Thematic evaluation on the contribution of UN Women to
increasing women’s leadership and participation in Peace
and Security and in Humanitarian Response
UN Women Executive Board
20th January 2014
Marco Segone,
Director, Evaluation Office
Overview
UN Women evaluation function serves three main and equally
important purposes:
• accountability
• decision-making
• learning
Corporate thematic evaluations:
• assess strategic plan’s thematic areas
• primary users are UN Women Board, senior management,
staff and partners
Context
Second corporate thematic evaluation
• Peace and security is a growing area (from 15$ million in 2010 to 25$
million in 2012)
Complex evaluation
• Scope: 2008-2012:
•
covering UN Women’s previous 4 entities, as well as the
consolidation of transition phase of UN Women
•
two strategic planning periods: strategies of UN-Women’s
predecessor entities and 2011-2013 UN-Women Strategic Plan
•
Previous entities no mandate on humanitarian work
Evaluation objectives
The evaluation was designed to provide:
• forward-looking and actionable recommendations
• based on previous work conducted by UN Women and
predecessor entities
Evaluation governance
• Managed by Evaluation Office
• Conducted by external independent company
• Reference Groups:
• UN Women internal
• Global External
• Country-level
Evaluation methodology
Mixed methods approach
Case studies:
• 1 Headquarters; 5 country-level (Afghanistan, Colombia, Kosovo, Haiti,
Liberia)
Desk review:
• Over 250 documents consulted
Interviews:
• 217 key informants: 18% from UN Women; 82% from other stakeholders
Findings: Normative/Policy
• Contributed to shaping global policy and norms
• contributed adoption of important resolutions
• contributed establishment of UN-wide frameworks to monitor and support implementation
• In all five country case studies, contributed to developing national
normative frameworks
• UN Women is seen as a lead actor within UN system, also thanks to its
capacity to forge strategic partnerships
Recommendations:
•
Continue to scale up intergovernmental engagement and interagency
coordination through a twin-track approach to: (i) pursue women, peace and
security implementation proactively and (ii) encourage buy-in from key
stakeholders
Findings: Normative/Policy
• Weak coordination role at country level undermines catalytic and agendasetting potential
• Lessons from country-level programmatic experiences and policy
engagement at both national and regional levels do not sufficiently inform
UN Women policy work and engagement at the global level
Recommendations:
•
Increase staff capacity to play more proactive intergovernmental and
coordination role
•
Increase number of opportunities for engagement between headquarters
and country offices to learn lessons from programme work
Findings: Programming and Operations
• UN Women is making an effective contribution to enhancing women’s
leadership and participation in peace and security …
Indirect support, by supporting the development of enabling conditions for
women’s leadership and participation
Direct support, by directly supporting women’s leadership and participation
… but needs to be sensitive to local context, including by being responsive to
expectations of local stakeholders
Recommendations:
•
Strengthen programming capabilities to remain flexible and adaptive, while
improving strategic planning
•
Develop new knowledge products to document innovation and
achievements on ways of working in different contexts
Findings: Programming and Operations
• United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 reflected in UN Women
Strategic Plan represents a high-level theory of change. However, the
theories of change underpinning UN Women’s activities are, for the most
part, implicit and rarely documented. In addition, UN Women has yet to
institutionalize M&E systems
Recommendations:
•
Better document implicit theories of change which feature in practice in
much of its work at headquarters and in the country office.
•
Develop and implement knowledge management and M&E strategy and
systems, to better capture lessons learnt and feeding into planning cycle.
Findings: Organizational Capacities
• High quality and commitment of staff ….. but this varies
• Knowledge leadership… but mainly at global level. The communication
gaps between different parts of the entity and weak knowledge
management systems and processes are major challenges.
• Resources (human and financial) are inadequate to fulfil the increased
expectations on UN Women
Recommendations:
•
Improve staff capacities through training and on the job learning, combining
thematic expertise and advocacy skills
•
Introduce, at country level, more systematic risk assessments and tools for
monitoring and managing political risk
•
Invest on strategic monitoring, and knowledge production and
management, to enable feedback and documentation on lessons learned
•
Invest in organizational capacities, and financial and human resources
specifically on women, peace and security
In conclusion: positives findings …
• UN Women (and predecessor entities) have successfully
contributed to shaping global policy and norms that advance
women’s leadership and participation in peace and security, and
it’s strategically positioned to continue to do so.
• UN Women is seen as a lead actor within the UN system and has
provided overall strategic coherence on women’s leadership and
participation in peace and security.
• At the operational level, UN Women contributed to an increase
in women’s leadership and participation in different thematic
areas of peace and security
… and areas to be strengthened
• Knowledge Management systems need to be strengthened
• Programming need to be enhanced
• Organisational resources (human and financial) are inadequate
to fulfill the increased expectations of UN Women, including
inter-agency coordination within the UN system at country level
Evaluation as an agent of change
Thank you very much for your attention