Outcome BRA_O_5

UN-Women efficiently and effectively discharges of all business processes that advance integrated delivery of its mandate at HQ, Regional and Country levels, including through shared services.

In 2024, UN Women reinforced its commitment to efficiently and effectively discharging business processes that advance the integrated delivery of its mandate. Building on its contributions to the Common Back Office (CBO) proposal, the organization played a central role in fostering collaboration and developing strategies for procurement, travel, human resources, ICT, and security. Throughout the year, UN Women maintained its significant role as a key member of the CBO committee, thoroughly evaluating proposals, including those from UNDP, from both technical and financial perspectives. Lot 01 for common premises became fully functional, enabling shared services to operate seamlessly. Additionally, the procurement function under the CBO began providing services to other agencies; however, UN Women has not yet signed the MOU required to start using these services directly. As 2024 drew to a close, UN Women contributions to the Common Back Office initiative highlighted its commitment to advancing sustainability and innovation within the broader UN framework. By addressing challenges, promoting risk assessments, the organization solidified its participation in the integrated service delivery. UN Women also continued to promote the Strategic Note Direct Funding (SNDF) modality to enhance programme effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, and sustainability. During the reporting period, UN Women established a new agreement with the Government of Austria under the SNDF modality, marking the second collaboration with this donor, and a second contribution from Gucci within this modality as well. This underscores the Country Office’s ability to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, and the relevance of the results achieved. UN Women promoted integrated, coordinated, and coherent action within the UN System by providing technical inputs and advocating for the prioritization of gender and racial equality outcomes within the Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF). Three of the ten priorities defined by the UN country team (UNCT) focus on the care economy and on ending gender-based violence and racial discrimination. Additionally, the UNCT established the promotion of gender, race, and ethnicity equality as a strategic result of the UNSDCF Communications Strategy and a transversal theme across other results, with specific attention to meeting the requirements of the UNCT System-Wide Action Plan (SWAP) Scorecard. Furthermore, the UNCT highlighted gender and racial issues in the 2024 Common Country Analysis, which informed the UNSDCF implementation. UN Women also led the Joint Programme Moverse,which promotes human rights and gender equality within Brazil's National Policies on Migration, Asylum, and Statelessness, in partnership with UNFPA and UNHCR. By fostering collaboration and coordination among participating UN organizations, UN Women ensured consistent and impactful joint results, especially in a year marked by the second Comigrar, a national conference aimed at proposing and discussing guidelines and recommendations for public policies for migrants, refugees, and stateless persons, through their social and political participation.

UN-Women efficiently and effectively discharges of all business processes that advance integrated delivery of its mandate at HQ, Regional and Country levels, including through shared services.

In 2025, UN Women achieved a breakthrough in long-standing negotiations with the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) to ensure that gender equality components across all cooperation projects are implemented in an integrated manner by UN Women through UN Agency-to-UN Agency Agreements. ABC endorsed this approach and facilitated negotiations with UNDP to establish an inter-agency agreement. This agreement will position UN Women to lead the implementation of gender equality initiatives within a South-South Cooperation project focused on sustainable development in the Amazon region. The process demonstrates strengthened integrated business practices and effective coordination among UN entities, with negotiations now in their final stage, advancing resource mobilization and integrated delivery of UN Women’s mandate. Additionally, UN Women implemented a Common back office approach in Brazil with UNDP and is now working in a standardized approach in Common premises, ICT and protocol services. This milestone also creates significant opportunities for resource mobilization through UN-to-UN Agreements in triangular cooperation projects and paves the way for a standardized approach that can be replicated across future initiatives. UN Women also continued to promote the Strategic Note Direct Funding (SNDF) modality to enhance programme effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, and sustainability. During the reporting period, UN Women established a new agreement with the Government of Austria under the SNDF modality, marking the third collaboration with this donor, and a third contribution from Gucci within this modality as well. This underscores the Country Office’s ability to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach, and the relevance of the results achieved. Within the scope of its triple mandate, in terms of coordination, the UN Women continues to promote integrated, coordinated and coherent action to ensure accountability for gender equality, women’s empowerment and human rights. In this sense, the UNCT had increased capacity and accountability regarding gender mainstreaming within the Legal Amazon Multi Partner Trust Fund as a result of UN Women’s technical support, contributing to advancing the delivery of UN Women’s mandate. UN Women developed guidelines for the application of the Gender Equality Marker to the projects under the Legal Amazon MTPF, which determines that at least 30 per cent of funds must be allocated to projects that have gender equality and women’s empowerment as a main goal and that proposals that had no consideration of gender mainstreaming will not be accepted. As a result, 50 per cent of the approved projects were considered gender-responsive, receiving a GEM code 2. Also in terms of integrated delivery, UN Women strengthened its operational effectiveness by applying differentiated delivery modalities, in line with recommendations from the Regional Office and with corporate guidance. As a result, the CO expanded the use of Partner Agreements and Small Grants across its portfolio, moving progressively away from predominantly direct implementation towards delivery modalities that promote national ownership, efficiency and sustainability. For instance, in the scope of the Joint Programme Moverse, a Partner Agreement with FLACSO, an intergovernmental organization specialized in social sciences research and technical cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, enabled the timely and compliant operationalization of cash-based interventions. These included cash for participation (covering basic costs such as transport and food to enable attendance in policy and consultation spaces), cash for leadership (supporting ongoing expenses related to sustained advocacy and leadership roles), and cash for care (a complementary modality offsetting care responsibilities that would otherwise prevent participation). In parallel, UN Women offered eight small grants, expanding access to flexible financial support for refugee and migrant women-led organizations. In another stream of work, the Country Office provided twelve additional small grants to strengthen the capacities of civil society organisations working on gender equality and climate action. UN Women is also promoting collaboration among the grantees in the implementation phase by facilitating peer - to - peer exchange, collective learning and the development of a supportive ecosystem that encourages joint approaches and shared solutions. By working through small grants and planning for a structured collaborative environment — rather than engaging individually with each organisation or relying solely on direct implementation — UN Women is helping to create the conditions for scaling up results of the project. Together, these modalities increased the availability of gender-responsive services, initiatives and policies and strengthened UN Women’s capacity to manage complex financial instruments in line with corporate risk management and accountability standards.