4th meeting, UN Women Executive Board, Annual Session

Good morning, Excellencies and distinguished delegates. Welcome back to the last plenary meeting of the 2026 Annual Session of the UN Women Executive Board. Before we start the session, I'd like to give the floor to the Executive Secretary for an announcement. Mr. Secretary General— Secretary, I'm not promoting you, Secretary General. You have the floor.

Thank you very much, Mr. President, and thank you for the promotion. But I just want to say that on behalf of the Executive Director, Ms. Sima Bahous, I would like to inform you that she will be unable attend this session of the Executive Board today due to some family obligation. She extends her sincere apologies to all delegations and she wish— we wish her very well in her trip. I thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Let's now continue our consideration of Agenda item 8, entitled Policy and Program Matters, during which the Executive Board will receive two updates, namely number one, an update on the implementation of General Assembly Resolution 72/279 on the repositioning of the United Nations Development development system, and two, an update on UN Women policies and procedures to tackle sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment. We shall first turn to the update on the implementation of General Assembly Resolution 72/279. On the repositioning of the United Nations Development System. In addition to the Deputy Executive Directors and the Executive Board Secretary, I would like to welcome to the podium the following colleagues, namely Sarah Hendricks, Director, Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division, Mr. Mohamed Nassiri, Chief of Staff. Well, he will join us later. There he is. Alice Shekfield, Director Ad Interim, UN System Coordination Division. She will join us virtually. As part of this agenda item on the implementation of General Assembly Resolution 72/279 on the repositioning of the United Nations Women's System, the Deputy Executive Director, Ms. Nyarandzaye Gumbo-Zivanda, will first deliver some opening remarks, which will be followed by virtual presentation by Ms. Alice Sheckelfield, Director and Interim UN System Coordination Division. Madam Deputy Executive Director, you have the floor.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. President, our President of the Executive Board, the esteemed Executive Board members, my colleague Didi Kessimadi, and our UN Women colleagues. Good morning and thank you for this agenda item on day 3 of the Executive Board, it is an honor for me to introduce this agenda item on the implementation and repositioning of the United Nations Development System. Only yesterday we got the news around the earthquake in Venezuela, the other day it was the Philippines, and at the same time this morning, the principals of the UN were meeting, reviewing and discussing on the development response to the Middle East situation. Just mentioning this in order for us to understand that context matters. As we deliver this agenda item, we are also very conscious of the context. The repositioning of the United Nations Development System was not intended as an institutional exercise for its own sake. Its purpose was to enable the United Nations to deliver more effectively, more coherently, with greater accountability in support of the member states, the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in the broader Sustainable Development Goals. For UN Women, one of the greatest measures of whether this reform is succeeding is whether gender equality and women's empowerment is increasingly reflected in how the United Nations system plans its work, finances, and delivers collectively. This is particularly important given the UN General Assembly Resolution 64/289 that established UN Women, in which coordination is a core pillar of UN Women's triple mandate and recognized the importance of delivery at the global level at the regional level and at the country level. As UN Women, we continue to reposition ourselves within the broader development system, remaining focused on ensuring that gender equality is central to the collective United Nations action at all levels of the system. This matters because gender equality and women's rights and empowerment cannot be advanced by one entity alone. It requires coordinated policy support, coordinated joint action, integrated financing, stronger data and evidence, collective accountability for results. In many ways, it depends precisely on the capabilities of the member states to strengthen through development system reform and support. The Executive Director's report on the first day of this board highlighted important progress across several dimensions of the reform agenda. At the country level, the engagement with the UNCTSWAP has more than doubled, increasing by 105% from 61 countries to 125 countries in 2025. This reflects growing ownership of gender equality commitments across the resident coordinators in the United Nations country teams. Today, more than 100 gender theme groups across 136 United Nations country teams are helping translate global and interagency commitments into country-level programs aligned with national priorities under the leadership of the resident coordinators with support of UN Women. These mechanisms remain particularly important in context where UN Women operates through multi-country offices or where UN system presence and capabilities vary, helping extend accountability and coordination beyond UN Women's physical footprint. The reports also points to improvement in accountability for gender equality across 75 United Nations entities, contributing to a stronger uptake of norms, standards, and consistent integration of gender equality across development, humanitarian and peacebuilding efforts. This is particularly important given the increasing interconnected nature of development, humanitarian and peace contexts, including fragile settings in small island developing states facing structural vulnerabilities. The report further highlights progress through the Secretary-General's Gender Equality Acceleration Plan. The Gender Equality Acceleration Plan is helping sharpen leadership, accountability, and financing across the system whilst accelerating implementation to commitments already made. At country level, it also supports UN Women's dual role of influencing cooperation frameworks and system-wide priorities while UN Women delivers on its own programs through the strategy notes aligned with national development objectives. At the same time, the reports remind us that progress cannot be taken for granted amid persistent regressions, stagnations, and pushback on gender equality. The share of United Nations Development Cooperation Frameworks integrating gender equality declined from 66% in 2022 to 61% in 2025. This only reinforces the importance of a strong and well-functioning gender equality architecture across the United Nations system. At a time when progress is uneven and resources are constrained, mechanisms of coordination, accountability, and collective action become even much more important. The collective challenge to us is to ensure that these mechanisms continue to drive implementation at country level, and therefore our strong commitment that cooperation framework should have a gender outcome in addition to mainstreaming UN Women. This is where UN Women's precise coordination mandate adds value and builds on the commitments that you member states already made through the UNCTSWAP and the UN SWAP and the Gender Equality Marker and other tools. The report highlights how UN Women's coordination mandate contributes to the broader architecture and the interagency Network on Gender Equality that is established by ECOSOC. We are pleased to share with you that we continue to strengthen this ECOSOC-mandated structure which supports development cooperation, and we will have an assistant level interagency network so that we are able to build into recommendations into the High Level Committee on Programme. Excellencies, building on these efforts, UN Women is clear that pooled funds of the United Nations, like the Peace Building Fund, the SDG Fund, are critical mechanisms that must continue to incorporate gender equality. UN Women is also drawing on the findings of the Rapid Synthesis Evaluation on coordination, and yesterday you spent time discussing evaluations, and I'm pleased to inform that for us this is very important, and in this regard, we really appreciate the Executive Director's decision to establish coordination specialists at the regional level in all our regional offices that have really seen us strengthen our work. As you advised in the last two days, and as we continue on the discussions on UNAT, UN Women remains very strongly involved in the country configuration and regional reset discussions, and we remain helping shape a more coherent, effective, and context-specific response that centers gender equality and coordination within that effort, maximizing on the lessons learned and scaling up on opportunities. I would like, with this introduction, to invite, to welcome through you, Mr. President, Alice Shekhofid, the Director of the Coordination Division, acting and interim, to provide a detailed update and again to extend our appreciation for the support that the Board continues to provide and the guidance on this critical aspect of our triple mandate coordination. Thank you, sir.

I thank the Deputy Executive Director for her introductory remarks. May I now invite Ms. Alice Shekelford to present the update on the implementation of General Assembly Resolution 72/279 on the repositioning of the United Nations Development assist you. Ms. Sheckelford, you have the floor virtually.

Your Excellency, distinguished delegates and colleagues, it is an honor to share from our global office in Nairobi the highlights of our contribution to the repositioned United Nations Development System for our unique triple mandate. Three things I will share with you today. First, we must recognize that UN Women as a unique dual role as an active member of the UN development system and as a lead entity on gender equality, leveraging the entire UN system. UN Women brings the gender equality expertise, normative grounding, and coordination function that enable large programs led by different agencies of the UN system to deliver more coherently for women and girls. There is a clear multiplier effect of UN Women's coordination mandate, and through our strong engagement with resident coordinators, UN country teams, agency funds and programs, as well as regional collaborative platform, we serve as a knowledge hub on gender equality, providing leadership standards, technical expertise at global, regional, and country level. In 2025, the UN achieved gender parity in international professional and higher categories for the first time. 27 out of 38 UN entities now reaching parity, up from 5 in 2017. UN Women led this process by supporting the system-wide strategy on gender parity. Second, our contribution extends well beyond, beyond our programs and strengthens the entire UN system. Therefore, when you Member States invest in UN Women, you are not only investing in one entity's program, you are investing in the connective tissue that enables the broader UN system to deliver more coherently on gender equality and women's rights through the UN system gender equality architecture. We are currently guiding and supporting 75 UN entities and 126 UNCTs through the implementation of system-wide action plans on gender, including gender parity standards and gender markers, as mentioned by our Deputy Executive Director. UN Women's coordination mandate has been further reinforced by the 2024 Secretary General's System-Wide Gender Equality Acceleration Plan, which was launched to accelerate progress on gender equality and empowerment of women. Our strategic planning documents are 100% aligned to cooperation frameworks, and our representatives at country level regularly report to resident coordinators in line with the management accountability framework. The course I Know Gender has strengthened the knowledge of more than 45,000 UN personnel worldwide, and our leading role in UN country teams to advance on the implementation of the, of the, of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women has translated in 99% of the UN country team submitting ports since 2022. Now we know very well the resident coordinator leadership is critical to advance gender equality, and that's why we work very closely with the Development Cooperation— Coordination Office at the global and regional level, and we have met our funding obligations of $2.7 million in 2025. At the same time, UN Women country offices participate in 80% of active business operation strategy management, and 76% of our offices are co-located in UN common premises. The increased use of common services and common back office solutions has generated efficiency gains and cost savings of $15.2 million. This is 3.8 times higher of what we reported last year. Third point, and last, While progress is evident, it is not guaranteed. Efforts remain uneven and in some cases are at risk of regression. Sustained leadership, adequate resourcing, and stronger collaboration, particularly at country level with resident coordinators, are essential to maintain momentum, prevent duplication, and ensure that gender equality remains a system-wide priority in cooperation frameworks and in other plans like humanitarian response plans. And in the case of cooperation frameworks, as mentioned by Dede, only 71% mainstream gender in 2025. And together with that challenge, we must ensure with your leadership adequate and predictable financing for gender equality commitments under the Funding Compact. As UN Women, we are committed to achieving gender equality, and under your leadership and in partnership with civil society and partners, We are committed to advance the 2030 Agenda, respond to humanitarian crisis, and ensure peace and security. Thank you for your continued partnership and support. Over to you, Mr. President.

