Rapid Gender Analysis: Colombia Earthquake 10 August 2026

This Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) was produced by TGLF’s Insights Unit on 13 August 2026. It is a secondary review of public primary, near-primary and humanitarian sources published between 10 and 13 August 2026, read alongside pre-crisis data for Chocó and comparative evidence from other earthquakes. No primary data was collected: no affected woman, girl, man, boy or gender-diverse person was interviewed, and no Colombian women-led organisation co-produced it. The Limitations section sets out what follows from this.

How to cite: The Geneva Learning Foundation. (2026). Rapid Gender Analysis: Colombia Earthquake 10 August 2026 (Version 1.0). The Geneva Learning Foundation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21918322

For updates:

• TGLF Rapid Gender Analysis page
• UN Colombia earthquake updates page
• ReliefWeb Colombia earthquake page

This is the first public RGA known to the author for this earthquake. No earthquake-specific rapid gender analysis, gender brief or protection cluster gender note was found in the sources reviewed by 13 August. CARE Colombia and the Red Nacional de Mujeres have produced a Rapid Gender Analysis on Power and Participation for Cauca and Norte de Santander under the Mujeres Líderes en Emergencias project, a different location and crisis, which offers a tested method for a follow-up analysis (CARE Colombia; Red Nacional de Mujeres; Uniminuto Radio).

This is a first public version, not a final account. It should be replaced within 30 days by an analysis co-authored with organisations in the affected departments, or earlier if authorities publish sex-, age-, disability- or gender-identity-disaggregated data, if a flash appeal is issued, or if collective shelters move from spontaneous to formal management.

Conventions used throughout: sources are linked in the text, and the source name follows every linked claim in parentheses so that readers can judge the evidence without consulting a numbered bibliography. The phrases “the author found” and “the sources reviewed” mark the boundary of this secondary review, which cannot establish that every relevant source has been found. Evidence from other disasters is labelled comparative and pre-crisis Chocó data is labelled pre-crisis; neither measures current earthquake conditions, and neither should be presented as current Colombia data.

Distribution format: web and PDF.

Audience: cluster and sector coordinators, shelter and water engineers, logisticians, programme managers, the local Protection Clusters of Chocó and Valle del Cauca, the gender-based violence sub-cluster, the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres, donors allocating earthquake funds, and Colombian organisations named below.

Limits of this analysis: No primary data collection was conducted. The analysis was produced on 1 July 2026, seven days after the earthquakes. It must be updated as soon as field-level data is available from Venezuelan women-led organisations.

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Executive summary

The decision problem

Humanitarian actors need to reach people beyond the rubble. The most urgent gender issue is that the author could not find a sex- or age-disaggregated earthquake casualty, injury, missing-person or assistance figure in the official and humanitarian reporting reviewed. That gap makes it difficult to know whether search, triage, shelter, family tracing and assistance are reaching women, men, girls and boys equitably (OCHA Colombia; UN News).

The available figures are provisional, conflict across sources and dates, and are still changing as assessment reaches more places; they should not be treated as a stable national total. On 10 August the Asociación Colombiana de Ciudades Capitales reported 132 deaths and 570 injuries (CNN). OCHA reported 224 deaths, 2,595 injuries, 195 missing people, 1,136 destroyed homes, 8,385 damaged homes, 796 affected education centres, 84 affected health centres and 16 affected water systems at 17:30 on 11 August (OCHA Colombia; UN News). On 12 August the president reported 265 deaths, nearly 500 missing people and more than 25,800 affected families (NPR).

The reporting reviewed suggests that rural and remote impacts are still being uncovered. On the first day the president reported 18 damaged health centres and 52 damaged education centres; by 11 August the figures were 24 health facilities and more than 550 schools, and by the 17:30 cut-off, 84 and 796 (CNN; UN News; OCHA Colombia). The United Nations Resident Coordinator said that the full effect on rural and remote communities was still unknown (UN News).

