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The Women Deliver 2026 Conference (WD2026) opened in Narrm (Melbourne) on Monday 27 April 2026, with a call to fundamentally rebalance how the world delivers gender equality.
The Point ESG News Site will be reporting live from Women Deliver 2026 throughout this week including the announcement of the Melbourne Declaration for Gender Equality, expected on Thursday.
The first media conference of Women Delivery 2026 featured a panel of four women with global leadership credentials: Noelene Nabulivou, Executive Director, DIVA for Equity (Figi), The Hon Helen Clark, former PM of New Zealand and WD board member, Dr Maliha Khan, CEO and Director of Women Delivery and Amina Mohammad, Deputy Secretary General, United Nations.
UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed acknowledged the global context within which the conference was taking place – “the urgency of the moment”.
She described a backlash against women’s rights, cuts to international aid, “the anti rights attacks happening on the lives, livelihood and bodies of women and gender diverse people everywhere.”
The geopolitical context was described as one of “Illiberalism and authoritarianism” and all within the context of escalating conflict including the Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
“This conference is happening at a time when we felt that solidarity which is so powerful in itself is not enough.”
The panel called for states, multilaterals, philanthropists and the feminist movement and gender equality champions to think about the system that has existed for the last 30 years.
“Much of that system was never built for women, children and gender diverse people.”
The press conference highlighted that hundreds of Women Deliver partners around the world had requested that the conference be more than about talk. And thus, the conference will make the Melbourne Declaration.
Holding power to account
The Hon Helen Clark called the present times a “special and grotesque moment” but stated that the almost 6000 women attending WD2026 have never taken their rights for granted. She called several times for civil society to keep holding governments to account.
The Melbourne Declaration has been shaped through global consultation and launched as a shared political commitment to center States’ human rights obligations, public accountability, and the leadership of national and local civil society and feminist movements.
WD2026 brings together political leaders, activists, advocates, funders, journalists, and young people from across the globe at a time of rising conflict, shrinking civic space, mounting pressure on women’s rights, and growing questions about whether current systems are serving the people they are meant to.
Grounded in the leadership of First Nations communities and the Oceanic Pacific, the theme Change Calls Us Here signals a Conference shaped by truth-telling, local leadership, and a determination to move beyond conversation to accountability, solidarity, and action.
Setting the scene for four days of urgent discussion, bold leadership, and collective action, Women Deliver CEO, Maliha Khan, told delegates the system that housed the movement’s victories had also created the conditions for its collapse.
“The system that housed our victories created a model of dependency, making millions reliant on donors and organisations headquartered thousands of miles away rather than building the conditions for States to be held accountable to the people,” Maliha Khan said.
“Much of the gender equality ecosystem became defanged politically, led by donor priorities, and kept power with former colonising powers.
“When sustained opposition arrived, the institutional architecture fell apart.”
Khan said the Conference was not a moment for mourning.
“We have secured the impossible before, and we will do it again. We choose courage over caution, solidarity over spectacle, and joy over despair.”
Hosted for the first time in the Oceanic Pacific, WD2026 marks a shift in whose voices are centered at the world’s largest gatherings for gender equality.
Victorian Minister for Women and Girls, The Hon Gabrielle Williams, said Victoria was proud to host Women Deliver on behalf of the Oceanic Pacific, putting the region at the heart of one of the world’s largest conversations about women and girls.
“Progress for women and girls isn’t guaranteed. It has to be fought for, built and protected. Bringing world leaders together like this is how we keep moving forward.”
“We have a lot to learn from leaders and advocates from around the world and a lot to share as well so we can get on with the job of delivering a better future for women and girls,” said Minister Williams.
The Melbourne Declaration will be formally launched at the close of the Conference, marking a shared commitment across the wider gender equality ecosystem to rebalance power, resources, and accountability so that States uphold human rights, feminist movements and civil society can hold them to account, and international actors support rather than substitute for locally led change.
In closing, Khan said: “What we’re asking of you all is to make this moment of crisis a moment of possibility.
“The Melbourne Declaration is a shared commitment to rebuild a gender equality ecosystem too often shaped by donor priorities and weak accountability to people — and to root what comes next in human rights, solidarity, and the leadership of those most affected by injustice.”
Across the wider program, Women Deliver 2026 will spotlight some of the defining issues of this moment: bodily autonomy, public systems, gendered violence, climate justice, digital rights, movement funding, adolescent girls’ leadership, conflict, and accountability.
We have so much more to share with you from the first press conference alone but now we need to go and get seated for the first plenary!
