The conversation was regarding returning to school despite the bullying he was receiving from other pupils because of his disability.

The Impact of Gender, Age and Disability Training

The impact of RedR’s Gender, Age and Disability training is not limited only to the participants. Through the training, participants gain the necessary skills and knowledge to create programmatic change, helping to overcome barriers to inclusion and reduce the risk of violence in urban and rural settings. Diana shares the effect of RedR training on her organisation and its relevance to the complex and often volatile context of her work in Dadaab: 
“With the new knowledge, it will start with the staff and increasing their capacity. I know staff capacity is essential even before going to the field. This is where the training can help me to know how to interact with them, how to bring them on board with decisions.
I would recommend for everyone in my organization to attend the training. The reason being everything you are working with in the context of Dadaab. It is a place where there are multiple complex issues at play and these issues often revolve around age, gender, disability. Dadaab is a unique area and the training has helped me contextualise it.”

Red Alert

This story originally appeared in Red Alert, RedR UK’s annual publication of news, trends and stories from the humanitarian sector. Read the publication online here.

Red Alert

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