Management Response

: Egypt
: 2014 - 2017 , Egypt (CO)
: Thematic evaluation for the Women Political Empowerment programme
:
: Egypt
:

UN Women ECO will strengthen its partnerships with diverse stakeholders and will enhance inclusiveness and participatory processes. UN Women ECO will further enhance thematic linkages and programming as outlined in more details in the below recommendations. Lessons learned include designing sustainability and exit strategy plans.

: Approved
Recommendation: Support the institutionalization of a unit within NCW with a structure, a curriculum, and a dedicated budget for political capacity building
Management Response: UN Women ECO supported the establishment of the “Political Participation Support Unit” within the National Council for Women (NCW), with the objective of extending technical assistance to women candidates, elected members of parliament and/or local councils, as well as raising the voter awareness in 2012. The unit has indeed been institutionalized within the NCW, and continues to function and carry out its mandate, despite the lack of resources. UN Women ECO intends to further strengthen and support the Political Participation Support Unit within the scope of the objectives outlined in the National Women’s Strategy 2030, the United Nations Partnership Development Framework (UNPDF), and UN Women’s Strategic Note 2018-2022.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Capacity development, National ownership
Organizational Priorities: Partnership, Normative Support
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Mobilize further resources to continue to extend technical financial support to the unit UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Share corporate knowledge and global best practices to enhance women’s political participation in Egypt with the relevant unit staff. UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Recommendation: Scale-up the citizenship initiative (CI). The CI needs to scale up not only in numbers but by adopting different modes to ensure women who obtain IDs really use them, and can access public services (economic, health, education, scholarships, health or legal counselling etc.), namely through awareness raising and linkages. The present model of triangular cooperation adopted in the CI between NCW, the MoI and the local NGOs needs to be replicated and up scaled as a model and be formally institutionalized to ensure both its scaling up as well as sustainability of service.
Management Response: UN Women ECO strongly supports the scaling-up of the Women’s Citizenship Initiative, which has indeed been included in the Political Participation Pillar of the National Women’s Strategy 2030. In addition, UN Women has supported the National Council for Women (NCW) to implement the innovative knocking door campaigns, as the main awareness raising methodology across Egypt’s 27 Governorates. Building on such previous success, UN Women intends to further support the activation of the National Women’s Strategy 2030 and expand on the knocking door campaigns, upon the mobilization of further financial resources.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Resource mobilization
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Develop documents for further resource mobilization UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Recommendation: Create an enabling environment for WPE’s programme through replicating successful interventions such as media advocacy and scaling up through interventions promoting training for parliamentarian and politicians and promoting increase of women in leadership positions
Management Response: The current environment in Egypt could be characterized by being highly welcoming and supportive of women’s leadership at the highest levels of decision making. UN Women ECO intend to capitalize on this momentum and strong national commitment to further support women’s participation in decision making in the upcoming elections (local and parliamentary).
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: National ownership, Capacity development, Advocacy
Organizational Priorities: Normative Support
UNEG Criteria: Gender equality, Effectiveness
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Develop documents for further resource mobilization UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Recommendation: Support Egypt in its national interventions to meet the SDG indicators in 2030. UN Women can embark on this work by supporting the increased women’s representation in leading executive positions through training youth candidates, promoting gender responsive work polices and systems to enable women’s participation and enhancing gender units in ministries.
Management Response: UN Women ECO is the lead UN agency mandated to coordinate among all other agencies on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality issues. UN Women has recently supported the development of work packages to operationalize the National Women’s Strategy 2030. The National strategy is aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 2030).
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Advocacy, Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind
Organizational Priorities: UN Coordination, Youth engagement, Normative Support, Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Gender equality
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Finalize the work packages for the National Women’s Strategy 2030 UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Lead on the coordination of the Women’s Empowerment pillar within the United Nations Partnership Development Framework (UNPDF) UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed UN Women is also the lead UN agency on women's political empowerment
Recommendation: Encourage more cooperation with NGOs under the WPE programme through increased: a. Coordination between WPE programme partners and enabling them to share their knowledge, experiences and lessons learned on a regular basis. b. Dissemination and sharing of information for example through newsletters with various stakeholders.
Management Response: UN Women ECO supports information sharing on key gender issues, initiatives, lessons learned and success stories as relevant to all its programmes. UN Women has recently launched a website and has further activated its Facebook page in an effort to utilize the power of social media to engage the widest audience possible, including traditional and non-traditional partners.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Capacity development, Knowledge management
