The United Nations Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) supports local and grassroots women’s civil society leaders and their organizations in conflict and crisis settings worldwide.
WPHF mobilizes and channels flexible and quality funding and capacity support to women peacebuilders, humanitarians and human rights defenders working at the forefront of Women Peace Security and Humanitarian Action (WPS-HA) issues across the globe. WPHF works to address the unique needs and amplify the expert voices of frontline women civil society leaders of all ages and diversities, leveraging their added value and unlocking their power to reach the most marginalized communities and effectively break the silos between the world’s most pressing peace and security, humanitarian, development and human rights challenges.
The Issue
Humanitarian crises and threats to peace are more common than ever before. Emerging and protracted conflicts, the rise of authoritarian regimes, global emergencies and humanitarian crises pose grave and unprecedented threats to international security, sustainable development, and human rights.
While the number of people forcibly displaced is the highest on record, women and girls continue to face disproportionate impacts. The backlash against the rights of women and girls, including hate speech and gender-based violence, is growing, preventing women’s meaningful participation in peace and security processes, political decision-making, and humanitarian action.
From the positive impact of networks of women mediators in Burundi in preventing conflict, to peace huts in Liberia or situation rooms in West and Central Africa, women and their local organizations have proven to serve as powerful engines of progress, agency and action on the front lines, leading local movements to prevent conflict, respond to humanitarian crises, prevent and address sexual and gender-based violence, build back better from COVID-19, fight against the shrinking democratic and civic space and hostile environments, and forge lasting peace in their communities, often at grave risk to their own lives.
Despite this, women continue to face barriers to participate in peacebuilding and humanitarian decision-making at all levels, and the work of local women peacebuilders, humanitarians and human rights defenders in fragile settings remains dramatically underfunded worldwide.
The Response
WPHF is a global partnership that aims to re-energize action and stimulate funding for women’s participation and leadership in situations of conflict and humanitarian crisis around the world.
WPHF has been designed to stimulate a significant shift in women’s participation and leadership in conflict and post-conflict zones through the enabling power of financing.
The Goal
Our primary goal is to bring about peaceful and gender equal societies. In order to achieve this goal, we work to:
- Support women’s participation in decision-making processes and responses related to conflict prevention
- Increase women’s engagement and leadership in humanitarian action
- Enhance women’s representation and leadership in formal and informal peace negotiations
- Protect women and girls’ human rights
- Promote women’s involvement in economic recovery of their communities
Background Resources
