The article below describes the author’s experience working with IsraAID to respond to the floods in Northern Peru in March of 2017. In particular, it emphasizes the specific needs of women in humanitarian crises, and considers how IsraAID’s response may have helped address these needs.

In March 2017, a series of floods struck the north of Peru, leaving 162 people dead, 38,500 houses destroyed, and nearly 400,000 buildings damaged. Around a million people were directly affected by this humanitarian crisis and almost 800,000 have become internally displaced. 

In terms of the local economy, 50,154 hectares of agricultural land have been lost and 107,827 more hectares were severely affected, leading to growing unemployment and a scarcity of basic food. Regarding public facilities, 3,266 educative institutions and 1,044 health centers were affected. 

In post-disaster situations, displaced communities are often forced to settle in refugee and internally displaced person (IDP) camps, whether in the same location or in a new geographical area. The collapse of community life causes constant mental stress and can augment drug and alcohol abuse, crime, and domestic violence. When humanitarian crises take place, the situation becomes of particular concern for women and girls, as they can be the victims of these phenomena. 

Besides these risks, the conditions of displacement, overcrowded camps, lack of privacy, lack of lighting, and limited and unsegregated washing facilities increase the risks of gender discrimination and gender-based violence. Therefore, sexual violence is common in humanitarian crisis settings, reaching an estimated rate of one in five displaced women who will experience sexual violence. The impact of this sexual violence can be devastating, and may include physical consequences including injuries, diseases, and unwanted pregnancies. 

In addition, the area affected by the floods may already have a history of gender discrimination, leading to male-dominated camps, where women are excluded from decision-making mechanisms. In such situations, women are neglected and marginalized when aid is distributed, and thus tend to suffer in higher levels from scarcity. 

Throughout this year, I had the opportunity to work with IsraAID in Peru, responding to this crisis and being involved in the evaluation of the work carried out in the country. This work was divided into two main fields. The first focused on the provision of water, sanitation, and hygiene solutions, with IsraAID’s wash team working directly with the local population in distributing hygiene kits and filtered water; providing containers for safe water storage; teaching the communities how to building hand-washing stations, latrines, showers, and fly traps; and even increasing hygiene awareness through hygiene promotion workshops.  

The second field focused on the provision of mental health services. Due to the severe psychological mark that the floods left on the affected communities, many adults and children were identified with signs of depression, panic, and anxiety. IsraAID’s mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) team worked directly with the affected communities, offering them tools to cope with their trauma and psychological first aid. Moreover, IsraAID partnered with a local association called “When the Arts Attack” and trained this group to provide psychosocial support in emergencies, using methodologies of expressive arts to support children and teenagers in coping with their feelings after the crisis. 

The evaluation was extremely important for us. It assisted us in reviewing our methods of implementation and considering how to improve them in order to give voice to the affected communities that are ultimately the owners and beneficiaries of our actions. In this basic evaluation, we learned that we increased the level of hygiene and sanitation for the general community, reduced risks of death due to vector-borne diseases, and introduced technology that can provide clean water on a regular basis, preventing locals from getting sick from drinking contaminated water.

In addition, this detailed evaluation helped us in exposing an impact that was not identified throughout our ongoing work: the strong impact on women. According to our studies, constructing separate showers within shelters and opening them throughout the day allowed women and children to feel safer when taking showers, thereby increasing their use and probably reducing the risk of sexual harassment. 

Moreover, when conducting the evaluation, we noticed that indirect impact became very central in the respondents’ narratives. For example, Nestor, one of our local partners, who joined the technical aspects of the construction, clearly expressed the view that the lesson of working together as a group and with the community was more essential than the technical knowledge he received. According to him, this method of local participation strengthened the community after their collective trauma and gave an answer to their pain. Furthermore, we identified that the partnership between local and foreign women in the construction work changed the dynamics of the local gender roles and exposed the importance of collaborating with all members of the community – including women – in the ongoing work. 

This reminded me of an incident I had in Piura. In that area, we were working very intensively because of the large distances between schools. We usually visited three schools per day to do hygiene promotion activities for the teachers, and install sawyer filters and soap dispensers in bathrooms and kitchens. One time, in the Hermanos Melendez School in Piura, it happened that we were short on time so we divided our tasks; while Oren, my colleague, did the hygiene promotion and installed the filters, I installed the soap dispensers in the bathrooms. As I used a drill to perform the installation, an eight-year-old child came by and asked, ”Are you going to do this?” And I said to him, “Yes. Why not?” He said, “I didn’t know that women could do this.” I smiled at him and said, “Both men and women can do the same things.” 

In order to assist the community beyond the crisis, it is clear that these projects should be aimed towards a long-term intervention. Besides the need to construct a safe source of water as well as for sanitation and hygiene education on a larger scale, the impact on women should be further studied. Our immediate conclusion about the gender aspect of our work raises questions about the impact on local culture and dynamics as well as the sustainability of this impact. It must therefore be examined through a long-term analysis. Unfortunately, we were constrained by the need to provide an evaluation in only in a few weeks after the interventions and thus could not establish sufficient conclusions. 

When we left, I reflected on how important my presence as a woman doing typically “manly stuff” was. Again I realized that the impact we had in every single place we went was much broader and powerful than we even imagined