UNIFEM is the women's fund at the United Nations. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programmes and strategies to foster women's empowerment and gender equality. Placing the advancement of women's human rights at the centre of all of its efforts, UNIFEM focuses its activities on four strategic areas:

(1) reducing feminized poverty,

(2) ending violence against women,

(3) reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls, and

(4) achieving gender equality in democratic governance in times of peace as well as war.

UNIFEM was created by the UN General Assembly resolution in 1976, following a call for from women’s organizations attending the 1975 UN 1st conference on women in Mexico City.

The whole idea behind UNIFEM is to help women to help themselves. UNIFEM is the United Nation’s Development Fund for Women. This fund provides financial and technical assistance to innovate programmes and strategies that promote women’s human rights, political participation and economic security.

Presently, UNIFEM administers a portfolio of more than 150 ongoing projects throughout the developing countries. UNIFEM works autonomously with UNDP (United Nations Development Program). It works through a network of 15 regional offices in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe and the commonwealth of independent States.

There are 15 active National Committees that are supporting UNIFEM’s projects in over 100 developing countries.

UNIFEM co-operates closely with UNHCR on the areas of refugee women.