Management Response

: Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division
: 2024 - 2024 , Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division (HQ)
: Mid-term review of the Strategic Partnership Framework 2022-2025 between UN Women, Sida and Norad (SPFIII)
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Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division

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Strategic Partnership Framework 2022-2025 (SPFIII) has been informed by the final evaluation of the phase I conducted in 2016; mid-term review of the phase II conducted in 2019; and relevant corporate thematic evaluations. The objective of the mid-term review conducted in 2024 is to assess criteria agreed with Sida and Norad, that of coherence, internal and external, sustainability and impact, to inform future orientation and implementation of the programme. UN-Women welcomes the findings and recommendations of the MTR and is in general agreement with the eight recommendations. The Management Response focuses on key actions for implementing the MTR recommendations in the last year of phase III. The MTR findings and recommendations will also inform the design of proposed phase IV of the partnership.

: Approved
Recommendation: Extend the impact of knowledge products and learning processes on coherence across UN Women ensuring linkages to policy work in various spaces including the UN Security Council (UNSC) or IASC Principals and Deputies meetings, through: increasing data and evidence generation and updating knowledge products where these remain useful for priority programming approaches; improving accessibility and increasing visibility of priority knowledge products to give these wider traction and applicability to non-specialist staff across UN Women, as well as positioning UN Women with its partners.
Management Response: UN Women accepted recommendation 1. UN Women agrees with this recommendation for extending the impact of knowledge products and learning processes on coherence across UN Women ensuring linkages to policy work in relevant spaces. On WPP, UN Women will continue supporting the successful staffing structure model of regional policy specialists matrixed to the global advisor, as it maintains coherence and extends the impact of collaboratively agreed and tested knowledge products, and country tailored technical advice. Supported by HQ based Knowledge Management Specialist and Statistician, UN Women will continue generating knowledge and tools for country implementation; and advancing international measurement standards on women’s representation while positioning itself as a UN and global thought leader on WPP. In parallel, UN Women continues to contribute to technical guidance to the National Statistical Offices on the use of electoral data in the context of the Praia City Group on Governance Statistics, as co-supporting agency (with UNDP) of the Task Team on Participation in Political and Public Affairs. Furthermore, UN Women will continue investing in knowledge products outlining the gender impact of conflicts and humanitarian crises through an intersectional lens and increasing visibility and dissemination through the new knowledge portal and a thematic webpage for data on women and girls in conflicts and crises under the flagship Women Count initiative. Advancing a gender data revolution on WPS will also be one of the focus areas of the 2025 Secretary-General’s annual report on WPS and a priority for UN Women in preparation for the 25th anniversary of 1325.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018), Peace and security (SPs before 2018), Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Knowledge management
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Coherence
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Increase global data production on WPP and access to broader audiences. SPF Team WPP 2025/12 Initiated The 2025 edition of the Women in Politics Map, and the Poster Women Political Leaders were produced and published. The Team Local Government Website and UN Gender Quota Portal have been updated; AWP surveys in Argentina, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC Mexico and Uruguay are being finalised SDG data on 5.5.1b was collected and reported under the Secretary General’s report on SGDs.
Continue producing cutting edge knowledge products and tools for country implementation to support WPP programming. SPF Team WPP 2025/12 Initiated Ongoing: (i) A first draft of the Guidance for EMBs on strengthening electoral data was prepared; and, in parallel, the outline for the Guidance to NSOs in using electoral data for producing statistics on inclusive political participation was prepared and agreed upon by the Praia City Group on Governance Statistics. These guidance notes will be finalized in 2025. (ii) The drafting of a Guidance Note on implementing VAWP surveys is ongoing and will be finalized in 2025.
Prioritize investment in advancing a “gender data revolution on WPS that reaches the general public in real time”. SPF Team WPS & HA 2025/12 Initiated WPS team is preparing its contribution to the new UN Women Knowledge Portal + Women Count dashboard, and the HA is finalizing the new toolkit for gender analysis in conflict and crisis settings. The annual SG’s report on WPS, drafted by the WPS team, included an extended section on a gender data revolution on WPS, and its findings were covered in more than 100 media outlets across the world. Among others, data on women’s participation in peace processes as mediators, negotiators, and signatories was collected for all processes (not just the handful led by the UN) for the years 2020-2024) and published in the SG’s reports in 2024 and 2025. UN Women intends to collect this data annually, if funding continues. The first sub-pages on WPS in the knowledge hub will go live in October 2025 and will be built up throughout the rest of 2025 and early 2026. WPS, HA and Research and Data teams collaborated on a funding proposal for CRAF’D on gender data for crisis settings. The CRAF’d project is implemented in several countries including CAR, Sudan, Yemen, Palestine and other crisis contexts. As of October 2025, the HA, WPS and R&D sections have developed a draft core set of global indicators to track the impact of crises on women which will be part of the Women Count Crisis and Conflict web page. Internal consultations are ongoing and consultations with external partners are planned to ensure the relevance of the data and analysis to a wide group of stakeholders. Some qualitative indicators will require engagement with women led organizations and crisis affected women and girls. This work feeds directly into the humanitarian reset priority of democratizing data, meaning data systems should be designed and led by those closest to affected communities, making information more accessible and accountable to the people being served. This is of particular interest and relevance to the ongoing data discussions in the context of the humanitarian reset. The data hub is expected to be ready by October 2026.