Recommendations: short-term

1. Fund transport for the Asociación de la Red Interétnica de Parteras y Parteros del Chocó directly and without a competitive proposal process. Its director said its midwives were attending births and identifying referrals but had no way to transport women to hospitals (El Espectador).
2. Put Colombia’s existing Línea 155, a national service for people affected by gender-based violence, beside 123 and 141 in official earthquake messages, shelters and distribution points. The author found Línea 155 in public earthquake information from Greenpeace Colombia but not in the official earthquake updates reviewed (Greenpeace Colombia; Policía Nacional).
3. Inspect collective shelters before occupancy becomes settled. Check lighting, sanitation locks, privacy, distribution practices and access for people whose gender identity does not fit binary shelter arrangements. This is risk prevention, not an added protection activity (UNHCR; UN Women, Plan International and Red de Igualdad de Género reporting).
4. Require every reporting table to show sex and age disaggregation, or to state plainly that it is unavailable. Add disability and gender identity only where consent, confidentiality and safety permit. This is the first of the IASC needs-assessment standards for humanitarian action, and it will make invisible gaps visible enough to act on (IASC Gender Handbook for Humanitarian Action).

What local actors are already doing

Traditional midwives, community councils, Indigenous authorities, women-led networks and local foundations are already part of the response. The Red Nacional de Mujeres reports chapters in Chocó, Risaralda, Manizales, Valle and Tolima (Red Nacional de Mujeres). Fundación Manos Visibles, Fundación Herencia de Timbiquí, Fundación Galería Aborigen, Fundación Buen Samaritano de Chocó and Fundación PLAN are among organisations reported to have mobilised collection points, networks or material support (Colombia Visible). The available sources do not show whether these organisations have formal voting roles in earthquake coordination.

Limits

This analysis does not establish that women, men, girls or boys have experienced a particular mortality rate, violence rate or assistance rate. It identifies plausible and evidence-supported exposure pathways, and it identifies where the data needed to test those pathways has not been found. The Limitations section below sets out the data, participation, ethical and standpoint limits in full.

Situation and gendered impact

Assessment is expanding, but the population profile remains unclear

The earthquake struck near San José del Palmar, Chocó, at 07:34 local time on 10 August. The Servicio Geológico Colombiano recorded magnitude 7.4 at a depth of 96 kilometres; the United States Geological Survey gave 107 kilometres and United Nations reporting about 103, a discrepancy that has not been reconciled publicly (Servicio Geológico Colombiano; Reuters; UN News). OCHA’s first update covered 16 departments at 14:00 on 10 August; by the third update the reporting had consolidated to 357 municipalities across 13 departments, with substantial impacts in Risaralda, Valle del Cauca, Chocó and Caldas (OCHA Colombia, Flash Update 001; OCHA Colombia, Flash Update 003).

Inconsistency between sources is expected in the first days of a large emergency, but it needs public reconciliation. OCHA reported 195 missing people on 11 August; the presidency reported nearly 500 on 12 August; the mayor of Cali reported 188 missing in that city alone on 11 August; and civilian-run databases were reported to contain more than 4,100 names on 12 August (OCHA Colombia; NPR; CNN). The author did not find a public reconciliation of these lists or their sex and age composition. The Defensoría del Pueblo has separately called for an urgent census of affected people in Chocó (Infobae).

The working implication is practical. Allocation should not rely only on the first municipal counts, and family tracing should establish whether civilian lists include children separated from family, adults who were elsewhere when the earthquake struck, or duplicate records.

Midwives are providing maternal care, but referral transport has failed

The Asociación de la Red Interétnica de Parteras y Parteros del Chocó is continuing to attend births during the emergency. Its executive director, Ledy Manuela Mosquera, told France 24 that referrals were being identified but that midwives did not have transport to hospitals (El Espectador). This is direct evidence of local clinical and social capacity.

The referral system has also lost capacity in Cali. About 30% of the infrastructure of Hospital Universitario del Valle collapsed, including three floors housing paediatrics, internal medicine and part of the neonatal unit, according to its manager, Irne Torres Castro; patients were trapped, and the governor of Valle del Cauca confirmed the paediatric collapse (CNN; Africanews). At San Juan de Dios Hospital, staff evacuated newborns from the neonatal area to the car park, improvising a care space with incubators and mobile cribs (De Último Minuto). Seven health institutions in Cali were closed and evacuated on the first day (CNN). OCHA later reported 84 affected health facilities in 13 departments (OCHA Colombia).

