They embody trust and global solidarity, and the willingness to solve common problems together.
Provided to UNFPA, they save lives, protect rights, and uphold sexual and reproductive choices, everywhere in the world.
Across 150 countries, core resources provided to UNFPA support the acceleration and scale of action needed for a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
How do they work?
Because core resources are not earmarked for specific activities, UNFPA uses them, flexibly and responsibly, to respond to women and girls as needs arise or evolve.
Core resources bring live-saving UNFPA assistance into refugee camps and marginalized communities. They enable us to be present before, during and after crises.
They maintain UNFPA’s global presence and strategic long-term investments in changes that take time, such as public policies centred on human rights. They are indispensable in shifting social norms to stop gender and other forms of discrimination.
Core resources give UNFPA scope to test promising innovations that meet more needs at a lower cost – and take countries to the forefront of sexual and reproductive health care.
In a time of many uncertainties, UNFPA relies on core resources to build robust systems that detect and prevent risks and allow us to ensure integrity and transparency in our operations.
A commitment to core resources is needed more than ever
The mission of UNFPA has never been more critical than today as global megatrends reshape our world. The climate crisis is worsening. Record numbers of people are on the move. Women’s health and rights are under threat from multiple directions.
To meet the magnitude of current demands, UNFPA has to act fast and flexibly, based on strong evidence and the best expertise. Robust core resources make this possible.
Core resources help us prepare for the impacts of the megatrends on women and girls, and build confidence in the collective action required to complete the vision of the landmark Programme of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development.
Investing in women and girls has proven economic benefits and high returns on investment. Core resources enable UNFPA to make the case for investment, take actions that prevent higher costs, and promote the dividends of peace and people-centred development.
Crises are not predictable. But an immediate response needs to be. With core funds, UNFPA is prepared to safeguard the health and rights of women and girls at some of the most fraught moments of their lives.
UNFPA drew on core funding to send 1.1 million units of oxytocin to Sudan in 2023, enough to make labour safer for over 367,000 pregnant women as the country succumbed to conflict. A crucial shipment of 163,900 packs of Misoprostol cut risks of obstetric haemorrhage, still the leading cause of maternal deaths.
With a combination of core funds and flexible funding through a multi-partner trust fund, UNFPA launched a mobile maternity service in regions of Somalia with large clusters of displaced people. Five units serve nearly 400,000 people. Qualified midwives and health-care providers make pregnancy and delivery safer, offer options for contraception, and provide confidential, competent clinical management of rape.
UNFPA has used core resources to pioneer solutions to a once-neglected element of humanitarian action: menstrual hygiene management. In 2023, we provided about 1.2 million dignity kits in 50 countries struck by conflict and natural disasters, including Armenia, Nepal, the State of Palestine and Türkiye.
With climate change posing new vulnerabilities and risks, UNFPA invested core funds in Morocco to build the capacities of a local coalition of NGOs. It works with women in communities to anticipate and reduce risks, such as the potential for higher rates of gender-based violence due to climate-related stresses.
“Our prepositioned stock of supplies and core funding make it possible for us to be on the ground within 48 hours of an emergency. We can immediately transport supplies and deploy staff and partners to reach communities even in the most mountainous parts of Nepal.”
Thirty-three per cent of core resources go to the least developed countries, including the hardest-to-reach communities within them.
Core resources helped to eliminate contraceptive shortages in 47 health facilities in a resource-scarce region of Benin.
A door-to-door awareness campaign in Guinea resulted in the provision of family planning and cervical cancer screening services to nearly 100,000 women in low-income communities.
With LGBTQIA+ people in Cabo Verde experiencing discrimination in health care, UNFPA used core resources to train over 60 doctors, psychologists, nurses and social workers to provide rights-based, inclusive services.
Shifting discriminatory social norms and taboos around sexuality and reproduction calls for persistence and timely and flexible funding, in countries and globally.
UNFPA’s thought leadership makes an important contribution to the data and knowledge needed for governments and communities to design and implement rights-based policies and programmes.
The flagship State of World Population reports are funded with core resources. The most recent report provided evidence to resolve inequalities that remain among the most significant obstacles to realizing the 1994 Programme of Action.
