The UN Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) is a pooled funding mechanism managed by the UN Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), now part of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. Since 2009, it has been at the forefront of implementing a gender equality marker to track financial allocations and mobilize financing to gender equality and the empowerment of women in the context of peacebuilding. The gender equality marker was first introduced in response to the Secretary-General’s Seven-Point Action Plan on Gender-Responsive Peacebuilding (2010), which called on UN entities to “…invest in systems to track gender post-conflict financing, and to work toward a goal of ensuring that at least 15 percent of UN-managed funds in support of peacebuilding is dedicated to projects whose principal objective (consistent with existing mandates) is to address women’s specific needs, advance gender equality or empower women.”  

As an overall principle, the Peacebuilding Fund is committed to ensuring that gender equality in the context of peacebuilding is integrated across its entire portfolio. It uses the gender equality marker as a programming tool – to strengthen the integration of gender equality in their projects – as well as a financial tracking tool to closely monitor fund allocations to gender equality and the empowerment of women. Like other UN entities, the Peacebuilding Fund employs a two-track approach to gender mainstreaming by promoting both dedicated targeted interventions as well as integrating gender equality considerations across its portfolio.

The PBF Gender Equality Marker is mandatory and is aligned with the UNDG standard of a four-point scale.  

Table 1: Gender Equality Marker Scale

Under the 2017-2019 Strategic Plan, the PBF stopped approving projects with a Gender Marker 0 score and discouraged funding for Gender Marker 1 projects to stimulate an increase in the number of Gender Marker 2 and 3 projects. 

Applicant organizations are responsible for self-assessing their proposal submissions and for indicating the gender marker score on the cover page of the PBF proposal template prior to submission.  The PBF Guidance Note on Gender Marker Scoring provides applicants with a set of criteria that applicants use as a checklist to assess their project and determine the correct gender marker score. These criteria help to clarify the difference between the gender marker codes in terms of how gender equality and the empowerment of women is addressed or integrated in eight key areas of the project proposal: gendered conflict analysis; project objective; project outcomes and the theory of change; implementation/activities; target population; budget; risk analysis and results framework. The 2021 independent Thematic Review on Gender-Responsive Peacebuilding found that, overall, the gender marker is well applied across PBF fund recipients, although some agencies still struggle to meet all the requirements set out in the Gender Marker Guidance Note. 

The PBF gender marker score is also determined on the share of the total budget that the project allocates to gender equality and the empowerment of women.  

Table 2: PBF Gender Marker Codes and Associated Financial Allocations

As Table 2 indicates, to achieve a Gender Marker 3 score, the project must allocate 80-100% of its resources to gender equality and the empowerment of women, in addition to meeting all the qualitative criteria. When developing project results-based budgets, applicant organizations are required to provide an estimated percentage of the budget per activity that will be allocated to gender equality and the empowerment of women as well as a justification for that allocation. To aid applicants on how much of the budget to allocate at the activity level, the PBF Guidance Note provides a set of guiding questions:

• Will the activity only focus on representation? For example, the number of women taking part in an activity does not on its own justify a high budget allocation to gender equality. 
• Will content be mainstreamed, as in based on a gender sensitive analysis and consider the dynamics of gendered roles, power relations and how they affect peacebuilding?
• Will special measures be taken to ensure women’s participation in a certain activity (i.e., special outreach, provisions for transport, sponsorship, childcare provisions)? Up to 30% of the budget can be allocated to gender equality but not if women would have participated otherwise. 
• Is the main purpose of the activity to contribute to gender equality and the empowerment of women? If yes, then 100% of the budget can be allocated to gender equality and the empowerment of women.

The project budget must also estimate allocations for personnel and other operational costs, including the monitoring budget which contribute to gender equality and the empowerment of women. Such costs are typically estimated based on the specialized gender advisor capacity that is available to ensure the integration of gender-sensitive approaches throughout the project cycle, including in the evaluation of the project or the project’s stated commitment to recruit staff or consultants, including M&E specialists, with gender expertise. Allocations for personnel costs are made using Terms of Reference to estimate the percentage of time a staff or consultant will work on gender equality related issues.  Once all project activities have been marked, financial allocations are then added and aggregated to arrive at the share of the budget that has been apportioned for gender equality and the empowerment of women and the gender marker score is assigned.