The author did not find an estimate of pregnant women in the earthquake-affected population. UNFPA’s estimate of 69,100 pregnant women is a Minimum Initial Service Package calculation on a separate, pre-earthquake national caseload of 6.9 million people (UNFPA). Comparative evidence is unambiguous about the stakes: pregnancy-related death is the second leading cause of death for women in any context, and 60% of such deaths occur in humanitarian settings (IASC Gender Handbook).

The response should fund transport and communication for the midwife network, identify the current obstetric referral facilities, and estimate the number of pregnant women in the affected population. These steps use capacity that is already present rather than substituting for it.

Reproductive health needs will continue after trauma care shifts elsewhere

People whose homes were damaged may have lost contraception, menstrual supplies, medical records and access to services. Colombian reproductive rights specialists said disruption could increase sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies, and could limit timely care after sexual violence (El Espectador). Voluntary interruption of pregnancy is lawful emergency health care in Colombia: in Sentencia C-055 of 2022 the Constitutional Court removed the crime of consented abortion up to 24 weeks of gestation, with the grounds established in Sentencia C-355 of 2006 applying without a time limit thereafter (Corte Constitucional; UNFPA Colombia).

UNFPA, UN Women, UNICEF and the World Health Organization were reported to be coordinating on the needs of pregnant women and young children (UN News). UNICEF reported reaching 22,000 people in Chocó and Buenaventura with family hygiene kits, maternal care kits, menstrual kits and water storage tanks, against a stated beneficiary figure of 25,000 in Spanish-language reporting; the difference appears to be between people reached and people targeted, and is not explained in the materials themselves (UN News; UNICEF Canada; UN News).

The health response should treat emergency obstetric care, clinical management of rape, post-exposure prophylaxis, emergency contraception, contraception resupply, menstrual materials and legal abortion care as one service package. It should not wait until the trauma caseload falls.

Shelter design and distribution practices can increase or reduce protection risk

The author found no confirmed public reporting of gender-based violence incidents caused by this earthquake, which means only that the sources reviewed did not report them.

The risk pathways are known. Colombian specialists described control over food and hygiene supplies as a potential mechanism for coercion and exploitation in emergency settings (El Espectador). Comparative evidence from a global systematic review associates disaster exposure with increased violence against women and girls through housing insecurity, economic insecurity, trauma, unsafe post-disaster housing and weakened protection systems (Thurston, Stöckl and Ranganathan, BMJ Global Health). Humanitarian guidance makes the same point operationally: acquiring food or water can be a dangerous task, women heading households after separation or loss often cannot access assistance without child care, and this is the context in which transactional sex for money or services becomes more likely (IASC Gender Handbook). A 2026 regional warning after the June earthquakes in Venezuela identified insufficient lighting, overcrowding and lack of private space in temporary shelters as specific risks for women and girls (El Diario).

Colombia has a national Línea 155 for orientation and psychological first aid for people affected by gender-based violence, free and available 24 hours, and a national Línea 141 for child protection, which the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar activated for earthquake-related reports (Policía Nacional; Infobae, reporting ICBF). The author found the 155 service in non-government earthquake messaging but not in the official OCHA and United Nations earthquake updates reviewed (Greenpeace Colombia; OCHA Colombia).

The response should post both numbers prominently, ensure that reporting routes do not pass through the person controlling aid, and complete a shelter safety walk-through before occupancy patterns become fixed.

Before the earthquake, UNFPA documented rising GBV rates including sexual slavery of indigenous and displaced women and girls in border and rural areas by criminal groups. The earthquake has displaced tens of thousands of women into sites where protection is minimal.

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Water disruption adds work, safety exposure and cost that infrastructure figures do not show

OCHA reported that 16 water supply systems were affected (OCHA Colombia). UNICEF’s country representative described its early response in Chocó and Buenaventura as water, sanitation and hygiene work intended to reduce public health risks while services are restored, reaching 22,000 people so far (UN News).

The sources reviewed do not measure who collects water, how far they walk, or how the disruption changes care work. Pre-crisis data does show that 48.5% of Chocó’s population depended on informal work, mostly women, and that more than 70% of the department lacked access to clean water before the earthquake (Internews). If women and girls take on water collection when a system fails, the plausible consequences include lost income time, missed school and exposure on poorly lit routes. This inference from the service failure and the pre-crisis division of labour needs local verification.