Continue to leverage the Women’s Resilience to Disasters (WRD) knowledge hub, including tools like the WRD experts register and policy tracker, to extend knowledge impact and improve accessibility for non-specialist staff. SPF Team WPS/DRR 2025/12 Completed The WRD Policy Tracker has been updated and a Policy Brief reflecting the results of the review has been completed and uploaded to the WRD Knowledge Hub. In addition, a publication “Building Women’s Resilience to Disasters: Lessons from Practice, Evidence from the Pacific” was also completed and uploaded to the Knowledge Hub in July 2025, distilling evidence and lessons learned from the WRD Programme's local and grassroots initiatives, demonstrating how empowering women and supporting their leadership contributes to more inclusive and effective disaster resilience. A Policy Brief on these good practices was developed and uploaded to the WRD Knowledge Hub in October 2025.
Strengthen utilization of data and knowledge produced at the country and regional levels to inform the global policy work at the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) and other humanitarian coordination mechanisms and highlight the added values of UN Women’s knowledge products. SPF Team HA 2025/12 Initiated UN Women has launched or is piloting new humanitarian knowledge management products with the support of an HQ-based Research and Knowledge Management Specialist and Analyst, including: (1) Humanitarian Situation Updates (externally facing products that make visible UN Women’s country-level humanitarian response and contribute to great coordination and accountability); (2) Humanitarian Bulletins (internal facing document providing updates on UN Women’s work on HA across HQ, Regional and Country contexts); (3) Humanitarian Dialogues Web Series – a webinar series that provide an opportunity to take a deep dive into select humanitarian topics with webinar reports produced to document and share insights. Several countries supported through SPFIII –including for example Niger, DRC, In addition, the HA team is enhancing the quality and standardization of humanitarian research and knowledge products produced by COs in crisis contexts, (e.g. introducing SOPs for review and quality control; developing standardized KM templates, research tools, and guidance notes; providing technical support and training to staff and partners on research and data). The HA team is also investing in greater data production including through publishing timely research (e.g. impact of funding cuts on WLOs); and working in close collaboration with WPS and M&D teams to develop a global web platform on data for women and girls in crisis and context settings. The HA team is updating its knowledge management hub and revamping its knowledge product pipeline to generate greater internal peer exchange and learning. As part of the humanitarian reset and the focus on democratizing data collection and ownership, UN Women plans to engage in relevant inter-agency processes to ensure gender data and analysis remains visible and central to the broader humanitarian response.
Recommendation: Engage UN Women leadership across country, regional and global levels to ensure understanding, buy-in and coordination with the conceptual, strategic and programmatic work enabled by SPF. This could include briefings to leadership as well as establishing stronger communication and coordination with relevant thematic advisory roles to share learning on specific approaches or opportunities for synergies between advisory and leadership roles, including how advisory capacity can best support political and policy engagement at different levels and how leadership decision can facilitate the responses to opportunities identified by SPF-funded advisors.
