CARE International Submission to the International Development Committee: Women, Peace and Security
May 2025
CARE International UK supports women to lead during times of crisis. We are a leading development and humanitarian organisation committed to social and gender justice, working with crisis-affected communities to lead the fight to end poverty and inequality. CARE works in over 120 countries, reaching 167 million people through more than 1,600 projects. We put gender equality and women’s leadership at the heart of everything we do.
[Q1: To what extent does the UK Government integrate Women, Peace and Security principles across its ODA-funded programming?]
A meaningful assessment of the UK's commitment to Women, Peace and Security (WPS) requires a view across all four pillars: Participation; Protection; Prevention; Relief and Recovery.
The UK has historically played a leading global role on WPS, helping to pass UN Resolution 1325 and holding the pen on WPS at the UN Security Council. WPS priorities have been reflected in UK key strategies[1].
However, in recent years, this leadership has weakened. Cuts to UK overseas aid — particularly funding for gender equality and women- and girl-focused programmes — have had a global impact. Humanitarian responses have often lacked a gender/women’s leadership lens, failing to consider the distinct risks and capacities of women and girls from the outset.
Gaza and Sudan: Overlooked Gendered Impacts
In Gaza, nine months into the conflict, CARE International’s report found that pregnant women were three times more likely to miscarry or die in childbirth due to poor access to healthcare, shelter, nutrition, and medicines. Women are still giving birth in unsafe conditions without pain relief. Yet to this day, no funding has been ring-fenced for WROs. A UK contribution to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to support reproductive and sexual health services came months after the violence started and made up only 5% of the UK’s Gaza response funding.
In Sudan, the scale of sexual violence has been described by the UN as “staggering.” UN Women has issued a Gender Alert, with 6.9 million at risk of GBV and demand for survivor services up 288%. Only 6.7% of GBV funding needs have been met, and just 1.8 million of the 6.7 million women requiring SRHR support have been reached. Two years in, the crisis is deepening.
Despite these realities, neither Gaza nor Sudan is currently a UK WPS National Action Plan (NAP) focus country — limiting the UK’s ability to address and prevent gendered impacts in two of the world’s most urgent crises for women and girls.
Selective Engagement and Participation Gaps
While the UK has demonstrated leadership on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), there is a risk of engaging in only parts of the WPS agenda — a selective, ‘à la carte’ approach. For example, while UK and international policy promotes locally-led humanitarian responses, women’s leadership is often missing. Token consultations can be mistaken for genuine participation. WPS offers a framework to centre women’s leadership as part of the localisation agenda, supported by initiatives like the Call to Action on Gender in Emergencies, which Governments can draw lessons from.
Consequences of Aid Cuts for WPS Delivery
The international aid system is undergoing one of its greatest shocks as governments withdraw funding. Over half of women’s rights organisations across the global South report they may close within six months due to aid cuts.
Globally, just 0.3% of bilateral aid reaches women’s organisations in conflict-affected contexts. UK gender-focused aid has fallen every year since 2019 and is now half of pre-pandemic levels, the lowest since tracking began in 2014.
Between 2021 and 2022, as the overall ODA budget was cut by a third, VAWG prevention funding fell by 41%, gender equality programming by 30%, and support to women’s rights organisations by 66% from its 2017 peak.
These decisions have undermined WPS delivery. For example, in Syria, CARE's protection services were cut by nearly 70%, slashing its reach by 80%.
The Minister for Development recently confirmed plans to end standalone gender equality programmes, with all gender work to be mainstreamed. This would mark the worst aid budget for women and girls on record, severely damaging the UK’s credibility as a WPS champion
To protect women and girls and promote their leadership in crises, we recommend that the Government:
[Q2: What financial resources has the UK allocated towards advancing the WPS agenda? Are these resources appropriately distributed across programmes and regions?]
The little funding that has been made available for WPS has tended to be supported by governance/conflict funds (such as IFS and country portfolios leading on this, such as in Ethiopia), rather than wider ODA funds. This disincentivises and limits cross-pillar programming, particularly where participation, protection, and recovery intersect
To enable women’s political participation, women’s basic needs – food to support families, GBV services and protection, livelihoods - must be addressed early in crises. Yet, Relief and recovery remain the weakest of the WPS pillars – impacting overall effectiveness across the spectrum.