Thank you so much, Alice, for that update. I'll now open the floor for member states' interventions with respect to the aforementioned agenda items. Those wishing to speak may indicate so by pressing the microphones on their desks. Thank you. My first speaker is Finland. Finland, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President, Excellencies. I deliver this statement on behalf of the following Member States: Albania, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, the Kingdom of Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, the EU as a donor, and my own country, Finland. We share the ambition to make the UN Development System more coherent, effective, efficient, and impactful at country level. UN Women is central to that ambition. Since the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 72/279, progress has been made and UN Women has played a constructive role. Yet the system is still not delivering on its full potential. Fragmentation, competition for funding, and weak incentives for collaboration continue to undermine collective impact. In a context of lagging SDG progress, growing humanitarian needs, and constrained ODA, This is not sustainable. We need a UN that acts as one UN in country, under the leadership of empowered resident coordinators, with UN Women as fully engaged and supportive partner. The UN80 initiative offers a unique opportunity to accelerate and strengthen the implementation of the repositioning of the UNDS launched in 2017. We ask all UN entities, including UN Women, to actively engage and show ownership of efforts under UN80 Workstream 3, through concrete steps. First, ensure UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks are the real drivers of UN Women's country work. The cooperation framework should be the single costed system-wide strategy at country level, in line with national priorities. Entity-specific country programme instruments must be genuinely derived from, and not loosely aligned with, cooperation frameworks. Sequencing the finalisation of entity country programme instruments after finalisation of the cooperation frameworks should be the standard. As Executive Board, we can work with entities to help with sequencing while protecting programme delivery. We encourage UN Women to ensure its country-level reporting clearly captures its contribution to cooperation framework results and joint UN outcomes, not only agency-specific outputs. It is also key that UN Women ensures live work plans and resource pipelines are visible to the RC throughout implementation.. And our question here would be, what more could UN Women do at global, regional, and country level to further elevate the cooperation frameworks as central strategic frameworks? Then second, consistently and fully support Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator leadership. This includes recognizing the RCHC as the default strategic interlocutor for high-level engagement with government and donors, systematically involving the RC in major strategic decisions and ensuring that project proposals agreed directly with donors are fully in line to the cooperation framework and are shared with the RC HC in advance. The question here would be whether you could share which challenges UN Women faces that limit your ability to do so. We also support a stronger role for RCs in the selection and performance assessments of country representatives. Country representatives should be assessed based on their contribution to collective results, and the delivery of the cooperation framework. We call on UN Women to more systematically request and integrate RC feedback into the performance assessments of country representatives. Third, tailor agency in-country presence to national contexts, comparative advantage, and the needs identified in the cooperation framework in consultation with RCs and host governments. This remains a key unfinished element of UNDS reform. We encourage UN Women to draw the system-wide evaluation on progress towards a new generation on UNCTs and meaningfully contribute to the UN Country Team reconfiguration. Fourth, advance shared services. We are encouraged by the system-wide efficiency gains of over $980 million USD in 2025 and count on UN Women to build on this progress to make shared services, common back offices, and co-location the norm. The number of common back offices at country level remains limited, and question here would be What, in your view, are the main obstacles to establishing common back offices, and do you have suggestions as how these obstacles could be overcome? Finally, we acknowledge that as member states we also have an important role. Funding practices must incentivize collaboration rather than fragmentation. The current imbalance between core and earmarked resources and the proliferation of short-term project-based funding undermines strategic planning and joint work. Beyond— and here comes a question— beyond funding, what is the one key change Member States can enact that would enable you to reduce competition and better align with cooperation frameworks? Mr. President, by fully embracing system-wide reforms, UN Women can enhance its impact and help the UN deliver as one where it matters most, most at country level. Thank you.

I thank the distinguished delegate of Finland for for your intervention. I now give the floor to the Dominican Republic, followed by Spain and Rwanda.

Dominican Republic.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished executive directors, distinguished delegates. I state this on behalf of Antigua and Barbuda, Mexico, Peru, and my own country, the Dominican Republic. As we come closer to 2030, with only a fraction of the SDGs underway. The— our agenda is clear. The quadriennial policy framework marks progress and must orient the strategic— our strategic actions. We recognize UN Women as an ally in improving gender equality and the empowerment of women, and we believe that an effective UN development system leads to results for women and girls. We encourage UN Women to increase its participation in joint programs and joint funds to maximize impact. Efficiency is a need for millions of women and girls throughout the world. Any gain in efficiency should create greater spaces for the work, and the work of UN Women ensures policies and casts attention to barriers increases opportunities. We underscore that gains in efficiency should be measured not only in financial terms, but also for their contribution to improving gender equality, including through sustained investment in organizations on the rights of women. Strengthening the presence and cooperation at the international level continue to be at the center of the system's reform. We encourage greater cooperation in all country teams of the United Nations, and we ask UN Women offices to work with other agencies of the UN, joint programming partnerships to combat violence against women, and back offices, joint back offices are results of a more— and indicate a more coherent approach. We recognize the contributions of WIAN Women to the system of resident coordinators, and we call upon safeguards to ensure that those operational activities are not hindered by coordination structures. Reforms must improve accountability without reducing the capacities of each mandate. Modernizing data and digital systems is another critical part of the repositioning effort. We encourage the participation of UN Women, which— encouraging that data are better prepared for AI. Presence in countries must be promoted by context and need, including the level of income and geography and not uniform places. This is important for the less developed countries, landlocked countries, small island developing states, and situations— countries in conflict or post-conflict situations. Middle-income countries, for them, the reform should not penalize these countries only based on the level of income. It should consider the vulnerability inequality and the specific needs of women and girls. Presence in the country continues to be essential when mandates cannot technically comply. And in this regard, we underscore that as reforms are implemented, the measures of efficiency and adjustments to country contributions in the last resort must strengthen field contributions. We must strengthen capacities and of UN Women, especially where they are most needed in the countries which are most vulnerable and affected by crises. The strategic notes are important, but we must ensure pragmatic flexibility to safeguard implementation. We note that the cycles of strategic notes must be aligned with national cycles and allow for adjustment in context of crises without needing total reprogramming. Operational reform also requires flexible programming. Basic and joint resources must be used flexibly and for financial impact. Looking at the future, we wish to understand how are we measuring the gains and efficiencies throughout the system and how do they contribute to program delivery at the national level. We would also be grateful for prospects of the governance structures, including strategic notes. And lastly, we would also like to know how member states and the executive board will remain totally involved in decision-making.

Thank you.

I thank the distinguished delegate of the Dominican Republic and I'll give the floor to Spain.

Thank you very much to all those present. Spain is grateful for the presentation of this update on the implementation of the reform of the United Nations Development System. We fully support the ambition of building a more effective, coherent, efficient, and result-oriented system. The UN80 initiative should consolidate and deepen the advances made since the 2018 reform. And not to weaken anything. In particular, we believe that the system of resident coordinators and mechanisms of joint financing are some of the main achievements of this reform and should continue to be pillars of the system. We wish to underscore the importance of strengthening leadership, the capacities, and sustainable financing of the RC system. Their role is essential to guarantee the coherence of action of the UN in the field and to assure that supporting the system in fact responds to national priorities. It is also important to continue to promote the active participation of UN Women in interagency initiatives at the country level, including those supported by the Joint SDG Fund, as an instrument to strengthen the action of the system. Spain also supports efforts toward having a new generation of country teams which are more agile. The configuration of country teams should respond to national priorities as defined in the cooperation frameworks and make strategic use of the comparative advantages of each entity. We view with interest thinking about mechanisms which allow for combining the physical presence of— with more— with other modalities specialized, including a better use of regional capacities. However, any process of repositioning should be based on the needs of countries to preserve or support and to strengthen the leadership of the RC. We also think it important to continue with joint programs and mechanisms. We seek information. We must guarantee repositioning to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women. In conclusion, Spain considers that the next phase of reform should be built on the basis of achievements already made, strengthening coherence of efficacy and the capacity of the system at the service of the priorities of countries and full implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Thank you.

Thank you, the distinguished representative of Spain, for his intervention. I now give the floor to Rwanda. There will be no automatic microphone cutoffs, so take your time for the benefit of the interpreters. Rwanda, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. We give you another term in office. Thank you, Mr. President, and thanks for UN Women to really give us a comprehensive briefing for its continued leadership in ensuring that gender equality, remains central to the implementation of the development system reform. We welcome also the progress reported, particularly the increase in cooperation frameworks that mainstream gender equality or include a dedicated gender equality outcome from 44% in 2024 to 61% in 2025. We commend UN Women's efforts to strengthen system-wide coordination, including support to 125 UN country teams, 75 UN entities through accountability frameworks, and the training of over 45,000 UN personnel through the I Know Gender program. This is very impressive. Mr. President, colleagues, we note with appreciation the reported efficiency gains of US$15 million— nearly 4 times higher than the previous reporting period, as well as the increase in a common premise from 69% to 76%. This is very impressive if compared to previous reports again. Now, while progress is encouraging, the report indicates that— the very report indicates that 39% of the cooperation frameworks still do not mainstream gender equality nor include a dedicated gender equality outcome. Now, what additional measures are envisaged by the UN Women team to address this gap and to ensure that full implementation of the QCPR commitments across all the UN country team? And this is very important for, for countries that have UN country teams.. The report further highlights an even implementation of the management and accountability framework across the UN system. What are the principal obstacles, in your view, to achieve greater consistency, and what support may be required from the governing bodies and, as other colleagues mentioned, from us, the members of the Executive Board, to be able to achieve that gap. We further note that only 46% of the UN country teams met or exceeded the benchmark of allocating 70% of the joint work plans resources together to gender equality and women's empowerment. And therefore, the question is, what lessons can be drawn from the high-performing countries, and how can these practices be replicated broadly and in other countries. Mr. President, the report further notes that targeted investments to close the gender digital divide could benefit 343 million women and girls and generate $1.5 trillion in the GDP by 2030. How is UN Women working with development partners and governments to translate these projections into concrete investments, particularly in developing countries such as mine, landlocked countries such as mine, and least developing countries such as mine? Finally, Rwanda remains supportive of the development system that is coherent, efficient, accountable, and capable of delivering measurable results. For women and girls, which is the objective and mandate of the UN Women. Again, we thank the UN Women for the presentation and forward-looking to the responses from the management.

