Concept note for the side event on Reigniting the Beijing+30 Agenda: Strengthening Financial Accountability and Partnerships through Inter-Agency Pooled Funds and the Gender Equality Marker

Event handout for the side event on Reigniting the Beijing+30 Agenda: Strengthening Financial Accountability and Partnerships through Inter-Agency Pooled Funds and the Gender Equality Marker

This paper serves as a think piece to initiate and drive strategic discussions and action with key partners on ageing, emphasizing a life-course approach that integrates perspectives on the status and rights of older women. As global demographics continue to shift, it suggests actions to promote the rights of older women, and the incorporation of their perspectives into all policies and programmes at the global, national and regional level.

This policy paper is focused on diverse groups of socially marginalized women with diverse disabilities. It highlights how the 12 critical areas of concern from the Beijing Platform for Action have progressed or faced continuing entrenched barriers and dealt with new challenges in the 30 years since the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing.

The focus is specifically on how gender inequality and disability exclusion both compound and create unique concerns for women and girls with disabilities. As they are not homogenous, this paper takes an intersectional approach, identifying the impacts for women and girls with disabilities facing numerous forms of discrimination while having different and multiple types of disabilities. Stereotypes and social and cultural norms are discussed in relation to stigma and discrimination.

The paper also features the voices of diverse women leaders with diverse disabilities, with case studies from various low- and middle-income countries.

The paper was produced as part of the development of the global report on accelerating disability inclusion in a diverse and changing world as well as a set of accompanying documents prepared for the Global Disability Summit 2025. Funding was provided by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany through UNICEF.

The United Nations Inter-Agency Working Group on Gender and Disability Inclusion (UNWGGDI) collected case studies for the Beijing+30 review process, looking at lessons learned and good practices on gender, disability inclusion, and intersectionality. UN Women received a total 32 case studies from six UN entities (UN Women, UNEP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, and UNOPS) and two UN Country Teams represented by the UN Resident Coordinator’s Offices in India and Honduras.

In reflection of the 12 critical areas of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, violence against women and women in power and decision-making were equally the most addressed critical areas in the case studies, while the critical areas around women and the environment as well as the girl child were equally the least addressed.

This knowledge compendium aims to share reflections for UN entities, Member States, policymakers, and civil society organizations. It synthesizes best practices, innovative approaches, and collaborative efforts to enhance sustainable development and human rights for all. By ensuring that the rights and needs of women and girls with disabilities are adequately addressed, this document reinforces the commitment of the UN system and its stakeholders to a more equitable and inclusive future.

The list highlights key recent knowledge products developed by the UN System Coordination Division of UN Women to support the integration of gender considerations into strategic system-wide processes at global, regional, and country levels. It covers topics spanning from gender mainstreaming, UN-SWAP, UNCT-SWAP, Gender Equality Marker, UN Gender Theme Groups, to Disability Inclusion and Intersectionality.

Preventing and responding to violence against women with disabilities requires a comprehensive and multi-faceted approach. It includes:

• strengthening legal frameworks,
• enhancing support services,
• ensuring that an inclusive lens is applied to prevention efforts,
• raising societal awareness,
• improving data collection, and
• promoting intersectoral collaboration.

It is also crucial to prioritize the voices, experiences, and agency of women with disabilities in developing and implementing policies and interventions.

This publication provides recommendations for policymakers to address the findings highlighted through the project “Addressing stigma and discrimination experienced by women with disabilities (ASDWD)”, which was developed in partnership with researchers from University College London, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Women offices, local organizations of people with disabilities, and individual women with disabilities who contributed across Pakistan, Palestine, Republic of Moldova, and Samoa, with funding from the United Nations Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD).

The “Women with disabilities stigma inventory” (WDSI) was developed as part of the project “Addressing stigma and discrimination experienced by women with disabilities” (ASDWD) project, which was jointly led by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and UN Women, with funding from the United Nations Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN PRPD).

The ASDWD project focused on the intersection of disability and gender-based stigma and discrimination. A key objective was to create a survey tool to assess the experiences of women and girls with disabilities regarding stigma, discrimination, and gender-based violence. To this end, alongside developing the WDSI using a participatory approach, a methodological note and ethical guidelines were also produced to ensure a human rights–based approach and minimize harm.

