‘Women are paying the price of wars they have almost no power to end’: The UN Secretary-General’s Report 2026

The Brief

• The UN Secretary-General’s 2026 report on Women, Peace and Security was launched on 26 October. Many of its headline findings concern 2025.
• Women averaged just 5% of negotiators across 57 peace processes reviewed in 2025.
• UN Women’s launch materials connect conflict with rising violence, heavier unpaid care responsibilities and threats to women’s organisations.
• Gumbonzvanda’s appeal calls for civilian protection, accountability, women’s decision-making authority and funding for women-led peacebuilding.
• Change in Content’s analysis: Institutions must recognise women’s existing work and give them influence over the decisions that shape recovery.

The UN Secretary-General’s Report 2026 & His Remarks

The UN Secretary-General’s Report 2026 on Women, Peace and Security arrives with a question that demands more than sympathy: How can women carry so much responsibility for surviving conflict while having so little influence over ending it?

Presenting the report on 26 October, UN Women Deputy Executive Director Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda put that imbalance at the centre of her prepared remarks. Her warning, reproduced in this article’s headline, connects the human cost of war with the political exclusion that follows it.

The report, formally titled Women and peace and security and numbered S/2026/758, is dated 25 September 2026. Its public launch came a month later, ahead of the Security Council’s annual discussion of the agenda. Publication year and measurement year must therefore be read separately.

For Change in Content, the central issue is women’s authority: who helps define security, who allocates recovery resources and whose experience reaches the negotiating table.

What the report’s launch materials reveal

Sources: UN Women’s launch materials and facts-and-figures summary; PRIO’s conflict-exposure research. These indicators describe different populations and should not be treated as a single combined dataset.

The figures require care. One in four civilian deaths does not mean women were the majority of those killed. A verified sexual-violence count cannot reveal the full scale of abuse. Living near a deadly conflict event does not mean every individual experienced the same harm.

Precision strengthens the story. There is no need to stretch evidence that already describes such severe failures of protection.

Women’s work continues when public systems fail

UN Women’s release reports that women and girls in conflict-affected countries spend five times as many hours on unpaid domestic and care work as men and boys. It also places around 170 million women and girls at the intersection of conflict and extreme poverty.

Consider what a destroyed water supply means in a household. Someone must find another source, work out whether the journey is safe and bring enough back. When a school closes, childcare does not disappear. When a hospital becomes inaccessible, the responsibility for a sick relative remains.

These are examples of how damage to public infrastructure becomes additional work inside families. That work consumes time that might otherwise support paid employment, education, rest or participation in community decisions. Recovery planning should therefore ask who is carrying it and what services would reduce it.

Celebrating women’s resilience can become evasive when it leaves that responsibility untouched. The relevant response is investment in functioning services, income security and the ability to participate in decisions without abandoning dependants.

5% exposes a failure to share authority

Women’s limited representation in negotiations is especially troubling because Gumbonzvanda describes women already mediating local disputes, helping families reach safety and supporting survivors. Her appeal is to bring them into peace negotiations with decision-making power.

An invitation to tell a painful story is different from the authority to amend an agreement. Institutions need to be able to explain whether women can influence the agenda, negotiate provisions and participate in implementation after the public meeting ends.

There are practical questions behind that standard. Are women’s organisations involved before positions have hardened? Is participation funded? Can delegates travel safely, obtain interpretation and arrange care? Can women disagree without losing access or facing retaliation?

Women also have different political positions and lived experiences. A process that includes one prominent woman cannot assume it has heard displaced women, women with disabilities, minority communities or grassroots organisers.

This extends the concern in Change in Content’s coverage of reversals in women’s political leadership: visibility alone cannot tell us who has authority over consequential decisions.

A ceasefire must account for the violence people continue to face

Gumbonzvanda’s prepared remarks flag that none of the 13 ceasefire agreements she references explicitly prohibited conflict-related sexual violence.

That is a finding about agreement language. It does not mean sexual violence becomes lawful when an agreement fails to mention it. It does raise questions about what the parties identify, monitor and act upon when they promise to stop violence.

For survivors, the practical test includes access to healthcare, confidential reporting, protection from retaliation and a credible response to perpetrators. For negotiators and those monitoring agreements, the task is to make those concerns operational.

An agreement can reduce fighting while leaving other serious forms of insecurity unresolved. Asking whose safety its provisions address should be part of assessing its success.

Peacebuilding needs dependable funding

UN Women’s launch release reports that 40% of women’s organisations in crisis-affected settings expect temporary or permanent closure within the following year because of funding shortages. This is a warning about anticipated closures, not a count of organisations that have already shut.

For donors, the practical implications go beyond announcing another short project. An organisation may need rent, staff salaries, secure communications, transport and support for workers exposed to trauma. Those costs determine whether it can keep answering requests for help.

Change in Content’s view is that funding arrangements should recognise this operating reality. Multi-year support, proportionate application requirements and flexibility during emergencies deserve serious consideration. So does paying for the time spent contributing to consultations.

Local organisations should be able to help determine what recovery requires. Treating them solely as delivery partners risks extracting their knowledge while leaving budgetary authority elsewhere.

What meaningful implementation would look like

Gumbonzvanda’s appeal brings together ending armed conflict, protecting civilians, upholding international law, ending impunity and supporting women’s participation and organisations.

The following are Change in Content’s practical tests for that agenda, rather than a verbatim checklist from the report:

For readers in India, this global report belongs in the conversation about women and power. Its findings should retain their conflict-specific context. The wider principle is relevant wherever institutions benefit from women’s labour while restricting their authority.

Our examination of women in leadership trends in 2026 asks who gets access to consequential roles. Here, the stakes include the terms on which communities survive and rebuild.

Change in perspective: Recognise the work, share the power

Women should not have to demonstrate extraordinary resilience before institutions recognise their right to shape the future. Nor should their inclusion depend on a promise that women will invariably agree or produce better outcomes. Participation is a right; diverse experience also gives decision-makers a fuller understanding of what their choices mean.

The strongest response to this report would be visible in the next negotiating delegation, the next funding decision and the next recovery plan. Women’s organisations need resources to continue their work. Women affected by conflict need influence over the decisions made in their name.

The question for those who hold power is what they will change before the next annual report records the consequences.

Sources

1. UN Women: Gumbonzvanda’s prepared remarks, 26 October 2026. Full page retrieved and read. Marked “As prepared”; do not describe quotations as independently checked against the delivered recording.
2. UN Security Council: 2026 Secretary-General’s report register. Confirms S/2026/758 and 25 September date. Report link.
3. UN Women: launch release, 26 October 2026. Full page retrieved and read.
4. UN Women Australia: facts and figures, 27 October 2026. Supplies the 20-conflict coverage and negotiator average.
5. PRIO: Women Exposed to Armed Conflict, 1990–2025. Confirms approximately 756 million and the geographical definition.