As prepared for delivery

Distinguished Members of the Executive Board, it is a pleasure to be here today as we present to you the new UNDP Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2029.

My remarks will focus first on the 2025 Annual Report, and then on the new Strategy.

The Annual Report points to three clear conclusions.

• First, UNDP consistently delivers its commitments and continued to achieve strong results through its country programmes.
• Second, our institutional performance remained solid, meeting or exceeding 83 per cent of the rigorous UN-SWAP 3.0 new requirements.
• Third, UNDP continues to invest at scale, with 75 per cent of expenditure contributing to gender equality.

These results are reflected in concrete gains, supporting:

• From 2022 to 2025: 155 million women to gain access to financial services and 182 million to gain access to basic services.
• 117 public institutions and 330,000 civil servants to advance reforms that improved public policy and service delivery for all people.
• In 2025, 100 countries to translate gender equality into practice through national climate and biodiversity plans.

These are not isolated outputs. They show how gender equality strengthens access to services, economic opportunity, governance systems, and climate action.

Let me now turn to the Strategy, which is a direct response to the urgent realities faced by our partner countries facing increased militarization, fiscal crises, technological disruption, and climate emergencies.

The Strategy was developed through an unprecedently broad consultation involving more than 3,500 participants, 152 UNDP country offices and a wide range of external partners, with two messages as a result:

• First, there is a strong expectation that UNDP helps countries place gender equality at the core of political, economic, and environmental decisions.
• Second, there is clear recognition of UNDP’s implementation capacity at scale in our areas of strength.

What is different in this Strategy is that gender equality is not treated as a sectoral priority, but as a systemic accelerator of development - embedded in the economic, political and environmental structures that determine people’s lives.

In response, the new Strategy focuses more directly on the roots of inequality, and concentrates UNDP’s efforts where we bring clear added value: social protection and care, fiscal policy, elections, public institutional reform, climate and biodiversity action, recovery and peacebuilding.

It also gives greater attention to emerging challenges, including technology-facilitated violence and the risk that digital and AI transitions reinforce existing inequalities.

This is about future-proofing development: the qualitative leap of this Strategy is that it connects what is too often treated separately, such as budgets, care systems, climate action and biodiversity- so countries can deliver a just transition in practice.

Partnerships are central to us.

For instance, our partnership with UN Women is a core element of this Strategy and reflects the direction of UN80: a more effective and coordinated UN System.

Finally, the Strategy also recognizes that our progress is built through internal transformation: our impact on gender equality depends on the strength of our own internal policies, structures, culture and ways of working.

Over the next four years, we will achieve this through:

• more integrated action across portfolios and teams;
• an internal culture grounded in respect, inclusion and dignity; and
• more diversified financing model to translate commitment into delivery.

Distinguished Member States, as our Administrator said: gender equality is not a side agenda. It is how development becomes more effective and more sustainable.

We are grateful for the engagement that helped develop this Strategy. We look forward to your guidance, and to working with Member States and partners to translate this ambition into results