Management Response: UN-Women partially accepted recommendation 2. UN Women believes there is a strong internal coordination and coherence in the way the programme is designed and implemented. The unique nature and set-up of the SPF is reliant on the existing organizational structures and processes where SPF-supported interventions aim to address gaps in country and regional Strategic Notes, and SPF-funded staff and technical experts are reporting directly to leadership of country and regional offices and HQs departments, while simultaneously working closely with the thematic leads at HQs. The Internal Programme Board (IPB) responsible for the overall performance and high-level implementation issues, ensures that the programme delivers its strategic outcomes and realizes its benefits in a coherent, effective, and efficient way. The IPB comprises of Director, Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division, representative Regional Director, Chiefs of thematic sections, and Chief, Public Partnership Section, bringing in critical coherence between technical teams and leadership. Furthermore, critical reports (i.e., annual reports and briefs, evaluation reports, etc.) are shared regularly with relevant HQs teams (i.e., highlighting major milestones in the PPID newsletter) and country and regional offices through the regional staff supported by the programme. UN Women sees the benefit of increased communication and clear directives to ensure better visibility for the programme at all levels and will focus on the following, in addition to the ongoing efforts:
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018), Peace and security (SPs before 2018), Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Internal coordination and communication
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Coherence
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Increase investment in communications on the gender impact and UN Women’s programmatic approach in crisis settings drawing on initiatives (including SPFIII-supported work) in Lebanon, oPt, Sudan, Afghanistan, Colombia, CAR and other country contexts. SPF Team WPS and HA 2025/12 Initiated The first months of 2025 featured lots of UN Women’s communications efforts on several major crises, with special attention to Ukraine, Myanmar, Gaza, and Sudan. The latter even included a joint mission to Sudan that resulted in a significant number of publications and a focus on the impact of SPF. The WPSHA Community of Practice also held an interactive discussion and webinar for staff working on WPS and HA on how to communicate our knowledge and impact. In more recent months, UN Women has organized several media briefings on the situation of women and girls in crisis contexts, for example in Sudan, Afghanistan, Ukraine and oPt (more recently on the ceasefire in Gaza and implications/priorities for crisis affected and displaced women and girls-October 2025). With the recruitment of a communications specialist, increased communication is expected on the gender impacts of crises both at Geneva and global level.
Conduct periodic debriefings on SPF to HQ, regional and country leaderships including through capacity building workshops/training. SPF Team 2025/12 Initiated Check-ins with SPF-funded deployments have been focused on clarifying reporting updates for the annual donor report and expectations for new deployments. Ongoing technical and advisory support to COs and ROs receiving deployments/HR surge capacity through SPFIII focuses on strengthening reporting as per the program standards and requirements, also in alignment with SP indicators. Furthermore, organized briefings bringing together CO/RO representatives will be coordinated in November 2025 to enable sharing of experiences and lessons learnt across regions.
Continue sharing annual reports, briefs, evaluation reports and highlighting programme’s results with regional and country offices and relevant HQs departments including through thematic communities of practice. SPF Team 2025/12 Completed Annual reports and annual briefs shared widely. Regional Director sits on the Internal Board bringing in country and regional perspectives. For example, in the recent Annual Meeting (October 2025), Regional Offices were represented by the ECA Regional Director reflecting on the SPF contribution to the WPP, WEE and WPS agenda.
Recommendation: Draw on and scale-up corporate coordination and dialogue using existing coordination mechanisms to address complementarity between WPP, WPS-HA and DRR agendas, including building on emerging synergies at field level to inform UN Women’s corporate Strategic Notes and Annual Work Plans. Depending on the country typology and context, this could include clarifying how different technical approaches can be delivered concurrently or be better aligned and sequenced for countries emerging or at risk of from conflict or crisis. Mechanisms such as the crisis response situation room and task teams have been mobilized to respond to political situation, conflict and humanitarian situations in countries like Haiti, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Bangladesh, looking at the needs and priorities of women and girls affected by crises, including IDPs, refugees and those in host communities. This can address linkages between political work, IASC advocacy, UNSC related discussions, investment in gender analysis and data, funding for local WRO’s and networks, partnerships with national governments and other actors on policy, humanitarian planning and legal processes/aspects, investigations in HR and IHL violations, operational response through the WPHF and UN Women’s country level programming on WPS and HA.
