Two UN Funds launch results and renewed joint call for action to finance feminist change

This critical moment comes amid severe funding challenges for civil society groups worldwide. In its latest research, UN Women found that nearly half (47 per cent) of women’s organizations affected by humanitarian crisis could be forced to close within six months if current reductions in international funding persist with catastrophic impact on women and families – underscoring the urgent need to scale up sustained, flexible support to ensure the survival and effectiveness of women-led and women’s rights organizations in fragile settings.

According to its 2024 Annual Report, the UN Trust Fund supported 180 women-led organizations across 74 countries last year, reaching more than 14.7 million people – over 7.7 million of them women and girls, many from the most marginalized communities. Despite their critical work, over 70 per cent of grantee partners reported facing backlash, including funding cuts, digital surveillance, and threats, according to the UN Trust Fund’s report Beyond Backlash: Advancing Movements to End Violence Against Women.

More than 98 per cent of grantees were women-led organizations, and over half leveraged their UN Trust Fund grants to secure additional—and often flexible—funding, essential in contexts of conflict, disaster recovery, and political instability. “In the face of rising anti-rights movements, women-led organizations are not retreating—they are rising,” said Abigail Erikson, Chief of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. “This year’s results show that when we invest in civil society and women’s rights organizations, we are investing in systemic, lasting change.”

In 2024, WPHF channeled urgent support to 579 local women-led and women’s rights civil society organizations and 344 women human rights defenders across 34 conflict and crisis-affected countries worldwide, according to the new WPHF 2024 Annual Report: Financing Women on the Frontlines Advancing Peace. Nearly half of these organizations were first-time recipients of UN funding, evidencing the accessible nature of WPHF for emerging and local and grassroots organizations.

Flexible funding from WPHF has been a lifeline for women’s organizations, allowing them to adapt and respond quickly in rapidly changing contexts through both institutional and programmatic funding. “But support must be sustainable and CSO-driven, which is exactly what our local partners are urgently calling for,” said Tonni Ann Brodber, Head of the WPHF Secretariat. “Now more than ever, we must ensure community-based organizations have the resources to adapt, to innovate, and to lead their own solutions in increasingly challenging contexts.”