UN Considers Merging Major Agencies

By | 2026

WASHINGTON, D.C. April 10 (C-Fam) The UN is considering merging the UN Population Fund and UN Women as part of a broader overhaul of the UN system to reduce costs and streamline operations.  However, feminist groups are strongly opposed to the proposed merger, arguing that it would mark a reversal of their progress.

Led by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the UN80 reform initiative was set out as a way to ensure the survival of the UN in the face of funding cuts and a changing geopolitical landscape.  It proposes reducing bureaucracy, getting rid of duplicative work, and shrinking the budget of the secretariat.  One proposal under consideration is to combine UN Women, the UN’s gender equality agency, with UNFPA, which focuses on sexual and reproductive health, including maternal health and family planning.

The arguments in favor of the merger are mainly practical: the agencies’ mandates at least partially overlap, and a single agency combining UN Women’s normative work with UNFPA’s operational work might be “better equipped to withstand backlash.”

In contrast, according to feminist organizations, merging the agencies into a single entity would be a capitulation to the “backlash,” a term used as shorthand for opposition to gender ideology, the promotion of abortion as an international right, and other demands arising from a Marxist feminist analysis.

One of the most outspoken critics of the proposed merger is Fòs Feminista, which itself is the product of a merger between three organizations, including the western hemisphere division of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, in 2001.  Earlier this year, Fòs Feminista warned that merging the two agencies would weaken their respective mandates.

“UNFPA provides technical leadership on adolescent pregnancy prevention, comprehensive sexuality education, safe abortion access, including post-abortion care, and rights-based sexual and reproductive health,” they write.  “Weakening or fragmenting this mandate would leave the comprehensive [sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)] agenda without a clear institutional home at a time when political opposition to these rights is intensifying globally.”

Another critic is Jessica Stern, who previously served as the Former U.S. Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons under former U.S. President Joe Biden. Speaking to The Guardian, Stern said that the agencies “are not perfect and not the only solutions to achieving gender equality and ensuring people have access to reproductive rights, but they are what we have now,” arguing that merging them would result in a net loss in funding rather than cost savings.

At the end of March, the UN80 initiative released an assessment of the potential merger, declaring it “technically feasible” while requiring “explicit safeguards” for the integrity of the agencies’ mandates, which are “anchored” in the outcomes of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women.

The assessment refers to these landmark conferences as “the internationally agreed foundations for advancing gender equality, women’s empowerment and sexual and reproductive health and rights,” despite the fact that SRHR was explicitly rejected from both conferences’ outcomes due to its inclusion of so-called “sexual rights” and has never been internationally agreed.

Technically feasible or not, feminist groups are not persuaded.  In a recent op ed in Devex, Stern and coauthor Shannon Kowalski issued a dire warning: “It is likely that the U.S. administration and other anti-rights groups would seize upon the merger as an opportunity to dismantle this agenda at the U.N. entirely.”

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