By Prosper Mene
The United Nations gender equality agency, UN Women, has issued a dire warning: sweeping funding cuts are forcing one in three women’s rights organizations to suspend or shut down critical programs aimed at ending gender-based violence.
The alarming findings, detailed in the newly released report At Risk and Underfunded, underscore a deepening crisis that threatens to reverse decades of hard-won progress in protecting women and girls worldwide.
The report, based on a global survey of 428 women’s rights and civil society groups, paints a picture of frontline services crumbling under financial strain. More than 40 percent of these organizations have scaled back or closed essential lifelines, including shelters, legal aid, psychosocial support, and healthcare for survivors. Nearly 80 percent reported reduced access to services for those in need, while 59 percent observed a troubling rise in impunity and the normalization of violence against women.
“Women’s rights organizations are the backbone of progress on violence against women, yet they are being pushed to the brink,” said Kalliopi Mingeirou, head of UN Women’s Ending Violence Against Women and Girls section. “We cannot allow funding cuts to erase decades of hard-won gains. We call on governments and donors to ringfence, expand, and make funding more flexible. Without sustained investment, violence against women and girls will only rise.”
An estimated 736 million women, nearly one in three globally have experienced physical or sexual violence, most often perpetrated by an intimate partner, according to UN Women data. Earlier this year, the agency flagged that nearly half of women-led groups in crisis-affected regions were at risk of closure due to aid reductions, a prediction now borne out by the survey’s results. As resources dwindle, many groups are compelled to prioritize immediate emergency responses over long-term advocacy, stifling efforts for systemic change like policy reforms and community education.
This funding shortfall is exacerbated by a broader global backlash against women’s rights, now manifesting in one in four countries through restrictive laws, shrinking civic space, and political opposition.
The At Risk and Underfunded report arrives just as the international community reflects on the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a 1995 blueprint for gender equality that placed ending violence against women at its core. Yet, three decades later, global aid for gender-based violence prevention accounts for a mere 0.2 percent of total development funding, highlighting chronic underinvestment.
From Nepal to Nigeria and Peru to Tajikistan, the impacts are visceral: shelters shuttering, legal aid vanishing, and survivors left without psychosocial care amid surging demand fueled by conflicts, economic instability, and climate disasters. In South Sudan, for instance, only 25 percent of UNHCR-supported safe spaces for women and girls remain operational, potentially denying up to 80,000 people vital assistance.caccf6 Reports of conflict-related sexual violence have spiked by 50 percent in recent years, yet humanitarian funding for prevention and response was just 38 percent met in 2024.
UN Women and its partners, including the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls, are urging immediate action. They advocate for core, flexible, long-term funding to women’s rights organizations, particularly those led by and for women in high-risk settings to avert mass closures and safeguard vulnerable populations.
The Trust Fund, which supported 191 initiatives across 68 countries in 2023, reaching over 15 million people, emphasizes that such investments not only save lives but empower women and girls as agents of change.
