The Women’s Humanitarian Leadership Fund (WHLF) represents a transformative approach to supporting Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs) in Ukraine, addressing long-standing gaps in funding, decision-making, and recognition within the humanitarian sector. Despite global commitments to localization, WROs often remain marginalized, underfunded, and excluded from strategic decision-making, even as they provide critical services to communities in crisis.
The WHLF pilot, launched by Oxfam and ActionAid in 2025, sought to shift both resources and power to WROs by providing flexible, short-term grants that prioritize autonomy, institutional resilience, and learning. Unlike traditional donor models, the Fund trusted WROs to set their own priorities, adapt budgets, and respond to changing circumstances, emphasizing partnership, mutual accountability, and feminist principles.
Twelve Ukrainian WROs benefited from the initiative, supporting diverse communities including survivors of gender-based violence, internally displaced persons, LGBTQIA+ people, and Roma women. The Fund also fostered peer learning, collaboration, and capacity-building, helping organizations strengthen leadership, systems, and resilience while reframing risk as relational and contextual rather than purely procedural.
Partners consistently highlighted the benefits of flexibility, trust-based reporting, and supportive due diligence, though they noted the need for longer-term, predictable funding to sustain impact, reduce burnout, and consolidate institutional reforms.
The WHLF demonstrated that feminist, locally led funding can enhance organizational capacity, empower marginalized actors, and promote equitable humanitarian leadership, providing a model for replication in other crisis settings. The initiative’s lessons emphasize the importance of sustained multi-year funding, shared learning, collaboration across international actors, and meaningful participation of WROs in decision-making as essential for building a more inclusive and effective humanitarian system.