Thank you very much.

I thank the distinguished representative of Rwanda for his comments. We can now give the floor to the Secretary Secretary-General, you have the floor.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. President, and our appreciation to the very range of comments, advice, questions to us. I will take a couple of comments and respond, and my colleague Didi Kesimadi would speak in response to some of the issues raised. And my colleague Alice is online, who also speak to the work and approach at the country level within the UNCT, and our Director for PPID, Sarah Hendricks, who also speak to the issues around data and some of the issues from the program coming point of view. Let me first respond to the questions raised by the board on context within which we are responding as part of the system coordination, context of least developed countries, SIDS, middle-income countries. This is a very critical question as we develop our strategy, not as we contribute within the UN system to the commitments that you made. We are reminded often that GDP does not translate to equality. GDP is an indicator of growth, but does not translate to economic opportunities immediately for all women and for all girls. In our work in Latin America, for instance, where we have a number of countries which are middle-income states, the challenges that they raised around some of the restrictions on ODA and therefore what are the approaches we need to take from a resourcing of development point of view and the partnerships that we we have to do. My colleague Kesi Madi will speak more to the issues around resourcing, but I also want to really appreciate some of the countries, middle-income countries, which are also funding to UN Women development work in the country in addition to the wider fundraising that we do. So I think this is one point that is very important for us. It's a question that also raised when countries are moving from being an LDC and migrating to being a middle-income country, what are the implications for resourcing the development work that we are doing? And we will continue to then engage with the Resident Coordinator System and the development system overall on these points for gender equality. The second big point that you raised is around ownership.— and internal coherence to reassure the board that as UN Women, we remain very much in the country-led and country ownership. It's important, it's cardinal. And at the same time, we develop our strategy notes with a good sequencing that even if you approved the corporate UN Women strategic plan, last year, we did not automatically ask all our country offices to also amend their strategy notes. We needed to make the appropriate sequencing to make sure that the country strategy notes are aligned with the duration and the timelines of the cooperation framework. So we actually have a number of countries where we are actually developing the country strategy— from starting from next year in order to ensure there is that alignment that you have really stressed in this conversation. The points that you raised on what is the— what are some of the lessons that we can draw on and the critical levers between now and 2030. We are so inspired also by the big progress being made by member states, and my colleague Sarah may speak to some of the programmatic issues. So, for instance, the question on women's leadership, Rwanda is an example. It's no longer— it's a new norm that Rwanda created that women can be more women in parliament a 50/50 can be achieved. And so we need those new norms to be scaled up, especially on the indicators which are the core indicators of the SDGs. The core indicators of the SDGs in relation to gender equality, women in decision-making is one critical lever that we need to continue to invest in. The second critical lever in that SDG 5 is violence against women.. And this is also where we have good practice working within the system, including the Spotlight Initiative, including the Violence Against Women Trust Fund, the intersection with the Trust Fund on Women, Peace and Humanitarian. And we can scale up, we can build on the good lessons around collaboration, collaborative work on violence against women and on gender-based violence. We can build on the work that we have around care and also around data. My colleague Sarah can speak more to that on the detail. The other question that you raised, esteemed Executive Board members, is what are the opportunities for joint program and pooled funding? And we have many examples at the global level. Level and at the country level of where we have joint programs, I think the first, which is very important for us, is to continue to ask that the board supports the gender equality marker in all United Nations funds. And one key important step is, as we go through the work package 5 and 6 of the UN reform, focusing on country reset and regional reset, and the pilot countries We must— we are, and we are contributing to those pilot countries actually being models on how we integrate gender equality, but in building a gender marker so that UN Women does not have to look for extra resources for gender equality in a UN pilot process for which resources are made available. So the gender marker and the piloting is going to be very important. We are also very much encouraged by some of the good examples on joint programs that we have. We have a multi-year joint program that has been running with the Rome-based agencies, with IFAD, FAO, WFP, at the global level on rural women and women's economic empowerment. And equally, we see that replication in countries like Nepal. So what we continue to ask is to to continue to build on these big joint programs that are also able to translate global norms into country-level responses. I would like to stop here, and, Mr. President, to therefore request my colleague Didi Kessimadi on the financial issues and other points the ones that have been raised by the members. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. President. Thank you, Diana Razzai, and thank you again to the delegates for very, really insightful questions that really go to the heart of our efforts and our work. Just on the resourcing question, I would actually just reiterate what our colleague Alice from Nairobi was saying, the criticality of core resources to support our coordination function really has a multiplier effect, and ensuring that the gender marker is met, ensuring that our ability to influence the country teams as a member of the UN country team to ensure that gender equality is mainstreamed across the cooperation framework and that we can have specific outcomes. You heard in the opening statement of the Executive Director on Tuesday, telling the story— not just the story, but giving the facts of how actually we have actually seen a decline in the number of specific gender equality outcomes in the cooperation frameworks last year. So we really need to take all collective efforts, and we also count on your support so that you as member states in the other governing bodies and in your discussions with the other agencies, you also bring the issue up, because Because gender equality is absolutely the multiplier and the catalytic SDG, the element that can help us to achieve the other development outcomes that we want to achieve. There was a question also on the— about the recruitment of the— our country representatives. I'm very happy to report to you that in the case of UN Women country representatives, heads of offices, meet very frequently. I cannot give you now the exact number, but in the majority of cases, the resident coordinator actually is part of the selection panel. We have felt that that has been a very good practice, and we have really benefited from the perspective of the resident coordinators. It may not be the case absolutely in every single case, but in very frequently, and I think it is a good practice that from which we have definitely benefited. Now, in terms of the questions related to the common services, global common services, common back offices, just to say first of all that within the framework of the High Level Committee on Management, we've been very actively contributing to the different work streams over there, which link to the Unified Services Roadmap, as well as within the UNSDG Business Innovation Group, which specifically is looking into the common back offices and common services.— and we are seeing not necessarily always a financial benefit for UN Women at this stage because so many of our services already are outsourced. You know that UNDP is a service provider for us for many of the so-called back office functions, but we are very actively sharing our expertise and experience because we see the whole system, the UN system as a whole, will benefit from that. That. For the common back offices, UN Women has— is part of all the common back offices which have been established and actually very actively supporting the establishment of new ones, the latest one having been in Pakistan. So, from our side, you can rest assured that there are very few obstacles for advancing— advancing the work on the common back offices. Common premises, you saw already, we have 76% of our offices in there, so we are very much committed and see the advantage of the UN system coming together. There can be always a little bit growing pains, as is with everything, everything new that you bring about, but I can also, just from my participation in the High-Level Committee on Management and in the Business Innovation Group, I can really attest to the commitment not only from UN Women, but actually the commitment from the system to really move forward on this front. Thank you so much.

I thank DED Kisi for the response. May I now give the floor to Alice Shekelford, followed by Sarah Hendricks.

Thank you very much. Excellent questions as usual, and very interesting debate. We will need many hours to touch on all the issues, but let me try to capture some important elements. We are very clear, the cooperation framework must be the guiding framework at the country level if we want a unified, coherent, and effective and efficient United Nations system. That is why UN Women invests so much resources, human, financial, in really advocating and working in the country teams on ensuring that those cooperation frameworks are gender mainstreamed at least and have a gender equality outcome. But what do we face? We face entities who refuse that, who counter that. We have a backlash also within the UN system, and we need to be very sure. So your role in executive boards of all the entities is to reinforce once again and strongly not only the role to mainstream gender in the programs and in the mission and mandate, but to support the rest of the UN system and UN Women in advocating throughout the cooperation frameworks. The alignment of the work between the executive board is critical, more critical than ever. Coherence and alignment is very, very critical. The funding dynamics at country level, and let me say as a former resident coordinator, do not always reflect the commitments of member states in these kind of spaces. I, I have not seen often that really happening, and often that is the divide and the division is also created by, uh, member states at the country level, and in particular development partners. So that's also something that we need to look at to ensure that that coherence represented across from the capitals down to the countries where we work in. Now we have a commitment of one, and we have already implemented a 100% alignment of our, of our strategic notes with the cooperation framework. Is that happening with all UN entities? Not necessarily. There again, another role that we need to keep insisting on working together. The accountability of the resident coordinators— this is an opportunity and a challenge. And as I said in my presentation, we recognize, I'm very highlight the importance of a relationship and the partnership with the Development Coordination Office, and we've worked with them to increase that accountability. As you've heard also, the number of cooperation frameworks mainstreamed, of a number also of the UNCT swaps by entities. But still, that is not complete. We need to insist that the performance review of resident coordinators fully reflect that, and that the work of the resident coordinators really fully reflects also the commitment of gender equality, especially keeping in mind the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan and the clarion call of the Secretary-General that needs to translate not only with resident coordinators but humanitarian coordinators and naturally political missions in that regard. Now, UN Women works actively with, for example, the Joint SDG Fund, uh, in terms of the application of the gender equality marker. It works also with the Peacebuilding Fund, which has a 30% target for gender equality and women's empowerment, and has been really— even surpassed to 40%. This is an excellent example that this is connected to funding and availability of funding. We, UN Women, would like to have much more joint programs than Nadia does now, but naturally we know that there are limited availability of joint funding and joint pooled funds at country level. And there again, we go back to the funding compact and the role of the member states. All the discussion on the country configuration that is going on now in the UNAID, and I was just representing the DD in a meeting just an hour ago, again, we are making the case that the pilots and the cohorts of pilots in the country configuration need to ensure the, the role of the gender-themed groups, the mainstreaming and the strong positioning of gender equality. And we need your support to advocate and to ensure that is a reality, as also in the regional reset where we are hearing about the new RPIs, and we are seeing the design of that. But how do we ensure that gender equality is at the center? And all the efforts that we've done in issue-based coalitions on gender equality across the regions through our regional office and the regional coordination specialists need to be strengthened and increased by institutionalizing, for example, a specific issue-based coalition on gender equality, gender-based violence in that regard. And regional directors need to be accountable as well to support to support that. The last thing that I would want to say, that again, UN entities are strengthening, and we are seeing it, strengthening the gender policy, the gender strategies. The UN entities do not look at gender equality across the UN system. UN Women does. UN Women looks at gender equality across the UN system, and UN Women needs to be taken in consideration also when you develop programmes and initiatives with the rest of the UN system to ensure that UN Women is part of that conversation, to support the entity in strengthening gender, not necessarily in implementing the work. Our role is not to take over the role of the rest of the UN system, but it's to support them to further integrate. So ensure that that element is included in the programmes and in the initiatives with, with the rest of the UN system, and that there is a role for us to really provide that guidance., and that the gender-themed groups are positioned in a strategic manner in that regard. And to the specific question of Finland, the representation of many other countries on what are the key changes that member states can enable in alignment of cooperation framework, I would want to say two quick things. One, support the UN system gender equality architecture. We need to recognize that there is an old architecture on gender equality across the UN system. UN Women is leading and that we recognize all the potential around those elements and we help them interact and connect better together with strong accountability and incentives. And I said, and as I said before, do not work, do not allow that work is done in the UN system without that element of gender equality captured by gender markers, captured by, by, you know, the UNCT Swaps or the UN Swaps. Others and really ensure that that space for UN Women is really enhanced. Sometimes UN Women still has to keep fighting for a space at the table, fighting for really ensuring that the gender equality is at the table. And we can't afford— in no country, in no context— we can't afford a gender-blind cooperation framework or a gender-blind humanitarian response plan or a gender-blind refugee plan in that regard. Um, the last thing that I comment is about how do we operate and how do we support and look at different modalities around physical presence. So UN Women has a strong strategy of work in non-physical presence countries, and we are finalizing a strategy in that regard. We have the regional coordination specialists which are working directly with country teams, and we partner with others as well in this regard. Um, but let's be careful that by diluting also the presence of gender and UN Women, we dilute all the work that we've done up to now on gender equality. Over to you. Thank you.

