Dear Amelia

Thanks for passing on the cleaned data from the MSNA. I've attached my prelimary analysis of the data with particular attention to changing gender roles between men and women, Shelter and WASH (protection issues are interwoven).

Of particular note, women appear to be more engaged in the public sphere through work and education; men are less mobile outside of the home and appear less happy about the change in influence. The inadequacy of shelter is a problem: limited protection from the environment (women), overcrowding (both men and women), lack of hygiene and problems with landlord (women), lack of electricity/lighting and poor safety (men). Women and men have different views on WASH issues and how to resolve them. Cash and voucher assistance was a popular modality for women and men. 

While women were more likely to work, collaborate with husbands on decisions and have good connections within the community, there were also more likely to be time poor. Men were more likely to be restricted in their movements in order to avoid public violence and kidnapping. These factors have implications for service delivery.

There are significant limitations in the data on marginalized groups. It will be good to rectify this soon :)

Addendum to RGA using MSNA Data

The recent Multi-Sectoral Needs Assessment provides up-to-date information on the experiences of displaced people within the Kirkuk district, comprising household surveys and 2 discussions with focus groups of adult women and men.

Changes in roles

The focus group discussions highlight that women are more likely to be working, studying and travelling outside of their residence than in the past. Conversely, men are less likely to be working and often are restricted in their movements outside of their residence (related to avoiding violence in the streets (e.g. fights with others or targeted from the air) and/or threats of kidnapping. Men are more likely than in the past to undertake domestic duties. While both gender groups commented that decisions are more likely to be made following discussion between men and women than in the past, women tended to make comments relishing the relative freedom while men discussed the changes being related to decisions being made by those who earned money. It is not clear whether the processes for making decisions will change in future if there are changes in who generates income.

Several comments were made about the influence of humanitarian aid: men tended to link the provision of aid to their decline in their abilities to provide financially for their families. One participant commented that aid made it possible for widows to choose not to remarry. Men commented that courts were more likely to award divorce and/or inheritance cases in favour of women. Conversely, women commented on the array of available services that improved living conditions, although they also commented that service providers either did not seek opinions from the affected or they didn’t listen to them.

According to the household surveys, men are more likely to want to return to their places of origin than women (24% men are actively considering returning in the next 2 weeks vs 12% of women surveyed). While these respondents were not questioned on their reasons for their choices, it is possible that men may be wanting to return to a way of life where they have more control and influence, including providing financially for their families. It is also noted that men (62%) were more likely to rate psychological trauma as an heath issue than women (44%).

Access to Adequate Shelter

According to the surveys, most (90% ) across all affected groups mentioned there were no separate rooms for female and male IDPs. Many (70%) advised that families had to share a room.

Women are more likely than men to list bad protection from cold/heat and wind (81% vs 62%) as one of the top 3 issues. Men (68%) are more likely than women (46%) to list overcrowding as an issue. Women advised that dirty or unhygienic shelter environment (50%) and problematic relationships with landlord (36%) were in their top three issues. Conversely, men advised that a lack of electricity/lighting (43%) and poor security/safety/ privacy (35%) were in their top three issues.

There are few significant differences between men and women on the priorities of delivering shelter aid through cash vouchers (93% of women and 87% of men listed this as one of three top priorities) and heating is important (89% of men and 81% of women). Women (90%) were more likely than men (73%) to prioritize improvements to shelter. Men (37%) were more likely than women (23%) to list electricity/lights in the top 3 priorities

WASH Issues

Only 10% of respondents replied there is enough safe water available. More than 90% of IDPs living with other IDP families in buildings or settlements reported that there is some safe water available, but not in sufficient quantities.

The views of women and men diverged significantly. Women advised that there was insufficient water storage capacity (62%), they reduced the water consumption because insufficient (39%) and/or water source is too far away or needs to be shared with others (33%). Men were more likely to comment on the quality of water (does not look good/40% or taste good/38%). Only 21% of men listed water storage capacity as a problem. This may reflect that women were more likely to have less time to collect water or that they are more likely to be living in conditions where the water was less available because it needed to be shared among more people, water infrastructure was of lower quality and/or women were more likely to be focusing on the water needs for the preparation of food, laundering clothes, cleaning house, cleaning self and dependents etc.

While there is agreement from both women and men that cash or voucher assistance would be a useful way to address issues, women (85%) are more likely to suggest water storage containment than men (57%), while men (21%) are more likely than women (5%) to request jerrycans. Men (35%) are more likely to prioritize electricity supply than women (30%).

Men and women viewed issues with sanitation and hygiene differently: most women said there were not enough places to wash or bathe (62%) and just over half of the women (52-9%) agreed the following issues are within the top 3: not enough toilets for women (59%); increase in rodents (59%); garbage accumulation (58%); skin diseases (57%); increase in flies and mosquitos (56%); not enough toilets for men (54%); and bad smell (52%). Men posited that were not enough toilets for either men or women (62%) and not enough places to wash or bathe (52%). Men were less likely (14-20 percentile points) to rate garbage accumulation, rise in pestilence and skin diseases than women. In keeping with their concern over the quality of water, men (27%) were more likely to say that sewage was causing water pollution.

Women (77%) were more likely than men (67%) to suggest cash or voucher assistance with sanitation priorities. Women were more likely to prioritize sewage network repairs (66%), garbage collection (52%) and separate latrines for men and women (44%). Men were more likely to prioritize separate latrines (59%), washing facilities (41%) and garbage collection (39%). Men were much more likely to prioritize insecticides (28%) and landfills (23%) than women di (10% and 5% respectively). Women (91%) were more likely than men (82%) to say that women’s hygiene kits were needed. Men (27%) were more likely than women (12%) to say that hygiene promotion trainings were needed.

Limitations

There are limitations to the analysis of the MSNA data. No information has been provided about how households and the males and females within were selected (random vs targeted) which can alert to inherent biases. The number of people surveyed as a proportion of the target population was not supplied so it is difficult to know the benchmark for statistical significance: for the purposes of this assessment, it was assumed to be 10%. It is also noted that women were more likely to list the same issues/solutions in the top 3 than men were, while men were more likely to come up different issues. (the proportion of women voting for the same topic was consistently higher than that of men). This may be an artefact of the women previously discussing the issues.

There was limited reference to issues related to disabilities (with the exception of the women’s FGD where it was mentioned that there were more disabled people because of the conflict) and ethnicities (women from different ethnic backgrounds have different capacity to travel safely outside of their homes). No reference was made to differences in gender roles at different stages of life nor was there any mention of issues and strategies of LGBTI individuals, who were identified as subject to significant harm based on their divergence from gender norms. As such, while the MSNA data is useful to deepen the understanding of issues and the preferred assistance for adult women and men, it is apparent that the focus on male vs female without attention to issues related to divergence from gender norms, disabilities, ethnicities and life stages skews the analysis to variations of what we already know from people who claim they are over-assessed while no further light is shed on what we don’t know. No doubt this has come about because of limitations related to funding. It is imperative that we locate sufficient funding to consult groups on gender issues more broadly and as it interse