The Multi-Year Appeal (MYA) is DPPA's primary extra-budgetary instrument to fund its work on strengthening peace and security. Along with other priorities, the MYA supports the implementation of DPPA’s women, peace and security agenda.  The MYA facilitates these efforts by deploying a two-pronged approach: 

1. Funding projects that mainstream gender equality and the women, peace and security agenda as part of broader efforts to advance inclusive approaches to conflict prevention, peacebuilding and sustaining peace efforts; and, 
2. Funding projects that promote gender equality and women’s empowerment as a principal objective through a dedicated funding window on Women, Peace and Security (WPS). In 2022, DPPA allocated $3.6 million for the WPS window. 

DPPA employs a gender equality marker to strengthen the integration of women, peace and security considerations across all aspects of the MYA project cycle: from analysis, design, and implementation to reporting and evaluation. Integral to this effort is the DPPA requirement to include a gender-sensitive political and conflict analysis in MYA proposals and to ensure the findings of this analysis explicitly inform the design of the project.  The gender equality marker is also used to ensure that projects respond to the priorities of DPPA’s Women, Peace and Security Policy.   In addition, it tracks financial allocations as well as overall investments to advance women, peace and security commitments. 

The MYA gender equality marker is based on a four-point scale that ranges from 1 (marginal contribution to gender equality and the empowerment of women) to 4 (gender equality as a dedicated project objective) (See Table 1). Under the Multi-Year Appeal, DPPA approves projects with a gender marker score of 2 and higher. Projects with a gender marker score of 1 are highly discouraged; to be considered, these projects must demonstrate that they “do no harm”; do not reinforce gender inequalities and provide a strong justification.  Project awards under the Women, Peace and Security window must achieve a gender marker 4 score and have a gender equality as a principal objective. 

Table 1: Gender Equality Marker Scale 

DPPA’s gender equality marker is applied at the project level during the planning phase and only covers MYA extrabudgetary funds. Under the Multi-Year Appeal, the project planning, review and approval process is managed directly through the NOVA digital platform. This involves project managers entering the project background and rationale, defining the results framework (outcomes, outputs and activities) and budget. 

The gender marker score is automatically generated in NOVA and is based on averaging the responses to a set of nine questions related to gender responsive analysis, gender expertise, CSO consultations, mainstreaming gender and women, peace and security across the project’s results framework, including budget allocations, among other considerations. It also calculates the programmatic budget for women, peace and security and associates these financial allocations with the percentage thresholds to determine the gender marker score as shown in Table 1 above. 

With the UN Secretariat’s transition to the Integrated Planning, Management and Reporting (IPMR) solution, DPPA is looking at strengthening the gender marker application by applying it at the outcome level, streamlining the gender assessment tool, and linking the marker to financial reporting on expenditures.  DPPA will also be aligning its four-point scale with that of the UN Secretariat.  

Financial target: DPPA established a 17% financial target in 2020 under the annual Multi-Year Appeal towards programmes that advance the crucial role of women in conflict prevention and sustaining peace. It also created a dedicated Women, Peace and Security window to spur greater action towards reaching the target.  In 2021, 18% of the MYA  annual budget had been allocated to gender equality and women, peace and security initiatives, thereby exceeding the target. This translated to more than $7.2 million in programmatic funding being allocated to support the inclusion of women in peace and political processes.   

DPPA reports gender equality marker data as part of internal and external accountability to meeting its women, peace and security commitments related to post-conflict planning and financing.  This includes annual reporting on the DPPA Results Framework and the UN System-wide Action Plan on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-SWAP). DPPA also shares this data annually with the Security Council as part of the progress of special political missions and headquarters made on WPS commitments as well as in the annual Report of the Secretary-General on Women, Peace and Security.  Gender equality marker data is also reported to donors as part of the Multi-Year Appeal Annual Report. The Annual Report includes both financial and substantive reporting on the use of MYA contributions and its main results. 

The use of the gender equality marker has improved the quality of proposals; there is enhanced attention and integration of gender equality and women, peace and security priorities in MYA projects. This in turn has led to an observable increase in the share of projects in the MYA portfolio that are significantly contributing to or entirely dedicated to gender equality and women, peace and security.  As Figure 1 shows, the number of projects that significantly contributed to the women, peace and security agenda (Gender Marker 3) grew from 23 projects in 2020 to 35 projects in 2021. More markedly, the number of projects fully dedicated to women, peace and security as a principal objective (gender marker 4) more than tripled, from 6 projects in 2020 to 21 projects in 2021.  

Figure 1: Number of projects that were entirely dedicated to WPS or that significantly contributed to WPS

In the face of ongoing and systemic gender inequality, continued and on-going investments in building institutional and staff capacity on the use of the gender equality marker as a programming tool for strengthening gender equality and women, peace and security considerations in projects and across the programme cycle are needed.

Project proposals that mainstream gender equality and women, peace, and security issues should aim to address gender issues across the entire project (i.e., overview, activities, impacts). They should also ensure that consideration is substantive rather than tokenistic – for example, by specifying measures to include women, regularly engaging women-led civil society, and integrating gender-sensitive conflict and political analysis to inform peacemaking work.