The Peacebuilding Fund relies on project documentation and reporting to manually track and manage the gender equality marker system. Since PBF-funded projects are typically implemented by more than one UN agency or civil society organization, each project team maintains their own internal enterprise resource planning and project management systems. At the Fund level, through its systematized bi-annual reporting cycle on project implementation, the PBF requires all active projects to also report on the project’s gender equality expenditures. The data is then reviewed by PBF HQ with an eye for identifying and addressing red flags in a timely way.  
 

Establishing financial benchmarks or targets has enabled the Peacebuilding Fund to advance UN system-wide efforts on gender equality in conflict contexts, and to further promote the Women, Peace and Security agenda. As mandated by the Secretary-General’s Seven-Point Action Plan, the Peacebuilding Fund had first set the target of allocating 15% of its funds to advancing gender equality and empowering women in peacebuilding.

In 2011, after tracking gender equality marker data for a few years, the Peacebuilding Fund launched the Gender Promotion Initiative (GPI) annual call for proposals to incentivize and increase the share of projects with gender equality as a principal objective (GM3) in the portfolio and to accelerate progress towards the target. By the 10th anniversary of the GPI, the Peacebuilding Fund had allocated $114.4 million to 96 GPI projects in over 30 countries in the 2011-2021 period.  As a result, not only did the Peacebuilding Fund meet the 15% target by 2015, but it also continues to exceed it year after year. In the 2017-2019 Strategic Plan, the Peacebuilding Fund doubled the level of ambition to 30%,  which again it surpassed, reaching 40 per cent in the period 2018–2020 and a record high of 47 per cent in 2021.  The Peacebuilding Fund has maintained a priority focus on fostering the inclusion of women and youth empowerment in the new PBF Strategic Plan 2020-2024 and has retained the 30% financial target (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Number of PBF-funded Projects by Gender Marker and Financial Allocation to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (2015-2020)

The Peacebuilding Fund has one of the most rigorous quality assurance processes in the UN system.  Proposal submissions, including the gender marker score, pass through many layers of review before being approved. At country level, the PBF Secretariat staff or main PBF in-country focal points within the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office review the gender equality marker of all project proposals and where necessary recommend changes to strengthen the integration of gender equality considerations in peacebuilding initiatives before submitting the projects to the Joint Steering Committee and the Peacebuilding Support Office. Led by the PBSO Gender Advisor, the Peacebuilding Fund  then undertakes an end-of-year quality assurance review of projects which have been approved in a given year to assess the extent of a project’s gender-sensitivity or gender-responsiveness.  The review is intended to validate the assigned gender marker code for each project and to ensure that financial allocations made to gender equality reconcile with that score. Following the review, gender marker scores are adjusted, either upwards or downwards. 

The Peacebuilding Fund has also benefited from two independent Gender Thematic Reviews,  one conducted in 2014 and the other in 2021, both of which have provided valuable operational learning on the use and application of the gender equality marker.  The Peacebuilding Fund now plans to issue updated and improved guidance and tools to strengthen gender considerations in projects’ design, implementation and M&E.

The Peacebuilding Fund reports on its results and financial allocations to gender equality to Member States, donors and partners through three annual reports of the Secretary-General:

• Report of the Secretary-General on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace, 
• Report of the Secretary-General on the Peacebuilding Fund, and  
• Report of the Secretary-General on Women, Peace and Security, particularly in the section related to financing for the Women, Peace and Security agenda.

Given that funding for the Women, Peace and Security agenda remains severely underfunded, the Peacebuilding Fund uses the gender marker data to build and strengthen the case for increasing adequate and predictable financing for gender-responsive peacebuilding, especially in the areas of conflict prevention, inclusive peacebuilding and women’s leadership, and in funding women’s networks and organizations. The data is also used to develop advocacy and communication messaging and to improve the quality of gender-responsive peacebuilding programming.

Check the Thematic Review on Gender-Responsive Peacebuilding 2021 for the key lessons learned.