How regular resources enable UN Women’s work around the world
UN Women recently published its 2023 Regular Resources Report, the latest annual breakdown of how the organization uses its regular resources—also known as voluntary “core” resources, “unearmarked contributions,” and “unrestricted funding.”
In 2023, 90 funding partners contributed USD 164.1 million in regular resources. This allows UN Women to work in 99 countries and territories in support of gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Read below to find out more about how UN Women’s regular resources were used around the world to promote gender equality in 2023.
Expanding women’s political participation
UN Women works with partners to ensure that women can participate equally in decision-making around the world, and benefit from gender-responsive laws, policies, budgets, services, and accountable institutions.
For example, UN Women deployed regular resources to support women’s political participation in Sierra Leone, a country grappling with some of the highest levels of gender inequality in the world.
UN Women used its regular resources to invest in skilled staff members, sponsor a television and print media campaign aimed at raising public awareness about women’s political participation and representation, and to engage with local political authorities as well as traditional community leaders to support the implementation of the country’s 2022 Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) Act.
Prior to Sierra Leone’s June 2023 elections, women held just 12 per cent of parliamentary seats and 12.5 per cent of cabinet positions. After those elections, and bolstered by UN Women’s support of the GEWE Act, Sierra Leone now leads the way in West Africa on women’s representation, with a ground-breaking 32.6 per cent of elected seats held by women.
Supporting women’s economic empowerment
UN Women supports interventions to empower women so that they have income security, decent work, and economic autonomy.
In South and Southeast Asia, UN Women supports women economic migrants, who often face poor wages, excessive working hours, and labour rights violations.
In 2023, UN Women used regular resources to fund a Women’s Economic Empowerment Advisor and Migration Lead in the region, who organized stakeholders to help figure out how to integrate gender issues into labour migration management. This contributed to the Government of Bangladesh’s decision to impose specific criteria on recruiters, better taking women’s rights into account.
Regular resources also enabled UN Women to engage in labour migration discussions with regional stakeholders and foster connections with policymakers, worker organizations, employer groups, and recruitment agencies.
Ending violence against women
One in three women experience physical or sexual violence at least once in their life, a figure that has remained largely unchanged over the last decade. It is a global problem, and UN Women has deployed regular resources around the world to end violence against women.
UN Women’s Chief of Ending Violence Against Women (funded by regular resources) provided sustained support for the European Union’s deliberations on its first-ever law on violence against women and domestic violence throughout 2022 and 2023; the law was adopted in February 2024.
In Latin America, UN Women used regular resources to invest in developing a Regional Protocol to Combat Sexual Violence against Women. That protocol was approved in November 2023 by the Gender Specialized Network of the Iberoamerican Association of Public Ministries. That success at the regional level was a building block for UN Women to spearhead a similar process (also using regular resources) specific to Argentina, helping prosecutors craft protocols to investigate and litigate cases of sexual violence from a gender perspective.
Protecting women in humanitarian crises and disasters
UN Women works to support peacebuilding processes and deliver essential services in humanitarian and development settings.
When earthquakes struck Türkiye in February 2023, UN Women used regular resources to start procuring essential supplies for women within days, with distribution taking place through civil society partners. Roughly 2,000 supply kits were distributed to women in temporary shelters, including hygiene and self-care items, as well as information on available services to respond to sexual exploitation and gender-based violence.
Regular resources were also used to support the Foundation for Women’s Solidarity, a UN Women partner, to strengthen their counselling centre in Ankara to better cope with the legal and psychosocial needs of women earthquake survivors. Those resources enabled the foundation to work directly with women survivors and organize empowerment sessions for women in temporary shelters, including providing 164 women with social cohesion activities and legal and psychosocial support.
Regular resources also leveraged additional funding from other organizations and governments, which has continued to be used in the earthquake response.
Partners that give regular resources ensure that UN Women has the institutional capacity and global presence required to fulfil its mandate, enabling the organization’s work around the world.