System wide reforms must ensure dedicated space for the protection of women and girls against GBV

Click here to download a PDF version of this text

Norway supports a humanitarian reset that is based on the humanitarian principles, focused on the Centrality of Protection and on strengthened locally led response for more effective humanitarian action, and with a more simplified and efficient architecture. But we must not lose the gains we have spent decades to achieve.

As the current lead of the Call to Action on the protection from Gender Based violence in Emergencies network, Norway reiterates the importance of including safeguards to ensure that protection from gender-based violence (GBV), primarily affecting women and girls, remains a priority in the system-wide reforms, including UN80 and the humanitarian reset.  While we recognize the importance and reiterate our strong support in streamlining the humanitarian system, we stress that dedicated spaces for critical GBV services must remain a non-negotiable priority.

In this regard, we wish to use the Call to action platform to amplify the strong voices of Women-Led Organizations (WLOs), many states and donor stakeholders, UN agencies, and NGOs in reiterating that gender-based violence (GBV) coordination and services are essential, life-saving components of our collective response, not auxiliary functions. We witness a global push-back on women’s rights and gender-equality, escalating GBV risks, including sexual violence in conflict, and major funding cuts disproportionally affecting these areas.

In this context, dedicated spaces for advocacy and coordination around GBV prevention, response, and risk mitigation must be protected and reinforced. Funding for GBV prevention and response services must be ensured, and all sectors held accountable for mitigating GBV risks in their programming.

This is not about maintaining a single model or mechanism, but about ensuring that—whatever the architecture—there remains a visible, resourced, and locally rooted space where GBV expertise, services, and leadership, especially from women-led and women’s rights organizations, can guide decision-making and access the funding needed to sustain their work.

As reforms move forward, we encourage all decision makers within the UN, the IASC, Humanitarian Coordinators, and donors to:

1. Affirm GBV services and risk mitigation as non-negotiable elements of life-saving humanitarian assistance, with clear commitments to their integration in future response plans and pooled funding mechanisms.
2. Ensure robust accountability mechanisms are in place to support decision-makers in fulfilling their obligations to deliver the minimum GBV services to survivors who depend on them.
3. Guarantee a continued, locally led and accountable coordination space for GBV at the field level—regardless of structural consolidation.
4. Ensure the meaningful participation and leadership of WLOs and GBV actors in all stages of reform planning and implementation, particularly in shaping localized funding and coordination systems.

We commend Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mr. Tom Fletcher on his efforts to keep a focus on the priorities of women and girls in crises, his support to women-led organisations and his understanding that GBV programming is life-saving. We encourage him to continue this and take it further.

We stand ready to collaborate across sectors and regions to support reforms that are not only more streamlined, but also more equitable—anchored in the lived realities of crisis-affected women and girls and those who serve them. A humanitarian system that seeks to be more localized must also protect the spaces where women and girls can be safe, heard, protected, and supported.

Let us move forward not by erasing what works, but by deepening our collective resolve to put protection against GBV, gender equality, and survivor-centered response at the heart of humanitarian transformation.