Management Response: UN-Women accepted recommendation 3. UN-Women agrees with this recommendation and the need to scale-up corporate coordination and dialogue mechanisms to address complementarity between WPP, WPS-HA and DRR agendas, including building on emerging synergies at country level to inform corporate planning. Existing interagency coordination mechanisms (e.g. The Interagency Task Force on TSMs) as well as UN Women internal task teams on specific countries (e.g. Bangladesh) provide spaces for continued building on emerging synergies at country level on WPP, HA/Refugee Response and WPS. The new CEDAW General Recommendation No 40, focused on parity between women and men in decision making systems – presents an opportunity to inform policy-oriented advocacy, UN programming at regional and country levels on the three thematic areas funded through SPF, support donor outreach and UN coordination.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018), Peace and security (SPs before 2018), Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Internal coordination and communication
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Coherence
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Continue providing coordinated and timely technical support to COs including in political crisis and transitions. SPF Team 2025/12 Initiated Bolster UN-Women’s country programming on WPP and the link to the WPS and HA agenda continuing with the provision of direct support to country programming, integrated policy advice and technical assistance at global, regional, and country levels, including through internal cross thematic task teams on specific countries replicating examples such as the Task Team on Bangladesh. This remains a key driver for results and enables UN-Women to leverage comparative advantage in advancing effective programming and UN coordination at country level. We will expand geographic coverage, adding to Europe and Central Asia, and East and Southern Africa with additional deployments in Fiji MCO and DRC CO. May 2025 - No cross-thematic crisis task teams have been activated in 2025 yet but one is planned for Ukraine in May. On WPP technical support to regional and country offices continues. In addition, new deployments in DRC and Fiji MCO recruited at the end of 2024 onboarded in January 2025. The WPP HQ team provided induction sessions and is working closely to support both new staff members with resource mobilisation efforts, and implementation of the WPP portfolio (including initiatives being funded under SPF)
Strengthen linkages between DRR, WPS, HA and WEE to ensure integrated approaches to DRR, climate security and climate change, and women’s economic empowerment through clarifying complementarities, particularly leveraging the WPHF to channel funding for local women’s rights organizations (WROs) working on DRR as well as the WPS Focal Points network to advance discussions with government partners. SPF Team 2025/12 Initiated WPS is working with WEE and HA on the global guidance on care in conflict and crises following on an Expert Group meeting bringing together practitioners and experts across several organizations and regions/countries (June 2025). The new guidance is expected to be launched on November 19th, and another paper on WPS and care will be published in early 2026. A new policy brief on gender and climate, peace and security was published in October 2025. UN Women has recently participated in climate risk assessments in CAR and Niger and is designing a standard methodology for integrating gender.
In coordination with Regional Offices, establish a mechanism for focused discussion on selected fragile countries to identify integrated technical support needs. PPID Directorate with SPF Team 2025/12 Initiated Quarterly meetings of PPID Director and Regional Directors continue to take place. Out of these meetings, a Task Team on DRC has been set up for RO, HQ to support the CO. Upon the request of the RD, a discussion on Ukraine will be taking place shortly, and OPT Task Team has also recently been activated.
Distinctly define UN Women’s approach to the HDP nexus by leveraging the opportunity of the new Global Strategic Plan development, and drawing on lessons learnt in relation ongoing programming in crisis contexts under SN/AWP. SPF Team HA 2025/12 Initiated In October 2025, programmatic guidance and technical support have been provided by the HA section for the development of Strategic Notes in countries like Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia complementing capacities under SPFIII. The main objective is to guide the implementation of UN Women’s approach across the HDP continuum. Similarly, there has been provision of technical support for all regional Strategic Notes to ensure visibility of UN Women’s approaches across the HDP continuum, guiding strategic partnerships with local actors and UN agencies and resource mobilization for the achievement of strategic GEEWG priorities in crises. The objective is also to ensure alignment with the new Global Strategic Plan 2026-2029.
Recommendation: Invest further in long-term programme development processes - drawing on UN Women Gender Equality Accelerators - to ensure that UN Women remains relevant in the changing context, particularly in innovative programming areas that utilise thematic synergies. This includes the intersection of WPS, HA and DRR (with links between reconstruction and WEE as well as resilience, protection, human rights and local leadership related interventions). This should enable UN Women to be more adaptable in a changing funding landscape.
Management Response: UN-Women accepted recommendation 4.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Peace and security (SPs before 2018), Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Alignment with strategy
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Continue supporting Country Offices’ programme design and resource mobilization efforts using the GEAs as the model through remote technical assistance and SPF seed funding. SPF Team 2025/12 Initiated Support on developing WPP programme development continues. Bangladesh Haiti, Malawi COs were supported on project design with resource mobilisation results. In addition, in a two and half month period, near 2MIL US$ has been allocated to 19 COs and 2 ROs to support staffing capacities, filling programming funding gaps and provide seed funding with the aim of catalytic results on longer term programming. Annual reports will be submitted by all COs at the end of December. Furthermore, SPF-funded regional advisors continue to shape country-based programming and fundraising using the GEAs on WPS and HA, and HQs teams complement through reviews of the strategic notes and targeted webinars in the WPS CoP. It is planned to deliver CoP sessions on how to translate the new SP and indicators into WPS programming.
