Background and Focus

In January 2026, catastrophic flooding across southern and central Mozambique displaced over 800,000 people, with women and children comprising the majority of those affected. Accommodation centres managed by INGD report that children half of those displaced face acute malnutrition and waterborne disease risks. Yet across humanitarian emergencies in the region and globally, the data infrastructure underpinning emergency response consistently fails to account for the differentiated needs of women and girls.

When evacuation maps don't show maternity clinics, when accommodation centres lack sex-disaggregated registration data, when flood risk models don't account for the mobility constraints of pregnant women or caregivers, and when early warning messages don't reach women who are less likely to own mobile phones the emergency response system has a gender data gap. This Agap is a justice gap.

The 2026 IWD theme calls for dismantling structural barriers to equal justice. In the humanitarian context, one of the most consequential structural barriers is invisibility: you cannot respond to what you cannot see on the map.

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) works to close this gap. Through open mapping, community-led data collection, and partnerships with national disaster management institutions and global development funders, HOT enables the creation of geospatial data that makes vulnerable populations visible and their needs actionable.

This webinar brings together four women leading national disaster response, funding resilience at scale, coordinating mapping projects on the ground, and building open mapping communities to examine the gender data gap in humanitarian emergencies and demonstrate how open mapping is emerging as a critical tool for gender-responsive disaster preparedness and response.

Objectives

1. Uncover the gender data gap in emergency response. Using the January 2026 Mozambique floods as a current case study, illustrate how missing or gender-blind geospatial data results in inadequate humanitarian response for women and girls.
2. Offer open mapping as a justice mechanism. Demonstrate how community-led open mapping contributes to making women and girls visible in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery planning.
3. Showcase women leading at every level of the response chain From institutional leadership to global funding strategy to technical project coordination to community facilitation.
4. Identify actionable priorities. Generate concrete recommendations on what data needs to be collected, what maps need to exist before the next disaster, and what investments are needed to close the gender data gap.

Panellists

Speaker 1: Luísa Celma Meque President, INGD, Mozambique Appointed by presidential decree in 2025, President Meque leads the national agency coordinating Mozambique's disaster response most recently during the January 2026 floods affecting Gaza, Maputo, Sofala, Inhambane, and Zambézia provinces. She will speak to what data INGD needs and does not currently have to better protect women and girls during disasters, and how open mapping partnerships strengthen the national response system.

Speaker 2: Pilar Pacheco — Senior Program Officer, Emergency Response, Gates Foundation With 25+ years in international development and humanitarian response, Pilar leads the Gates Foundation's emergency response programming emphasising local partners, preparedness capacity, and long-term resilience over reactive relief. She has specifically championed work in Mozambique, and will speak to the investment case for gender-disaggregated data infrastructure.

Speaker 3:Verónica Chico— Technical Project Coordinator, HOTOSM Mozambique Verónica coordinates HOT's disaster resilience mapping project in Mozambique, working directly with INGD/CENOE, UNICEF, WFP, and community mappers. She brings the operational reality: what mapping looked like before and during the January 2026 floods, what data existed versus what was needed, and how open mapping tools can ensure women's needs are captured in the geospatial record.

Moderator: Omowonuola Akintola (Ola) from HOT guides the discussion from institutional to funder-to- ground-level perspectives and facilitates interactive audience engagement.

This webinar is for you if you are interested in:

• Disaster risk management and humanitarian response
• Gender-responsive data and emergency preparedness
• Open and community-led mapping
• Climate adaptation and resilience funding
• Geospatial tools for development and humanitarian action

Block your calendar here — and check what time this is in your local time zone so you don't miss it!