Compared to the previous CSSF, the ISF has increased the number of priorities from four to six. Without additional resourcing put in place, this risks a de-prioritisation of gender/women’s participation across the portfolio. The ISF’s GESI marker which mandates reporting on the integration of gender, is a welcome step toward embedding gender considerations across programming. However, its effectiveness depends on sufficient staffing, robust monitoring, and dedicated resourcing – all of which are in short supply.
The Case for Dedicated, Flexible Funding
Effective WPS implementation demands dedicated, accessible funding for local women’s rights organisations (WROs), particularly in crisis settings. This includes scaling direct funding and significantly increasing UK contributions to pooled mechanisms like the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund and UN Country-Based Pooled Funds (CBPFs), with majority allocated to local actors and 50% (where feasible) to WLOs, as well as meaningful proportions reserved for gender interventions.
While the UK is the second-largest donor to CBPFs, structural barriers prevent WROs and WLOs from accessing them. Feminist funds provide a proven model for channelling flexible resources while upholding feminist values but demand vastly exceeds supply. Many frontline WROs remain unaware of parallel funding systems or how to access them. Linking CBPFs and feminist funding mechanisms will therefore be critical.
The FCDO-backed First Response Fund - specifically designed by 12 Feminist/ Women's Funds to create one fund to quickly and effectively distribute funds directly to WLOs for humanitarian action is a great example of UK support and leadership in this regard. However, this initiative may fall at the first post under the new cuts and without wider political support among bilaterals to invest, beyond just gender equality pots.
To ensure UK Government resources are most effective and advance locally-led WPS objectives, we recommend the Government:
[Q3: How does the UK’s current WPS National Action Plan compare to its previous iterations? To what extent is the UK successfully achieving the strategic outcomes it set out within the 2023 National Action Plan?]
The recognition of climate insecurity as a transnational threat and WPS issue in the 2023 NAP was a positive development. Evidence from IFS-funded programming, such as the FCDO / CARE GENRE++ project in Mali, shows this (see more below): The expansion to include new technologies as transnational threat, while also welcome in principle, must keep a focus on the structural gendered drivers of tech-facilitated GBV and digital harms —not just on security threats, while also highlighting the risk of non-inclusive AI in the roll-out of cost efficiencies, particularly in humanitarian reform agenda.
While this ambition is positive, WPS expertise among UK Embassy staff remains limited. This reflects a broader lack of gender and governance capacity, weakening the UK’s leadership. CARE’s experience shows that the presence of technical advisors—particularly those with governance or conflict expertise—adds substantial value. Projects are more responsive and adaptive when technical oversight extends beyond grant management.
Clear ministerial ownership of the WPS agenda is essential to drive cross-government coordination. Enhanced accountability must be underpinned by robust, transparent monitoring, evaluation and learning mechanisms, as expanded below.
Designating NAP Focus Countries has helped incentivise investment and engagement at country level-for example, in Ethiopia. However, this strategy must be developed in partnership with women’s rights organisations and embedded in a clearer vision. While the CSSF/IFS architecture supports adaptive programming, delivery remains uneven across contexts.
To improve delivery and ROI of WPS agenda we recommend that the Government:
[Q4 & Q6: Are women’s voices, particularly those from conflict-affected communities and marginalised groups, sufficiently included within the UK’s approach to the WPS agenda? / Can you provide examples of successful programmes or initiatives where the UK’s WPS framework has led to measurable improvements in women’s security and participation in peace processes?]
Where the UK has prioritised women’s voices -particularly from conflict-affected and marginalised groups -this has led to positive outcomes. For example, CARE’s Women Lead in Emergencies project in Tigray (Ethiopia), funded by FCDO, built women’s leadership in GBV prevention while addressing barriers to participation such as economic wellbeing. This led to a 24% increase in women and girls’ engagement in decision-making spaces.
In its second phase, the project now supports marginalised women and girls in Tigray and Afar to participate in peace, security and recovery processes. Informal community Women Lead groups have developed 26 localised Women, Peace and Security Action Plans. Women and Safe Spaces (or ‘WLiE Hubs’) offer psychosocial support and referrals to GBV and livelihood services. Men’s groups - including men, boys, and community leaders - are engaged to build allyship for women’s leadership. Three women-led organisations are being supported to build strategic alliances between women’s collectives, from community to national level, to scale impact in peace, transitional justice, and recovery.
