Ukraine

Almost three years after the start of the large scale aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, and a massive United Nations (UN) humanitarian operation,UN Women increased awareness of the need for gender-responsive humanitarian and recovery operations and women’s participation in decision making, contributing to improved women and girls access to services and rights.
UN Women encouraged the UN system to more integrally meet the needs of women and girls, especially those facing multi forms of discrimination, in their humanitarian response through the work and advocacy of the Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) Working Group and the visible contributions of UN multi-donor Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF), which demonstrated that women’s rights organizations (WRO) and CSOs across Ukraine can effectively provide humanitarian assistance and that women and girls have specific needs that need to be accounted for. Both GiHA and WPHF grew significantly in 2024 under UN Women’s chairing of their respective secretariats. GIHA expanded in 2024 to over 300 members, including 40 Ukrainian WROs, securing its position as Ukraine’s main coordination body on gender mainstreaming in the humanitarian response. Through GiHA the CO regularly convenes partners, providing them capacity building and skills development, support to communication, advocacy and data collection. GIHA successfully contributed to the HNRP and other humanitarian planning documents to make them more responsive to the needs of women and girls. UN Women supported WPHF to become the largest feminist fund for gender-responsive and inclusive humanitarian assistance and recovery in Ukraine. Through $6.5 million allocated to 54 women’s CSOs in 2024, some 25,000 women and their families across Ukraine received vital support, including food, hygiene kits, medication, legal aid, information on humanitarian assistance and emergency protection referral pathways, evacuation services and economic empowerment initiatives. Through the WPHF efforts were also invested in enhancing the institutional capacities of WROs facing multiple forms of discrimination to strengthen their agency and voice.
The CO also increased awareness and commitment to address the needs of women and girls in the recovery process through numerous advocacy efforts including the launch with the Governments of Ukraine and Germany of the Alliance on Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Recovery. It aims to encourage the 60+ commitment makers to invest more financially in gender responsive recovery, to support women’s leadership in decision making on recovery and to help plan and implement projects and programs advancing gender equality during recovery. Commitment makers will be asked to demonstrate accountability to their commitments in a report to be published before the 2025 Ukraine Recovery Conference.
The result contributes to achieving the SDG 5, SDG 8 including nationalized SDG targets and indicators for Ukraine.

Women’s leadership and participation in decision making on the UN’s humanitarian response increased during the second year of the full-fledged war in Ukraine. The result contributes to effective implementation of the UN in Ukraine Transitional Framework’s priority ‘Saving Lives’ with more women and girls receiving services that are better designed to meet their needs. It also contributes to achieving the SDG 5, SDG 8.
Women and LGBTIQ+ organizations had a more receptive environment in which to exercise their voice and leadership in the humanitarian response. GE advocates and CSOs accessed a number of dialogues and platforms created by the CO. This includes a dialogue mechanism with the UNCT and the RC/HC for women activists representing front line communities, Roma and disabled people to express their needs for goods, services, and protection from security risks and discrimination. This increased awareness among UN agencies and strengthened aid targeting. In 2023, key recommendations and inputs from women’s CSOs and technical gender experts were incorporated, in a dedicated chapter in the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan on “Intersectionality, Gender, and Disability” and gender and age disaggregated data and analysis was in the 2023 Multi-Sector Needs Assessment.The UN system improved it’s capacity to include GE issues in the humanitarian response through the CO’s coordination efforts. For example, the Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) working group (co-chaired by UN Women) successfully integrated gender dimensions into the HCT clusters’ work and cross-sector joint actions including through the provision of strategic and practical guidance via the introduction of UN Women’s gender-tip sheets. GiHA published a gender brief “Closing Gender Gap in Humanitarian Action in Ukraine” which recommended ways forward. After UN Women’s full-fledged membership in the Inter Agency Standing Committee, the CO transitioned from an observer to a full member of the HCT. UN Women’s co-chairing of the GiHA Working Group played a critical role in ensuring that women' needs and priorities were covered by humanitarian strategies and action plans. More than 45,000 women and girls received aid from UN Women and over 100,000 dependents were indirectly supported. Out of these 672 women received psychological and social support services through 4 UN Women’s multi-purpose centres (‘Safe Spaces’). Over 39,091 women and girls received food, hygiene kits, medication, legal aid, and information on humanitarian assistance and emergency protection referral pathways through the availability of more flexible and dedicated funding to women’s rights organizations to meet the specific needs of diverse categories of war affected communities. Serving as the Secretariat of the Women, Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) in Ukraine, the CO oversaw the availability of these funds, with 34 CSOs sharing USD 8.5 million in grants, making WPHF the biggest feminist fund in Ukraine.