For a humanitarian reset that preserves what is essential and strengthens the leadership 
of WLOs
On behalf of the CAFI Network — an alliance of more than 200 Women-Led Organizations 
(WLOs) in humanitarian crisis contexts — together with all signatory organizations and 
individuals, we issue an urgent call for the so-called “humanitarian reset” to be a real 
opportunity to build a fairer, more effective, and more coherent architecture, without 
undoing the progress that has saved lives.
We call for four minimum and urgent measures:
1. Recognize and guarantee WLOs and national organizations a meaningful place in 
humanitarian decision-making spaces — global, regional, and national — as 
leaders with technical expertise, community legitimacy, and territorial 
commitment.
2. Create an independent global body specialized in Gender-Based Violence (GBV), 
outside the Protection Cluster, to ensure continuity, quality, and specialization in 
the response. This body must be co-led by WLOs and UNFPA, with UNFPA providing 
the initial leadership and a roadmap to progressively transfer full leadership to 
WLOs, while maintaining the technical expertise and legitimacy of the current GBV 
Area of Responsibility (GBV AoR).
3. Ensure direct, multi-year, flexible, and context-appropriate funding to sustain 
WLO responses in territories, recognizing that we are highly effective actors, rooted
in their communities and with proven ability to maintain and expand specialized 
services, in particular GBV services.
4. Guarantee that any transformation of the humanitarian architecture is guided by 
fundamental commitments: human rights, gender equality, transformative 
localization, and protection as a central pillar, ensuring that GBV remains a priority, 
with strong structures, clear leadership, and dedicated resources.
We defend these spaces not out of inertia, but because of their vital role.
These spaces have enabled post-rape care, specialized case management, psychosocial 
support, protection pathways, safe spaces, and coordination with community leaderships 
— even in territories where states do not reach or cannot act.
Dismantling them, or subsuming them in structures that do not prioritize GBV, means 
weakening the response and putting lives at risk.
We acknowledge that the humanitarian system must change: simplify, redistribute 
resources, and increase efficiency.
But these goals must never come at the expense of gender equality or of the life-saving 
response for those who face the most extreme forms of violence and exclusion in crises —
people who are too often sidelined when funding shrinks — and whose right to live free 
from violence is non-negotiable.
WLOs have the legitimacy, technical capacity, and political vision to co-lead global 
coordination on GBV.
We have proven this by sustaining services in contexts of war, forced displacement, climate 
crisis, and natural disasters.
The leadership we propose must be built in an orderly and co-responsible way, with initial 
leadership from UNFPA and the GBV AoR, and with guaranteed funding to sustain 
infrastructure, teams, and quality services.
Our proposal fully aligns with the global commitments already made by the humanitarian 
community to ensure that GBV prevention, response, and mitigation are present from the 
outset of any emergency.
The mechanism we propose — small, low-cost, and strategically impactful — would ensure
that the voices of WLOs and specialized expertise are permanently present in global, 
regional, and national decision-making spaces.
It would serve to keep GBV visible in the humanitarian architecture and to ensure that 
decisions are made with those of us working on the frontlines, thus reinforcing the 
principles and collective objectives that the international community has already 
recognized as essential.
A transformative approach must acknowledge that mainstreaming is no substitute for
specialization.
What we propose is the next step in the path that the GBV sector has already taken towards 
transformative localization: an architecture that engages on equal terms with the 
humanitarian system, at all levels, and that has the resources to act with independence, 
effectiveness, and legitimacy.
The system can and must transform — but by adjusting without dismantling, simplifying 
without silencing, and advancing without excluding.
There is no possible response if the mechanisms that have sustained life in the worst crises 
are weakened.
We stand ready to contribute to this change.
On behalf of the CAFI Network and the undersigned organizations and individuals, we 
extend this letter as a political commitment to participate, to propose, and to transform.
We do so out of the conviction that a fairer architecture must build on what has been 
achieved, strengthen collective action, and keep at its center the life, dignity, and leadership 
of those sustaining the response on the ground.