Merging of UN Gender Entities Moves Ahead      Despite Doubts and Risks

The push to consolidate the two United Nations’ agencies dedicated to women’s rights and reproductive health has produced a formal path for their merger.

An initial assessment done under the UN80 Initiative, the systemwide reform plan to make the world body nimble, proposed merging UN Women and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as a “composite entity.” That means the two organizations will be brought together under a single governance structure while maintaining their separate mandates.

The document, published on March 30, is the first to lay out a concrete model for the proposed merger since it was announced in early 2025 as part of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s UN80 plan.

It might also quiet, at least for now, fears by advocates that UN Women could potentially absorb UNFPA’s large-scale programs, primarily focusing on providing sexual and reproductive health care to global South countries, to form one homogeneous entity. (The United States, a previously large voluntary donor to UNFPA, has ended most funding to it.)

Yet for experts and UN member states, naming the mode of the merger is the only new information in the report. Member states and half a dozen other gender experts told PassBlue that it does not offer enough material to reassure parties about the proposed changes.

During an informal meeting on the UN80 initiative on April 6, member state delegates said the report lacked clarity on the composite model, how it would be implemented and why it is the best approach for the merger.

“We do not see sufficient analysis demonstrating how a so-called composite model would preserve mandate integrity while improving effectiveness,” a representative of Sweden said during the briefing. “The concepts of composite and pathway remain underdefined and the report does not yet provide a clear assessment of trade offs and risks.”

Amina Mohammed, the UN deputy secretary-general and the highest-ranking member of the Secretariat leading the merger, said that while both agencies have delivered consistent results over decades, current global challenges require a more unified, scalable plan.

“The status quo is not an option,” Mohammed said. “The secretary-general’s proposal for a merger does create a unified vehicle that brings together the collective muscle of the UN’s gender expertise with sexual and reproductive health and rights and populations.”

She told member states that the composite approach has the strongest potential to protect mandates and to ensure continuity. Benelux countries jointly questioned this assertion. Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands asked for explanations on other mechanisms that were considered and the data to justify the composite model.

The model itself is not new, given that it was the approach used when four previous UN bodies, UN Development Fund for Women; the Division for the Advancement of Women; the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues; and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women were all joined to form UN Women in 2010.

The risks of a merger

“When the different organizations were operating, their combined budget was approximately $221M (2008),” Fadekemi Akinfaderin, the chief global advocacy officer at the gender advocacy group Fòs Feminista, said by email, referring to millions of dollars. “With the proposal of a merger of the [four] entities, the hopes from feminist organizations was an annual budget of $500M in the first year and the goal of increasing to $1 billion in five years.”

She added: “In the beginning, we saw a growth in the budget, but have witnessed a steady decline over time. This is what we anticipate with this new merger. We actually think the situation will be worse given the recent ODA [Official Development Assistance] cuts and the overall fiscal contraction.”

Manon Lebatteux, the global advocacy adviser at the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said the basis of evidence cited in the report is unclear. She added that a process of this scale must include meaningful consultation with civil society to be credible and warned that excluding these voices risks ignoring the communities affected by the decisions.

Foteini Papagioti, the director of policy and advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women, a nongovernmental organization, said the report’s contention that the risks are manageable “is impossible to take seriously,” given the limited consultation so far and growing mistrust among staff, civil society and member states.

She noted that the proposal appears to be moving forward without transparency or clear guarantees as financial resources are shrinking and confidence in the system is strained.

More than 500 civil society organizations signed an open letter in late January 2026 to Guterres, warning that when sexual and reproductive health rights are absorbed into broader mandates, they can be deprioritized, underfunded or rendered politically invisible.

The merger reflects just how precarious it is for gender programs at the UN to remain viable as the US government under President Trump continues to mount unrelenting opposition against sexual health and reproductive rights. In addition to withdrawing from UNFPA, PassBlue reported how the US pushed to reinterpret gender as a term strictly referring to men and women, during the annual women’s rights conference in March.

Addtionally, some Asian and African countries want the agencies’ mandates to align more with their national interests. This dynamic, experts say, would reopen opportunities for countries with restrictive gender policies to renegotiate agreed terms.

“In our review,” a representative of Brazil said at the April 6 meeting, “ this is more than a real risk. It is almost certain, given developments unfolding in un for almost daily.”

Not the time to gamble

Veronica Brown, a coordinator with the nonprofit Women’s Major Group, said the early merger report points out possible risks and suggests they could be handled with careful planning. However, she added that it did not explain how it will protect important and sensitive commitments on gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights, or SRHR.

“What is the plan?” Brown asked in an email to PassBlue. “At a time of growing backlash, this is not the moment to gamble with the Gender Equality and SRHR mandates that uphold the Beijing and Cairo agenda without a far more robust evidence base, a clear mitigation plan for the re-opening of the mandates, and serious consideration of alternatives.”

For Maldives, even the symbolism of erasing the word “women” from the proposed composite entity reflects on the UN negatively. A representative of the country said at the April 6 briefing that the Secretariat must clarify how it intends to “safeguard its leadership in protecting the rights of women, . . . and that the UN’s normative voice remains strong and visible.”

The report also said any structural changes to the two agencies would not be done without approval from the General Assembly, but Brown says that opening up such a debate could damage hard-won mandates on gender equality and sexual reproductive health and rights.

The report’s findings estimated that the merger would save the UN $32 million to $38 million annually, once it is fully done. The document said cost-cutting was only a secondary rationale, insisting instead that the merger’s purpose is to strengthen the institutional weight on gender equality rather than reduce it.

“Although the review suggests there are medium-term cost efficiencies in the new model, it also states that those savings would have to be reinvested in order to strengthen capacity and implementation,” Cristal Downing of the International Crisis Group think tank said. “This seems to imply that there will, in fact, be no cost reduction, bringing us back to the question of what problem the proposed combined institution model is trying to solve.”

While public messaging from the leadership of both organizations appears to align with the position of the Secretariat, their respective staffers remain uncertain about their jobs. Workers at both agencies told PassBlue that they worry they might have to reapply for their roles if the merger pulls through, as there would be multiple people doing the same job.

The UN80 task force carrying out the study is expected to publish detailed assessments that could answer some questions raised by member states and civil society groups in the coming week.

WUNRN

Merging of UN Gender Entities Moves Ahead Despite Doubts and Risks – PassBlue