The UN Trust Fund launches new Strategic Plan to scale action as risks intensify for women and girls

Marking its thirtieth anniversary, the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls strengthens long-term, flexible funding, support to women’s rights organizations and system-wide accountability to match growing demand and emerging risks.

The United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls (UN Trust Fund) today launched its Strategic Plan 2026–2030, “Resourcing Resilience. Delivering Results. Realizing Rights.” At its core, the plan reaffirms a simple vision: a world where every woman and girl can live free from violence.

The Strategic Plan aims to ensure that more women and girls, especially those who are structurally marginalized, live free from violence, stigma and discrimination across all contexts by strengthening prevention, expanding access to services and supporting stronger laws, policies and institutions. These results will be advanced through quality funding, stronger learning and evidence, and convening and advocacy to promote system-wide accountability.

As the UN Trust Fund marks 30 years of partnership with women’s rights organizations driving change worldwide, the Strategic Plan responds to the challenges facing frontline actors in a rapidly evolving global landscape shaped by conflict, democratic backsliding, economic strain, climate shocks, rising technology-facilitated violence and widening funding gaps for women’s rights organizations.

Strengthening support where it matters most

Developed through a participatory process drawing on evaluations, surveys, grantee partners’ practice-based knowledge, and consultations with 165 stakeholders, the Strategic Plan intensifies the UN Trust Fund’s approach in several key areas to better support the organizations driving change on the frontlines:

• Longer-term, flexible funding, combining core support for organizational resilience with programmatic grants lasting a minimum of four years with ambitions to extend partnerships to six years or more.
• Comprehensive support to partners, including accompaniment, peer learning and advocacy visibility to strengthen women’s organizations operating in high-risk contexts.
• Strategic prioritization of funding, directing resources where emerging risks and funding gaps intersect, including technology-facilitated violence, crisis and climate-affected contexts, adolescent-focused approaches and initiatives reaching structurally marginalized women and girls.
• More accessible grant-making, through annual grant-giving, open Calls for Proposals, strategic thematic windows, and simplified multilingual processes that lower barriers for small and emerging organizations.
• Stronger learning, evidence and system-wide accountability, leveraging demand data, portfolio insights and evaluation findings to inform policy, strengthen coordination and support a more coherent global response.
• Civil society leadership embedded in governance, ensuring women’s rights organizations shape priorities and decision-making across the UN Trust Fund’s work.

The UN Trust Fund plays a distinct role in global efforts to end violence against women and girls as the only United Nations General Assembly-mandated, system-wide pooled financing and accountability mechanism dedicated to this issue. In a moment of UN reform, it remains a proven platform that delivers results by resourcing frontline organizations, strengthening resilience and advancing the rights of women and girls. Through its model of pooled financing, evidence and partnerships, the Trust Fund translates global commitments into sustained action on the ground. This approach aligns with the UN80 reform agenda, strengthening coordinated financing, shared responsibility and accountability across the United Nations system.

The Strategic Plan also presents a practical offer for governments, donors and partners: directing pooled financing where risks and funding gaps are greatest, sustaining essential services for survivors in high-risk settings and ensuring that evidence from frontline initiatives informs global accountability and policy action.

The scale of demand underscores the urgency of sustained investment. In the UN Trust Fund’s most recent Call for Proposals, nearly 4,000 organizations requested approximately US$2.1 billion, far exceeding available resources and highlighting both the scale of unmet need and the critical role women’s organizations play in preventing and responding to violence.

The launch takes place at the UN Trust Fund high-level event “Putting Access into Access to Justice. Why Financing Women’s Rights Organizations Is Essential to Ending Violence Against Women and Girls”, during the 70^th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), highlighting violence against women and girls as a global public health, human rights and justice emergency.

“Nearly 30 years ago, the United Nations General Assembly established the UN Trust Fund in response to women’s movements calling for direct investment in those working on the front lines to end violence against women and girls. We deeply appreciate the partners who have stood with the Trust Fund over these three decades, and as the UN advances the UN80 reform agenda, sustained support to community and women-led programs remains essential to advance rights, justice and action,” said Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director, UN Women.

“This Strategic Plan is about resourcing what works and protecting the frontline organizations that make justice possible for women and girls. It reflects the realities they face every day, from operating under shrinking civic space to keeping services open during conflict or political pressure. Our commitment is simple: providing long-term, flexible and risk-tolerant funding into the hands of those who save lives, prevent violence and hold institutions to account. This plan is a practical offer to governments and partners to scale solutions that already deliver results,” said Abigail Erikson, Chief, UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls.

Click to read the Strategic Plan 2026-2030 in full and Strategic Plan 2026-2030 Summary below.