Among the many proposals under consideration in the United Nations’ UN80 Initiative^[1] is a proposed merger between UN Women and UNFPA. An assessment of the risks and benefits of a merger^[2] outlines three key problems that it would address:

It argues the confluence of these issues makes it difficult for the UN to withstand the increased hostility to and backlash against gender equality and women’s and girls’ human rights, including their sexual and reproductive rights.  It posits that a merger would address all three challenges by bringing oversight under one executive board; pooling available resources and freeing up more money for gender equality through the reduction in administrative overhead; and increasing institutional size and political power.

Taken at face value, these are significant problems that need to be addressed. But the assessment provides no evidence to demonstrate the extent to which they are undermining impact or why a merger is the best of all available solutions to address them. Nor does it explain how it would increase the UN’s ability to deliver on women’s and girls’ human rights.

Fragmentation and a lack of shared institutional accountability

Responsibility for gender equality sits first and foremost with UN Women. Its mandate is threefold: advancing global norms on gender equality and women’s and girls’ human rights, coordinating the UN system response, and supporting programs at the country level.  But UN Women is not the only body within the UN system that has a gender mandate.

Gender equality is a dedicated program area for UNDP, Unicef, the International Labor Organization, UNFPA, and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to name a few, while all UN agencies bear responsibility for advancing gender equality within their mandates. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action,^[4] which along with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,^[5] forms the basis for the UN’s work on gender equality, has twelve critical areas of concern. UN Women’s country programs cover less than half of them; UNFPA partially addresses three. When it comes to translating global commitments into action, we need all these agencies working together.

If fragmentation is problem, the assessment report fails to make the case that a merger will solve it. Instead, it acknowledges the work that UN Women and UNFPA each do to advance gender equality is complementary and mutually reinforcing. Nor does it address how it would address more direct overlap with other UN agencies, such as UNDP, which dedicates US$200 million annually to women’s political participation, gender-based violence, and economic empowerment.^[6]

The UN Gender Equality Action Plan was launched in 2024 specifically to increase coordination and reduce duplication across the UN system.^[7] With just over a year of implementation, the report asserts this largely voluntary coordination mechanism is not working. If that is the case, then it is worth exploring why or other ways to institutionalize coordination and increase accountability. One idea is a joint program with a governing body that involves governments and civil society and that brings together various agencies for planning, budgeting, and reporting.

Persistent funding shortfalls and high levels of earmarking

Funding shortfalls for the UN’s work on gender equality are a systemic issue. When UN Women was established, women’s organizations advocated for a US$1 billion/year budget. It has never come close: in 2024 it raised US$593 million.^[8] For its work to coordinate the UN system response on gender equality, UN Women receives less than US$12 million annually from the UN’s regular budget.^[9] It raises all other funding from public and private sector donors, who give far more to support specific initiatives than core funding. Addressing shortfalls in funding requires appropriately valuing UN Women’s coordination work and dedicating more resources from the UN’s regular budget. It also requires a funding policy that resets the balance between core and earmarked funds. While not a UN Agency, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria prohibits earmarking by public sector donors, but allows it from private sector donors, to ensure it has the flexibility to respond effectively to the three diseases.^[10] Beyond that, public donors need to step up and match their rhetoric in support of gender equality with resources.

UNFPA faces a similar challenge balancing core and earmarked funding but has a much larger budget to begin with. In 2024, UNFPA raised $1.66 billion; it spent $538 million on programs to end gender-based violence and harmful practices.^[11] While a merger would create a bigger organization, that may not necessarily translate into more money for women’s and girls’ human rights. Instead, it introduces a risk that the work will be balanced towards addressing gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health and rights, while giving less programmatic attention to other critical areas not as well resourced, such as advancing normative standards on women’s and girls’ human rights.

Power dynamics and gender biases

Power dynamics and gender biases are the real issues that undermines the UN’s impact on gender equality. The reason voluntary coordination is not working is because gender equality programs are often considered “nice to have” when there are excess resources available, rather than integral to the overall success of the UN’s work on development, human rights, and peace and security. That is why most UN agencies fall far short in meeting their own, internally set, funding benchmarks^[12] and why the Resident Coordinator System does not ensure an adequate focus on gender equality at the country level.^[13] The gender inequalities and systematic barriers women and girls face every day within society are replicated at the institutional level within the UN system. 

The report argues that merging UN Women and UNFPA will result in an organization with more institutional heft, making it less easy to sideline. This may be true. However, a merger alone is not likely to eliminate the gender inequalities within the UN system.  Instead, it risks contributing to it by sending a signal that working on gender equality as a priority in and of itself is no longer needed. It may diminish the UN’s clear institutional voice and leadership on gender equality by subsuming it within a broader mandate. In an era of increasing backlash, this is the wrong message to send.

The path forward

The assessment argues that a merger is needed to safeguard the UN’s work on gender equality but provides little information about its practical implications for its normative work on women’s and girls’ human rights or programming at the country level. It does not elaborate meaningful safeguards against the risk that the human rights-focused mandates of the two organizations may be curtailed in a moment where global norms are being eroded. Nor does it provide any assurances that existing funding levels for gender equality programs could be maintained.

The problems identified in the assessment cannot be ignored. But it lacks an evidence-based analysis of what is driving these problems and the range of options that could be taken to address them. Absent this, it is hard to take seriously the argument that a merger is the only and best solution.  

Instead of rushing into a merger, UN Member States should set up a meaningful process, with civil society, to consider these challenges and a fuller range of actions we can collectively take to address them. Otherwise, we risk amplifying and replicating unequal power dynamics and gender biases within the UN system, instead of addressing them head on.

^[1] United Nations, “UN80 Initiative,” https://www.un.org/un80-initiative/.

^[2] United Nations, Strategic Merger Assessment of UNFPA and UN Women: Final Consolidated Report (April 2026), https://www.un.org/un80-initiative/sites/default/files/2026-04/260424_Strategic%20merger%20assessment%20UNFPA%20UN%20Women_WP4_0.pdf.

^[3] Ibid., p. 2.

^[4] United Nations General Assembly, Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, UN Doc.

^[5] Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, G.A. Res. 34/180 (1979).

^[6] Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Office for Project Services, Structured dialogue on financing the results of the UNDP Strategic Plan, 2022-2025 (26 June 2025), UN Doc. NoDP/2025/25.

^[7] United Nations, “Gender Equality Acceleration Plan,” https://www.un.org/en/gender-equality-acceleration-plan.

^[8] UN Women, “Transparency Portal: Resource Overview, 2024,” https://open.unwomen.org/en/global-results/resource-overview/2022-2025?year=2024.

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Amended and Restated Comprehensive Funding Policy (16 November 2016). https://www.theglobalfund.org/media/6021/core_comprehensivefunding_policy_en.pdf

^[11] UNFPA, Programme Expenses, 2024, https://www.unfpa.org/data/transparency-portal#:~:text=Data%20Menu&text=Organizational.

^[12] UN Women, United Nations System-Wide Results: UN-SWAP 2.0, Summary Analysis and Key Insights 2018-2024 (December, 2025). https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2025-12/2024-system-wide-swap-2-reporting-results-en.pdf.

^[13] UN Women, “UNCT-SWAP,” https://gendercoordinationandmainstreaming.unwomen.org/unct-swap.