The Reproductive Health Assessment Toolkit for Conflict-Affected Women

Reproductive health for women affected by conflict entails providing services to ensure safe pregnancies and deliveries, meeting family planning needs, preventing and treating sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV/AIDS, and preventing gender-based violence (GBV) in populations affected by complex humanitarian emergencies. Assessing these needs requires gathering information and technical knowledge about how to conduct a survey. The Toolkit includes sampling instructions, training manual, questionnaire, data entry program, analysis guide, and suggestions for data use. It allows field staff to collect data to inform program planning, monitoring, evaluation, and advocacy. Information can be gathered about safe motherhood, family planning, sexual history, STIs, HIV/AIDS, GBV, and female genital cutting. The Toolkit has been pilot tested in three settings during 2004-2006 among women in refugee camps and women displaced in their own countries. Target users The Toolkit is intended for organizations such as government, non-governmental, and United Nations agencies that provide or are interested in providing reproductive health services to conflict-affected women. Field staff who use this Toolkit should be familiar with survey work, but it is designed to be used by staff with limited survey skills.

Developed to meet the increased need for accurate reproductive health data among conflict-affected populations. The RHA Toolkit informs program planning, monitoring and evaluation, and advocacy efforts. It enables field-based staff with limited survey expertise to collect information about safe motherhood, family planning, sexual history, sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence, and female genital cutting. It also has sampling instructions, a training manual, questionnaire, data entry program, analysis guide with preprogrammed analyses, and data use suggestions.

Among the world's 36 million displaced people, approximately 80% are women and children and are vulnerable to abuses and negative health outcomes during crisis.