Strengthening Civil Society Capacities and Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships

Women around the world continue to face challenges in accessing equal rights in economic, social, and political life.

Civil society organizations and women’s movements have an important role in promoting reforms, influencing policies, and strengthening the legal frameworks that underpin gender equality and women’s rights.

The partner organizations active in Türkiye’s vibrant women’s movement are committed to ‘Leaving No One Behind.’ They provide services to the most vulnerable, including women with disabilities, refugee women, and rural women. Women’s organizations actively advocate on women’s behalf with the ‘duty bearers’ – those responsible for implementing Türkiye’s national and international commitments to women’s rights. Their knowledge, experience, and leadership are vital to Türkiye achieving its targets in the 2030 Agenda and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

UN Women in Action in Türkiye 

UN Women in Türkiye supports civil society organizations through its convening power, advocacy efforts, and catalytic programmes. Its initiatives support women’s leadership, gender responsive refugee efforts, ending child, early and forced marriages, and eliminating violence against women and girls. UN Women creates platforms and opportunities that bring together civil society with policy makers and relevant stakeholders, ensuring that civil society voices, perspectives and demands are considered at all levels of policymaking. Such support means that women’s organizations can foster lasting and transformative change towards gender equality. 

Through the Global Strategic Plan 2022 – 2025 and the Country Strategic Note for Türkiye, UN Women in Türkiye gives priority to engagement with civil society as advocacy and knowledge partners. Civil society groups also serve as implementing partners in advancing women’s economic, political, and social rights. 

In 2021, UN Women launched the Strong Civic Space for Gender Equality project in Türkiye. With European Union funding of Euro 4.5 million, the project helps women’s rights groups, women-led civil society organizations and other relevant rights-based groups to improve their capacity to influence national and local women’s rights and gender equality agendas.

Working with civil society groups as implementing partners and advocates, UN Women Türkiye helps enhance their access to capacity development opportunities and resources. It provides technical assistance and grants for networking, knowledge and experience sharing, capacity development, data- and evidence-based advocacy and for building partnerships with public institutions, local authorities, and academic institutions. For more information, see the project brief here.