Water-point locations and repair sequencing should therefore include walking distance, route safety and the views of women who will use the point, alongside population served and technical feasibility.

Informal work and unpaid care are part of the economic loss

Chocó is Colombia’s poorest department, where more than two-thirds of the population lives in poverty and much of the territory is reachable only by air or river (CNN). Internews reported 63.4% monetary poverty and 48.5% reliance on informal work, mostly among women (Internews). A separate Chocó report using DANE data recorded women’s monetary poverty at 65.8% in 2020 and 2021, and an increase in the department’s gender poverty gap from 2.2 to 4.8 percentage points (Centro Democrático). These pre-crisis figures are not a count of people affected by the earthquake.

OCHA recorded 1,136 destroyed homes and 8,385 damaged homes, the president referred to more than 25,800 affected families, and the governor of Quindío alone reported more than 10,000 affected homes and damage to 70% of the department’s education institutions (OCHA Colombia; NPR; Infobae). Seven million people in Colombia were already experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity before the earthquake (UN News). It is reasonable to expect livelihood loss where homes, stock, workspaces and routes are damaged, but the author found no sex-disaggregated livelihood assessment for this earthquake.

Cash can reach people excluded from formal compensation systems. It should not be assumed to be an automatic measure of empowerment. Recovery assistance should ask whether a household lost income-generating assets, whether it has added care responsibilities, and whether the transfer reaches the person who manages the relevant livelihood.

Child protection is active, but the published figures do not show specific risks for girls and boys

The Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar reported the deployment of 30 mobile units made up of about 120 professionals, the activation of Línea 141 for reports concerning children, and 12 additional officials assigned from 11 August to follow up cases in hospitals and brief search and rescue teams. Its published figures use the phrase “niñas y niños” but do not provide a separate count for girls and boys (Infobae, reporting ICBF).

Authorities estimated 796 affected education centres (OCHA Colombia). UNICEF’s country representative said children had seen homes and schools damaged and faced growing risks as essential services remained disrupted, and Save the Children reported plans for safe spaces and psychosocial support in Buenaventura (UN News; Save the Children). Note that UNICEF’s estimate of 11 million people, including 4 million children, requiring humanitarian assistance is its 2026 appeal figure for the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean and predates this earthquake; it should not be reported as an earthquake caseload (UNICEF, Humanitarian Action for Children 2026).

Recruitment of children is the one risk here for which Colombian sex-disaggregated data does exist. The Defensoría del Pueblo recorded 257 cases of recruitment of children and adolescents in 2025, of which 62% were boys and adolescent boys and 38% girls and adolescent girls, with Chocó among the five departments with the most cases; the Fiscalía has recorded 202 cases in Chocó since 2020 (Defensoría del Pueblo; Infobae, reporting the Fiscalía). Comparative evidence indicates that adolescent girls may face risks related to sexual exploitation and care work, and that girls are frequently withdrawn from school to support the home when economies are strained (El Diario; IASC Gender Handbook). These are questions for child-protection monitoring, not claims about current prevalence.

Humanitarian actors need to disaggregate future shelter, family tracing, psychosocial and return-to-school reporting by sex and age, and should monitor children who remain out of school as a distinct protection concern.

Men and boys may also face particular risks, but current data is insufficient

Men and boys should not appear in this analysis only as potential perpetrators of harm. Adolescent boys in Chocó face documented pre-crisis risks of recruitment by armed groups, and they are the majority of recorded cases nationally (Defensoría del Pueblo; United Kingdom Home Office, country policy and information note on armed groups and criminal gangs, Colombia, March 2026). Search and rescue also involves relatives, neighbours, firefighters and military personnel working in unstable structures, with about 600 troops deployed in Cali on the first day alone (NPR; CNN).

The author found no sex-disaggregated figures for deaths, injuries, responder injuries, mental health needs or service use. Comparative evidence supports links between economic loss, provider expectations, psychological distress and violence in the home, including the observation that men unable to fulfil expected roles as wage earners may respond with humiliation, frustration and increased domestic violence (Thurston, Stöckl and Ranganathan, BMJ Global Health; IASC Gender Handbook).