You have the floor. Sorry, Sarah Hendricks, you have the floor.

Thank you so much, dear President, and indeed thank you all colleagues and honorable delegates around the room for this substantive conversation, and in particular for the question around the targeted investments in the way that UN Women is working to address the gender digital divide, together with partners and with governments around the world. Indeed, as we know, digital technologies and AI are increasingly the cornerstones of economies and of societies, and yet their benefits, their opportunities, are not being shared equally. And so consequently, UN Women, in our new strategic plan, has positioned positioned digital technology as a critical mainstreaming item, cutting through the impact areas and our systemic outcomes of our strategic plan. And allow me to bring this to life for you in terms of our triple mandate. So, first, in the normative space, here UN Women provides global leadership on digital inclusion and on gender equality and its intersection across critical normative spaces. For example, we mobilized stakeholders and integrated gender equality into the center of the Global Digital Compact in order to shape international dialogues on digital rights and really to ensure that the digital revolution is among the priorities of government— of governments and partners as AI governance moves forward. Forward. In this regard, we are also forthcoming, actively engaged in the forthcoming preparations for the first UN General Assembly-mandated Global AI Dialogue, which, as you know, will take place in the first week of July during the High-Level Geneva Technology Week. And we're grateful, of course, to this dialogue being co-facilitated by El Salvador and Estonia. Estonia. Beyond this work in the normative space, UN Women also works steadfastly to coordinate across the UN system by playing an advisory role to the UN system to position gender equality and women's empowerment in global, regional, and national digital governance dialogues, and to lead the system to mainstream gender in digital policies and initiatives that different parts of the system are engaging. In this regard, we work steadfastly with ITU, for example, in a partnership called EQUALS, and building, of course, in our shared leadership of the Action Coalition on Gender Equality, Digital Technology, and Innovation. Furthermore, we work across the system to ensure system-wide coherence in the implementation of UN 2.0, 2.0, and we support UN 2.0's digital pillar and the forthcoming UN80 commitments around that. We have contributed in this regard to the Unified Roadmap to operationalize a gender and digital commitments to ensure that norms are really translating into action in and across the entire UN 2.0 2.0 architecture on digital transformation. And finally, in terms of our operational mandate and how this translates across our strategic plan. Indeed, we see and provide quality assurance on integrating digital as that cross-cutting issue in our new strategic plan. A great example of this is the way in which the implementation of one of our flagship initiatives across Africa, has elaborated important priorities as well as results through the African Girls Can Code initiative. This is one example of our work coming to life in our new strategic plan and building on strong results of our last strategic plan. We also advance critical research and knowledge initiatives through and across our impact areas, for example, on digital public infrastructure from a gender lens and its relationship with ending violence against women and girls. We moreover, um, and building on the strong advancement of results across CSW67 agreed conclusions, have very explicit work through a new corporate strategy on technology-facilitated gender-based Violence. This strategy builds on the CSW agreed conclusions to not only strengthen norms and standards through comprehensive legal frameworks addressing online abuse, but also to invest in accountability, to collectively expand data and evidence on what works to prevent online violence, and to finally amplify women's voice and agency, as well as digital resilience and leadership across countries and regions in the space of digital violence. It is these combined areas in our normative work, our coordination work across the system, and certainly in our operational work that drives forward a growing portfolio of engagement by UN Women across our countries, regions, and global offices to ensure that the digital divide is closed once and for all. Thank you so much.

I thank the Secretariat for that comprehensive response. I see no further requests for the floor. We can now move to our next presentation under the agenda item.— namely, an update on UN Women policies and procedures to tackle sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment. On the podium, in addition to the Deputy Executive Directors and the Secretary of the Board, I will invite the following colleagues: Prasann Chakrabarty, Abate, Director of Human Resources.

Thank you.

Sarah Hendricks is already with us here, Director of Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division. And Mitushi Das, Senior Adviser for Coordination and Focal Point for Women in the UN system. I am pleased to invite the Deputy Executive Director, Ms. Kisi Ndi, for her presentation. You have the floor.

Thank you so much, Mr. President, and distinguished members of the Executive Board. It's a pleasure for me to update you today on UN Women's most recent and ongoing actions to prevent and to respond to sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment. This lie at the heart of our triple mandate and reflect our commitment to advancing the empowerment of women and girls in the communities we serve. Strengthening organizational culture remains central to our PSH efforts. Including through leadership accountability, fostering trust in reporting mechanisms, and ensuring protection from retaliation. UN Women recognizes that effective safeguarding depends on meaningful engagement with and accountability to the communities we serve. Accordingly, we work closely with women-led and civil society organizations to ensure that safeguarding measures are informed by community voices and are responsive to local realities. At the core of our action is victim-survivor-centered approach, which respects the rights, wishes, needs, and dignity of victims and survivors, seeking to protect them from retaliation and re-traumatization and ensures provision of timely assistance and support. To operationalize these efforts at the regional and country level, we have established a strong network of 127 PSEH focal points across our global presence. Our approach is complemented by a strong focus on prevention and response, including awareness-raising, tracing, risk mitigation, including with implementing partners, and robust vetting and accountability measures. In 2025, we continue to expand entity-level outreach on SCA and SH. As a result, over 90% of UN Women personnel indicated in the annual PSA perception survey their awareness on how and where to report SEA and SH. In parallel, we have strengthened engagement with community members and leaders, as well as women-led associations, including through research and knowledge sharing. Also, our risk-owning units have maintained 98% rate of integrating SEA and stage into the risk assessments as part of our enterprise risk management framework. Concurrently, we assessed 82% of civil society organizations with whom we partner and government implementing partners on their BSCA capacities. This represents an increase of 15% from 2024. We have also successfully implement implemented ClearCheck 2.0, which expanded misconduct screening beyond SEA and SH to include also racism, racial discrimination, and other forms of serious misconduct, and extended the coverage to all personnel as well as our standby personnel. Pursuant to the Executive Board decision 2024/8, 2025/10. And to complement the ClearCheck, a pilot of the misconduct disclosure scheme was launched across 4 humanitarian settings earlier this year. This will help to prevent the hiring of individuals with a history of sexual misconduct beyond the UN system. In terms of accountability, we ensure that allegations are addressed through the established investigative processes and that timely action is taken in substantiated cases. UN Women has also continued to leverage its technical expertise through various interagency working groups on SEA, including including the SEA Working Groups led by the Office of the Special Coordinator on Improving the UN System Response to SEA, the Interagency Standing Committee Technical Advisory Group on SEA, and the PSEA Implementing Partner Protocol Working Group. Turning now to our engagement on preventing and responding to sexual harassment, UN Women actively contributed to the High-Level Committee on Management Executive Group on Sexual Harassment, and we led last year the work stream on knowledge sharing and collaboration and actively contributed to the work streams on victim and survivor support, policies, and capacity building. In this leadership role of the knowledge sharing and collaboration, we strengthened the UN system knowledge HUB on addressing sexual harassment by enhancing accessibility for persons with disabilities and translating it into all 6 official UN languages, leading to considerable increase in engagement. We also completed a comprehensive review of the UN system tools to prevent and address sexual harassment, drawing on best practice best practices and lessons learned within and outside of the UN. In parallel, UN Women continue to support multi-sectoral partners to help end sexual harassment in various settings through global initiatives such as Safe Cities. And in response to the growing global challenge of online violence, like my colleague Sarah just mentioned, in 2025, 2005, we developed the UN Women Strategy on Ending Technology-Facilitated Violence Against Women. In this context, and building on this work, I'm pleased to inform you that UN Women is, as of this year, co-leading with UNFPA a new work stream on technology-facilitated sexual harassment as part of the HLCM Executive Group on sexual harassment. In closing, dear delegates, UN Women reaffirms its strong commitment to addressing sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment in all of its forms. Across the UN system, we have made important progress while continuing to navigate shared challenges, including financial challenges. Together we will build on the efforts and advance the implementation of the recommendation of the Joint Inspection Unit. I would like to thank the Executive Board for its continued support in advancing this critical agenda. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your comprehensive presentation, Madame Deputy Executive Director. I now open the floor for members to intervene. Questions with respect to the aforementioned agenda item? You may indicate so by pressing the microphone on your desk.