Collate and showcase good practices of gender mainstreaming in UN programming and long-term fundraising efforts, through regional and global CoPs and peer to peer exchanges. SPF Team 2025/12 Initiated Recent sessions of the WPSHA Community of Practice include a multi-part webinar series on designing impactful NAPs on WPS, and specialized webinars on masculinities and WPS. The WPP CoP continued distributing newsletters and held a Webinar to introduce the online training modules on violence against women in politics and elections (VAWP/E), produced with SPF resources. Part of this work has included a collaboration between the global team and ESARO to develop training modules targeted to different electoral stakeholders - EMBs, security sector, justice sector, observers, political parties, UN staff and CSOs. The training presents global research and data, programming, and policy experiences related to VAWP/E prevention, monitoring, mitigation, and response. The webinar provided cross-learning among colleagues through sharing lessons from COs and regions that have piloted the modules and engage in peer exchange and provide feedback through discussion. In mid 2025, the HA team launched a Humanitarian Dialogues Webinar Series to facilitate peer-to-peer learning on good practices in HA. In July 2025 the series was launched with the first topic governing how to integrate Gender in inter-agency assessments followed by a webinar in September 2025 on UN Women’s Core Commitments on Humanitarian Action. Additional webinars are being planned for Q4 2025 on Partnerships and AI in humanitarian action.
Continue prioritizing investment and support to long-term programme development that rely on thematic synergies. SPF Team 2025/12 Initiated Work on these studies (on care in conflict and crises and on women’s role in reconstruction) is underway. WPS and DRR collaborated during the WPS National Action Plans (NAPs) Focal Points meeting, hosted by Japan in Tokyo in February 2025, recognizing disaster risk reduction as a key pillar of the WPS agenda. Following capacity assessment, UN Women is not currently able to meet the demands of formal membership in the Santiago Network. However, UN Women will continue to support loss and damage assessments through its gender-responsive Post-Disaster Needs Assessments (PDNAs). Progress continues in this area, with the revised gender guidelines for PDNAs now in draft form and undergoing further review through the PDNA Core Group.
Recommendation: Develop a coordinated approach to respond to the wider donor landscape and funding trends for GEWE. Funding constraints are an ongoing concern, despite SPF successes in leveraging funds, both due to systemic weaknesses (such as dwindling funds to support WPP in between election cycles) and due to the current downturn in overall funds for GEWE. UN Women should draw on the SPF funded capacity across the system to identify internal and external actions in response to current and predicted shortfalls, including: external advocacy to enable access to increased, predictable and long term funding including in relation to conflict and crisis contexts; forging of new partnerships; framing how UN Women’s work can be integrated into wider programming; and research into innovative funding mechanisms for the future in countries with declining donor funding.
Management Response: UN Women accepted recommendation 5.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Peace and security (SPs before 2018), Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Resource mobilization
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Formulate a strong proposal for SPFIV that can be shared with other prospective donors that want to join the Strategic Partnership Framework. SPF Team, PPID Directorate, SPD 2025/06 Overdue-Initiated UN Women’s new Strategic Plan was developed and approved and will form the basis of the proposal for the fourth phase.
Continue to leverage current donor partners, Norway and Sweden, for advocacy purposes showcasing the SPF results and benefits of the funding modality. SPF Team, PPID Directorate, SPD 2025/12 Initiated Both Norway and Sweden have been receiving extensive monthly summaries and analysis of WPS developments in the Security Council since our last annual meeting. Their advocacy was crucial for a strong statement by the Nordic countries in the Open Debate and a strong statement of the Group of Friends on 1325.
Formalize partnership with the Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative as part of ongoing collaboration with WMO and engagement with the Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative. SPF Team DRR 2025/12 Completed The UN-to-UN agreement between WMO and UN Women to formalize partnership with CREWS was signed and implemented under ESARO.
Mobilize the HDP nexus funding for crisis settings through the wider programming, leveraging the synergies and complementarities of thematic areas UN Women engage. Partner and engage in joint programming with other UN agencies to mobilize resources for joint action/collaboration and programming in crisis settings, for example with IOM, UNHCR, and WFP is another corporate priority. SPF Team HA 2025/12 Initiated A donor roundtable with the title ‘Inclusive humanitarian action-Gender equality as enabler for efficient responses’ with focus on UN Women’s crisis response/humanitarian portfolio held in Geneva, in May 2025 was co-organized with the Permanent Mission of Sweden to the United Nations. The focus was on UN Women’s humanitarian portfolio and partnerships with local women’s organizations and other UN agencies (WFP, UNHCR and IOM) in oPt, Sudan and Afghanistan. Discussions with IOM and UNHCR are ongoing also in view of the upcoming Global Refugee Forum Progress review scheduled in December 2025 on joint events, messaging on gender equality in crises.
