It may seem like a dissonant moment to have a ministerial conference on feminist foreign policy (FFP) given the well-funded and growing backlash against women’s rights and a recent wave of prominent countries abandoning their FFPs. However, to many, including the global feminist civil society community, this might be the exact right moment for such a high-level gathering. This sentiment seemed to be shared by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which hosted the Fifth Annual Feminist Foreign Policy Ministerial Conference on June 2 and 3, 2026, in Madrid, Spain. The contradiction between today’s challenges for women’s rights, democracy, and the global order and the energy and power of feminist movements was evident throughout the conference.

The State of Feminist Foreign Policy

There is no single agreed upon definition of feminist foreign policy. According to guidance from UN Women, FFPs are, at the most basic level, a commitment by governments to mainstream a gender perspective into their foreign policy (including within their ministries of foreign affairs) and advocate for gender equality in their bilateral and multilateral relations.

Sweden was the first country to adopt an FFP in 2014, and up to 16 countries have at one point published an FFP or announced they planned to do so. Another way to understand how many states are interested in adopting FFPs is by looking at the membership of the “Feminist Foreign Policy Plus Group” (FFP+ group), which includes UN member states committed to pursuing FFPs or incorporating feminist principles into their policymaking. As of September 2025, that cross-regional group, based in New York, had 20 members.

The conference hosted by Spain was the fifth ministerial conference on FFP. Past hosts of the conferences have been Germany (2022), the Netherlands (2023), Mexico (2024), and France (2025). These conferences have been a way for hosts to demonstrate their leadership on FFP, for other member states to issue political declarations committing to actions that advance their FFP, and for member states and civil society to connect.

FFPs have been created and revoked in waves, and the current moment of regression is hard to ignore. Several member states have discarded the feminist label since 2022, including Sweden (2022), the Netherlands (2025), Germany (2025), and Canada (2025). Chile has not formally withdrawn its FFP, but in 2026 it disbanded the team responsible for implementing it. Argentina and Luxembourg also had expressed their intention to adopt FFPs but have not pursued these commitments following transitions to new conservative governments. However, even amid this regression there has been a rise in countries in Africa interested in FFP (including Morocco) or in creating a “gender-responsive foreign policy” (Liberia). Slovenia also joined the FFP+ group at the end of 2025. While the backlash is impossible to deny, the fifth ministerial conference in Madrid showed it is too early to declare FFPs irrelevant.

FFP amid Backlash and Funding Cuts

The global anti-rights backlash was a major focus of the conference in Madrid. In line with the conference theme of “building peace and democracy,” many speakers linked the anti-rights movements and backlash against gender equality with democratic backsliding. They also spoke to the role of technology, including AI, in fueling the backlash on women’s rights and technologically facilitated gender-based violence.

The backlash against gender equality was also reflected in the conference’s final declaration. Anti-women’s rights activists often use language on “family” in multilateral negotiations as a way to promote regressive, patriarchal ideas about family structures. To reclaim this term, the declaration uses this language of family but “recognize[s] the existence of diverse forms of families.” This reflects an effort to demonstrate that supporting women’s rights also supports families.

Civil society organizations also focused on backlash when they met at a forum the day before the formal proceedings began. Discussions centered on how feminist activists can sustain their movements in the face of anti-gender pressure and how governments should be using FFPs to support them. Neil Datta, executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, also explained that to counter the anti-rights movement feminist advocates need to know how it is organized. He shared how this movement uses narratives on familiar topics such as sovereignty, digital regulation, and demography to build anti-democratic, anti-rights coalitions. He cited the anti-migration “Remigration Summit” that was held in Portugal right before the FFP ministerial.

In addition to the anti-gender backlash, several other themes were prominent during the conference. One was the state of women and gender in the multilateral system, particularly in light of the current crisis facing the UN and the upcoming UN leadership transition. Several speakers discussed the importance of having a woman as UN secretary-general—though some speakers emphasized that the secretary-general should not be any woman but a feminist woman committed to the principles of the UN Charter.

