Improving Civil Society Engagement in the Global Financing Facility: One year on from Oslo

In November 2018, in Oslo, Norway, the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF) Trust Fund had its first replenishment to raise additional funding to expand support to all 50 eligible countries by 2023. However, the consensus across the civil society sector is that, in order to deliver on its ambition, alongside expanding, the GFF needs to implement some urgent improvements.

Save the Children’s April 2018 briefing, An Opportunity to Get it Right, encouraged donors to contribute to the replenishment. It also suggested four key recommendations for reform of the GFF.

It has been a year since the replenishment, where the GFF Secretariat committed to support civil society engagement, including through strengthening the multi-stakeholder country platforms and a small grant mechanism to support civil society organisations’ (CSOs) work. The GFF has also expanded to nine more countries. The expansion was a perfect opportunity for the GFF to act on its commitments, which we believe will help improve access to information for civil society and its funding needs for effective engagement with the GFF’s overall outcomes.

This briefing reviews progress on those commitments to gain understanding of what the GFF has delivered since Oslo and to highlight any existing or new challenges. We examine some of the key elements and most-used mediums for information-sharing and civil society engagement in the GFF. We also assess current funding allocation for civil society’s work.

Since Oslo, some progress has been made on the commitments to support civil society engagement, however, in spite of this progress in supporting civil society engagement, significant challenges remain.