ARROW Annual Report 2025

Reflections from the Executive Director

“ARROW is trying to reorganise ourselves to work more purposefully and more strategically in this time of rupture and chaos. We are embarking on our new strategic plan, which we believe will help us and our partners navigate these new waters. We are trying to work more intentionally to transform norms and narratives and shift power over the next five years, and we are committed to the long run. It took more than a century to end the transatlantic slave trade. It took 88 years to end slavery in the United States. It took 46 years to end apartheid in South Africa. We all have the power to make it to the endgame.”
Sivananthi Thanenthiran

Generating Evidence, Creating Change

ARROW’s Domain 1 works towards generating evidence and monitoring to ensure governments adopt, implement, fulfil and account for laws, policies and programmes, that uphold gender equality and sexual and reproductive rights.

ARROW focused on strengthening accountability for gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) by combining evidence generation, movement building, and strategic advocacy. Working closely with partners across the Asia-Pacific region and the Global South, we pushed the agenda and supported efforts to ensure that governments adopt, implement, and are held accountable for laws, policies, and programmes that uphold gender justice and fulfil the sexual and reproductive rights of women, girls, and young people in all their diversities.

Opening Minds, Shaping Views and Advocating for Change

ARROW Domain 2 ensures that the civic space is protected, expanded and thriving where women, non-binary people, and young people in all their diversities organise, dialogue, participate, advocate and communicate without hindrance, and in doing so, influence the SRHR political and social structures and discourses around them at national, regional and global levels.

ARROW and partners intensified targeted advocacy, strengthened strategic partnerships, supported collective action, amplified community voices to defend and reinforce transparency and accountability where it matters most, especially in the intergovernmental processes. From a feminist, gender-just, and Global South standpoint grounded in human rights and gender justice, our actions ensure decision-makers are better informed about the SRHR realities affecting women and young people in all their diversities.

Strengthening Community Participation, Empowering People

ARROW’s Domain 3 works towards mobilising communities to reinforce positive norms and values around women, non-binary people, and young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and recognise SRHR as a basic human right.

ARROW continued to advocate and advance young people’s SRHR and prioritised capacity strengthening to amplify the voices of young people in all their diversity, around SRHR information and education. Young people from Asia, the Pacific and Africa were capacitated on intersectionality and SRHR, regional and international advocacy spaces, and gender and climate.

Forging New Alliances

ARROW’s Domain 4 work focuses on building feminist movements, SRHR alliances and other social movements to uphold women, young and gender non-binary people’s sexual and reproductive rights through building and strengthening perspectives among CSOs, activists and advocates around the issues of gender, feminism and SRR, and its intersections with other issues that impact universal access to SRR

ARROW, through knowledge production and sharing, capacity strengthening and constituency mobilisation, continue to strengthen feminist movements, and expand regional collaboration across Asia and the Pacific to advance gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights, especially focusing on gender-responsive climate justice and ending female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

Governance and Financial Management

The year 2025 was a pivotal period for ARROW, marked by deep organisational reflection, consolidation of systems, and collective preparation for strategic transition. At its core, 2025 was a year of alignment—aligning people, plans, processes, and partnerships to ensure ARROW was ready to move decisively into its next strategic phase.

ARROW Publications Launched in 2025

About

Founded in 1993, ARROW is a regional non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing the rights of women, girls, and young people in all their diversities across Asia and the Pacific. With consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC) and an observer status with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), ARROW works to empower communities and advocate for gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and rights and justice in the region. ARROW is a commitment maker in the Generation Equality Forum, and a leader in the Action Coalition for bodily autonomy and SRHR.

Strategic Plan 2022 - 2026

In 2022, our work was guided by our strategic plan for 2022-2026