Permanent Mission of India
New York
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First Regular Session of UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

Agenda item 2

Engagement with UN80 Initiative

Statement by Ms. Bhavika Mangalanandan, First Secretary
18 February 2026

Madam President,

We take this opportunity to congratulate you on your election as President of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women Executive Board Bureau for 2026 and assure you of India’s full support and constructive engagement as a member of the Board.

2. As the United Nations advances the UN80 Initiative, with its emphasis on renewal, efficiency and results-driven multilateralism, India will look into the assessment once made available to examine the mandate review of UN Women in a constructive and forward-looking spirit. Our shared objective under UN80 must be to ensure that UN Women emerges as a more impact-oriented entity, delivering tangible results thereby empowering the lives of women and girls particularly in developing countries.

3. Going by the spirit of UN80’s call to move from process to performance, India believes that UN Women’s work must be firmly anchored in ground-level implementation. While normative frameworks and policy dialogue are helpful, the balance must tilt towards action oriented programmes in the field that translate commitments into measurable and tangible outcomes. Reducing overreliance on conferences, seminars and consultative processes, UN Women should prioritize capacity building, skill development and service delivery, resulting in gains in health, education, nutrition, digital access and women’s economic participation.

Madam President,

4. The Executive Board, has a critical role in guiding UN Women toward results based delivery at scale. India’s own experience from women-led self-help groups to nationwide initiatives in financial inclusion, health insurance, sanitation, digital empowerment and entrepreneurship demonstrates that transformative change occurs when programmes are locally adapted, nationally owned,and implemented at scale.

5. In an era of global liquidity constraints and shrinking development finance, UN80 calls for a disciplined focus on core mandates. India therefore stresses that UN Women must avoid dilution of resources across peripheral or tangential issues. Strategic prioritization is essential to ensure efficiency, credibility and tangible impact. Programmes must be demand-driven, responding to nationally identified needs and priorities, rather than shaped predominantly by donor preferences. UN Women must deliver what developing countries genuinely require, consistent with the UN80 objective of restoring trust and relevance in multilateral action.

Thank you, Madam President.