Core resources empower young people to make choices about their bodies and their lives, such as by redressing gaps in comprehensive sexuality education, which is still far from universally accessible. Jordan lacks a formal national framework for comprehensive sexuality education, but with core resources, UNFPA developed different means to support it, such as a toolkit that reached nearly 29,000 students and training that improved the skills of counsellors in 90 schools. A media partnership with the youth-run Kidoz Times drew young people into exploring how “health is more important than taboos.” They are now championing positive attitudes towards sexual and reproductive health among their peers.
UNFPA combined a mix of resources, including core funds, to sponsor a caravan of artists that travelled across Guinea Bissau. Creative public performances engaged over 7,000 people in questioning and changing norms that perpetuate female genital mutilation.
UNFPA’s leading global role in population data supports accurate, rights-based public policies and investments. Core resources have assisted 65 countries to conduct censuses.
Digitalization of the census in Benin made data collection more efficient and accurate, and improved the management of national programmes based on population needs.
Mauritania’s census benefited from support for national resource mobilization, learning through South-South cooperation and access to mapping software to apply data in development planning.
In Senegal, core funds established scholarships for young women to become demographers, paving the way for a new generation of women leaders in the male-dominated field of statistics and demography.
Building relationships is integral to navigating complex policy reforms and triggering expanded investments that embed changes over time.
In Lebanon, with core resources, UNFPA maintained close ties with line ministries and the national women’s commission, and shaped national strategies for women, older persons and persons with disabilities – a comprehensive approach to leaving no one behind. Core resources helped to strengthen the health system in Kosovo through a policy choice to integrate cervical cancer screening in primary health care.
Advances on Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in Burkina Faso brought women and young people into policymaking aimed at forging peace and deepening social cohesion. Initial core investments triggered additional project funding of $17 million. Core resources have also been the foundation for UNFPA’s lasting support for national family planning. Among other achievements, the number of new users has jumped by 40 per cent. A strong track record helped to mobilize over $10 million to improve access for adolescents and young people.
United Nations coordination boosts efficiency and impact.
In Chad, core funds lent momentum to the combined efforts of UNFPA, UNDP, OHCHR and UNICEF to scale up the response to gender-based violence.
Extending services in two regions drew additional donor finance for services in five more, helping to uphold the rights and safety of survivors and rapidly increase the number of prosecutions.
With core resources, UNFPA leads the Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility, a global coordination forum for humanitarian actors. It links over 2,600 international and national organizations, including a growing share of women’s rights groups. In 2023, global and regional teams provided specialist support to country teams in more than 40 places of crisis. Their efforts extended immediate, skilled and survivor-centric assistance, from medical care to legal advice, to both prevent and respond to gender-based violence.
Core funds keep oversight strong – and sustain constant learning and improvement.
Oversight functions make every dollar count in realizing UNFPA’s mission. Audits and evaluations steer efficient, transparent, accountable operations. With core resources, UNFPA in 2023 improved evaluation quality and reach based on a new policy and increased the capacity of the independent evaluation office. These investments will position it to better harness innovations, including on the frontier of artificial intelligence, and engage more effectively with the broader United Nations system.
By providing real-time, actionable feedback, evaluations keep UNFPA learning on track even when the world is changing fast. Recent evaluations helped refine humanitarian preparedness, including through a new emphasis on pre-positioning supplies.
In 2023, for the first time, UNFPA pre-positioned $5 million in lifesaving operational items and security equipment.
Evaluations have guided an organizational embrace of adaptive management and unlocked additional resources for climate-vulnerable small island developing States. They have also supported a strategy to bring the collective power of the United Nations system behind accelerated action on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Core resources give UNFPA the flexibility to test and scale up some of the most promising innovations in sexual and reproductive health care. Sierra Leone’s new pregnancy registration and service tracking app (PReSTrack), available to patients served by 39 health facilities, detects potential pregnancy complications before they become life-threatening. A similar app for patients at 40 maternity centres in Bangladesh, “Ma Jaan” or “My Life”, lives up to its name by sending pregnant women to the nearest hospital if an emergency arises.
Crises are not predictable. But an immediate response needs to be. With core funds, UNFPA is prepared to safeguard the health and rights of women and girls at some of the most fraught moments of their lives.
UNFPA drew on core funding to send 1.1 million units of oxytocin to Sudan in 2023, enough to make labour safer for over 367,000 pregnant women as the country succumbed to conflict. A crucial shipment of 163,900 packs of Misoprostol cut risks of obstetric haemorrhage, still the leading cause of maternal deaths.