Recommendation: Prioritize the contribution of SPF to sustaining gains for gender equality, women’s leadership and empowerment in the longer term through building local and national capacities within member states and within civil society, including their ability to finance activities outside of UN Women’s financial support. Prioritize long-term capacity building for national ownership of change processes to support GEWE goals. This should include a strong focus on external engagement across national, regional and global levels to embed gender equality within public financial management capacities as well as increasing direct support for WRO’s.
Management Response: UN-Women accepted recommendation 6. Overall, SPF supported initiatives have generated progress in strengthening electoral frameworks and developing and sustaining a diverse cadre of women political leaders. This impact is largely due to sustained investments in technical assistance and capacity building targeting key institutions to support legal reforms and strengthening of women’s skills as office holders and leaders and increasing capacities at all stages of their path into politics. Similarly, UN Women HQ and regional and country offices are all prioritizing their engagement on the planning and implementation of UN transitions, in anticipation of reduced footprint by large UN peacekeeping or special political missions and increased demands on UN Women. This is an entire workstream with its own mechanisms and processes, and UN Women will continue to advocate for localization and effective channeling of resources and capacity-building to national and local actors in these contexts. UN Women expects to finalize its internal guidance note on this matter in 2025 and contribute to the revision of the overall UN Transitions guidance for the whole system.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Peace and security (SPs before 2018), Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Capacity development
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Bolster country support enabling timely deployment of technical expertise and capacity building to key national partners and Civil Society. SPF Team WPP 2025/12 Initiated A four-day legislative induction training for 20 women local councilors from various regions in Zimbabwe in March 2025. This training served as a pilot for the legislative training manual currently being finalized by the WPP HQ team. Over the four days, participants engaged in a series of interactive sessions designed to strengthen their skills as effective local councilors. The training covered key aspects of legislative, representative, and oversight functions, including problem identification and solution development, gender-responsive legislation and budgeting, negotiation and communication skills, and oversight mechanisms. A legislative induction pilot training for the Members of Parliament in Guyana and in Sierra Leone were implemented in Q3 of 2025. After incorporating their feedback from the different pilots, the training manuals have been finalised and translated to Spanish and French in preparation for rolling them out in 2026. Through the WYDE | Women’ Leadership programme, UN Women has awarded near $ 1 Million US$ in grants to eight women’s rights organizations across four regions to advance the goals of the Generation Equality Action Coalition on Feminist Movements and Leadership. These organizations focus on empowering young women towards increased political participation, including those from internally displaced populations, women with disabilities, Indigenous and (lesbian, bisexual and transgender) LBT women, and Dalit women, among others. The Call for Proposals in 2024 received 234 applications, demonstrating the high demand for support in advancing women’s leadership, mobilizing feminist movements, and transforming social norms. A new call for proposals has been launched in October 2025
Concentrate efforts under the WPS work on National Action Plans and on supporting women-led and women’s rights organizations, on financing and building their capacity to access funding. SPF Team WPS & HA 2025/12 Initiated WPHF has raised 125 million dollars towards their 300 million goal. The process of preparing for the 2025 SG’s report showed significant progress in stronger UN tracking of their contributions to women’s organizations. The SG’s report reiterated the 1 percent target, and this was finally echoed by many Member States at the Open Debate on WPS during the 25th anniversary. The EU, for example, announced that it has tripled its allocation in the last three years. UN Women’s surveys ringing the alarm on the financial distress that women’s organizations in conflict-affected countries are in due to the reduction in foreign aid was amplified by global media outlets and the UN at the highest levels. This issue is also being prioritized in Strategic Plan discussions and by the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan. In countries like Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria, UN Women continued supporting the initiatives of local women led organizations through the Women’s Advisory Group as well as their participation in humanitarian decision making in crises like DRC, oPt, Lebanon. This is a core pillar of UN Women’s work under the Global Strategic Plan and the core commitments on humanitarian action launched by the Executive Director in April 2025. In October 2025, UN Women in its role as the co-chair of the IASC Gender Reference Group launched for the first time a Global Dashboard capturing the progress against specific indicators under the Gender Accountability Framework (including WLO access to CBPF). In September 2025, UN Women launched a new global initiative on supporting LWLO funding through CBPF in close collaboration with OCHA at global level. The main components of this initiative are: i) Strengthening local WLO’s Capacity: Equip local women-led organizations with the skills and tools to successfully access and manage Country-based Pooled Funds (CBPF) and Regional Humanitarian Pooled Funds (RHPF). ii)Advance Gender-Responsive CBPF Systems: Work with OCHA and humanitarian stakeholders to address barriers and adapt CBPF processes to better enable the access, leadership, and sustained engagement of local women-led organizations. Iii)Establish a Gender Finance Tracking Mechanism: Support UN Women and OCHA offices to systematically track and report on WLO participation and funding outcomes in CBPFs. UN Women will target WLO in 10 countries. Priority will be given to countries where CBPFs or RHPFs are operational or under discussion, including: Afghanistan, CAR, DRC, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nigeria, oPt, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen, and countries eligible for regional pooled funding in the LAC, WCA, ESA and AP regions.