Response teams should record injuries among paid and volunteer responders by sex and role, and should include men and boys in psychosocial and livelihood monitoring without framing them as a homogeneous source of risk.

Gender-diverse people may face exclusion in binary shelters and need explicit protection

Colombia’s National Disaster Risk Management Plan 2015 to 2025 adopts a differential and gender approach, and its fifth strategic objective is to strengthen governance, education and social communication in risk management with a differential, gender and cultural diversity approach. The variables it names for that approach are gender, disability and ethnic and cultural identity, and its non-discrimination commitment enumerates age, sex, social condition, ethnicity, minority groups, Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities and people with disabilities. Sexual orientation and gender identity do not appear (Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres). A regional review of Latin American disaster risk policy makes the same argument about the sector’s binary understanding of gender (Albarrán Rebaza and Marin, Investigaciones Geográficas, 2023). This is a policy gap; no public figure was found for gender-diverse people affected by this earthquake, and no exclusion in the current response is documented.

In a different Colombian emergency, the Catatumbo displacement crisis of 2025, Caribe Afirmativo counted 42 people of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity in humanitarian attention centres, and local leaders reported that the centres lacked adequate diversity and protection measures (El Espectador). UNHCR guidance warns that LGBTI people can encounter discrimination, unsafe shelter and sanitation arrangements, documentation barriers and exclusion from aid queues in humanitarian settings, and IASC guidance notes that sexual and gender minorities are often overlooked when the needs of a crisis-affected population are identified (UNHCR; IASC Gender Handbook).

Shelter teams should make access explicit now: admit people according to their stated identity, provide safe sanitation options, train staff not to use identity as an eligibility test, and only collect identity data where this does not put people at risk.

Older people and people with disabilities need power restoration and accessible assessment, not only evacuation advice

In Manizales, the director of the Fundación Lazos de Amor care home was reported to be seeking to relocate 16 of its 21 residents after both of its sites lost power, including residents dependent on oxygen whose cylinder reserve was running down (El Espectador). CARE included older people and people with disabilities among groups facing additional challenges in its early statement (CARE).

The author found no disability- or age-disaggregated figures for deaths, injuries, shelter occupancy, assistance or service interruptions. The Manizales example shows one concrete operational question: who depends on electricity for oxygen, dialysis, refrigeration of medicines or mobility equipment, and where are they now?

Municipal health authorities need to establish or update this register and use it to sequence generator placement, referral transport and shelter accessibility work.

Local leadership needs a place in coordination, not only in the acknowledgements

The sources reviewed show local capacity but do not show that local women-led organisations hold voting roles in the earthquake coordination structures. UN Women co-leads the national response area on violence against women and three territorial gender and gender-based violence sub-groups, in Chocó, Cauca and Nariño, two of which regularly include local non-governmental organisations (Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund, Colombia Annual Report 2025). The mechanism for participation therefore exists, but the author found no public evidence of its current membership in this earthquake response, and no equivalent structure documented for Valle del Cauca.

A shelter designed without the people who will use it can fail technically as well as socially. Latrines may be left unused at night, distribution arrangements may not work for people with care responsibilities, and hygiene kits may omit essential items. These are programme-design failures, not merely participation failures. Local women’s groups, youth organisations, organisations of people with disabilities and LGBTI groups are frequently best placed to identify these solutions (IASC Gender Handbook).

The response should assign voting seats, pay the cost of participation, provide interpretation where needed, and include community councils, Indigenous authorities, midwife networks and women-led organisations in decisions before service design becomes fixed.

The state is necessary for this response and must improve the information it provides

The Colombian state has declared a national disaster, requested international support and asked the United Nations to complement national action on shelter, health, food security, education and protection (UN News). The Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar activated a child-protection protocol within 48 hours, and national services including Línea 141 and Línea 155 already exist (Infobae, reporting ICBF; Policía Nacional).

The argument for national leadership is sound. The limitation is that the public reporting reviewed has not yet provided disaggregation by sex, age, disability or gender identity, has not reconciled the different casualty, missing-person, infrastructure and depth figures, and rests on a national risk-management plan whose differential approach does not name sexual orientation or gender identity (OCHA Colombia; NPR; Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres).