Thank you.

I see no comments. That means the response has been quite—

United Kingdom.

Okay, right. United Kingdom, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. I deliver this statement on behalf of Albania, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, the EU as a donor, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, Zambia, and my own country, the United Kingdom. We thank UN Women for its continued efforts to strengthen protection from and response to sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment, SAIA. As we made clear in the board discussions last year, protection from SAIA is a non-optional core accountability commitment, even amid resourcing constraints. Leadership is critical to sustain progress. We are, we are at a critical juncture. Financial pressures and staff reductions are weakening protection systems, limiting prevention efforts and access to survivor support and risking hard-won gains, hard-won progress, when needs remain high. The erosion of gender-based violence services, including the weakening of community-based and women-led organizations, is particularly concerning, as these constitute essential entry points for reporting. Underreporting remains a systemic challenge driven by fear, lack of trust, and perceived inaction. These challenges are acute for women and children, who are among the most vulnerable vulnerable and depend on specialized approaches. We welcome greater clarity on how UN Women is ensuring its prevention, response, and victim-survivor support approaches are child-sensitive and survivor-centered. The important 2025 JI-U review on SAIA underlined the need for dedicated expertise, clear accountability, and sustained resourcing. We urge UN Women to protect the good practices that the review identified, fully implement the recommendations, and prioritize sufficient human and financial resources for Sayer prevention and response, particularly at country level, recognizing the importance of building country-level capacity and strengthening national safeguarding systems? How will the— how will UN Women report to the board on implementing the JIU report and special coordinator recommendations? Can it provide a table outlining recommendations and actions taken. The JI-U review highlights that tackling SEA requires a system-wide effort. With shrinking resources, collaboration should increase, not diminish. We encourage UN Women to improve efficiency and impact through mechanisms such as the Common Approach to Protection from SEA and the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. UN80 and the Humanitarian Reset offer a unique opportunity to embed a strengthened, well- a well-resourced, sustainable, system-wide approach to protection from SAIA. We urge agencies to work with member states and each other to influence these reform processes to ensure this happens. Mr. President, please allow us to highlight a few elements based on UN Women's background note and informal briefing. We recognize the efforts undertaken by UN Women to maintain and improve protection from SAIA systems in these challenging challenging times, including its continued dedication to strengthening interagency collaboration on protection from SAIA. While the appointment of protection from SAIA focal points is a positive development, dedicated expertise remains limited, particularly at field level. We encourage UN Women to protect and adequately resource dedicated protection, protection from SAIA capacity despite ongoing funding constraints. Safe, accessible, and survivor-centered reporting and assistance mechanisms must be served, especially as financial pressures may heighten vulnerabilities and place additional strain on referral pathways? How is UN Women addressing reporting barriers and ensuring continued protection and, and support services for survivors? We note that in 2025, the proportion of partners assessed on protection from SAIA capacity under program partner agreements increased from 67% to 82%. 2%, which is a significant improvement. What measures is UN Women taking to ensure that all implementing partners are assessed on protection from SEA and risk management capacity, and what actions follow if capacity is insufficient? We also welcome the launch of the, the misconduct disclosure scheme across 4 settings. What lessons are emerging, and when does UN Women expect to decide on full implementation of the scheme? We look forward to continued dialogue in support of UN Women's work on protection from SAIA. Thank you.

I thank the distinguished delegates of the United Kingdom. May I now invite the Secretary-General for the response. Secretary-General of the UN.

Thank you, thank you so much, Mr. President. I will follow— provide some reflections to this excellent statement from group statement presented by the delegate from United Kingdom. And then I will also ask my colleagues, Sarah Hendricks from Programme and Perspective, Prasun Chakraporti perhaps to complement, as well as Mithushi Das, who is the UN system focal point for women in UN Women and is very ably coordinating all of our efforts in the Executive Group on preventing and addressing sexual harassment.

Investment.

So just to say, to start on the funding issue, yes, there are funding constraints, but this is why it's ever more important, and I would just reiterate your points, what you said, the collaboration, looking at which are the most effective actions, making sure that we are taking those and working closely across the system is critical. And you have 100%, I would say 150% commitment from UN Women to do to do that. So we are really going to be ensuring, and we are ensuring, that the capacities and sustained financing to address PSEA remain an organizational priority in line with the strategic plan. So this includes supporting our network of the focal points, who in fact are playing a vital role engaging with the communities and providing the victim-survivor-centered approach and coordinating efforts with our interagency partners at the country level. And Sarah can perhaps elaborate more on that, but I think it's important to know that most of our focal points, in fact, are also experts on eliminating violence against women and girls, so that's an also important programmatic perspective and places our focal points to play a very important— important control. Leadership, absolutely, you can rest assured that UN Women leadership is absolutely behind this critical agenda and will do everything possible in its power to make sure that we are advancing, as actually is demonstrated, I would say, also through our active contribution to the various interagency processes. Now, critically important, of course, to recognize that prevention, response, and the victim-survivor support, they need to be appropriately tailored to the needs and rights of children and young people. And we are in the process of finalizing our Safeguarding of Children and Young People policy in this— from this perspective. And the policy is really reinforcing our duty of care to prevent and reduce risk of harm to children and young people engaging with the personnel operations and activities while setting out the safeguarding principles. We very much recognize the common approach to PSEA and SH as a very valuable resource, and we deeply appreciate the promotion of coherent and coordinated action to prevent and respond to— see, across humanitarian, development, and peace settings. And this is why we are also taking an active role in the UN system-wide harmonization efforts to update the Secretary-General's Strategy on Protection from SEA and the Special Measures on SEA Policy. In terms of the— what are the next steps in the piloting and then expanding the misconduct disclosure scheme? So, so far we have, as I mentioned, introduced it in 4 settings: Afghanistan, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the humanitarian section that is based in Geneva. We just started these pilots this year and we are planning to expand the pilot to additional country offices based on the lessons learned and capacity requirements. So I cannot yet, as we only started earlier this year, I cannot yet tell you the lessons learned, but we will certainly certainly come back to you at the very latest in the annual session next year on— under this agenda item. I also would just like to again underline that we are gonna be— we are already, in fact, reinforcing the efforts that we have taken as an organization through an annual certification exercise, through which the Executive Director requires all Country Representatives and Regional Directors to to point the focal points and to support the PSEH responsibilities. And we, from our side, from headquarters, we continue to ensure that the focal point capacities and sustainable financing remains an organisational priority. Mr President, if you allow, I'll stop here and perhaps we can ask our other colleagues to complement, if appropriate.

Time allowed.

Thank you so much, Mr. President, and indeed, thank you to the honourable delegate from the United Kingdom and on behalf of the group of countries for your important points, as well as the framing of questions that you've made around how UN Women supports and addresses underlying reporting barriers, ensuring support services for for victims and survivors of violence. And allow me to emphasize here that indeed, this is the core of UN Women's work right across our impact area on ending violence against women. We have and continue to implement a comprehensive approach on prevention, but also addressing the needs and the rights of victims and survivors of violence through a number of critical mechanisms. Number one is we undertake operational activities translating normative gains and policy gains into practical, on-the-ground delivery, particularly through survivor-centered services through what is called the Essential Services Package. As you may know, the Essential Services Package provides a comprehensive package of supports to survivors of violence right across the countries that UN Women works with and through, and in support of government priorities, and also in partnership with the UN system. We also engage to ensure that this work to support survivors and create the conditions for greater pathways of reporting is strengthened through prevention prevention, um, and we do this via the RESPECT framework. This is an evidence-based strategy that strengthens women with relationship skills, with empowerment, with services, um, with also more broader environmental safety, as well as, um, transformation of social norms and attitude change within their communities and their homes. And in addition, we strengthen women's pathways to engage in reporting on violence against women through Greater Sexual Harassment Reduction in our Safe Cities and Safe Global Spaces global initiative. As you can see, we see the contextual realities of where women experience violence to be an important measure here. UN Women is proud to have established a strong relationship with police and with judicial services through our Gender Responsive Policing Initiative, engaging policing leadership as well as broader protection and judicial services for women on the ground to strengthen comprehensive and integrated survivor packages of support through essential services, but also to strengthen the response mechanisms of police and of women's interface, noting that less than 1 in 10 women actually do report violence right now. We see these as holistic, multi-pillar interventions that really address the legal, the the survivor support, but coupled with data and investments into women's movements and women's rights organizations on the ground as the most effective way to strengthen reporting and much better than siloed projects or programs. We see this borne up in data and in our evaluation findings, noting the imperative of mobilizing —national and global partnerships. I think it is the emphasis on referral mechanisms that enable women's access to information and available services, to legal aid and accompanying of survivors, together with overall legal and policy frameworks to ensure that violence against women is criminalized and that standards exist, including operational procedures procedures for the justice and police sectors. Um, we see our role in capacity strengthening of those sectors to deal with survivors as being of prominent importance across this work. I hope that provides you with more awareness of the way in which UN Women works comprehensively to strengthen and support not only services for women and girls, but to ensure that these are rights-based, to ensure that these are holistic, and to ensure that these are following through the overall commitments on PSEAH. Thank you so much.