This toolkit includes:

• Women with disabilities stigma inventory (WDSI)
• WDSI methodological note
• Ethical standards guide for the ASDWD project

The WDSI is a stand-alone, self-reporting survey tool that can be used to collect data about the experiences of women with disabilities globally in relation to stigma, discrimination, and violence.

The purpose of the methodological note is to provide an overview of the WDSI, its development process, and how to implement the tool and analyse results.

The “Ethical standards guide” was used throughout the ASDWD project to minimize the risk of harm while engaging women with disabilities. The human rights–based approach and the “Do no harm” principle guided the conceptualization and implementation of these guidelines.

La presente publicación representa un esfuerzo conjunto de Organización para la Educación y la Cultura de Naciones Unidas (UNESCO), la Entidad de Naciones Unidas para la Igualdad de Género y el Empoderamiento de las Mujeres (ONU Mujeres) y de la Organización Panamericana de la Salud (PAHO) en Panamá bajo un programa nacional financiado por la sexta convocatoria del Fondo Fiduciario de Socios Múltiples (Multi-Partner Trust Fund) del Secretariado de la Alianza de las Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad (UNPRPD por sus siglas en inglés). 

El documento pretende dar una herramienta a las Organizaciones de Personas con Discapacidad (OPDs) en apoyo de su función de incidencia y abogacía para mejorar los resultados del presupuesto nacional relacionados con los compromisos nacionales e internacionales a favor de los derechos de las mujeres y de las personas con discapacidad. Sin una distribución eficaz y eficiente de los recursos destinados a cerrar las brechas de género y desigualdades que afectan a las personas con discapacidad, dichos compromisos no pueden cumplirse.

La presente publicación representa un esfuerzo conjunto de Organización para la Educación y la Cultura de Naciones Unidas (UNESCO), la Entidad de Naciones Unidas para la Igualdad de Género y el Empoderamiento de las Mujeres (ONU Mujeres) y de la Organización Panamericana de la Salud (PAHO) en Panamá bajo un programa nacional financiado por la sexta convocatoria del Fondo Fiduciario de Socios Múltiples (Multi-Partner Trust Fund) del Secretariado de la Alianza de las Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad (UNPRPD por sus siglas en inglés).

Para avanzar los derechos de las mujeres y de las personas con discapacidad en el país en base a las convenciones internacionales firmadas y ratificadas por Panamá y reflejadas en diversas legislaciones nacionales, y alcanzar la inclusión y la igualdad sustantiva, es necesario que los recursos humanos y financieros estén identificados y disponibles dentro de los sistemas de planificación y presupuestación del estado.

Es por ello que en la presente publicación se ofrecen ejemplos y se describen herramientas que logran introducir una perspectiva de género y de inclusión de los derechos da las personas con discapacidad a la planificación y presupuestación gubernamental. Para ello se ha contado también con la participación de las OPD y la Asamblea Nacional recogiendo sus sugerencias y puntos de vista a través de diversos talleres y reuniones dando a conocer los objetivos del proyecto y, de manera más importante, los derechos de las personas con discapacidad y su reflejo en los presupuestos públicos. 

In 2022 the UNDP Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office (MPTF Office) conducted the Fiduciary Management and Oversight Group (FMOG) Survey on the Funding Compact Commitment 14 targeting inter-agency pooled funds. This commitment is composed of 12 features (well-articulated strategy, clear theories of change, etc.) that are an integral part of each inter-agency pooled fund and that seek the use of pooled funds in an efficient and effective manner in order to galvanize collective action towards the Sustainable Development Goals. The survey includes gender-related questions covering issues such as the use of the gender equality marker (GEM), the establishment of the minimum 15 per cent allocation to programmes with gender equality as their main objective or other financial targets. This publication highlights the main findings of the FMOG survey concerning gender-related issues in Multi-Partner Trust Funds (MPTFs) and Joint Programmes (JPs).

