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Dear colleagues and partners,
As 2025 draws to a close, I am pleased to share a recap of PMNCH’s key milestones this year, along with reflections on what lies ahead. Across the year, a clear pattern emerged: mounting political and financial hardship met with remarkable collaboration, resilience and resolve across our partnership.
From the outset, 2025 confronted PMNCH, and the broader development community, with deep and compounding challenges. In the early months of the year, we reported growing fiscal pressures on global health, shrinking civic space, and intensifying political pushback on SRHR. Partners raised serious concerns about declining donor support for advocacy, the erosion of accountability mechanisms, and increasing threats to evidence-based policymaking.
By mid-year, these pressures crystallized into a global funding crisis. PMNCH’s snap survey, shared with partners in October, revealed the scale of the impact: the majority of organizations working on WCAH faced reduced or uncertain funding; many were forced to downsize; and a worrying number had to suspend or close programmes altogether. This was not a temporary disruption, but a systemic shock to the ecosystem supporting women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health.
Against this backdrop, partners adapted. We witnessed a strengthening of national health sovereignty, increased interest in innovative financing mechanisms, and determined pushback from Global South leaders, particularly members of the Global Leaders Network, who consistently and visibly advocated for SRHR throughout the year.
PMNCH also adapted as well. In July, we launched the PMNCH Strategy 2026–2030, responding directly to the realities partners were reporting from the ground. Framed around doing business unusually, the Strategy repositions PMNCH’s role around:
Strengthening collaboration across constituencies and movements;
Providing thought leadership grounded in evidence and lived experience;
Driving coordinated advocacy in increasingly contested political spaces; and
Expanding access to tools, resources and capacity-building to support partner impact at national and regional levels.
In the months that followed, PMNCH focused on translating this strategic shift into action:
Strengthening collaboration and coalition-building: PMNCH supported multi-stakeholder action through the Global Leaders Network, Collaborative Advocacy Action Plans, parliamentary engagement, and cross-movement alliances linking WCAH with UHC, climate and humanitarian agendas.
Thought leadership and evidence generation: Throughout the year, PMNCH highlighted new publications and evidence, including work on preterm birth, life-saving commodities, midwifery, HIV and children, and violence against women, equipping partners with credible data to inform advocacy and policy dialogue. For instance, our latest piece Africa’s Push for Health Sovereignty highlights Africa’s commitment to elevate health financing as a core element of fiscal and economic policy.
Defending SRHR amid global headwinds: PMNCH consistently supported collective advocacy to protect SRHR, supporting coordinated responses to restrictive laws, donor conditionalities and misinformation – including The launch of PMNCH FactCheck c counter false narratives with accessible committee evidence-based information.
Building capacity for impact: PMNCH supported partners through advocacy workshops, media engagement training, youth leadership platforms, and knowledge-sharing webinars, ensuring that even as resources tightened, capacity to influence and deliver was reinforced.
Taken together, the story of 2025 is one of adaptation and resolve. This has been a year in which the challenges facing WCAH became sharper and more structural, but also a year in which PMNCH and its members responded by strengthening collaboration, sharpening advocacy, and doubling down on evidence, accountability and partnership.
As we move into 2026, the task before us is clear: to protect progress, defend civic space and SRHR, support civil society and youth leadership, and ensure that women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health remains central to national and global priorities.
Thank you for your leadership, partnership and persistence throughout this demanding year.
With appreciation,
Rajat Khosla
Executive Director, PMNCH