→ 2c. Establish an Asia-Pacific Women Peacebuilders Forum. Regional institutions such as ASEAN and the Pacific Islands Forum can convene annual gatherings of women mediators, negotiators, and security officials to exchange best practices and coordinate responses to emerging threats. Governments can nominate practitioners, while development partners and feminist networks ensure the inclusion of grassroots and indigenous women peacebuilders. Recommendation 3: Climate Change and Disaster Response → 3a. Mainstream gender and intersectionality into national climate policies. Governments can embed gender and social inclusion targets into Nationally Determined Contributions(NDCs) and climate adaptation plans. Multilateral institutions such as the UNFCCC and UNESCAP can require gender-impact assessments for Green Climate Fund projects, while development partners can fund technical assistance to operationalise these standards across the board. → 3b. Invest in women-led and community-based adaptation. Governments and donors can allocate direct financing to women’s cooperatives and local organisations leading renewable energy, water, and disaster response projects. Regional funds, such as the Pacific Resilience Facility, can earmark grant windows for women’s initiatives, ensuring that grassroots innovations inform climate strategies. → 3c. Strengthen women’s leadership in disaster risk governance. National disaster management agencies can include gender focal points at all administrative levels, while regional organisations coordinate leadership training and peer learning networks for women in crisis response roles. Academic institutions can document and evaluate outcomes, building an evidence base to support replication and scaling of successful policies. Recommendation 4: Trade and Economic Justice → 4a. Embed gender equality in trade and investment agreements. Governments negotiating frameworks, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), can include gender clauses that mandate equal access to markets, finance, and procurement. Regional bodies like APEC can monitor implementation through dedicated scorecards, and civil society groups can track the distributional impacts on women entrepreneurs and workers. → 4b. Expand financial inclusion and women’s entrepreneurship. National financial regulators can promote women’s access to credit by removing collateral restrictions and incentivising banks to develop gender­responsive financial products. Development partners and donor banks, such as the ADB, can provide blended finance mechanisms to scale up women-led enterprises in both rural and urban markets. → 4c. Use gender data to drive macroeconomic and fiscal reform. Governments can institutionalise time use surveys and pay gap analyses within national statistics agencies, feeding data into gender-responsive budgeting. Academic institutions and multilateral organisations can support comparative research to inform policy design and track progress in the redistribution of resources. Recommendation 5: Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid → 5a. Align donor and recipient priorities through feminist accountability frameworks. Governments and donors can jointly define gender outcomes and tracking mechanisms in development cooperation agreements, using performance indicators consistent with OECD’s gender markers that classify foreign aid projects as being gender transformative or otherwise. Regional coordination through UNESCAP can harmonise reporting, enhance transparency, and reduce duplication; enabling civil society to hold governments and donors accountable. → 5b. Prioritise direct funding for women’s rights organisations and feminist CSOs. Donors and multilateral partners can allocate flexible, multi-year grants to women-led organisations engaged in service delivery and advocacy. Governments can facilitate access by simplifying registration and compliance requirements, recognising these groups as key implementation partners in national aid strategies. In the context of foreign aid cuts, innovative financing models, such as membership fee-based revenue streams, should be championed by leading regional feminist CSOs. → 5c. Mainstream gender-responsive budgeting in humanitarian response. Humanitarian agencies and national disaster authorities can jointly design funding models that earmark a proportion of emergency and reconstruction budgets for women-led initiatives. Civil society actors can monitor expenditure through participatory audit mechanisms, ensuring accountability to affected communities. In many countries across the region, this can leverage existing gender budgeting processes. CH 5: Policy Recommendations and Entry Points for New Opportunities 49