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Update UN Women ECO website and Facebook page UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Feature and disseminate success stories on Women’s Political Participation in UN Women’s newsletters, briefings, and achievement reports to the greatest extent possible. UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Recommendation: Encourage comprehensive women empowerment through thematic interlinkage. UN Women should enhance interlinkage between the WPE work and other relevant thematic areas such as WEE, EVAW explicitly integrating them into the programme design where there is added value through: a.  the development of a comprehensive plan which includes objectives and measurable indicators; b.  the identification of technical and financial linkages. Assess where resources can be drawn from the various components.
Management Response: UN Women ECO highly supports this approach and hence has integrated and highlighted such complementarities in its new Strategic Note (2018-2022). The Strategic Note includes SMART indicators with clear time frames and targets.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Internal coordination and communication
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities, Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Design new programmes with thematic interlinkaes based on the newly approved Strategic Note 2018-2022. UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Recommendation: Continue to cultivate long-term partnerships- Good partnerships have been cultivated through the WPE programme with all partners. Stakeholders expect to remain as partners even after the project terminates. Suggested mechanisms to continue partnerships could include the creation of a network of WPE partners to share their events and information. ?
Management Response: UN Women ECO values enhanced and strengthened partnerships at all levels. ECO will also use its membership in the Development Partners Group, and its co-chairing role of the thematic DPG ‘Gender and Development’ Group - comprising 15 bilateral, 13 multi-lateral partners and ten CSOs - to coalesce their technical and financial support in favor of GEWE in Egypt, and to strengthen relations with current and potential partners and donors.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Internal coordination and communication, Knowledge management
Organizational Priorities: UN Coordination, Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Work more closely with the National Council for Women on envisioning new programmes for Egypt UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Support the operationalization and the implementation of Pillar 1 of the National Women’s Strategy 2030 UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Recommendation: Restructure WPE's program theory of change for the coming phase.UN Women should restructure the WPE programme to adopt a broader understanding of the concept of leadership and decision making at all levels in public and private, not limited to the political arena. To restructure the present theory of change, the following should be addressed: a. Shift to the broader definition and include the wider understanding of women in leadership at all levels to show how the wide understanding can fit into different spaces such as syndicates, ministries and produce results that meet government, community and local priorities and address the causes that are currently limiting women’s leadership participation. b. Shift from merely a women’s empowerment perspective to introduce a gender equality perspective not only in the orientation but also in the phraseology of the statement and the assumptions.
Management Response: UN Women ECO has already addressed the above in the formulation of its new strategic note, particularly under impact area 1: Egyptian women lead, participate in, and benefit equally from decision making systems and processes.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women ECO will continue to support the promotion of women’s leadership and participation of women UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Recommendation: Conduct an early participatory and elaborated stakeholder analysis. The new phase should decide on partner selection based on a participatory and elaborated stakeholder analysis right before the start-up of any intervention. This can be done through participatory workshops where partners get introduced to each other to develop a common vision and decide on the division of roles based on their strengths and weaknesses.
Management Response: UN Women ECO will base the formulation of all new programmes on the endorsed National Women’s Strategy 2030 and the new United Nations Partnership Development Framework (UNPDF), all of which relied on extensive consultation and participation of a diverse range of stakeholders.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency, Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Formulate new programmes that are aligned to the new UNPDF and the National Women’s Strategy 2030. UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Recommendation: Introduce participatory planning approaches at all levels Phase 2 of the WPE programme should emphasise participatory approaches and ensure the participation of all concerned stakeholders in the collective planning, monitoring and auditing of the programme. The next phase should also emphasize an in-depth analysis and baseline from the beginning and specify that a certain percentage of “subsets” of women and men are chosen in the initiative. When institutionalizing a system with stakeholders, it would be important to build a system of accountability, and ensure the incorporation of a monitoring and evaluation component in the system with measurable qualitative indicators. 
Management Response: UN Women ECO promotes and fosters a strong culture of results-based and knowledge management, participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation at all levels. Newly designed programmes will incorporate a more rigorous M&E component with SMART indicators (including proper baselines and targets) to ensure that the overall objectives are achieved. Through the implementation of the 2018-22 monitoring, research and evaluation plan (MERP), and through enhanced compliance with the RMS monitoring mechanism, the ECO will ensure that all programmes are implemented on time and with the expected high-quality results.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and political participation (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind, Knowledge management
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency, Effectiveness
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Follow up and update the MERP and AWP UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed
Monitor progress toward the achievement of set targets and their relevant indicators UN Women ECO 2019/12 Completed