Women and girls with disabilities continue to face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. When it comes to global normative standards for disability inclusion, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) includes provisions and obligations related to gender equality. To date, however, normative standards have not been consistently translated into national, sectoral, and/or local gender-responsive, disability-inclusive policies and corresponding budgets.

Drawing on a selection of country experiences, this policy brief identifies emerging trends and practices on gender- and disability-inclusive budgeting. These include, among others:

• collection, analysis, and use of data and statistics on intersectional discrimination;
• integration of gender and disability inclusion in laws, policies, systems, and institutional practice;
• integration of gender and disability inclusion in the planning and budgeting cycle; and
• enhanced participation of women with disabilities in policy, planning, and budgeting.

The brief aims to address these gaps and promote policy discourse and reforms at global and country level.

One in five women is estimated to be living with a disability, making it crucial to study the increased risks of various forms of violence that they face.  

This synthesis review contains key insights and lessons from the experiences of 22 diverse civil society and women’s rights organizations in various contexts that were supported by the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) special window to end violence against women and girls with disabilities between 2018 and 2023. In particular, it highlights the lessons learned about fostering collaboration, shifting mindsets, empowering women and girls with disabilities, engaging with legal and policy systems, and allowing for flexible adaptation and learning in addressing violence against women and girls with disabilities.  

These findings mean that the review: 

• contributes to developing programming that is disability specific and disability inclusive; 
• promotes the development of a knowledge base that is grounded in the realities of practitioners in the Global South; and 
• offers practical recommendations to practitioners, researchers, donors and policymakers. 

UN Women is fully committed to mainstreaming disability inclusion and intersectionality throughout its work, as laid out in the UN Women Strategic Plan 2022–2025. The goal is to ensure a more systematic approach to ensuring the rights of women and girls with disabilities across UN Women’s areas of work.

Disability, gender, and discrimination are closely interlinked, with one in five women experiencing a disability-related exclusion. To address this, UN Women developed a corporate strategy for the empowerment of women and girls with disabilities built on a multi-pronged approach that includes providing normative guidance, integrated policy advice, operational support, and technical assistance for programme and capacity-development. The approach helps ensure that initiatives are both gender-responsive and inclusive of the rights of persons with disabilities.

This brief overviews UN Women’s approach to disability inclusion and intersectionality.

The latest UN system-wide achievements on gender equality and empowerment of women, collected via the 2022 UN-SWAP reporting. A total of 41 useful data points on the number and name of entities per detailed achievements, across 17 business functional indicator areas. 

This is a presentation on the GEM and financial targets in the UN System as part of the ITC-ILO Course  “Gender Responsive Budgeting within Organizations”, made by UN Women in December 2022. The aim of the presentation was to inform participants about the use of the GEM and financial targets as UN tools for ensuring gender equality and the empowerment of women at entity and country levels and at pooled funds. 

This brief analyzes legal and policy data from 190 economies on the rights of women with disabilities and highlights promising practices where laws directly recognize and protect these needs, with the goal of informing policy reforms across the globe.

Empowered by the UN-SWAP 2.0, UN Women is able to identify and coordinate the system-wide adoption of good practices and harmonized products that can be scaled from one entity to another. UN Women selects and publishes a series of good practices from various entities on annual basis, normally through the UN-SWAP review reports and the updated technical guidance. This catalog aggregates various best practices under UN-SWAP 2.0 indicators, updated in 2022.

This report presents a rapid gender analysis of Joint Programmes (JPs) reported in the UNSDG Information Management System (IMS) exploring the extent to which gender and SDG 5 are reported as a focus of the JPs and what the proportion of overall funding is to JPs with a gender or SDG 5 focus. The analysis was developed by the UN Women UN System Coordination Division to strengthen evidence-based analysis, provide a baseline for similar follow-up analysis of IMS data from 2022 and identify trends with the overall objective to inform UN System policies and engagement with UNCTs on strengthening gender equality in JPs. 

This brief presents data on the legal barriers that women with disabilities face when accessing economic opportunities in 190 economies. The new data suggest that only one-quarter of economies worldwide explicitly protect and promote the rights of women with disabilities.