In the ISF-funded GENRE++ project in Mali, implemented by CARE International UK, integrated approaches to gender equality, climate resilience and peacebuilding have delivered WPS outcomes for marginalised, conflict-affected women. Women have taken leadership roles in NRM and conflict resolution, adopted climate-adaptation practices to reduce tensions, and influenced local agreements, development plans and budgets. As a result, reported instances of conflict dropped from 60% to 22% in the past year, with fewer cases escalated to councils or courts.
Still, a disconnect remains between UK-funded programmes and diplomatic inclusion. When the UK hosted the Sudan SOM in 2024, Ethiopian women country directors from the HINGO Forum were denied visas. At the recent 15 April Ministerial meeting on Sudan, Sudanese women’s organisations and civil society were not invited—despite the scale of GBV and CRSV. UK diplomacy, as well as ODA programming, must fully reflect WPS principles.
To strengthen women’s voices to meet WPS objectives, particularly from marginalised, conflict affected communities, we recommend the Government:
[Q5: Are there appropriate accountability mechanisms in place to ensure that the Government is meeting its WPS commitments, and that these commitments are translated into substantive outcomes?]
Several issues are compromising accountability on the Government’s WPS commitments.
Firstly, ODA databases do not track funding specifically for WPS or WLOs/WROs. This absence of targets and lack of data undermines accountability, denies entry points for advocacy, and provides few incentives to invest.
Secondly, while the NAP 2023-2027 contains commitments to establishing a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) system, a proposed baseline study, indicators and MEL framework remain absent. This is compounded by the reduction in the reporting cycle to Parliament from annually to once every two years.
To improve accountability to WPS, we recommend that the Government:
[Q7 & Q8: What are the current trends that can be observed in respect of adherence of the international WPS agenda? What role does the UK play on an international scale, and how can this be improved? / What can the UK Government do to ensure that its WPS efforts are sustainable long-term, particularly in light of global political shifts?]
Over the past decade, progress toward gender equality has not just stalled—it has reversed. The gap between women and men in work is the widest since records began. Women’s rights are under attack, from Afghanistan to the US. 80% of those displaced by climate change are women and girls. And in conflict zones, violence against women has surged by up to 200%.
This rollback is being driven by a coordinated, well-resourced global anti-rights movement seeking to undermine gender equality, reproductive rights, LGBTQI+ inclusion, and democratic freedoms. These trends are not isolated - they are geopolitical, and they demand a global response.
The UK has a proud history of global leadership on gender equality, development, and peacebuilding. Successive governments - Labour and Conservative - have led efforts to champion women’s rights, including through the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative and investment in research like What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls. But in recent years, the UK’s leadership has faltered under the pressure of aid cuts.
Leadership is about more than money. It is about coherence, consistency, and courage. That means ensuring WPS principles are not just applied to ODA-funded programming, but also across diplomacy and defence. It means putting gender equality at the heart of foreign policy and using the UK’s voice and platforms-like the Security Council, Ministerial meetings, and summits- to centre women’s leadership in crisis response and peacebuilding.
In 2022, eight of the UK’s top 10 ODA recipients were countries in conflict[2], and many of them are WPS focus countries. These are the very places where UK global leadership is most urgently needed- to uphold rights, elevate women’s voices, and promote more inclusive peace processes. However, it is unclear how the UK plans to do so as it grapples with the humanitarian reset and its own reimagining of UK ODA system.
Gender inequality is a proven early warning sign of conflict, we know that peace agreements are more durable and societies more secure when women are at the table; ignoring it is not just a missed opportunity, it's a strategic failure.
To increase UK Global Political Leadership on Women’s Leadership in Crisis, we recommend that the Government:
To ensure sustainability and impact of WPS agenda, the Government must build and invest in the right partnerships, we recommend:
[1] such as the International Women and Girls Strategy (2023–2030) and Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (2021). Domestically, initiatives like Safer Streets and the pledge to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) indicate political commitment
[2] (Afghanistan, Ukraine, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, South Sudan, Syria) and two, Pakistan and Bangladesh, host large refugee populations who have fled conflicts in Afghanistan and Myanmar, respectively.