The United Nations gender equality agency, UN Women, has warned that severe funding cuts are crippling frontline organisations working to combat violence against women and girls worldwide.
In a new report released on Monday, titled “At Risk and Underfunded”, UN Women revealed that one in three programmes aimed at tackling gender-based violence has been suspended or shut down due to a lack of financial support.
According to the global survey, which covered 428 women’s rights and civil society organisations, over 40 percent have scaled back or closed critical services — including shelters, legal aid, healthcare, and psychosocial support — because of immediate funding shortfalls.
The report further noted that nearly 80 percent of organisations observed a decline in access to services for survivors, while 59 percent reported growing impunity and normalisation of violence against women.
“Women’s rights organisations are the backbone of progress on violence against women, yet they are being pushed to the brink,” said Kalliopi Mingeirou, Head of UN Women’s Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Section.
“We cannot allow funding cuts to erase decades of hard-won gains. We call on governments and donors to ringfence, expand, and make funding more flexible. Without sustained investment, violence against women and girls will only rise.”
UN Women described gender-based violence as one of the world’s most pervasive human rights violations, citing data showing that 736 million women — nearly one in three globally — have experienced physical or sexual violence, most often by an intimate partner.
The agency previously warned that many women-led organisations in crisis-affected areas were on the brink of closure — a concern now reinforced by the latest findings.
Only five percent of the organisations surveyed said they could sustain operations beyond two years, while 85 percent predicted serious setbacks to legal protections and policy reforms benefiting women and girls.
More than half of the respondents also expressed concern over rising threats to women human rights defenders, as financial challenges coincide with a growing global backlash against women’s rights, now visible in one in four countries.
The report emphasised that as funding dries up, many groups are being forced to prioritise short-term emergency aid instead of long-term advocacy — a shift that threatens to undo systemic progress achieved over decades.
The release of At Risk and Underfunded coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a landmark global blueprint for gender equality that placed the fight against violence towards women at its core.
