Sex & Age Matter; Improving Humanitarian Response in Emergencies

To ensure that vulnerabilities, needs and access to life-saving services are best understood and responded to, humanitarian actors must collect information based on sex and age. When this data is lacking, it limits the effectiveness of humanitarian response in all phases of a crisis.

This report shows that proper collection, analysis and use of sex and age disaggregated data, or SADD, allows operational agencies to deliver assistance more effectively and efficiently in a crisis. The net result is more lives saved, more livelihoods preserved, and basic human rights reinforced in situations where rights are often brushed aside.

This report is intended for policy makers and senior operational actors, both within the United Nations and INGOs, and in particular Humanitarian Coordinators, Heads of Offices and Cluster leads. This report is also directed at donors that fund humanitarian response to natural disasters and situations of armed conflict.