UNDP is committed to making gender equality, a basic human right and a necessity for a sustainable world, a reality. Women's empowerment and gender equality are vital to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which envisions a world “of universal respect for human rights and human dignity” in which “every woman and girl enjoys full gender equality and all legal, social and economic barriers to their empowerment have been removed.”  

The UNDP Gender Equality Strategy 2018-2021, the third such strategy, provides a road map to elevate and integrate gender equality into all aspects of UNDP's work to reduce poverty, build resilience and achieve peace in communities and territories, helping to accelerate progress towards the 2030 Agenda. In particular, the strategy delineates the UNDP commitment to:

• Strengthen UNDP interventions tackling structural changes that accelerate gender equality and women’s empowerment;
• Strengthen the integration of gender equality into UNDP's work on the environment, energy and crisis response and recovery;
• Better align UNDP programming with the centrality of gender equality and women’s empowerment to the achievement of sustainable development; and
• Build upon institutional mechanisms for gender mainstreaming such as the Gender Equality Seal and the Gender Marker, which provide measurable standards and incentives to drive development progress.