It’s time to kick-off the InsuResilience Centre of Excellence on Gender Smart Solutions!

Within the scope of the InsuResilience Global Partnership (the Partnership) Annual Forum held virtually between 7 – 11 December 2020, the InsuResilience Centre of Excellence for Gender-smart Solutions has kicked-off through a virtual announcement at the High-Level Event – “From strategy to implementation – deliverables on the road to Vision 2025” on Day 1 of the Forum.

The Partnership’s Annual Forum aims to bring together members of the Partnership to exchange on experience and knowledge and to raise awareness about climate risk finance. The High-Level Co-chairs of the InsuResilience Gender Working Group, Canada’s Climate Ambassador Patricia Fuller and Secretary General of CARE International, Sofia Sprechmann Siniero have welcomed the soft-launch of the Centre of Excellence on Gender-Smart Solutions.

Ambassador Fuller emphasized the role of the Centre of Excellence as a way to deliver on the Declaration on Gender, endorsed by the High-Level Consultative Group of the InsuResilience Global Partnership at its recent virtual meeting in September. The Declaration provides a framework for the InsuResilience Secretariat and its Gender Working Group to rally and mobilize efforts towards greater gender-smart solutions in climate and disaster risk financing and insurance (CDRFI) and to do this in a coordinated way. Here, the Centre of Excellence provides the tool to turn the efforts set out in the Declaration on Gender into tangible action on the ground by ensuring that gender-smart approaches are understood and applied to CDRFI solutions. With the aim at strengthening the resilience of poor and vulnerable people, differentially impacted by climate change and disasters, the formation of the Centre of Excellence for Gender-smart Solutions is suggested to ensure the success of the InsuResilience Global Partnership Vision 2025.

According to Sofia Sprechmann Siniero, women and girls provide critical solutions to everyday problems as individuals, community members and as leaders. It is therefore crucial to put the spotlight on how to best bundle the knowledge, resources and opportunities that are available within the realm of Gender and CDRFI and tap into the potential of women leaders who can transform the sector from within. The Centre of Excellence for Gender-smart Solutions closes this exact gap. To date, no other platform exists that collects, bundles, generates and coordinates information and knowledge on gender-related aspects in the area of CDRFI.

In the coming year, the InsuResilience Centre of Excellence on Gender-smart solutions will continue to collate information from the international community until its full launch at COP26 in 2021. Should you wish to contribute research to the platfrom please contact the InsuResilience Secretariat: secretariat@insuresilience.org for more information.