Sexual and reproductive health and rights in anticipatory action for disasters

An examination of the incorporation of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in anticipatory action (AA) reveals the latter's potential to strengthen disaster response by addressing pre-existing inequalities and marginalised needs. Despite the gendered dimensions of disasters being well evidenced, SRHR and other gendered needs remain overlooked in AA programming, exacerbating the risks to women, girls, and intersectionally marginalised groups with high pre-existing vulnerability. This paper investigates the challenges to and opportunities for including SRHR in AA, using SRHR as a lens to investigate the possibilities for more inclusive and effective AA programmes. AA enables a more transformative approach to humanitarian aid, with time for early planning, gender analyses, local community engagement, and improved nexus linkages to the longer-term development of healthcare services, corresponding to current debates in the humanitarian sector. Utilising these attributes of AA facilitates a humanitarian response which can better meet vulnerable groups' needs in fragile contexts, helping to mitigate the long-term repercussions of the 'double disaster' of gendered impacts.