ignored in times of natural or man-made crisis and we also know that women have special gender-specific needs that must be addressed when preparing disaster response. I will share a recent example from my country Pakistan. In August 2010 Pakistan was devastated with one the biggest flood in 80 years. One fifth of the country with 180 million population was under water and millions of people were affected and their agricultural land and livelihoods were destroyed. Today over 20 million Pakistanis are living as Internally Displaced Persons (IDP)s in all parts of the flood affected areas. We urge the international community to continue to pay attention to the needs of flood affected communities in Pakistan. Most rural communities are displaced because their villages do not exist any more as the water has taken their land along with their traditional livelihoods means. Women were the most affected in this flood because most women live and work in their native areas while most rural men venture out to find other sources of livelihoods to compliment family income. Most women did not know how to swim and many lost their lives while saving a child or a goat or a cow that is as important to a rural woman as a child. Now when the government and UN agencies have started the compensations and rehabilitation programs for the flood affected women there are many forms of gender-based discriminations. Many women especially poor and minority women do not have their national Identity cards that is essential for getting any form of compensation. Like in many places in the world, we fear that women will be left out from the compensation processes if we do not shout their names and if we do not say please pay special attention to women and girls because they area already marginalized in the society’s power structures. Therefore it is critical to have gender integrated into each and every section of these DRAFT Recommendations and to have a