The immediate recommendation to national institutions is to improve the completeness and usefulness of the information they are collecting.

Recommendations

The recommendations are ordered by urgency. Each has a responsible actor, a practical action, the finding it addresses and a budget line or decision point.

1. Fund referral transport for Chocó midwives without a proposal process

• Actor: OCHA Colombia Pooled Fund, UNFPA Colombia, and donors with unearmarked Colombia funds.
• Action: Transfer unrestricted cash to the Asociación de la Red Interétnica de Parteras y Parteros del Chocó for vehicle and river transport hire, fuel, communications and midwife stipends. Use a signed receipt and retrospective narrative report. Do not require a competitive call or prior international partner registration.
• Link to finding: Midwives report that they are attending births and identifying referrals but cannot transport women to hospital, in a department much of which is reachable only by air or river (El Espectador; CNN).
• Budget line or decision seat: Colombia Pooled Fund rapid-response window and UNFPA Colombia emergency funds. The United States said it provided 200 million dollars to the Colombia Pooled Fund, which can be used for earthquake-related needs (United States Mission Geneva).

2. Publicise Línea 155 and create a reporting route that distributors do not control

• Actor: Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres and municipal emergency communication teams for Línea 155. The Humanitarian Country Team protection from sexual exploitation and abuse focal point for complaint routes.
• Action: Add Línea 155 to official messages, shelter noticeboards, distribution points and press briefings beside 123 and 141, in Spanish and, where feasible, Emberá and Wounaan. Establish a complaint route in each shelter and distribution point that bypasses the person distributing assistance. State that assistance is never conditional on anything.
• Link to finding: Línea 155 is a free, confidential, 24-hour national service absent from the official emergency materials reviewed, and Colombian specialists have identified discretion over food and hygiene supplies as a possible coercion route (Policía Nacional; El Espectador).
• Budget line or decision seat: Emergency communications approval for Línea 155, which has low additional cost. Include complaint routes in partner agreements and distribution standard operating procedures.

3. Inspect every collective shelter before occupancy patterns become fixed

• Actor: Shelter and camp coordination actors, UNICEF, Save the Children, the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres and municipalities, with women-led organisations and disability organisations involved in walk-throughs.
• Action: Within ten days, inspect each collective shelter for five conditions: lighting along routes to sanitation, latrines and bathing facilities that lock from inside, private space for people who cannot safely sleep with a household member, fixed entitlement lists that reduce individual gatekeeper discretion, and admission and sanitation options that do not exclude people whose identity does not fit binary shelter divisions.
• Link to finding: Comparative evidence identifies lighting, privacy and overcrowding as shelter safety risks, and comparable Colombian displacement evidence indicates that LGBTIQ+ people may not be adequately included in binary humanitarian arrangements (El Diario; El Espectador).
• Budget line or decision seat: Shelter and non-food item funding. The United States committed 15.5 million dollars for shelter, food, protection and earthquake assessments (United States Mission Geneva; CNN). No European Union allocation for this earthquake was found: the 10 million euros added to the 2026 Latin America and Caribbean humanitarian implementation plan on 24 July responds to the June 2026 Venezuela earthquakes, and the 5 million euros added for Colombia in January 2026 responds to armed conflict, so a new decision would be required (European Commission).

4. Keep reproductive health on the same supply route as trauma care

• Actor: Ministry of Health and Social Protection, UNFPA Colombia, the International Rescue Committee, Project HOPE and Direct Relief, coordinated through the health cluster.
• Action: Restore emergency obstetric referral, clinical management of rape, HIV and sexually transmitted infection prophylaxis, emergency contraception, contraception resupply, menstrual supplies and access to voluntary interruption of pregnancy in functioning facilities and mobile units. Publish an estimate of pregnant women in the affected population.
• Link to finding: The referral tier in Cali lost about 30% of Hospital Universitario del Valle’s infrastructure including paediatric, internal medicine and part of the neonatal capacity, Chocó midwives cannot transport referred patients, and no earthquake-specific estimate of pregnant women was found (CNN; El Espectador).
• Budget line or decision seat: Health cluster funding, UNFPA Colombia and medical supply pipelines. UNFPA’s stated 2026 requirement of 2.34 million dollars for sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence services for 53,595 women and adolescents predates the earthquake and needs revision (UNFPA).

