Build Back Equal: Saint Lucia's National GBV Task Force & Women's Economic Resilience Programme

Build Back Equal (BBE) is a four-year programme jointly run by UN Women and UNFPA with the Government of Saint Lucia, funded by Global Affairs Canada. It launched in Saint Lucia on 11 May 2022, the first of four Eastern Caribbean countries, followed by Dominica, Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in June 2022.

To expand women's economic opportunities (skills training and financing in tourism, agriculture and climate-resilient businesses), strengthen social protection (unpaid-care policy, accessible childcare), and improve sexual/reproductive health and gender-based violence (GBV) services (shelters, cash transfers for survivors).

In December 2024 the programme helped Saint Lucia launch its first National Inter-Agency GBV Prevention and Response Task Force, along with new multi-sector protocols formalising referral pathways between police, health and social services; the government reported continuing reforms into 2026.

The programme cites pre-pandemic baseline data showing 42.3% of female-headed households in Saint Lucia living in poverty, with child poverty in such households rising from 48.6% (2006) to 58.2% (2016), as the rationale for the intervention.

As of mid-2026, no independent, publicly available evaluation of BBE's economic-empowerment or task-force outcomes had been published, so its actual effect on the baseline poverty and GBV figures remains undocumented.