The focus of this outcome will be to ensure that SIDS infrastructure provides accessible, affordable and equitable services with a view to promote gender equality and disability inclusion along with integrating resilience aspects. As the gaps in infrastructure access and services affect sections of the society differentially, it is pertinent to focus on the needs of the socially marginalized sections. Therefore, it is integral while setting the resilience agenda for infrastructure development, the infrastructure design and planning should be gender-responsive and ensure equal access to jobs and services. To do this, it will require a good understanding of the gender dimensions of infrastructure demand and access to gender-disaggregated data. Additionally, it becomes equally essential to ensure the voices of people with disabilities are heard and reflected when integrating resilience measures for infrastructure systems and services. Especially, since they are disproportionately affected by climate change and disasters with implications on their health, income and social well -being. However, their specific needs are often overlooked in infrastructure development planning, design and implementation. Therefore, the key focus of this outcome will be to foster an enabling environment for mainstreaming social inclusion and human-centred components within infrastructure projects, where social inclusion and resilience action reinforce each other.
The priority will be to promote the uptake of people-centred and equitable approaches to provide opportunities for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups to be part of the resilient infrastructure planning and policy process. The focus will be to ensure equal participation of all genders, youth, senior citizens, people with disabilities and other vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. This will involve the establishment of dedicated partnerships with all genders, youth and disability organisations in the SIDS regions to drive the agenda of sustainable, resilient and inclusive infrastructure systems and services.
IRIS will prioritize investing in initiatives that support innovation, piloting and replication of scalable good practices around inclusive infrastructure in context of SIDS. The focus will be to promote integration of Gender Equity, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) in resilient infrastructure projects in SIDS.
The priority is to facilitate knowledge exchange and capacity development on global policies, practices and technical expertise that promote resilient and inclusive infrastructure development in SIDS. This will include documentation of good practices on resilient and inclusive infrastructure for learning and dissemination and enhancing the capacity of decision makers, government officials, practitioners, champions and change makers, civil society organisations to integrate GEDSI when building resilient infrastructure. This will be done through organizing training programs and development of guidelines or manuals to facilitate mainstreaming GEDSI for infrastructure development. The priority will also be to generate awareness on integrating equitable and human centred dimensions as an integral aspect of building resilient infrastructure, through multistakeholder dialogues and peer learning events.