UN Women report./ PHOTO ;UN Women
A new UN Women report, At Risk and Underfunded, has sounded the alarm over sweeping global aid cuts that are dismantling the very organizations critical to ending violence against women and girls.
Released in October 2025, the report reveals that financial shortfalls are forcing women’s rights groups, many of them in Africa and other developing regions, to scale back or shut down life-saving programmes just when demand for their services is surging.
Based on a global survey of 428 women’s rights and civil society organizations, the report highlights the devastating consequences of these cuts.
Thirty-four per cent of organizations have suspended or shut down programmes to end violence against women and girls, while more than 40 per cent have scaled back or closed shelters, legal aid, psychosocial, and healthcare support due to immediate funding gaps.
The ripple effects are severe: 78 per cent report reduced access to essential services for survivors, 59 per cent see an increase in impunity and normalization of violence, and nearly one in four have halted prevention initiatives entirely.
“Women’s rights organizations are the backbone of progress on violence against women, yet they are being pushed to the brink. 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,” said Kalliopi Mingeirou, Chief of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls section, UN Women.
A Global Crisis with Local Consequences
Violence against women and girls remains one of the most widespread human rights violations worldwide.
UN Women estimates that **736 million women, almost one in three globally, have experienced physical or sexual violence, most often from an intimate partner.
Yet even as this crisis persists, the infrastructure that supports survivors and advocates for prevention is eroding.
Earlier this year, UN Women warned that most women-led organizations in crisis settings were already facing severe funding cuts, with nearly half at risk of closure.
The new report confirms that those warnings have become reality.
Across Africa, where women’s rights organizations have historically filled critical service and advocacy gaps, the funding crisis threatens to reverse years of progress.
In many African countries, grassroots women’s organizations are the first responders offering shelters, counseling, and legal support in communities where government services are limited or absent.
Their work also extends beyond emergency care, tackling the root causes of gender-based violence through education, advocacy, and community dialogue.
Yet as funding disappears, many of these organizations are being forced to choose between keeping doors open or paying staff, with some already shutting down completely.
Losing Ground After Decades of Progress
According to At Risk and Underfunded, only 5 per cent of the surveyed organizations expect to sustain operations beyond the next two years.
An alarming 85 per cent anticipate backsliding in laws and protections for women and girls, while 57 per cent report heightened risks for women human rights defenders.
The report also warns that funding cuts are taking place amid a rising global backlash against gender equality, evident in one in every four countries surveyed.
This combination of financial crisis and political regression, the report notes, is undermining not only service delivery but also long-term advocacy.
As organizations lose funding, they are forced to focus narrowly on immediate relief shelter, food, and safety while abandoning structural change efforts such as policy reform, leadership training, and prevention work that address the roots of violence.
“It is not just programmes being cut, it is women’s voices being silenced,” one organization told UN Women during the survey.
30 Years After Beijing: A Renewed Call to Action
The release of At Risk and Underfunded comes as the world marks 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a landmark commitment by governments to achieve gender equality and uphold women’s rights. At its heart was a pledge to end violence against women and girls a goal now in danger of slipping further away.
UN Women’s message is unequivocal: governments and donors must “ringfence, expand, and make funding more flexible” to ensure women’s rights organizations can continue their critical work.
The report calls for a fundamental rethinking of how gender equality initiatives are financed, urging long-term, core, and unrestricted funding that enables organizations to adapt, innovate, and sustain impact.
In Africa, where women-led movements have been at the forefront of transforming laws, attitudes, and community norms, the loss of funding risks erasing hard-earned progress.
These organizations are not just service providers; they are lifelines, advocates, and changemakers working to build safer, more equitable societies.
As Mingeirou warns, the world stands at a crossroads:
“Without sustained investment, violence against women and girls will only rise.”
For African women’s rights organizations and their counterparts worldwide the call is clear.
Protecting them means protecting the progress of generations, and ensuring that the fight to end gender-based violence does not become yet another casualty of global funding cuts.
About the report
“At risk and underfunded: How funding cuts are threatening efforts to end violence against women and girls” was produced by UN Women under the Advocacy, Coalition Building and Transformative Feminist Action (ACT) programme, funded by the European Union, with support from the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women.
The report draws on a global survey of 428 organizations, key informant interviews, and a desk review to provide the most comprehensive evidence to date of how funding cuts are dismantling essential services, silencing advocacy, and undermining progress toward gender equality.
About ACT
The Advocacy, Coalition Building and Transformative Feminist Action (ACT) programme is a game-changing commitment between the European Commission and UN Women as co-leaders of the Action Coalition on Gender Based Violence (GBV), in collaboration with the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women.
The ACT shared advocacy agenda is elevating the priorities and amplifying the voices of feminist women’s rights movements and providing a collaborative framework focused on common priorities, strategies, and actions.
