Management Response

Recommendation:	As the Syrian response moves towards an increasing focus on resilience, UN Women should consider articulating a more explicit and holistic framework for working on women’s empowerment in humanitarian action for future interventions.
Management Response:	The LEAP Framework articulates a clear framework for women’s empowerment in a humanitarian setting (leadership, protection, access to money). However, the degree to which these elements are implemented may vary across projects. (better articulated and implemented in project documents (adapted to the extent that it needs to be).

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments UN Women ROAS will work with all offices in the region to more explicitly articulate a regional and country level theories of change aligned to the LEAP, adapted to the context for all future project. ROAS will work with project managers to ensure integrated approach to implementing LEAP. ROAS 2020/12 Completed Completed over the past years across RO and COs. Humanitarian Action Team have provided technical support to COs and RO to improve Theory of Change of LEAP programme. This technical support inlcuded incremental steps to improve monitoring and measuring progress have been inlcuded for all resilience focused progammes (that includes the regional LEAP and COVID-19 responses as well as the MADAD regional programme) UN Women ROAS will initiate discussion of the LEAP framework and theory of change to ensure a common understanding among UN Women staff in the region ROAS 2017/10 Completed

Recommendation:

UN Women should establish a comprehensive Monitoring Evaluation Accountability and Learning (MEAL) system to inform of future work in humanitarian action and gain a greater understanding of intended and unintended results of its interventions.

Management Response:

UN Women recognizes the need to strengthen its monitoring and evaluation efforts. The establishment of the organization-wide results monitoring system has introduced a greater results orientation. UN Women at regional and country level will continue to strengthen RBM capacity and build a user-friendly system for project/programme level monitoring and evaluation which can feed into more strategic and longer-term analysis of humanitarian action.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments UN Women ROAS will discuss with donors earmarking a set percent for evaluation – and monitoring where security costs are high (e.g. Iraq, Yemen, etc) in all proposals. It will seek agreement for the establishment of a pooled fund for longer term monitoring and evaluation go assess outcomes and impact of humanitarian action, where donors allow. ROAS 2020/12 Completed The recommendation has been addressed with all proposals since 2019 including evaluation percentages incorporated and monitoring costs included. The component around establishing a pooled fund was not discussed during the Regional Programme Manager's tenure is not applicable at this point. UN Women ROAS will work with at least two offices in the region to produce stand-alone annual monitoring reports which will be disseminated and discussed with key stakeholders. ROAS 2018/12 Completed UN Women ROAS will develop an integrated monitoring and evaluation framework for the next LEAP programme to ensure that future interventions build in an evaluation lens from the outset. ROAS 2018/06 Completed

Recommendation:	UN Women should place greater focus on the capacity development of implementing partners to strengthen national capacities on ensuring humanitarian action is gender responsive.
Management Response:	UN Women will increase its efforts on capacity development of implementing partners in future interventions based on needs identified in a capacity assessment.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments UN Women will allocate money for capacity building of partners in future proposals focusing on humanitarian action. ROAS 2020/12 Completed UN Women has allocated funds for capacity development components at the regional level. An example of that would be dedicated funding for strengthening monitoring under the MADAD regional programme and more recently, the regional LEAP and COVID-19 Regional responses. A regional Monitoring and Report Specialist on SSA has been supporting with capacity building activities on the resilience monitoring side since 2019. UN Women will disseminate its online learning tools to all partners, and where relevant, undertake targeted assessments of partner HA capacities. UN Women will refresh staff on their role in building the capacity of HA partners, rather than using partners simply as operational arms ROAS & COs 2018/12 Completed

Recommendation:	UN Women should include a more robust SGBV component as part of its broader efforts to enhance social protection. This should include expanding partnerships with others actors who are working on SGBV and expanding the work the work on engaging men and boys in addressing sexual and gender based violence through the identification and leveraging of good practices.
Management Response:	UN Women will continue to strengthening and expanding its current SGBV interventions and the capacities of its staff, with a focus on awareness raising, referrals and documentation

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments UN Women ROAS will ensure that all UN Women staff working on SGBV in humanitarian action complete the UNHCR training on protection standards ROAS 2020/12 No Longer Applicable This action should focus on COs to ensure that all UN Women staff directly working on SGBV complete the relevant UNHCR standard trainings. UN Women ROAS will conduct a refresher workshop on SGBV basics for staff ROAS 2017/10 Completed UN Women will document and disseminate good practices on working with men and boys in humanitarian settings on SGBV. ROAS 2018/12 No Longer Applicable There is a regional COVID-19 Community of Practice has been created to support knowledge exchange for good practies. UN Women RO undertakes regular meetings and takes deep dive sessions on best practices that include COVID-19 programming in humanitarian settings. While this CoP provides an opportunity to disseminate practices including on working with men and boys, this issue of providing good practices on working with men and boys in humanitarian action on SGBV was not identified as a RO priority during the Regional Programme Manager's tenure.

Recommendation:	The creation of sustainable economic opportunities for Syrian refugees and host communities remains a great challenge. UN Women should explore different modalities for ensuring sustainable economic opportunities for vulnerable women from Syrian refugee and host communities in partnership with other key actors working on this.
Management Response:	UN Women is currently exploring supporting more sustainable economic opportunities within the LEAP interventions based on the current policy context. This work be undertaken in close cooperation with the regional WEE advisor.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments UN Women ROAS is developing a strategy on entrepreneurship. Elements of this strategy will be integrated into the work with refugee and host community women. ROAS 2018/06 Completed UN Women ROAS will further test and expand sustainable approaches, including business centres in refugee camps in Jordan, co-ownership of businesses and cooperatives in Lebanon ROAS & COs 2018/12 Completed UN Women ROAS will conduct biannual conversations with every CO on the policy environment and what is possible with respect to refugees working in country. ROAS 2019/12 Completed UN Women has undertaken two discussions with respect to refugee response. The first meeting was undertaken in late 2018 held in Cairo and the second meeting was held in Turkey in 2019, in which country offices were engaged in planning refugee response for the MADAD regional programme. Furthermore, RO faciliated online discussions with Iraq, Egypt and Jordan for LEAP programme development which focused on empowering Syrian refugee women in the region. ROAS has created a COVID-19 community of practice with key programme staff from COs meet on a bi-monthly basis to undertake indepth discussions on key COVID-19 related issues including the policy environment with respect to refugees. UN Women RO is currently undertaking a follow up study on the status of refugees in the region. This research will further help COs in informing policies and responses at the country level.

Recommendation:	UN Women should advocate for multi-year funding to enable longer-term planning and programming in humanitarian action.
Management Response:	UN Women at regional and country level is already in discussions with donors on multi-year funding and is submitting proposals which reflect this.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments UN Women ROAS will continue to submit proposals for multi-year funding where feasible. ROAS 2020/12 Completed