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

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

Assessing Benefits and Risks of a UNFPA & UNWomen Merger

The approach followed by LEAD+, the consulting firm assessing the benefits and risks of a potential UNFPA and UNWomen merger, appears to use the typical approach to evaluation, mapping out specific questions to evaluate whether a merger can enhance impact, relevance, coherence, efficiency and credibility of the UN’s work on gender equality. It frames many of these questions around the concerns that have been raised by several member states and civil society groups that a merger would dilute the mandates of both UNWomen and UNFPA and make it a target for even greater contestation by stakeholders opposed to gender equality or reproductive rights (see PassBlue's recent summary of these concerns). All of this seems to be a correct and reasonable approach but 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, unlocking a ‘seamless value chain’ of impact from global standards to tangible change in communities while also providing greater resilience protecting hard won norms and backlash against gender equality. These are not wrong conclusions per se, but similar benefits could be cited for merging UNWomen with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and UNFPA with the World Heath Organization (WHO) or even UNICEF both of whom also work on sexual and reproductive health and preventing sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls.

This is where MOPAN’s approach focused on identifying what gives UN entities a comparative advantage in a particular area can add more value, because it provides a framework for comparing the relevant strengths of different entities. Based on its own evaluations, MOPAN notes that UN entities have increasingly been using the concept of comparative advantage to differentiate and coordinate their roles across the UN system, particularly at country level in order to minimize duplication and address policy and programming gaps. Yet, MOPAN also highlights that UN entities all define comparative advantage differently, with some focusing on the comparative advantages derived from mandates, while others focus on their operational capacities and expertise etc. For that reason, it sets out a framework to identify an entity's comparative advantage across seven core functions which 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; and,

6. Financing, including provision of resources, ability to mobilize international and domestic resources, and supporting countries to leverage and align 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. It’s not a thorough assessment, but uses information about what these organizations do best and demonstrate impact provided in current strategic plans and their 2024 annual reports. You can check out our full analysis here.

What becomes very obvious 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 has a mandate, expertise, and established partnerships for human rights protection that extends to judicial systems and national human rights institutions that are crucial for protecting ‘hard won norms’, and which UNFPA simply cannot offer. Both UNWomen and OHCHR have significant convening power across similar but slightly different civil society and governmental actors aimed at protecting civil spaces and reinforcing 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. 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 is unclear from this level of analysis. But it could certainly rationalize the number of UN staff needed to coordinate these mandates and the amount of time that entities being coordinated dedicate to a single mainstreaming approach as 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. UNFPA does however have important comparative advantages in direct delivery and support services and financing in relation 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 - to investigate and report on serious human rights violations when mandated by the Security Council or Commission on Human Rights. MOPAN’s analytical framework highlights these very different comparative advantages, and makes 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 appear to have a unique comparative advantage in crisis situations, and 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, as the UN system lead on Women, Peace and Security. This leads to an immediate question of whether that really is the best investment of those funds, or whether this investment could in fact have a stronger impact by exploiting UNFPA's or OHCHR's unique comparative advantage in crisis and conflict settings. Answering this question will also require some reflect about what member states and beneficiaries need most in crisis settings. Does a merged entity add more value in providing direct support and service delivery for women in crisis settings, or by monitoring, investigating and reporting on violations of women’s rights? Finding stakeholder consensus on these types of questions may be an easier way of facilitating multilateral agreement than trying to have stakeholders make value judgements 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

Our experiment demonstrates the value of MOPAN’s comparative advantage framework in considering mergers and other reforms. But 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, there is significant change management work that needs to accompany mergers and other reform efforts. The UN’s own evaluations have highlighted that too little attention is paid to implementation planning and leadership of reforms to ensure that hidden costs don’t outweigh the benefits (see for instance the JIU’s reports on change management, JIU/REP/2019/4, and consolidation of administrative services, JIU/REP/2016/11). The current merger assessment has already highlighted some of these 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 needs to be an assessment of the leadership capacity to manage these change issues and an effort to quantify these indirect and hidden costs.

And this in turn means there need to be some system-wide definitions and methodologies for calculating direct and indirect costs and efficiencies - a point 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 mergers really do add value to the UN in these challenging financial times. The UN80 baseline analysis provides a very good overview of the governance mechanisms, structures, workforce and finances of both UNFPA and UNWomen to help readers understand the technical aspects and implications of a potential merger. But 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.