In Focus: 27th Grant Giving Cycle (2023)

UN Trust Fund awards USD 16 million to end violence against women and girls amid global crises

New York — The UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) today announced USD 16 million in grants to 36 civil society and women’s rights organizations implementing initiatives to prevent and respond to gender-based violence across 41 countries and territories. The announcement came during this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence and as the 15th Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) International Forum was closing in Thailand.

These grants, awarded under the UN Trust Fund's 27th annual funding cycle, along with those provided through the Advocacy, Coalition Building and Transformative Feminist Action to End Violence against Women (ACT) programme, will support women’s right and civil society organizations working in humanitarian crises, protracted conflicts and other diverse contexts where women's and girl’s rights have been restricted and anti-rights movements have gained momentum.

The UN Trust Fund's 27th Call for Proposals generated unprecedented global interest, with 2,889 applications from organizations spanning 130 countries seeking over USD 1.5 billion in funding. In response, the UN Trust Fund is awarding grants under the 27th cycle while also selecting partners for the 28th cycle. Organizations receiving grants are all women-led civil society organizations, with half being small organizations. The UN Trust Fund is also exploring supplementary funding in 2025 to support more organizations.

"This record-breaking response demonstrates both the enormous global need, and the trust placed in women’s and civil society organizations to lead change in their communities," said Abigail Erikson, Chief of the UN Trust Fund. "Our grantee partners are addressing violence against women and girls on the front lines of some of the most complex and challenging contexts. Supporting their critical and life-saving efforts is more essential now than ever."

SPECIAL FOCUS ON CRISIS RESPONSE

The 27th Call for Proposals included a special window focusing on crisis-affected women and girls, with USD 3.9 million in funding from the Governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom (UK). Initiatives under this window will address various forms of violence, including conflict-related sexual violence and gender-based violence in refugee or displaced persons camps.

The UK’s Special Envoy for Gender Equality, Alicia Herbert OBE, stressed: "By championing and resourcing the change-makers working on the front line of gender-based violence, we can help to shift the dial to prevent violence from happening and to build a world where all women and girls are safe and free."

The Assistant Director General and Head of the Global Department at the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), Torbjörn Pettersson, said: "What we hope to see is that women and girls who are internally displaced or refugees, and who might be survivors or at risk of gender-based violence have access to information about their rights, get referred support to structures including to [those dealing with] SRHR [sexual and reproductive health and rights], and have safe spaces for training, healing and other tools to handle their situation." 

Constanze Quosh, Senior Interagency Coordinator Officer at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and member of the UN Trust Fund’s Global Appraisal Committee, reflected, "The special funding window is so critical because it resources the organizations in displacement settings that are very often overlooked. At the same time, these organizations are the ones that know their communities and the circumstances the best, and they respond fast and effectively."

Hear more from them below.

ACT PROGRAMME

The UN Trust Fund also awarded USD 2.34 million to eight groundbreaking sub-regional, regional and cross-regional initiatives in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa under the ACT programme – a partnership between UN Women and the European Commission in collaboration with the UN Trust Fund. These initiatives will amplify networks and drive feminist movements dedicated to ending violence against women and girls, creating lasting change where it matters most.

INNOVATIVE APPROACHES

The new portfolio of selected partners prioritizes underserved populations, with nearly a third of initiatives targeting adolescents and young women. Other priority groups include displaced and refugee women, women with disabilities, LGBTQI+ women and Indigenous women.

Among the groundbreaking interventions are:

Serbia's first dedicated LBTQ women's crisis hotline;
self-sustaining survivor support centres in Ghana;
Indigenous-led, art-based violence prevention programmes in Mexico; and
direct pathways connecting survivors to UN accountability mechanisms for refugees from Myanmar in India.

The selected projects reflect a comprehensive approach to ending violence against women and girls, combining:

systemic approaches to violence prevention, with a focus on changing social norms;
essential services for survivors, prioritizing psychosocial support;
strengthened implementation of laws and policies;
economic empowerment initiatives to address the economic vulnerability-violence link; and
targeted solutions to address diverse vulnerabilities and their intersection with gender and violence.

Discover our new partners in: