About the Alliance
Why is the Alliance needed now?
Gender equality and women’s empowerment are globally recognised as priorities for achieving sustainable development for all. Governments and development partners have made international commitments to advance gender equality through humanitarian response, development cooperation, and peace and security efforts.
More than two years after the start of Russia’s large-scale aggression, the war continues to impact women and girls, as well as vulnerable and marginalised groups, disproportionally. Women in Ukraine experience higher rates of poverty and displacement than men, worsening inequalities, and multiple types of gender-based violence, including conflict related sexual violence. Among the 14.6 million in need of humanitarian assistance, women and girls constitute the vast majority. Despite women’s engagement at the forefront of the humanitarian, defence and early recovery efforts, barriers to their representation in formal decision-making and to equality in the workplace persist.
Ukraine has made significant efforts to address this, mainstreaming gender equality in recovery and reconstruction plans since the 2022 Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC) in Lugano, including by establishing the Platform for Gender Mainstreaming and Inclusive Recovery as a follow up to the URC in London led by the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, and including women’s rights organisations in discussions on recovery in the CSO Consultative Panel.
There is now a significant opportunity for international partners to join the Government and civil society of Ukraine in their efforts for a gender-responsive and inclusive recovery by joining a new Alliance on Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Recovery and committing to doing more to support gender equality and women’s access to rights, representation and resources when making decisions on how to contribute to Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction. They can prioritize the needs of displaced women, women returnees, disabled women, women veterans, rural women and LGBTIQ+ persons, and women’s participation in decision-making on recovery.
Working together with the Platform and CSO Consultative Panel, the Alliance will join efforts to build back better, more equal, and more inclusive. Alliance members will implement international commitments, ensuring that women meaningfully participate in decision-making on recovery and reconstruction, and that gender equality and women’s and girls’ needs across all sectors are prioritised in donor coordination structures, and international events dedicated to meeting SDG targets.
The business community will play an important role in advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community, and can join the Alliance by signing the UN’s Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) and committing to implementing them in Ukraine.
Concrete actions on how to move forward exist. The 2024 Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA3) provides data on women’s and girls’ specific needs and how they can be met for recovery and reconstruction to strengthen equality and women’s empowerment. The Ukraine Plan includes concrete steps to secure gender-responsive and inclusive recovery.