In 2015, AMS adopted the ASEAN Declaration

on Gender-Responsive Implementation of the

ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and Sustainable

Development Goals, which further reaffirmed

the commitments of individual AMS to the UN

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the

Convention on the Rights of a Child (CRC), and

the Convention on the Rights of Persons with

Disabilities (CRPD), and acknowledged that

gender equality is recognized as a precondition

for the realization of sustainable development.

Against the context of the COVID-19 pandemic,

ASEAN has continued to reiterate and affirm

these strong commitments to advance gender

equality and the empowerment of women and girls,

including at the highest level in the ASEAN Summit

in November 2020.

Within the disaster management sector, this

commitment to gender and social inclusion

is manifested throughout the AADMER Work

Programme 2021–2025, which aims to inculcate

a whole-of-ASEAN approach in disaster

management that leaves no one behind by

recognising the key roles and unique needs of

the communities, especially those that are most

affected during disasters including women,

children, youth, elderly, the poor and people

with disabilities as well as other vulnerable

groups. The AADMER Work Programme 2021–

2025 furthermore has a dedicated outcome on

vulnerable groups and community-based disaster

risk management (CBDRM), as well as key outputs

that integrates gender and social inclusion

throughout the priority programmes.

To support the mainstreaming of the gender and

social inclusion guiding principle throughout

disaster management efforts in the region, the

ACDM agreed to establish a new Technical Working

Group on Protection, Gender, and Inclusion

(TWG-PGI) in 2021, as a collaborative platform

between the ACDM, ASEAN Committee on Women

(ACW), Senior Officials Meeting on Social Welfare

and Development (SOMSWD), and the ASEAN

Coordinating Centre on Humanitarian Assistance

on disaster management (AHA Centre). The ACDM

tasked the TWG-PGI with the development of a

gender and protection mainstreaming strategy

for the AADMER Work Programme 2021–2025,

in line with the ASEAN Community Vision 2025

and the ASEAN Gender Mainstreaming Strategic

Framework (AGMSF).8