Président, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. Dede Mahdi had actually responded to most of the points raised during the statement, but I just wanted to add a couple A couple of specific points which were raised. One was regarding how we will report on the implementation of the GIU recommendations and the comprehensive assessment. That would— the reporting on the progress would be actually done through the SG's report on SEA, and of course UN Women will continue to report on that through our annual session, as well as the Executive Director's undertaking to the Executive Board. So we will have reporting directly as well through our annual sessions, but it will also be included in the SG's report on SEA, coordinated with the Office of the Special Coordinator, of course. We heard my colleague Sarah Hendricks talk about the underreporting barriers, which was also specific to our partners, but when we talk about our internal staff and personnel, personal. That's also an element where we are working. And to build, continue, or maintain the trust in our reporting mechanisms, we have been strengthening— continue to strengthen awareness in terms of where to report, how to report. And I think, as we have noted in our background note, more than 90% of our personnel have reported through the 2025, uh, UN, uh, PSA SEA perception survey that they are fully aware of how and where to report on SEA and SH. We have, as you've heard also during the course of the sessions, independent functions which provide guidance to colleagues and support personnel through the investigation function, the ethics function, as well as the Office of the Ombudsman. So these pathways are always available to colleagues and personnel, encouraging them to report, as well as we have robust protection against retaliation policies and mechanisms to ensure that any such report, while it's being reviewed, investigated, we are also ensuring that there is robust mechanisms to ensure any whistleblower protection as well as protection against retaliation. So I just thought I'll add those three points and That's it for me.

Thanks. I thank the Secretariat for the response— the responses, rather. I see no further requests for interventions. Yeah, right. Sorry. You have the floor, Tushar.

Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to elaborate on the system-wide coordination and collaboration we are facilitating on addressing sexual harassment. The Executive Group to Prevent and Respond to Sexual Harassment, with 37 member entities, has become a key mechanism to sustain leadership commitment to prevent and respond to sexual harassment. It facilitates the pooling of resources, which has become even more relevant now in a time of fiscal constraints. It work— continues to— it learns from previous years' work streams to address areas that were hitherto not an emerging area, and it has the agility to adapt to changing contexts. As Deedee Mahdi mentioned, UN Women invested resources in the creation of the UN system-wide knowledge hub on addressing sexual harassment, a key deliverable of the work stream we led the past 2 years.— the hub is generating efficiencies, reducing duplication, and consolidating resources in one place. It serves now as the central repository for guidance and tools on preventing and responding to sexual harassment, and will now have tools and resources on addressing technology-facilitated sexual harassment. It is increasingly becoming the main entry point for UN entities entities seeking support in this area, with 20,000 clicks in a single month. This year, as Dede Mahdi also mentioned, UN Women and UNFPA are collaborating in co-leading the workstream on technology-facilitated sexual harassment. While this may be a new workstream in this Executive Group, it is not a new issue, as my colleague Sarah Hendricks elaborated. 26 entities and offices, including the World Bank, are collaborating with us on this work stream. UN Women and UNFPA will leverage their collective knowledge and experience through the work stream, identifying policies, practices, and approaches that can be adapted to the UN system, creating efficiencies, strengthening coherence and coordination in this emerging area. We also look forward to collaborating with private sector entities, including technology companies, again leveraging the experiences and partnerships of both UN Women and UNFPA. Thank you.

I thank Mitrusi for the additional response.

Are there any other comments on the agenda? I see none. We can now move on to Agenda Item 9. The Board will receive a presentation on the report of the UN Women Executive Board field visit to Bolivia that took place between 24th to 31st March 2026. I'm pleased to invite the representative of the Kyrgyzstan Republic to the United Nations to present the report on Executive Board's field visit to Bolivia, from his seat or her seat. Thank you. Please, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. On behalf of the delegation of the UN Women Executive Board, I have the honor to present the report of the field visit to the Plurinational State of Bolivia conducted from 24th to 31st March 2026. The full text of this report is available on the website of the Executive Board now. The purpose of the visit was to provide the Executive Board with a better understanding of the impact of UN Women's work at the country level, how the entity leverages its triple mandate, and how it contributes to the implementation of Bolivia's national priorities and broader United Nations efforts. The delegation met with senior government officials, members of the Parliament, indigenous authorities, civil society organizations, private sector representatives, and the United Nations Country Team. The delegation also visited projects focused on ending violence against women and advancing women's economic empowerment in rural communities. This visit was highly informative and a valuable tool for the Executive Board to perform its governance and oversight functions. One of the key observations from the visit was the breadth and depth of UN Women's engagement. The Bolivia Country Office has developed networks and span from high-level political collectors and international partners to grassroots organizations and civil society groups. This enables UN Women to play an important bridging role between the global normative frameworks and local implementation realities. The delegation observed that UN Women's presence is widely recognized and appreciated by beneficiaries and stakeholders. Its engagement is perceived as legitimate, accessible and responsive. Responsive, reinforcing trust and the relevance of its work across diverse contexts. The delegation also witnessed how UN Women's legal, operational, and coordination mandates reinforce one another in practice. The delegation saw strong evidence of UN Women's contribution to women's economic autonomy, women's leadership, and climate action. The field visit further highlighted that UN Women remains uniquely positioned and effective equipped to engage in policy dialogue and discussions concerning laws, policies, and standards related to gender equality. Mr. President, the delegation concludes that the field visit demonstrated UN Women's effective delivery of its triple mandate in Bolivia. Finally, the delegation expresses its sincere gratitude to the government and people of Bolivia for their warm hospitality. We also thank the UN Women Country Office Office, the Regional Office for Latin American and Caribbean, the Resident Coordinator, the United Nations Country Team, and the Executive Board Secretariat for their excellent preparation and support throughout the mission. I thank you.

I thank the representative of Kyrgyzstan Republic for that presentation. I now open the floor for member states' intervention with respect to the aforementioned agenda item. You may indicate so by pressing the microphone on your desk. I see no requests for intervention. The Executive Board will now consider agenda item 10, namely other matters. Does the board have anything to add? I see no requests for intervention. As no additional issues have been brought to our attention, we move to the adoption of decisions. For this item, or under this item, I would first like to invite the facilitator to read out the Draft Decision 2026/8, entitled Annual Report of the Under-Secretary-General/Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on the Implementation of the Strategic Plan 2022-2025, as negotiated MS Tsububu Chotonova, I give you the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President, for giving me the floor again. First and foremost, I'd like to thank all delegations for their constructive and efficient engagement to reach the consensus on this decision. Let me now read the text. Decision 2026/ 8. Annual report of the Under-Secretary-General, Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on the implementation of the Strategic Plan 2022-2025. The Executive Board takes note with appreciation of the report of the Under-Secretary-General, Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on progress made on the implementation of the Strategic Plan 2022-2025 and Commends UN Women on the strong performance on the Strategic Plan 2022-2025. Recalls Decision 2023/3 and recognizes UN Women's continued contribution and its focused engagement within the United Nations Development System to ensure that gender equality and women and girls' empowerment continue to be an integral part of the Sustainable Development Agenda. Decides to transmit the report to the Economic and Social Council. I thank you.

May I take it that the Executive Board wishes to adopt Decision 2026/8 on the annual report? I see no objections. So decided. Thank you very much, uh, for your, uh, skill in negotiations. As the facilitator. Next, I would like to invite the facilitator to read out draft decision 2026/9 entitled Report on the Evaluation Function of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women 2025 as Negotiated. Ms. Dile Karaga Diaglo, you have the floor.

I had the honor to facilitate the draft decision 2026/9 on the report on the evaluation function of the United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women, 2025. Allow me first to thank all the delegations for the constructive engagement through the negotiations and the Secretariat for their presence and support in the room. I'm glad to announce that we reached a consensus on this draft decision, and I will now read out the decision. 2026/9 Report on the Evaluation Function of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women 2025. The Executive Board takes note of the 2025 Report on the Evaluation Function of UN Women, the Corporate Evaluation Plan 2026-2029, and the Independent Evaluation Service 2026 Program of work and budget. Acknowledges that UN Women maintains an independent, credible, and valuable evaluation function that contributes to system-wide gender-responsive evaluation initiatives and national evaluation capacity development, taking into account national plans, needs, and priorities. Take notes of the corporate evaluation of UN Women's support to intergovernmental processes processes and notes with appreciation the strategically important contribution of UN Women to the efforts of member states to advance global normative frameworks on gender equality and women's empowerment and requests the implementation of its recommendation. Welcomes the progress and achievements of the evaluation function, including its continued adaptability and responsiveness to new and emerging global challenges. Recalls Decision 2025/6 and requests UN Women to increase investments towards allocation of at least 2% and up to 3% of its total program expenditure to the evaluation function according to the targets set in the Evaluation Policy 2020, and requests UN Women to continue to safeguard the independence of the independent evaluation service and ensuring evaluation expertise in the advisory Committee on Oversight , encourages the Independent Evaluation Service to continue investing in innovative practices, including the responsible use of artificial intelligence, and to share with the Executive Board information on measures taken to ensure the consistent application of related guidelines, as well as progress made in developing a mechanism to measure efficiency gains within the evaluation function as part of its annual report at its annual session 2027. Encourages UN Women to continue strengthening the capacity of the decentralized evaluation function, including through result-based management, and to provide targeted support to regional and country offices that are lagging behind in evaluation quality. Recalls previous Executive Board decision on the report of the evaluation function. Takes note with appreciation of the progress made on key performance indicators of the Evaluation Function over the Strategic Plan 2022-2025 period and requests UN Women to continue to report on and to maintain and improve performance across all key performance indicators of the Evaluation Function. Requests UN Women to integrate evaluation use and other key performance indicators of the Evaluation Function into Strategic Plan reporting as foreseen in the Evaluation Strategy 2026-2029 at the earliest opportunity and to report on progress at the Annual Session 2027. Expresses continuing support for strengthening the evaluation function in UN Women and the use of evaluation. I thank you.