Continue providing technical support and capacity building on the gender dimensions of disasters within DRR coordination mechanisms and normative processes, enabling entry points for alternative financial support (see previous recommendation) including for civil society, while leveraging the ongoing work and support, particularly through the WRD knowledge hub for advancing discussions on financing for gender-responsive DRR. SPF Team WPS/DRR 2025/12 Initiated Technical support on the gender dimensions of disasters continued through global DRR coordination mechanisms, including through the UN Interagency Focal Points Group on DRR and regional initiatives in the Pacific under WRD. The WRD Knowledge Hub was used to advance dialogue on financing gender-responsive DRR, showcasing approaches for funding women’s organizations. Technical support was provided for a donor roundtable in the Pacific for a second phase of the WRD programme in July 2025 and UN Women actively participated in the 2025 Global Platform for DRR in June 2025, through various speaking engagements and a Gender champions event with governments and women’s organizations - strengthening advocacy for increased, predictable gender-responsive financing and recognition of the vital role of women and women-led organizations in building resilience at the community level in line with the Sendai Gender Action Plan.
Continue to leverage the IASC membership to strengthen the positioning of local women’s organizations in the humanitarian coordination mechanisms and decision-making spaces. SPF Team HA 2025/12 Initiated UN Women’s policy engagement and advocacy in the context of several IASC coordination meetings from the level of the IASC Principals to the EDG, as well as the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting (October 2025) focused on localization and equitable partnerships with local women led organizations and networks in crisis contexts. In the upcoming IASC Principals session (28th October), UN Women represented by the ED will focus on the following priorities: Humanitarian Reset and the Roadmap to delivery; as well as the session on ‘where do we all fit in the new humanitarian system’ with main focus on shifting power, resources and decision making to local actors. UN Women also published a study on the impact of the funding cuts on local women led organizations in crises: At a breaking point: The impact of foreign aid cuts on women’s organizations in humanitarian crises worldwide | Publications | UN Women – Headquarters (March 2025)
Recommendation: Engage in strategic and coordinated advocacy to address the lack of political will and commitment from some governments and inter-governmental actors to advance gender equality and women's empowerment. This relates both to engagement around the politicized backlash against women’s rights in key countries and a wider de-prioritization of GEWE in some key spaces. This process can draw on the advisory capacity and established civil society relationships fostered by SPF to date.
Management Response: UN-Women accepted recommendation 7. UN-Women agrees with this recommendation and the need to strengthen advocacy with diverse partners in support of women’s political participation. While noting that UN-Women does already work with range of stakeholders at country and regional level, there is scope to strengthen advocacy with a broader range of partners, such as multi-party international foundations, parliamentary groups, local governments and associations, youth and disabled groups, and political parties and political party registrars, as appropriate. The Beijing+30 Action Agenda will be the main advocacy tool targeting governments and a broad range of stakeholders and advance UN Women’s universal mandate.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Peace and security (SPs before 2018), Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Advocacy
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Impact
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Leverage Beijing+30 as a key moment for member states to renew their commitments and strengthen accountability to full, effective and accelerated implementation and resourcing of the Beijing Platform for Action as well as the Sustainable Development Goals through mobilizing support around the Beijing+30 Action Agenda. PPID, CSD, UNSCD, SPD under the leadership of DED Results 2025/09 Completed March 2025 saw the launch by the SG of the Clarion Call for Gender Equality, the launch of the SG’s report on Beijing plus 30 and the summary report prepared by UN Women (which generated lots of media attention), the CSW Political Declaration and the launch of the Beijing plus 30 Action Agenda, and record-breaking levels of attendance to CSW. The action agenda is being launched and advocated for at country level by our offices now, and there will be high-level events at the High-Level Political Forum in July and the General Assembly in September, followed by a meeting of heads of state/government in Beijing in October.
