Oct. 27 (UPI) — One in three nonprofit organizations has ended programs to end violence against women in the world because of funding cuts, a United Nations report released Monday found.
At Risk and Underfunded, a 27-page report, was based on a survey of 428 women’s rights and civil society groups.
In the survey, 89% of those surveyed reported severe reductions in women’s and girls’ access to essential services.
“Women’s rights organizations are the backbone of progress on violence against women, yet they are being pushed to the brink,” said Kalliopi Mingeirou, chief of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls section, U.N. Women.
“We cannot allow funding cuts to erase decades of hard-won gains. We call on governments and donors to ringfence, expand, and make funding more flexible. Without sustained investment, violence against women and girls will only rise.”
The report showed $78 billion in global aid cuts are forcing world rights organizations “to reduce or close life-saving services, halt prevention and empowerment programs, and curtail advocacy work.”
In March, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that 83% of USAID’s programs and 94% of its staff would be cut. In fiscal year 2024, USAID spent $21.7 billion. In July, Congress passed a bill rescinding $7.9 billion in international assistance funding.
Donations are also impacted.
“As the world faces intersecting crises, donors have shifted their priorities away from programming for ending violence against women and girls, and gender equality issues more generally,” the report said.
“For some, these priorities shift toward national and global security, economic security, defense spending or immediate humanitarian relief. It is within this context that various countries have engaged in massive funding cuts to their aid budgets.”
One in four countries reported a backlash against women’s rights.
A total of 34.5% suspended or shut down programs with 40.5% having scaled back or closed “life-saving services such as shelters, legal aid, psychosocial and healthcare support due to immediate funding gaps.”
Also, 78% reported reduced access to services for survivors and 59% saw an increase “in impunity and normalization of violence.”
And 23% said they suspended or completely halted “interventions designed to prevent violence before it occurs.”
An estimated 736 women — almost one third in the world — “have experienced physical or sexual violence, most often at the hands of an intimate partner,” the U.N. said. This doesn’t include sexual harassment.
Of those, 15 million adolescent girls 15-19 worldwide have experienced forced sex.
Women comprise 91% of all victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation with 140 females killed every day by someone in their own family in 2023.
Earlier this year, U.N. Women warned that most female-led organizations on crisis settings were facing severe funding cuts.
The future could be more dire.
Only 5% reported they would be able to keep operating at for two years or longer. Also, 85% ‘”predict severe backsliding in laws and protections for women and girls” and 57% report serious concerns about rising risks for female human rights defenders.
Instead of helping troubled women, they will be forced to focus on basic services.
Thirty years ago, a progressive roadmap was agreed by governments to achieve gender equality and women’s rights to end violence against women.
