UN80 Insights: Assessing the Value of a Merger of UNFPA & UNWomen

15 March 2026

By Katja Hemmerich

Testing an Analytical Framework Based on Comparative Advantage

At their recent meetings in January and February, the Executive Boards of UNFPA and UNWomen received an update on the assessment of their potential merger. This month, UN80 published a baseline analysis of UNFPA and UNWomen as part of Work Package 4. This analysis aims to help assess the implications of a potential merger. The Executive Board briefing outlined the process and methodology for the assessment, along with some initial findings on benefits and risks. While it is not a comprehensive presentation of the issues intended to support a decision at this stage, it inadvertently demonstrates that there are no clear or established criteria for determining when a merger of UN entities is sensible.

Understanding the Challenge of Mergers

In anticipation of this challenge, the Multilateral Performance Network (MOPAN) recently published a new thematic brief. This brief provides a framework to compare the strengths of UN entities based on their comparative advantage. In this month’s spotlight, I will test this framework to assess the comparative advantages of UNFPA, UNWomen, and OHCHR. My analysis highlights an interesting set of complementarities and differences, emphasizing the importance of understanding what reforms aim to achieve through mergers.

Assessing Benefits and Risks of a UNFPA & UNWomen Merger

The approach followed by LEAD+, the consulting firm assessing the potential UNFPA and UNWomen merger, appears to use a typical evaluation method. It maps out specific questions to evaluate whether a merger can enhance the impact, relevance, coherence, efficiency, and credibility of the UN’s work on gender equality. Many of these questions are framed around concerns raised by several member states and civil society groups. They worry that a merger would dilute the mandates of both UNWomen and UNFPA, making it a target for greater contestation by stakeholders opposed to gender equality or reproductive rights (see PassBlue's recent summary of these concerns). While this approach seems reasonable, the preliminary conclusions reached are somewhat unsatisfactory.

The assessment finds that a merger will result in a stronger, more unified voice on gender equality and sexual and reproductive health. This could unlock a ‘seamless value chain’ of impact, from global standards to tangible change in communities. It may also provide greater resilience in protecting hard-won norms against backlash related to gender equality. These conclusions are not incorrect, but similar benefits could be cited for merging UNWomen with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) or UNFPA with the World Health Organization (WHO) or even UNICEF. Both also work on sexual and reproductive health and preventing sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls.

The Value of MOPAN’s Framework

This is where MOPAN’s approach, focused on identifying what gives UN entities a comparative advantage in a particular area, can add significant value. It provides a framework for comparing the relevant strengths of different entities. Based on its evaluations, MOPAN notes that UN entities increasingly use the concept of comparative advantage to differentiate and coordinate their roles across the UN system. This is particularly true at the country level, where it aims to minimize duplication and address policy and programming gaps. However, MOPAN also highlights that UN entities define comparative advantage differently. Some focus on advantages derived from mandates, while others emphasize operational capacities and expertise. For this reason, MOPAN sets out a framework to identify an entity's comparative advantage across seven core functions that exist across the UN system:

1. Normative support for the implementation and monitoring of global agreements.

2. Policy advice to assist countries in translating global commitments into national and local plans and budgets.

3. Data analysis to inform evidence-based, context-specific, and inclusive policy choices.

4. Convening power across constituencies.

5. Direct support and delivery of specific goods and services, particularly for countries in crisis.

6. Financing, including the provision of resources, the ability to mobilize international and domestic resources, and supporting countries in leveraging and aligning diverse funding streams and investments.

   
   

Testing the Comparative Advantage Framework

MOPAN provides a test case of how this framework can be used to understand UNFPA’s comparative advantage. ReformWorks has expanded MOPAN's table to identify the comparative advantages of UNWomen and OHCHR, given the concerns around the backlash against women’s rights. This is not a thorough assessment, but it uses information about what these organizations do best and demonstrates impact provided in current strategic plans and their 2024 annual reports. You can check out our full analysis here.

What becomes apparent when considering MOPAN’s different elements of comparative advantage is that merging UNWomen with OHCHR would bring together significant and largely complementary normative, policy support, and convening powers. OHCHR possesses a mandate, expertise, and established partnerships for human rights protection that extends to judicial systems and national human rights institutions. These are crucial for protecting ‘hard-won norms,’ which UNFPA cannot offer. Both UNWomen and OHCHR have significant convening power across similar but slightly different civil society and governmental actors. This aims to protect civil spaces and reinforce non-discrimination. Combining that power and leveraging it collectively could allow the UN to remain a relevant normative and policy support actor, despite significant reductions in resources.

