Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF). Member States In the margins of the 2025 CSO–UN Dialogue on Peacebuilding.
Statement delivered by Mr Tormod C. Endresen
Ambassador - Permanent Representative to the UN
and other International Organizations
Check against delivery
9 December 2025
These were 90 minutes well spent. Thank you, everyone.
Many thanks to the Women, Peace and Humanitarian Fund and to our cosponsors Austria, Belgium, Colombia and Chile for bringing us together here today. And thanks to everyone in the room - for your interest and engagement.
I greatly value this opportunity to participate in this closed-door meeting, where we can engage in confidential and strategic exchange, open discussions and learning.
A very special thank you to the women leaders from Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, and the DRC - for your powerful insights. You demonstrate what this is all about.
Your expertise is indispensable to any credible peace effort. Your participation in events like this one - is key to calibrate the work that we do on multilateral levels, so that our efforts here reflect the realities that you meet in your respective countries.
Norway’s partnership with WPHF and RRW
Norway’s commitment and support to the Women, Peace and Humanitarian Fund, are closely linked to our broader Women, Peace and Security work, our ongoing efforts for women human rights defenders, localization and promoting women’s participation in peace and reconciliation processes. Inclusive peace processes do lead to more widely explored and owned solutions, and therefore more sustainable and better results.
We are proud to have supported different WPHF funding windows since 2018. And we are a committed Funding Board member this year.
Over the last three years, the Women, Peace and Humanitarian Fund has included the Rapid Response Window on women’s participation in peace processes and implementation of peace agreements.
This sustained engagement has translated into concrete results, allowing rapid interventions and direct support to women-led civil society organizations - across a range of crises and political transitions.
The Impact Study of the Rapid Response Window Phase 1, which was presented at the Phase 2 launch event last year, documented tangible outcomes and lessons learned. And it underscored the added value of flexible, demand-driven funding for women peacebuilders.
Norway’s support focuses on flexible funding. We recognize that this is becoming increasingly important in the current funding climate.
The importance of mechanisms that convert commitment into actions and influence
Despite the fact that it is 25 years since landmark resolution 1325 was adopted, too many challenges remain for women’s full participation and influence.
In a context of rising conflict, shrinking civic space and growing militarization, mechanisms like the Rapid Response Window are vital to move from rhetorical commitments to practical support, that allows women to shape peace and political processes.
Even in times of heightened political sensitivity, strategic entry points remain - from humanitarian access, ceasefire discussions, community dialogues. In all of these “entry points” women’s leadership is decisive. Women’s leadership can make the difference between fragile arrangements and more inclusive outcomes that last.
Way forward
Today has once again proven to us, that women peacebuilders are indispensable partners. It should be no surprise to us that peace is only possible and sustainable when women as well as men are fully part of shaping it. Yet, it appears that at this point in time it must be repeated.
Norway is committed to supporting mechanisms that enable women’s perspectives to directly shape outcomes.
Our funding for the WPHF is based on our appreciation of the fund’s flexibility and ability to reach - so many local women’s organizations and networks at the local level. In a time where there is increasing focus on local responses, you are giving us tools to do exactly this.
The Rapid Response Window is a unique, high-impact instrument, for local women actors on the frontlines. It addresses the need for sustained, flexible, and predictable funding that allows women peacebuilders to act quickly and safely in rapidly evolving contexts. We have heard how it is done here this morning.
I hope this event has given you all, as well as me, further encouragement to join forces for - and with - women peacebuilders on the frontlines of crises and peacebuilding efforts.
Thank you.