With a combination of core funds and flexible funding through a multi-partner trust fund, UNFPA launched a mobile maternity service in regions of Somalia with large clusters of displaced people. Five units serve nearly 400,000 people. Qualified midwives and health-care providers make pregnancy and delivery safer, offer options for contraception, and provide confidential, competent clinical management of rape.
UNFPA has used core resources to pioneer solutions to a once-neglected element of humanitarian action: menstrual hygiene management. In 2023, we provided about 1.2 million dignity kits in 50 countries struck by conflict and natural disasters, including Armenia, Nepal, the State of Palestine and Türkiye.
With climate change posing new vulnerabilities and risks, UNFPA invested core funds in Morocco to build the capacities of a local coalition of NGOs. It works with women in communities to anticipate and reduce risks, such as the potential for higher rates of gender-based violence due to climate-related stresses.
“Our prepositioned stock of supplies and core funding make it possible for us to be on the ground within 48 hours of an emergency. We can immediately transport supplies and deploy staff and partners to reach communities even in the most mountainous parts of Nepal.”
—Won Young Hong, Representative of UNFPA Nepal.
Core funds reach marginalized communities.
Thirty-three per cent of core resources go to the least developed countries, including the hardest-to-reach communities within them.
Core resources helped to eliminate contraceptive shortages in 47 health facilities in a resource-scarce region of Benin.
A door-to-door awareness campaign in Guinea resulted in the provision of family planning and cervical cancer screening services to nearly 100,000 women in low-income communities.
With LGBTQIA+ people in Cabo Verde experiencing discrimination in health care, UNFPA used core resources to train over 60 doctors, psychologists, nurses and social workers to provide rights-based, inclusive services.
Shifting discriminatory social norms and taboos around sexuality and reproduction calls for persistence and timely and flexible funding, in countries and globally.
UNFPA’s thought leadership makes an important contribution to the data and knowledge needed for governments and communities to design and implement rights-based policies and programmes.
The flagship State of World Population reports are funded with core resources. The most recent report provided evidence to resolve inequalities that remain among the most significant obstacles to realizing the 1994 Programme of Action.
Core resources empower young people to make choices about their bodies and their lives, such as by redressing gaps in comprehensive sexuality education, which is still far from universally accessible. Jordan lacks a formal national framework for comprehensive sexuality education, but with core resources, UNFPA developed different means to support it, such as a toolkit that reached nearly 29,000 students and training that improved the skills of counsellors in 90 schools. A media partnership with the youth-run Kidoz Times drew young people into exploring how “health is more important than taboos.” They are now championing positive attitudes towards sexual and reproductive health among their peers.
UNFPA combined a mix of resources, including core funds, to sponsor a caravan of artists that travelled across Guinea Bissau. Creative public performances engaged over 7,000 people in questioning and changing norms that perpetuate female genital mutilation.
UNFPA’s leading global role in population data supports accurate, rights-based public policies and investments. Core resources have assisted 65 countries to conduct censuses.
Digitalization of the census in Benin made data collection more efficient and accurate, and improved the management of national programmes based on population needs.
Mauritania’s census benefited from support for national resource mobilization, learning through South-South cooperation and access to mapping software to apply data in development planning.
In Senegal, core funds established scholarships for young women to become demographers, paving the way for a new generation of women leaders in the male-dominated field of statistics and demography.
Building relationships is integral to navigating complex policy reforms and triggering expanded investments that embed changes over time.
In Lebanon, with core resources, UNFPA maintained close ties with line ministries and the national women’s commission, and shaped national strategies for women, older persons and persons with disabilities – a comprehensive approach to leaving no one behind. Core resources helped to strengthen the health system in Kosovo through a policy choice to integrate cervical cancer screening in primary health care.
Advances on Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security in Burkina Faso brought women and young people into policymaking aimed at forging peace and deepening social cohesion. Initial core investments triggered additional project funding of $17 million. Core resources have also been the foundation for UNFPA’s lasting support for national family planning. Among other achievements, the number of new users has jumped by 40 per cent. A strong track record helped to mobilize over $10 million to improve access for adolescents and young people.
United Nations coordination boosts efficiency and impact.
In Chad, core funds lent momentum to the combined efforts of UNFPA, UNDP, OHCHR and UNICEF to scale up the response to gender-based violence.
Extending services in two regions drew additional donor finance for services in five more, helping to uphold the rights and safety of survivors and rapidly increase the number of prosecutions.
