The 9th Commonwealth Women’s Ministers Meeting (9WAMM) will be held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre, Barbados from the 7-9 June 2010, and will serve as a platform for the collaboration between the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Subregional Headquarters for the Caribbean and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) to bring forward the issues of gender and disaster management. With the theme for the 2010 meeting being: “Gender Issues in Economic Crisis, Recovery and Beyond: Women as Agents of Transformation,” ECLAC will share preliminary results of  the Gender Impact Assessment (GIA) conducted in the aftermath of the  January 2010 earthquake, the most devastating to hit Haiti in two hundred years.

The ECLAC contribution was integral in determining Haiti’s damage and losses after it was hit by a 7.3 magnitude earthquake which left 1.3 million people displaced and 220,000 people dead. The total value of the damage and losses was estimated at US $7.8 billion. Through the use of the GIA, the ECLAC and UNIFEM team was able to determine that 56 percent of the deaths were female. An estimate such as this will allow the Haitian government to allocate resources in support of families affected considering the fact that women were not just mothers but also bread winners.

Using Haiti as an example will allow for other commonwealth countries to understand the important relationship between gender and disaster management and the impact it can have on relief and early recovery after a disaster.

The three day meeting will also allow for critical assessment by participants on gender and economic development concerning developing countries.

E-mail: registryeclacpos.org; Tel: (868) 623-5595; Fax: (868) 623-8485; Website: www.eclacpos.org