5. Give local women-led organisations voting seats in coordination

• Actor: United Nations Resident Coordinator, national Protection Cluster, the territorial gender and gender-based violence sub-groups, and the local Protection Clusters of Chocó and Valle del Cauca.
• Action: Fill at least four voting seats, not observer seats, within seven days. Invite the midwife association, the Red Nacional de Mujeres chapters in affected departments, the Red Departamental de Mujeres Chocoanas, and a rotating representative selected by community council and Indigenous authority women’s structures closest to the epicentre. Pay attendance and interpretation costs.
• Link to finding: Existing Colombian networks and women-led groups are responding, and a territorial gender sub-group exists in Chocó, but no public evidence was found that local women-led organisations hold formal voting roles in the current earthquake coordination structure (Red Nacional de Mujeres; Colombia Visible; Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund).
• Budget line or decision seat: The voting seat is the decision transfer. Cover participation through Humanitarian Country Team coordination costs and the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund Colombia allocation, which in 2025 supported nine women-led organisations including in Chocó (Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund).

6. Require transparent disaggregation and reconciliation of figures

• Actor: Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres, OCHA Colombia, Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal, Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, Asocapitales and cluster leads.
• Action: Report deaths, injuries, missing people, shelter occupancy, separated children and assistance recipients by sex and age band. Add disability and gender identity only where it is safe and consented to. Show “sex and age disaggregation not available” when data is missing. Publish a reconciliation of the differing casualty, missing-person, infrastructure-damage and earthquake-depth figures, and respond to the Defensoría del Pueblo’s call for a census of affected people in Chocó.
• Link to finding: Totals differ between Asocapitales, OCHA, the presidency, municipal authorities and civilian databases, and no sex- or age-disaggregated reporting was found in the official and humanitarian materials reviewed (CNN; OCHA Colombia; NPR; Infobae).
• Budget line or decision seat: OCHA and national information-management functions. Make this a reporting condition for pooled-fund grants.

7. Repair water systems with collection burden and route safety in mind

• Actor: Water, sanitation and hygiene cluster, UNICEF, municipal water utilities and the Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres.
• Action: When prioritising repair of the 16 affected systems and placing temporary water points, assess walking distance, route lighting and safety with women and girls who will collect water. Include menstrual supplies in standard hygiene kits.
• Link to finding: 16 systems are affected in a department where more than 70% of the population already lacked clean water access and where women predominate in informal work, but no local measure of water collection burden was found, so assessment should run alongside engineering decisions (OCHA Colombia; Internews).
• Budget line or decision seat: UNICEF water, sanitation and hygiene resources and municipal restoration budgets. The decision belongs in the early siting and repair-prioritisation meeting, before the temporary system is fixed.

8. Commission a follow-up RGA co-authored with Colombian organisations

• Actor: CARE Colombia and Red Nacional de Mujeres as co-leads, with UN Women Colombia and the Humanitarian Country Team as commissioners. The co-author group should include the Asociación de la Red Interétnica de Parteras y Parteros del Chocó, Red Departamental de Mujeres Chocoanas and Afro-Colombian and Indigenous organisations selected in the affected municipalities.
• Action: Extend the CARE Colombia and Red Nacional de Mujeres Rapid Gender Analysis on Power and Participation method to Chocó, Valle del Cauca, Risaralda and Caldas within 30 days. Contract Colombian organisations directly. Pay staff time at consultant rates. Include their questions, not only cluster questions. Reach San José del Palmar, Río Iró, Nóvita, Sipí and Istmina where safe and agreed.
• Link to finding: CARE Colombia and Red Nacional de Mujeres already have a partnership and an RGA method in Colombia, built under the Agence Française de Développement-funded Mujeres Líderes en Emergencias project, but the source material reviewed concerns Cauca and Norte de Santander (CARE Colombia; Red Nacional de Mujeres; Uniminuto Radio).
• Budget line or decision seat: The Mujeres Líderes en Emergencias programme, UN Women Colombia humanitarian funding and the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund).