Develop communications and advocacy plans on WPP, focusing on the new CEDAW General Recommendation No 40 focused on parity between women and men in decision making systems - adopted in October 2024. SPF Team WPP 2025/12 Initiated UN Women has prioritized the socialization and awareness-raising of CEDAW General Recommendation No. 40 (GR 40), as the latest normative development to advance women’s equal participation in decision-making, in key regional and global multilateral fora. The Tlatelolco Commitment, resulting from the XVI Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean underscores the imperative of guaranteeing women’s equal representation in decision-making through legislative, electoral, and temporary special measures, while promoting their full participation in strategic sectors, political life, and peace processes. Under the European Union-funded WYDE-Women and Youth Democratic Engagement initiative, GR 40 has been systematically advanced as a foundational principle across diverse platforms and strategic initiatives, including intergenerational dialogues on young women’s political participation in Istanbul and Fiji and integrated into UN Women and partner-led engagements during UNGA and CSW.
Prioritize combatting technology facilitated gender-based violence, with coordinated action between WPP and EVAW. SPF Team WPP 2025/12 Initiated UN Women is formalizing the partnership with the Australia’s eSafety Commissioner. The intended collaboration under this letter includes facilitating the pilot implementation of the Social Media Self-Defense Training designed by eSafety. This training aims to equip women active in political and public life with practical knowledge and skills to safely manage their social media accounts, report online abuse, and protect their well-being. This initiative is being jointly developed by UN Women’s Leadership and Decision-Making Section and the Ending Violence Against Women Section.
Leverage opportunities for greater visibility during the 25th anniversary of resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (throughout the year and especially around October 2025). SPF Team WPS 2025/10 Completed An early assessment of media coverage of the 25th anniversary (ahead of hundreds of side events held throughout the world, including more than 50 during WPS week in New York alone) indicated that the findings of the SG’s report were covered in more than 100 media outlets (including BBC, Al Jazeera, El Pais, and others). Efforts to increase the visibility of these findings included a press briefing, a targeted media strategy, the publication of selected digital content, and the preparation of an infographic for easier and wider dissemination of findings, aside from the usual activities and briefings. Given that Russia was presiding the annual meeting in the Security Council and moved it to the beginning of the month, which altered everyone’s plans, the measures taken to mitigate its impact on the visibility of the anniversary as a whole were effective.
Recommendation: Develop collaborative activities between UN Women, Sida and Norad to amplify messages around the successes and lessons from SPF in driving system-wide change and context specific change for women. To date the relationship between UN Women, Sida and Norad has been highly supportive, with UN Women valuing the depth of the relationship, efforts of Sida and Norad to interrogate how SPF enables change, and constructive feedback gained through regular engagements. There is appetite within UN Women to further this with collaborative activities to maximize the value of the partnership. This could focus on sharing lessons externally and facilitating discussions across the donor community to help shape wider responses to the current challenges to progress on GEWE. Utilizing key moments, such as the 1325+25 anniversary, the peacebuilding architecture review, the Global Platform for DRR 2025 and ongoing engagement in IASC could provide initial impetus for this.
Management Response: UN-Women accepted recommendation 8.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Peace and security (SPs before 2018), Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Advocacy
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Impact
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women, in collaboration with Sida and Norad, will identify opportunities for sharing information and analysis in real time and discuss possible entry points for joint policy work around these themes. SPF Team (in collaboration with Sida and Norad) 2025/12 Initiated UN Women has secured speaking slots at the 2025 Global Platform for DRR for women leaders from Sahel region to speak at the Special Session on Progress on implementing the Gender Action Plan and will showcase regional and country level results in side events, including the ignite stage and innovation hub. SIDA and Norad would be welcomed to attend these events, including to speak or share a video message at a Gender Champions event organized by UN Women on the eve of the Global Platform for DRR from 4-6 June 2025. The launch of the guidance on care in conflicts and crises –a joint knowledge product of WPS, HA and WEE teams is scheduled on 19th November. NORAD and SIDA have been invited to provide opening and closing remarks. The guidance note drawing on UN Women’s work and lessons learnt across several countries: oPt, Afghanistan, Sudan and other crisis contexts, will be shared in preparation of the event. Similar information will be shared on other joint products and events. Norway co-organized with UN Women and Japan the ministerial-level meeting during UNGA of the WPS Focal Points Network
UN Women will keep Sida and Norad involved in plans and opportunities for visibility and joint advocacy around milestone processes and global events. SPF Team (in collaboration with Sida and Norad) 2025/12 Initiated Security Council analysis and updates on WPS have been shared with Sweden and Norway on a monthly basis. More regular information sharing opportunities (for example every three months) will be planned for the end of 2025 and throughout 2026 (e.g. a digest of findings from recent IEG meetings, Council briefings, gender alerts, and an opportunity to debrief after the anniversary to share take-aways and plan for the future).