There were also discussions on the need for reform of the UN and the broader multilateral system. Vijavat Isarabhakdi, deputy minister of foreign affairs of Thailand, noted that “multilateralism must be more people-centered; it must protect not only state interests but human security, human dignity, and equal opportunity.” The conference took place at a time when a proposed merger between UN Women and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is being debated in New York—and proving increasingly unpopular with civil society. While the proposed merger was not a major topic of discussion, Sarah Hendricks, a senior official at UN Women, spoke about UN80 and the need for gender equality and women’s rights to be “center stage” in this process and for the process to be inclusive of civil society. The executive directors of both UN Women and UNFPA were in attendance.

Another major theme was the decrease in financing for gender equality. This was emphasized at the civil society forum, where civil society representatives called for direct, flexible, and long-term funding. Michelle Milford Morse, vice president for women and girls strategy at the UN Foundation, explained at the conference, “We are all competing for what we have been told is a dwindling amount of money. To be clear there is plenty of money in the world, [but] it is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and hands that don’t want to invest in things we want them to invest in. There has never been more idle capital, and we can’t get to it and can’t use it.”

To unlock this capital, many participants brought up the Financing for Development Conference held in Seville in 2025. The Sevilla Platform for Action committed member states to increase investment to close the gender financing gap and emphasized financing for care systems. It is also notable that the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) hosted the civil society forum, signaling that FFP also encompasses development cooperation.

Participants particularly emphasized the importance of investing in the care economy, which was also discussed in depth at one of the conference’s parallel sessions. Speakers at the session called for strengthening global cooperation on building out care systems, highlighting efforts like the Global Care Alliance and the Bi-regional Care Pact between the EU and 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Participants also discussed the need to link care with other issue areas such as climate and questioned who benefits from siloing the issue of care from other areas feminists work on.

Who Was at the Table—and Who Wasn’t?

Despite the anti-rights backlash, the conference reflected an ongoing cross-regional commitment to FFP. The conference featured speeches by high-level government representatives from more than 20 member states, including several that have not formally used the FFP label. The regional diversity of the high-level speakers was notable, with government representatives from Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

The declaration at the end of the conference was signed by 27 member states: Spain, Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Belgium, Canada, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Iceland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Portugal, Rwanda, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Ukraine, Uruguay, and the United Kingdom. This was a slight decrease from the Paris declaration in 2025, which 31 states signed (Chile, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Kosovo, the Netherlands, Latvia, Slovenia, Australia, and Liberia signed in 2025 but not 2026). At the same time, five new member states signed the Madrid declaration: Albania, Andorra, Cape Verde, Montenegro, and Timor-Leste. It is notable that countries like Canada and Luxembourg, which have recently moved away from their commitment to FFPs, still signed the declaration.

There was also robust representation from civil society at the conference, demonstrating the important relationship between governments and civil society in implementing FFPs. The civil society committee, selected by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain through an application process, drafted a declaration with detailed recommendations for attending governments. The declaration centered on four themes: (1) resourcing feminist movements, transforming global financing, and protecting and strengthening the global gender equality architecture; (2) centering feminist movements and coalitions, especially Global South/Majority leadership in all aspects of FFP design, implementation, and accountability; (3) rejecting militarism and advancing feminist peace; and (4) strengthening democracy, confronting anti-gender backlash, and protecting defenders.

At the same time, given capacity constraints at the venue, civil society were mostly prevented from attending the high-level opening portion of the event and had to watch the proceedings via a livestream set up in a different area of the ministry. This was a disappointment for many civil society representatives who traveled to the conference for the opportunity to connect with ministers and fully participate in the events. However, later in the conference there was more opportunity for engagement between civil society, government representatives, and UN officials. There were also civil society speakers across the plenary and parallel events.

The “Duty to Hope”

While the conference was pervaded by a sense of despair at the state of the world, speakers also stressed a “duty to hope.” At the same time, some civil society representatives debated the value of such convenings, including whether they are worth the cost of governments hosting them and civil society organizations sending representatives to attend, given limited funding.

However, the conference provided an opportunity for governments to publicly commit to the importance of gender equality, which is particularly important at a time when such commitments are eroding around the world. Many speakers also noted the need for such space to build transnational coalitions, which are necessary to show that “they have millions, [but] we are millions,” as one speaker put it. The conference provided a venue to build new coalitions across countries and regions and for civil society representatives to foster connections with each other and with government representatives. The host of the conference in 2027 will be Morocco—the first time the conference will be held in Africa. While many civil society representatives were present in Madrid, holding the conference in Africa could create an opportunity for an even larger civil society contingent from the Global Majority.