Recommendation 11

HM Government Acknowledged

We are also concerned that the impact of covid-19 on women and girls has been disproportionate and that the crisis has exacerbated many of the challenges that they already faced. FCDO is working to ensure the needs and priorities of women and girls are central to every aspect of our response. For example, we provided an additional £10 million to UNFPA as part of our wider support to the UN Humanitarian Response Plan, to address reproductive health supply shortages caused by the pandemic, and help scale up reporting, protection, and support services for women and girls affected by the surge 16 Eighth Special Report of Session 2019–21 in gender-based violence. This contributed towards UNFPA reaching an estimated 10 million women and 5 million young people in 52 countries with services, information and supplies. We also know that success will depend on putting women’s rights organisations at the heart of our response. That is why we have provided long-term support to women’s rights organisations on the frontlines, including through our contribution to the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women. As mentioned earlier, in September last year, the UK announced an additional £1 million to the UN Trust Fund for the new covid-19 Crisis Response Window, which is placing survivors at the heart of the pandemic response. Furthermore, the UK Government put £18 million towards the Rapid Response Fund’s response to covid-19, which launched on 7 April 2020, calling for proposals, and incorporated two key principles: (1) Inclusion of the most vulnerable and marginalised, to leave no one behind and that (2) protection, gender and safeguarding should be mainstreamed across all programmes. Proposals were selected based on their inclusion and whether they aimed to address the needs of the most vulnerable groups, including prevention and response to gender based violence. The UK continues to highlight in international fora the increased care burden faced by women and girls due to covid-19. We are also promoting the role the private sector can play to support its workers, and have produced a report in which the ‘Work and Opportunities for Women’ Programme presents an overview of current knowledge about unpaid care in the sector, and shares findings from primary research conducted with garment workers in 2019. This report is based on pre-covid-19 research but our ongoing work with the private sector will build on this to incorporate a covid lens. FCDO sponsored the GenderSmart Investing Summit which had ‘Investing for Resilience and Recovery’ as one of its key themes. The summit held a session on investing in the care economy, noting that the pandemic has highlighted the importance of investment in this sector, which is now being recognised as a lifeline for the wellbeing of all. The session explored the spectrum of care economy solutions (for-profit, non-profit, low-tech, high- tech, requiring debt, equity, or blended capital) and focused on what good looks like in the ever-growing landscape of investable ventures. We continue to champion the role of investors and corporates in tackling unpaid care, recognising that investment in this sector has huge growth opportunities alongside human development benefits. Social protection is a core part of FCDO’s response to address the indirect impacts of the covid-19 crisis. Social protection can reduce women’s and girls’ vulnerability to shocks and prevent negative coping strategies and can be effective in delivering gender equality objectives. Through our Gender Responsive Social Protection programme and our dedicated covid-19 advisory facility (co-funded with German Development Cooperation) the “Social Protection Approaches to covid-19: Expert Advice Helpline”— we are providing expert advice to the FCDO country network, governments and partner organisations on how social protection systems can be better at delivering gender equality and disability inclusion objectives. An integral part of this is how social protection can better support women and girls, including mitigating the impacts of women’s increased unpaid care responsibilities resulting from the covid crisis. Eighth Special Report of Session 2019–21 17 As part of the merger, FCDO will retain and build on the Strategic Vision, taking full advantage of our diplomatic and development levers and reflecting new challenges— including covid-19—and opportunities. The Strategic Vision, together with the National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security, continues to reflect and respond to the UK government’s ambitions on gender equality, and we do not see its core ambitions changing. The challenges of advancing girls’ education, sexual and reproductive health and rights, women’s political and economic empowerment, and ending violence against women and girls are as acute now, if not more so, as when we published the strategy in 2018. Following the merger, FCDO is developing a new Programme Operating Framework. This will include a new rul