With core resources, UNFPA leads the Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility, a global coordination forum for humanitarian actors. It links over 2,600 international and national organizations, including a growing share of women’s rights groups. In 2023, global and regional teams provided specialist support to country teams in more than 40 places of crisis. Their efforts extended immediate, skilled and survivor-centric assistance, from medical care to legal advice, to both prevent and respond to gender-based violence.
Core funds keep oversight strong – and sustain constant learning and improvement.
Oversight functions make every dollar count in realizing UNFPA’s mission. Audits and evaluations steer efficient, transparent, accountable operations. With core resources, UNFPA in 2023 improved evaluation quality and reach based on a new policy and increased the capacity of the independent evaluation office. These investments will position it to better harness innovations, including on the frontier of artificial intelligence, and engage more effectively with the broader United Nations system.
By providing real-time, actionable feedback, evaluations keep UNFPA learning on track even when the world is changing fast. Recent evaluations helped refine humanitarian preparedness, including through a new emphasis on pre-positioning supplies.
In 2023, for the first time, UNFPA pre-positioned $5 million in lifesaving operational items and security equipment.
Evaluations have guided an organizational embrace of adaptive management and unlocked additional resources for climate-vulnerable small island developing States. They have also supported a strategy to bring the collective power of the United Nations system behind accelerated action on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Core resources give UNFPA the flexibility to test and scale up some of the most promising innovations in sexual and reproductive health care. Sierra Leone’s new pregnancy registration and service tracking app (PReSTrack), available to patients served by 39 health facilities, detects potential pregnancy complications before they become life-threatening. A similar app for patients at 40 maternity centres in Bangladesh, “Ma Jaan” or “My Life”, lives up to its name by sending pregnant women to the nearest hospital if an emergency arises.
Contributions of core resources signal solidarity and commitment and provide hope for the 10-year-old girl and all those we serve.
UNFPA remains profoundly grateful to all our core contributors. All contributions, of whatever size, make a meaningful difference, including in diversifying our donor base and mitigating the risk of disruptions to programmes.
In 2023, 95 government partners provided $384 million in core resources. This investment triggered others since core funding seeds resource mobilization overall. Every $1 in core raised in 2023 helped generate $2.70 in other resources.
Around two thirds of UNFPA core resources goes directly to programmes. The rest funds operations that make our programmes possible.
“Core resources are powerful because of how UNFPA spends them. They support programmes in over 150 countries and fund the operations that make those programmes possible.”
Dr. Natalia Kanem
UNFPA Executive Director
UNFPA core contributors in 2023
UNFPA encourages multi-year core contributions, which enable programmes to be delivered in a predictable and sustainable manner.
UNFPA is committed to ensuring transparency and visibility by recognizing donors for their core contributions and the results achieved thanks to their partnership, with the hashtag #PartnersAtCore.
*Multiyear agreement.
Sincere thanks to the governments of:
Albania
Algeria
Angola*
Armenia*
Australia*
Austria
Belgium*
Bhutan
Botswana*
Burkina Faso*
Burundi
Cameroon
Canada
Chile
China
Comoros*
Costa Rica
Cuba
Cyprus
Denmark*
Dominican Republic
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea*
Estonia
Eswatini*
Finland
France
Gabon*
Gambia
Georgia*
Germany
Ghana*
Guyana
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iraq*
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan*
Lao People’s Democratic Republic
Luxembourg*
Madagascar*
Malaysia
Mauritania*
Mauritius*
Mexico
Republic of Mongolia
Micronesia (Federated States of)
Morocco
Nepal
Netherlands*
New Zealand*
Nicaragua
Nigeria
North Macedonia
Norway
Oman
Panama*
Peru
Philippines*
Portugal
Qatar
Republic of Korea
Romania
Russian Federation
Rwanda*
Saudi Arabia
Senegal*
Serbia
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden*
Switzerland*
Tajikistan
Thailand
Togo*
Trinidad and Tobago*
Tunisia
Turkmenistan
Uganda
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland*
© UNFPA Sudan
© UNFPA Somalia
© UNFPA Palestine/Bisan Owda
© UNFPA Armenia/Aspram Manukyan
© UNFPA Nepal/Bikash Karki
© UNFPA Türkiye/Gözde Kumru Uçak
© UNFPA Morocco
rmb@unfpa.org
