Outcome WCA_D_4.2

More women and girls in West and Central Africa have equitable access to high quality public goods, services, and resources that are responsive to their needs in Peace, Security , Humanitarian and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) settings.

During the reporting period, UN Women leveraged its comparative advantage and triple mandate—normative, coordination, and operational—to strengthen strategic partnerships across the UN system. These efforts supported the systematic integration of gender equality and the empowerment of women (GEWE) and women-led organizations (WLOs) into humanitarian governance structures, accountability frameworks, and response planning. In partnership with UNFPA, UN Women maintained active engagement in the Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility (GBV AoR), contributing throughout the transition from GBV sub-clusters to the protection cluster. UN Women participated in Humanitarian Country Team reprioritization exercises and supported advocacy to sustain GBV as a life-saving priority and category of high vulnerability. Engagement with country offices also advanced discussions on joint programming, including in Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. UN Women continued its leadership within the inter-agency PSEA network under UNICEF’s coordination and served as lead of the Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) group. Through these roles, UN Women contributed to the revision of regional inter-agency terms of reference and supported Priority 1 country-level actions, including the development and implementation of inter-agency PSEA standard operating procedures in Togo, Niger, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. Under its coordination mandate, UN Women contributed to the Analysis and Advocacy Taskforce led by UNHCR, supporting the revision of advocacy messaging on reductions in protection funding. This work strengthened the positioning of women-led organizations as a group disproportionately affected by funding cuts. Evidence generated through UN Women’s global study on the impact of funding reductions on WLOs informed advocacy efforts and supported their consideration in regional and country-level resource allocation discussions. Through the Sahel Resilience regional programme on disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate adaptation, UN Women, in collaboration with ECOWAS, the African Union, UNDRR, and UN system partners, strengthened the capacities of women’s civil society organizations and key government institutions. Support focused on integrating gender-responsive DRR and climate adaptation into national planning and budgeting processes, contributing to improved institutional accountability and more inclusive, risk-informed development outcomes within the humanitarian-development-peace nexus.

More women and girls in West and Central Africa have equitable access to high quality public goods, services, and resources that are responsive to their needs in Peace, Security , Humanitarian and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) settings.

UN Women has made significant efforts in providing equitable access to high-quality public goods, services, and resources for women and girls in West and Central Africa, particularly in Peace, Security, Humanitarian, and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) settings. Here are the key achievements and initiatives: Peace and Security: Women's Participation and Leadership : UN Women supports women's participation and leadership in peace and security processes. This includes advocating for the implementation of Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) commitments and providing technical and policy support to enhance gender-responsive peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Humanitarian Settings: Training Sessions and Leadership Development : Women's organizations across the Sahel have participated in training sessions designed to enhance their roles in humanitarian architecture. These sessions prioritized the development of women’s leadership in humanitarian responses and emphasized their inclusion in the structures of the humanitarian country teams. Access to Funding Opportunities: Information on Funding Opportunities : Women and girls who are members of UN Women-supported organizations in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad have gained access to essential information on funding opportunities for their organizations. This has empowered them to secure resources necessary for their initiatives. These efforts highlight UN Women's significant contributions to fostering inclusion, leadership, and empowerment across the region, ensuring that women and girls are key participants in shaping humanitarian and disaster response systems.

More women and girls in West and Central Africa have equitable access to high quality public goods, services, and resources that are responsive to their needs in Peace, Security , Humanitarian and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) settings.

As consequence of the capacity building initiative of Gender & DRR atelier carried out at regional level in Dakar (UN WOMEN Nov 2022), in which public institutions (gender and women ministry), Women Led Organisations and women organisation working in the sector, more women and girls, will be benefited from targeted gendered policies, risks preventions, action plans taking into consideration gender needs, the mainstreaming of gender and engagements made by these stake holders in their respective countries to improve access of women and girls to public and basis services. Practitioners on disaster risk reduction (DRR), disaster risk management (DRM) and climate change (CC) has been also aware about the need for gender-sensitive and inclusive DRR strategies and mechanisms in their countries and regions , including the global and regional frameworks (Sendai Framework, Africa Action Plan, ECOWAS Strategy for DRR and CCA). With the application of these national and regional frameworks at the institutional level, women and girls will have better or improved access to basic services and prevention mechanism on DRR, peace and security, and protection .

More women and girls in West and Central Africa have equitable access to high quality public goods, services, and resources that are responsive to their needs in Peace, Security , Humanitarian and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) settings.

WCARO adopted the following specific strategies aiming to improve women's access to humanitarian response: establisment of group of expert on gender and humanitarian action ( GIHA Group) in the region, advocacy , capacity building of key humanitarian actors, and specific support to women's organizations. UN Women has focused on building skills and providing tools to humanitarian actors (government Ministries, NGOs, regional women’s networks and platforms, women led organizations, Humanitarian Country Teams (HCTs), UN agencies) to enable them to integrate gender in the design of interventions several countries in West and Central Africa. In Niger under the leadership of the Humanitarian Gender Theme Group, a Gender Alert highlighted the effects of sanctions by sub-regional bodies (ECOWAS and the West African Monetary and Economic Union (UEMOA) on women and girls after the military coup as a contribution to the UN’s dialogue on limiting the negative impact of the sanctions on humanitarian assistance in the country. UN Women in partnership with NorCap is currently supporting women's organizations that are working on humanitarian and disaster risk reduction issues in the Sahel region. UNWOMEN created space for them to interact with key decision makers and present their priorities and some solutions to different crisis particularly in the context of transition. UN Women coordinates the Regional and national Gender and Humanitarian Groups which include 30 experts from main international agencies and NGOs working in the humanitarian field A group of 20 women have developped their expertise on gender and DRR and influence through advocacy different DRR processes at the national and regional level including the AU GRoup on DRR