​Participants of this workshop discussed the work of UN Women and the World Bank on Women’s Economic Empowerment, including in fragile contexts. The thematic introduction familiarised participants with the activities of those two multilateral institutions, with the UN system-wide action plan for gender equality and the flagship programme initiatives. One mechanism to support existing networks, in particular women’s association (see also workshop on women’s CSO’s) is the UN Women’s Fund for Gender Equality which gives grants to CSO’s. The head of the fund presented the activities of this fund for women’s empowerment in fragile contexts. She shared experiences of women’s economic empow-erment, access to resources, participation and decision-making and women’s safety from Guinea and Lebanon and stressed the significance of considering women’s unpaid time burden. The discussion revealed a large interest to understand the involvement of SDC in the multilateral system and the need of strengthening the links between bilateral and multilateral cooperation. Therefore participants discussed possibilities of increased cooperation with multilateral entities and the scaling up of initiatives at the field and national level. Participants also reported about their cooperation with multilateral entities in the field and shared their perception: UN Women is quite present in the different partner countries, however the World Bank does not seem to be as visible on gender related work in the field.

Thematic introduction: Multilateral Cooperation
Further information: Chantal Oltramare

UN Women Fund for Gender Equality: Building Resilience in Fragility
Further information: Elisa Fernandez

Key messages of the workshop: Here