May I take it that the Executive Board wishes to adopt Decision 2026/9 on evaluation? I see no No objections, so decided. Thank you very much, Delay, for your skillful facilitation. Next, I would like to invite the facilitator to read out draft decision 2026/10 entitled Report on Internal Audit and Investigation Activities for the Period from 1st January to 31st December 2025 as negotiated. Ambassador González, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you to all the constructive engagement from all the delegations which allowed for us to reach consensus on this decision. So 2026/10 report on internal audit investigation activities for the period from 1 January to 31 1 December 2025. The Executive Board: 1. Takes note of the report and related annexes on internal audit and investigation activities for the period from 1 January to 31 December 2025. Paragraph 2: Takes note of the Advisory Committee on Oversight's annual report. Paragraph 3: Takes note of the management response to these two reports. Paragraph 4 takes note of the progress made by UN Women in implementing audit recommendations and encourages UN Women to ensure the timely implementation of long outstanding recommendations. Paragraph 5 recalls Decisions 2024/5 and 2025/7 and encourages UN Women to ensure adequate, sustainable, and long-term funding of UN Women's internal audit and investigation functions. Paragraph 6 notes heightened risk to second and third lines— line of defense functions due to financial constraints and encourages UN Women to ensure that governance, risk management, and control functions are adequately resourced, particularly in light of ongoing reform efforts. Paragraph 7 expresses its continued support for strengthening the UN Women's internal audit and investigation functions in reiterates the importance of their full independence and direct access to the Executive Board. Thank you.

May I take it that the Executive Board wishes to adopt decision 2026/11 on audit? I see no objections. It is so decided. Thank you very much, Ambassador, for your experienced and skillful negotiation. Next, I would like to invite the facilitator to read out the decision 2026/12 entitled Annual Report on the Ethics Function as Negotiated, Mr. Paul Waldeman de Frazier.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I had indeed the privilege to facilitate the following decision decision, and I'm happy also to report that consensus was reached within the room.

2026/9 Annual Report on the Activities of the UN Women Ethics Function.

The, the Executive Board, paragraph 1, takes note of the report on the activities of the UN Women Ethics Function for the period 1 January through 31 December '25. Paragraph 2 takes note of the management response to this Report. Paragraph 3 recalls Decisions 2023/10, 2024/6, and 2025/8 and reiterates the importance of the sustainable and independent implementation of the Ethics Functions mandate. Paragraph 4 takes note of the review of alternative models to deliver the Ethics Functions as raised by the Advisory Committee on Oversight and requests UN Women to inform the Executive Board of relevant developments at the Annual Session 2027.

I thank you.

May I take it that the Executive Board wishes to adopt the Decision 2026/11 on ethics? I see no objections. It is so decided. Thank you very much, Paul. Next, I would like to invite the facilitator to read out draft Decision 2026/12 entitled Implementation of General Assembly Resolution 72/279 on the Repositioning of the United Nations Weapons System as Negotiated. Ms. Anila Ajivasi, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Mr. President, I would also like to start by thanking all the delegations for the constructive spirit during the negotiations, as well as the Secretariat for the valuable presence in the room. Without further ado, I will start with the readout of the decision I had the honor to facilitate. Decision 2026/12, Implementation of General Assembly Resolution 72/279 on the Repositioning of the United Nations Development System. The Executive Board welcomes the update provided by the UN Women on the implementation of General Assembly Resolution 79/279 and related mandates concerning the repositioning of the United Nations Development System in the context of the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review of Operational Activities for Development of the United Nations system. Takes notes of the progress made in implementing the United Nations Development System reform checklist, which is included as an annex to the update, and recalling its decision 2027— uh, 25/9, requests that remaining areas of uneven progress be addressed. Recalls its decision 2022/6, 2024/7, 2025/9 and requests UN Women to take further steps to ensure that strategic notes are derived from the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework, including informing the resident coordinators in a timely manner of a new prog— of new programs and financial agreements signed to implement the strategic notes in line with the management and accountability framework. Recalls Decision 2025/9 and requests UN Women to intensify its efforts to contribute to system-wide and interagency efficiencies, including through expanding the use of global shared services, common back offices, and common premises, prioritizing the most cost-effective and resource-efficient efficient efforts and to report within existing reporting on the challenges UN Women faces to implement these efforts, particularly at the country level. Request UN Women in the implementation of United Nations development system reforms to ensure that efficiency measures and country configuration processes strengthen country-level delivery and preserve mandate-specific technical capacities, particularly in least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, small island developing states, and countries in situations of conflict and post-conflict countries. Recall, Decision 2024/7 and 2025/9 reaffirms the strong commitment to the United Nations Development System reform, and in this regard welcomes UN Women's commitment to, to said reform and the resident coordinator system and encourages UN Women to fully leverage its comparative advantage and system-wide coordination mandate in implementing reform processes. Recall Decision 2025/9 takes notes of the work done by UN Women in its capacity as a Secretariat of the UN system-wide gender Gender Equality Acceleration Plan and requests UN Women to continue supporting the acceleration of gender equality, including at the level of resident coordinators and United Nations country team configurations in coordination with the United System. Welcomes the alignment of the UN Women Strategic Plan 2026-2029 with the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review and the inclusion of common and complementary indicators in the updated Integrated Results and Resources Framework. They request UN Women— and request the UN Women to continue to work with other United Nations entities to increase joint programming and strengthen coherence across the United Nations system. Encourages UN Women to use the findings of the system-wide evaluation on progress towards a new generation of United Nations country teams and requests the UN Women to provide the Executive Board at the annual session of 2027 further explanation of the rationale for partial acceptance of sub-recommendation 1.2 and what steps UN Women has taken to enhance sharing of work planning and resource mobilization information with UNCTs and what system-wide conditions UN Women consider necessary to enable such broadening sharing. I thank you.

May I take it that the Executive Board wishes to adopt Decision 2026/12 on the implementation of General Assembly Resolution 72/279 9 on the requisitioning of the United Nations Development System. I see no objections. It's so decided. Thank you very much, Anila, for facilitating this decision. Next, I would like to invite the facilitator to read out draft decision 2026/13. Entitled Update on UN Women Policies and Procedures to Tackle Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment as Negotiated. Madam— Ms. Brinda Gongo Padilla Lundmark, I give you the floor and please try to speak at a regulated pace so the interpreters could keep pace with you. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. President. I wish to thank all the delegations involved for the constructive spirit, and I'm very glad to report that we reached consensus on this decision. This is your draft 2026/13 update on UN Women policies and procedures to tackle sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment. One, takes note of the written update on UN Women policies and procedures to tackle sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment. Two, encourage UN Women management to ensure dedicated, adequate, and sustainable staffing, expertise, and funding to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and and abuse and sexual harassment. 3. Request future annual updates to the Executive Board to focus further on results and impact of measures taken and systems in place. 4. Request UN Women to continue to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of prevention, protection, and response efforts through interagency and system-wide collaboration. Cooperation, including through conducting joint assessments and capacity building of implementing partners and joint community engagement. 5, request UN Women with firm commitment and support from leadership to continue to strengthen efforts to ensure a victim/survivor-centered system-wide and coherent approach to the prevention of and response 2, sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment. 6, recalls decision 2023/7 and 2024/8 on piloting the misconduct disclosure scheme welcomes its piloting by UN Women and requests the agency to report at its annual session in 2027 on results and lessons learned from implementation and use of scheme and to encourage wider adoption by other UN entities. I thank you.

May I take it that the Executive Board wishes to adopt Decision 2026/13 on policies and procedures to tackle sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment? I see no objections. It's so decided. Thank you very much, Brenda, for facilitating this decision skillfully. Next, I would like to invite the facilitator to read out draft decision 2026/14 entitled JIU review of governance and oversight of the executive boards of UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS, UNICEF, and UN Women as negotiated. Mr. Marvin Ikondere, you have the floor.

Thank you, Chair. I am happy to report that we also reached consensus on this decision. I want to thank you all delegations for your constructive engagement. And I will now read the decision. Decision 2026/14, JIU review of governance and oversight of the executive boards of UNDP, UNFPA, UNOPS, UNICEF, and UN Women. The Executive Board recalls its decision 2024/3, in which the Executive Board decided to participate in a joint work Working Group to consider the Joint Inspection Unit report titled Review of Governance and Oversight of the Executive Boards of the UNDP, UN Population Fund, UN Office for Project Services, the United Nations Children's Fund, and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, GIU/REP/2023/ March 7th, with the participation of the executive boards of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Population Fund, United Nations Office for Project Services, and the United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women, UN Women. Two, also recalls that in the same decision, the executive board requested the Joint Working Group to provide regular updates to the participating executive boards as necessary, starting after the first regular session of 2025. 3. Welcomes the update and interim report of the Joint Working Group on the Joint Inspection Unit review presented at the annual session of 2026. 4. Recalls its decisions 2025/15 and 2026/2 and reiterates the requests contained therein. 5. Agrees to review the proposals of the Joint Working Group for the implementation of the Joint Inspection Unit recommendations contained in the interim report and takes note of the possibility for Executive Board members and observers to provide feedback in writing to the Joint Working Group by 1st July 2026. 6. Request the Secretariat, in collaboration with the secretariats of the participating Executive executive boards to schedule a joint informal briefing no later than mid-July 2026, wherein the Joint Working Group and the participating executive boards can discuss the proposals for the implementation of the Joint Inspection Unit recommendations contained in the interim report. Lastly, 7, reiterates its request to the Joint Working Group to submit elements of a draft decision for the independent consideration of the participating executive boards at their respective second regular sessions of 2026. I thank you, Chair.