Limitations

Data and verification limits

This is a secondary data review, not a field assessment. It uses OCHA updates, Colombian government and institutional sources, UN agencies, humanitarian organisations, Colombian and international journalism, and pre-crisis research. The review prioritised recent sources and named data gaps, but it cannot establish that every relevant source has been found.

Every source cited in this version was resolved and read on 13 August 2026, and every figure was checked against the source that carries it. Where an earlier draft’s figure could not be confirmed in any accessible source, the figure has been removed rather than retained with a caveat. Two documents in the earlier source list could not be reached and are not cited: an ACAPS report on confinement in Chocó, whose content is covered here by Defensoría del Pueblo data, and the ReliefWeb disaster page, which is listed only as an operational entry point.

The casualty, injury, missing-person, infrastructure and depth figures conflict across sources and dates. This document presents the difference as evidence of a rapidly developing assessment picture rather than choosing a single figure as definitive.

Who did not participate

No community council, Indigenous authority, women-led organisation, midwife association, disability organisation, older persons’ organisation or youth group was consulted or invited to review a draft. No shelter was visited. The report therefore does not claim to represent the priorities of the affected population.

The analysis credits Ledy Manuela Mosquera, Cristina Rosero, Luis Mora, Chocó governor Nubia Carolina Córdoba, Colombia Diversa, Caribe Afirmativo, CARE Colombia, Red Nacional de Mujeres and the El Espectador Género y Diversidad desk where their published intelligence informs a finding. None reviewed or approved this document.

Knowledge and representation limits

Organisations named here are visible because they have online material, social media, media relationships or collection points. They may not represent the wider local response, especially in municipalities close to the epicentre. The list is a starting point, not a shortlist.

The framework uses international humanitarian categories and cluster structures, which may not match the priorities and knowledge systems of Afro-Colombian community councils, Indigenous authorities or interethnic midwife networks. Community and Indigenous justice systems are not adequately analysed here. Any protection response that assumes formal complaint and prosecution are the only routes to safety will be incomplete.

Ethical limits

The report discusses gender-based violence, exploitation by responders and exclusion of gender-diverse people, but avoids collecting personal accounts. That reduces the risk of exposing an individual and also limits what can be known. Any follow-up research should confirm safe referral pathways before asking about protection, use community-level questions rather than questions about personal experience in group settings, and avoid collecting gender-identity information where doing so could cause harm.

Standpoint, provenance and the scribe test

The analysis was produced remotely, in English, from public sources, without instruction from local actors and without Afro-Colombian, Indigenous or Chocoano authorship. This position privileges what is visible online and legible to donors. It likely represents urban centres better than rural Chocó, and infrastructure damage better than care, social solidarity and psychological needs. It applies an international humanitarian framework to a territory with long-standing Black feminist, Indigenous and community organising traditions that have not shaped this document directly.

The intent is to absorb administrative and donor-facing work so that local actors can focus on response, working from their analysis rather than around it, and not as a substitute for local leadership. No money, decision authority or formal credit has moved to a local actor as a result of this publication: naming organisations and recommending funds or seats is not a transfer. The test of whether this analysis has any value is whether funds reach local actors, whether they gain decision authority and whether a follow-up analysis is co-authored with them.

A note on the claim that women are 14 times more likely to die in disasters

Some material about this earthquake, including Colombian coverage of gendered impacts, repeats a claim that women and children are up to 14 times more likely than men to die in disasters (El Espectador). This report does not use that figure. Independent reviews trace it to an unsubstantiated statement from the 1990s, and a 2026 empirical review of twenty-first century disasters finds the evidence on sex-differentiated mortality largely inconclusive, with no support for consistently higher female mortality outside biological disasters (BBC More or Less; Rubin, Disasters). That is not an absence of gendered disaster effects: the same review points to elevated non-fatal risks, and humanitarian guidance records that about one in five refugee or displaced women in complex settings experiences some form of sexual violence (IASC Gender Handbook).

No earthquake-specific sex-disaggregated mortality data was found for Colombia. The analysis therefore focuses on documented service failures and exposure pathways, including referral transport, health service interruption, water access, shelter design, care work and exclusion from assistance.

Sources

All sources checked on 13 August 2026.

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