The Overlap of Mandates

At the same time, the analysis highlights that there appears to be significant overlap in UNWomen’s and OHCHR’s mandates to coordinate and mainstream human rights and gender equality across the UN system. Combining this function and having one entity that speaks with a unified voice could strengthen or weaken this function; that remains unclear from this level of analysis. However, it could certainly rationalize the number of UN staff needed to coordinate these mandates and the time that entities dedicate to a single mainstreaming approach compared to the dual approach that currently exists.

The comparative advantage analysis demonstrates that UNFPA adds limited value to a merged gender equality entity in terms of normative and policy support and convening powers. However, UNFPA does have important comparative advantages in direct delivery and support services, as well as financing related to sexual and reproductive health and sexual and gender-based violence. Particularly in crisis settings, UNFPA has a unique ability to procure and deliver goods and services for victims of sexual and gender-based violence and in support of sexual and reproductive health. OHCHR also has a comparative advantage in crisis settings—albeit a very different one—by investigating and reporting on serious human rights violations when mandated by the Security Council or the Commission on Human Rights.

Incompatibility of Comparative Advantages

MOPAN’s analytical framework highlights these very different comparative advantages, making it easy to understand that these are generally incompatible. The collaborative relationships, expertise, and logistical capacities needed for UNFPA to deliver in crisis cannot be combined with the mandate authority, impartiality, and expertise needed for OHCHR to report on human rights violations committed by state and non-state actors.

But what about UNWomen? It does not seem to have a unique comparative advantage in crisis situations. Yet, according to the UN80 Work Package 4 Baseline Analysis for the merger, it invests a third of its programmatic resources in crisis and conflict settings, serving as the UN system lead on Women, Peace, and Security. This raises an immediate question: is this truly the best investment of those funds? Could this investment have a stronger impact by leveraging UNFPA's or OHCHR's unique comparative advantage in crisis and conflict settings? Answering this question will require reflection on what member states and beneficiaries need most in crisis settings. Does a merged entity add more value by providing direct support and service delivery for women in crisis, or by monitoring, investigating, and reporting on violations of women’s rights? Finding stakeholder consensus on these types of questions may facilitate multilateral agreement more easily than attempting to persuade stakeholders to make value judgments about whether the current assessment is correct in projecting that a merger between UNFPA and UNWomen will be “better equipped to withstand backlash, protect hard-won norms, and drive progress even in crisis, conflict, and climate-affected contexts” (Slide 15 of the LEAD+ briefing).

What Decision-Makers Need to Know about Potential Mergers

My experiment demonstrates the value of MOPAN’s comparative advantage framework in considering mergers and other reforms. However, it also needs to be supplemented by two similar analytical tools that do not yet exist in the UN system.

As the LEAD+ assessment implies, significant change management work must accompany mergers and other reform efforts. The UN’s evaluations have highlighted that too little attention is paid to implementation planning and leadership of reforms. This oversight can lead to hidden costs outweighing the benefits (see, for instance, the JIU’s reports on change management, JIU/REP/2019/4, and the consolidation of administrative services, JIU/REP/2016/11). The current merger assessment has already highlighted some concrete risks around managing legislative decision-making on the merger and impacts on host country agreements, as well as workforce and culture integrations. Not only do these need to be mapped out, but there also needs to be an assessment of the leadership capacity to manage these change issues and an effort to quantify these indirect and hidden costs.

This, in turn, means there need to be system-wide definitions and methodologies for calculating direct and indirect costs and efficiencies. This point was made last year by the ‘cluster’ of UN leaders providing inputs to UN80’s Workstream 3 last June. In the absence of baseline data on current efficiency levels, it is impossible to measure the impact of mergers on efficiency and determine whether they truly add value to the UN in these challenging financial times. The UN80 baseline analysis provides an excellent overview of the governance mechanisms, structures, workforce, and finances of both UNFPA and UNWomen. This helps readers understand the technical aspects and implications of a potential merger. However, the only way that data can be used to measure efficiencies that might be gained is by calculating whether a merged entity results in fewer personnel overall or a reduction in the number of field offices. There is no way to measure the extent to which a merger might slow down delivery or the costs involved in implementation and change management, which the Executive Board briefing has highlighted.