May I take it that the executive board wishes to adopt decision 2026/14 on the JIU? I see no objections. Is so decided. Thank you very much, Marvin, for facilitating this second decision. Next, I would like to invite the facilitator to read out the decision 2026/15 entitled Engagement with UNAID Initiative as Negotiated. Mr. Bastien Howaman, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. I had the privilege to facilitate this draft decision 2026/15 on the engagement with the UNHCR initiative. Allow me first to thank all the delegations for their constructive engagement and the Secretariat for their precious help. I am happy to announce that we reached consensus. I will now read out the decision. The Executive Executive Board: 1, notes with appreciation the efforts by UN Women on the UNAT initiative and reiterates the importance of an adequately resourced, relevant, coherent, efficient, and effective United Nations system. 2, also takes note of the information provided as part of the strategic merger assessment of UNFPA and UN UN Women Final Consolidated Report and its annexes. 3, affirms that any structural proposal regarding UN Women should aim to generate, to generate tangible savings in structural and administrative costs and strengthen operational delivery of existing, existing mandates. 4, stresses that entity-specific merger These discussions should not be considered in isolation from the broader UNAT reform work, including inter alia United Nations Country Team reconfiguration, the regional reset, the expertise on demand mechanism, and funding mechanisms, as they directly impact the entity's ability to deliver on its triple mandate at the country level. 5 reiterates its request in Decision 2026/6, in which it emphasizes that documentation related to the UNAT Initiative and its implementation should be shared with the Executive Board as soon as it becomes available and no later than 3 weeks prior to any formal or informal session, to allow sufficient time for its consideration. Sixth, recalls General Assembly Resolution 79/318 and 80/155 and reaffirms the central role of Member States in the reform process, which should be inclusive, evidence-based, and transparent, and in that sense calls on UN Women to actively engage with members and observers of the Executive Executive Board. 7. Further recalls General Assembly resolutions 48/162 and 50/227 and reaffirms the Executive Board's responsibility within its mandate to consider and recommend any proposed structural changes to United Nations entities under its governance while following the existing legal framework as well as established procedural steps, and in this regard, to issue a recommendation on the potential merger or alternative options through a decision to be transmitted to the Economic and Social Council and through the Council to the General Assembly as necessary before a decision on a potential merger is scheduled for consideration by the General Assembly. 8, emphasizes that in order to fulfill this responsibility, the Executive Board must be in possession of all such information as it deems relevant, including alternative options to the potential merger, and in this respect notes that the information provided thus far is insufficient. 9, commits to continuing its constructive engagement with the potential merger and alternative options with a view to providing a well-informed recommendation on them as the requested information becomes available in a timely manner. 10. Underscores the critical importance of system-wide coherence for the delivery of mandates and stresses the relevance of country-level programs and projects for the implementation of the UNAT initiative. 11. Strongly emphasizes that any structural reform must safeguard the integrity of the triple mandate of UN Women as conferred by all the relevant United Nations bodies. 12. Further takes note of the legal elements on the potential merger of UN Women and UNFPA provided by the, by the Legal Office of UN Women, which states, inter alia, that there is no specific legal mechanism available to guarantee the continuity of existing mandates, which therefore may be adjusted or redefined at the time of a merger or thereafter. 13 also takes note of the internal UNFPA legal advice, which indicates that there are no— that there are risks for the integrity of the mandates of the two entities in case of a merger. 14. Recalls its request contained in paragraph 8 of Decision 2026/6 for the Secretary-General to seek and share with members and observers of the Executive Board a legal opinion from the, the Office of Legal Affairs of the Secretariat on the outcome of the merger assessment with regard to implementation modalities governance requirements, and mandate preservation, and further request a written update from UN Women on this issue in advance of the second regular session in 2026 under this agenda item. 15. Note that since the information provided is currently insufficient, the Executive Board is not in a position to make a recommendation of support for a potential merger between UNFPA and UN Women at this time, and alleging inter alia that the protection of mandates cannot be guaranteed, but remains committed to engage constructively with the UNHCR initiative and requests outstanding evidence, analysis, and information to fully address Decision Point 2026/6, paragraph 9, as well as any additional analysis identified as necessary, including, inter alia: a) provision of alternative options to a merger for enhanced alignment, impact, and efficiency to the Executive Board as a matter of priority at least 6 weeks before the second regular session 2026; b) further elaboration on operational models regarding a potential merger and alternative options, with particular attention to the added value, anticipated efficiencies, and expected impact on operational results and delivery with respect to their existing mandates. C, provision of further details on the anticipated costs associated with a potential merger and alternative options, including disaggregated and verifiable one-time implementation costs implementation and transition costs, recurrent costs, anticipated savings, and impact on human resources, together with assumptions used to derive such estimates and to clearly identify resources that could be mobilized to cover this cost. And D, provision of information and analysis on the impact at the country, regional, and programmatic levels, including operational Implementation and delivery, country office configuration in each region, mandate-specific technical capacities, and responsiveness to national priorities. E, provision of summaries of stakeholders' consultations as relevant. I thank you.

May I take it that the Executive Board wishes to adopt Decision 2022/1? 26/15 on UN 80. I see no objections. It's decided. Thank you so much, Bastian, for facilitating the decision. I thank all the distinguished delegations for your diligence and constructive efforts in achieving consensus. I congratulate you all. We now move to agenda item 1, namely organizational matters, to address the approval of the provisional agenda and work plan for the second Conference 2026. In this respect, I will invite the Secretary of the Executive Board to outline the agenda as contained in un.org/w/2026/crp.2. Mr. Secretary, you have the floor.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. As you mentioned, the second regular session of the Executive Board will start on the 9th of September with the consideration of the adoption and the annotated program agenda and work plan of the second regular session 2022. 2026, as well as the report of the Annual Session 2026. Following the adoption of these reports, the session will continue with official opening statements by you, Mr. President, as well as the Executive Director. The Executive Director will include in her remarks an update on Agenda Item 2, on engagement with the UNAT Initiative. Then the floor will be open, as always, for Member States. Interventions. Once the speakers' list for this agenda item will be exhausted, the Board will suspend its plenary session at 1 PM and reserve the rest of the time for the lunch for informal consultation on draft decisions. At 3 PM, the Executive Board will turn to Item 3 on the Structured Dialogue on Financing, where it will be presented with the report on the structural dialogue on financing, the result of the UN Women Strategic Plan 2022-2025. After this agenda item, the Executive Board will reserve the rest of the day for informal consultation on draft decisions. The following day, on Thursday, the 10th of September, the Board will continue with Item 4 on the GIU review of governance, operations and oversight of the Executive Boards of UNDP, UNFPA, UNOPS, UNICEF, and UN Women, to receive an update on the progress made so far. The Board will then address Item 5, Other Matters, followed by the adoption of draft decisions. After the adoption of decisions, the Board will return to Agenda Item 1 on Organizational Matters and consider for approval the provisional agenda and work plan for the first Regular Session of 2023.. The second regular session 2026 will conclude, Mr. President, with your remarks as well as the remarks of the Executive Director. I thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. The floor is open for any of your comments, questions, and observations. I see none. May I take it that the Executive Board wishes to approve the provisional agenda and work plan of the Second Regular Session 2026? I see no objections. So, decided. At this juncture, may I now give the floor to the ED, Kisi Madi.

Thank you very much, Mr. President, and I just wanted to take the opportunity before for your closing remarks to— first of all, thank you, Mr. President, and all the Vice Presidents for steering us through this very, very important session. I also would like to thank all the members and observers of the Executive Board for your very strong support that you have expressed over the past 3 days to UN Women, to our mandate. This is more needed now than ever before. I thank you for your very insightful your thoughtful questions, your guidance, and I want to particularly thank the facilitators for the skillful facilitation and all the delegates for the flexibility for your participation. I know the negotiation have gone late to the night, but also for your flexibility that you have been able to adopt these decisions. And in that way, I also would like to just reiterate and appreciate I appreciate the strong call that you have made for flexible and predictable funding for UN Women. This is more critical than ever to ensure that we are able, indeed, to implement the important decisions that you have adopted just now. I also would like to just take the opportunity to thank my UN Women colleagues who have contributed to this annual session and to all of our colleagues globally who continue to drive forward our critical mandate of gender equality and women's empowerment with strong commitment and dedication. And lastly, thanks to the Executive Board Secretariat, to the Conference Services, and to the interpreters for all the support. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Kisi, for your remarks. I now give the floor to the Paul, you have the floor.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Your Excellency, the President of the Board, the Executive Board of UN Women, my colleague Didi Kesse. I join you in your words of appreciation to our Executive Board. This Executive Board, like any other board, God continues to nourish us as UN Women, as you provide advice, as you provide guidance, as you oversee our work, provide the necessary oversight, and also provide the insights into our implementation of the mandate and of the strategic plan of UN Women. We are so grateful for the insights sides of this session for the emphasis that you have continued to provide on the importance of our triple mandate, the importance of evaluations, the importance of coordination, and the importance of country-level work. We take very strongly and very clearly the decisions that you have made, and we will strive to work hard to achieve and work towards the commitments that you have provided it to us. I equally extend and join my colleague Kesimadi in expressing our deep appreciation to our teams and to Jean-Luc and your team, and equally to our teams across the world, the UN Women teams across the world who are following this board and who we know are equally committed to the implementation of the decisions. We look forward to the board in September. You have already shared the agenda, so in In our minds, we are already preparing the details of that agenda. I wish you the very best, and again, thank you so much, Mr. President, and our esteemed Executive Board.

Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Executive Director Nyarandzayi, for your comments. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues, we have come to the end We have come to the end of a very productive and enlightening annual session. I'm very pleased to see that we have managed to successfully consider the entire items on our agenda in a very efficient manner without compromising on the quality of the discussions in the session. Throughout the session, we have— we focused We had very focused, interactive, and rich discussions on each agenda item. I congratulate all of you. We congratulate ourselves, all of us. I would like to thank again our bureau members, the vice presidents, and the experts for their excellent support during and in the lead-up to the session. Delegation. I especially wish to thank the delegations of Albania, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Sweden, Switzerland, and Uganda for their very skillful facilitation during this annual session. Your hard work is truly appreciated. I wish to also I would also thank profoundly the Executive Board members and observers for their constructive engagement and contributions, as well as their flexibility during the negotiations. I would also like to thank the Secretary of Executive Board, Mr. Djalouk, Boris, and his team for providing all our support, all the support to us and me, other members of the the boards and all our delegations. Over the past 3 days, we have had several briefings from the Secretariat colleagues, and I must acknowledge the quality of the presentations were extremely rich. I would like to congratulate in absentia the Executive Director, as well as all other briefers from the UN Women Secretariat, for their hard work and effort in ensuring the high quality of our deliberations. On this positive note, once again, thank you all for your cooperation, collaboration, and support in making this a very successful session. I now wish to declare closed the Annual Session 2026 of the UN Women Executive Board. The meeting, the session is adjourned.