Speech: Bold in ambition, relentless in delivery, fearless in advocacy, and prepared to move as one
Remarks by UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous at the joint meeting of the Executive Boards of UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS, UNICEF, UN Women and WFP, at UN Headquarters, on 30 May 2025.
[As delivered.]
Paragraph 13 of the QCPR [Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review resolution] calls for the full implementation of the UN-SWAP and UNCT-SWAP frameworks. Today, 116 UN Country Teams are actively engaged in the UNCT-SWAP Gender Scorecard process. This is truly remarkable. If we look at 2016, where we had only 19 teams, now we have 116, which is a remarkable achievement.
We owe this progress to the UN system and the strong leadership of Resident Coordinators and the Development Coordination Office, whose joint efforts we greatly appreciate.
Also, Paragraph 69 of the QCPR matters. It mandates financial tracking through the use of the Gender Equality Marker in inter-agency pooled funds. These targets have teeth: 15 per cent of pooled fund allocations must go toward gender equality as a primary goal. This is not just a reform on paper. It is a reform that lives in budgets, it lives in policies, and it also lives in outcomes.
This reform comes to life in places like Tanzania, where with UN Women’s support, 28 ministries, departments, and agencies translated budget reform into action—allocating specific funds to benefit women directly in 2024–2025 budget plans.
It is also why 548 institutions, across Albania, Ethiopia, India, Colombia, Morocco, and others, used gender budgeting tools to close financing gaps and to strengthen services for survivors of violence against women, for female-headed households, and for maternal health.
This is why coordination needs to continue to be strong, and this is what coordination looks like: UN Women working with the UN system and national partners to make gender equality a line item, not just a line in a speech.
Our new Strategic Plan 2026–2029 fully aligns with this momentum. It is bold in ambition and clear in purpose, anchored in human rights, and laser-focused on delivering measurable results for all women and girls, everywhere.
We have ensured greater clarity on outcomes, reducing them from seven to three, and unwavering commitment to our triple mandate through our enhanced coordination offer. Just this week, you—Member States—expressed strong support for the Plan’s sharpened direction, its grounding in international commitments, and its rigorous, participatory design. You welcomed our prioritization of the normative mandate, our enhanced coordination offer, and our commitment to deliver at country level. Count on us to take this forward as we make the ambition of the new Strategic Plan a reality.
As we mark UN Women’s 15th anniversary this year and the UN’s 80th, the Strategic Plan sends a clear message: we are not standing still and we are not standing by. We are evolving—with clarity, courage and cost-consciousness—to meet the future head-on, and to leave no one behind in the process.
In delivering on this ambition, one truth becomes clear: coordination is not an accessory; it is the connective tissue of the United Nations.
You see this connective tissue in action in Afghanistan and Sudan, where Women’s Advisory Groups—established and strengthened by UN Women—are now guiding Humanitarian Country Teams. This is coordination with consequence: ensuring emergency responses are shaped by those most affected.
UN Women’s coordination tools—UN-SWAP, UNCT-SWAP, and the Secretary-General’s Gender Equality Acceleration Plan—are here to serve the whole system, so the system collectively can better serve all women and girls.
This year also, we mark the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. But we do more than remember. We commit and we recommit. We advance it through the Pact for the Future, across the six transitions, and in every Cooperation Framework, embedding it in budgets, programmes, and in lives. And we elevate it through your collective leadership on the Beijing+30 Action Agenda, giving it both structure and strength.
Let us not underestimate what is ahead. The final stretch to 2030 demands coherence, courage, and common purpose.
The UN80 Initiative must rise to this challenge, making our multilateral system more effective, more efficient, and maintaining gender equality as a core commitment and a pillar underpinning all we do. UN Women fully supports UN80 and we will continue to do so, and to ensure that women’s rights remain central to all the sustainable development, peace, and security ambitions of the UN.
We are prepared to be bold in our ambition, relentless in our delivery, fearless in our advocacy. And we are prepared to move as one, guided by your leadership. We are already reforming to deliver better: rejuvenating our business model, accelerating our pivot to the field, and shifting resources to where they matter most. This is UN80 in action.
You have been clear: to stay relevant, multilateralism must be supported and funded to deliver credibly, effectively, and with the rights of half the world’s population at its core. Gender equality is not a sidebar to system renewal. It is the stress test of our credibility and our relevance.
UN Women stands ready: to support Member States, to drive coherence, and to build an inclusive future—together. Because together, we can make gender equality the foundation—not the footnote—of the UN development system.
I thank you.
