Management Response

Recommendation:

To be demand driven, consider a regional portfolio and strategy which includes a variety of well-developed economic models based on the experiences and the research conducted to date and the priority needs identified by the target group, governments, and other actors. The portfolio should focus on partnership model developed in the region and should demonstrate the added value and expertise UN Women brings to WEE. The added value of UN Women in supporting the capacity development of local organisations should be developed further.

Management Response:

UN Women will continue to test and expand its economic models based, working with a range of partners to implement them.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. In Jordan, UN Women will apply the holistic OASIS approach to host communities WEE work. Dec 2019 JCO Initiated JCO 2019/12 Completed In 2019 UN Women, in partnership with the Ministry of Social Development (MoSD), expanded the Oasis model to host communities. Currently, thirteen centres are running in nine governorates (Ajloun, Jerash, Balqa, Amman, Madaba, Zarqa, Karak, Tafileh, and Ma'an), providing the Oasis holistic approach to economic empowerment to Syrian refugees and vulnerable Jordanian women in non-camp settings. 2. UN Women will document and disseminate effective economic models based on implementation at national level in one country. RO / ECO 2019/01 Completed 3. UN WOMEN is undertaking a capacity development programme for the CBOs working directly with the refugees on the component of livelihoods ECO 2019/12 Completed

Recommendation:

Management support should be provided to country and programme offices where needed. This is especially the case for offices in countries where the presence of UN Women is more recent and where fully-fledged country offices have yet to be established. When presences in those countries are established, the necessary resources to ensure delivery of programme quality must be allocated. UN Women has a good basis from which to develop and implement strong economic interventions, but the requisite resources need to be made available. During the early stages this could require own core funding investment. WEE multi-year strategies should be developed that can be broken down into annual plans (or other suitable timeframes) to accommodate short-term humanitarian funding cycles. A longer-term approach to monitoring and implementation for resilience focused interventions will ensure the assessment of long-term sustainable results (e.g. income, employment) beyond the immediate project cycle.

Management Response:

UN Women has limited core funds and advocacy is undertaken by the Regional Office to HQ for greater investment of core to countries in conflict / hosting a HA response. This will continue. The RO is also working to further allocate current regional core funds in ways that prioritise field presences. As referred to in Recommendation 1, UN Women is taking a multi-year approach to its WEE work. Evidence of this is a JP with ILO that is beginning now and the two-year EU programme – which is an expanded version of its WEE in HA contexts (LEAP) programme.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. UN Women ROAS will develop a guidance/methodological note on potential approaches for longer term monitoring. RO 2019/12 Completed UN Women prepared a guidance note for measuring resilience through the Gender-sensitive resilience index. The guidance tool has been shared with key focal points from the orgnaisation seeking inputs and feedback after which it will be broadly shared within UN Women ROAS, the WPS/HA community of practice and others. 2. UN Women will work with statistical offices to design methodologies on WEE that they can integrate into their work to be able to monitor change over time. RO 2022/12 Completed In Palestine, UN Women is working with the statistical office, specifically on the SDG indicator 5.c.1. UN Women ROAS is collaborating with ESCWA to design methodologies for estimating opportunity cost of selected SDG5 indicators, namely, 5.1., 5.3., and 5.4. The methodologies will be piloted in selected countries in AS and they will be made available to statistical offices and other relevant entities. In Jordan, UN Women is supporting the statistical office to conduct a Time Use Survey. In Egypt, UN Women works closely with the Statistical Office, the work focusing on monitoring selected SDG indicators 3. UN Women in Egypt will integrate the components of its humanitarian work into multi-year WEE strategies such as the VSLA platform ECO 2020/12 Completed For the VSLA model to succeed, it requires that the members of the savings groups to be in the same area for a long period of time to ensure the sustainability of the lending process. However, in our case during LEAP 2 and due to the continuous relocation of the beneficiaries (either within Egypt or outside of the country completely) the activity have not achieved its aimed results as the saving groups did not last.

Recommendation:	UN Women should build further on its strengths and the progress made to date in engaging with private sector actors.
Management Response:	UN Women offices will continue to partner with the private sector and expand the work with the private sector through the Women Empowerment Principles.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. UN Women in Jordan will expand its engagement with the private sector through work with them on the Gender Equity Seal and the Women’s Empowerment Principles. JCO 2021/12 Completed 2. As part of its JP with ILO, UN Women will provide at least 10 private sector firms with tools (Gender Gap Analysis tool) to assess gender responsiveness– and technical support and training to implement gender responsive action plans. RO with offices in Lebanon, Jordan Egypt Palestine 2021/12 Completed In the countries that are part of LEAP we have 104 private sector companies that have signed up to Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) and have committed to promote GEWE. Some of these companies have completed the Gender GAP tool. All WEPs signatories have access to various tools and resources that help them in addressing issues related to gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and the community. Several online training resources are available and on hand technical support is provided to companies to draft and/or implement WEPs Action Plans. The new regional Strategic Plan foresees expanding the WEPs network in Arab States and deepening the engagement. Tailored training services and tools on women in leadership positions, harassment-free workplaces and use of marketing to address issues related to GEWE are being drafted and will be made available to all WEPs signatories. 3. UN Women in Egypt will work with the private sector on skills development programmes and vocational training ECO 2021/12 Completed

Recommendation:	UN Women should consider whether an ‘advisory’ presence within relevant ministries (a counterpart for the economic empowerment agenda) would enhance UN Women recognition among other stakeholders as an important WEE actor. This would follow the example of other multilateral agencies (e.g. ILO and UNDP) who have advisory presence within the ministries which are their primary counterpart.
Management Response:	UN Women has established advisory presence in some countries (e.g. Egypt, Jordan, Palestine). UN Women will explore this modality where it makes the most sense.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. UN Women is increasing its collaboration and partnership with its national counterpart NCW on this portfolio and the presence in other ministries may dilute the focus UN Women is putting on this partnership. The collaboration includes capacity development of the local NCW branches to better serve refugees and host community nationals. ECO 2021/12 Completed

Recommendation:

Between humanitarian actors there is an absence of strong knowledge and research which demonstrate the complexities required to support response strategies. Across the region there are deeply rooted cultural and social norms which have affected women’s access to employment. While UN Women addresses this well, more diverse responses should be included in recognition of the diversity of women from displaced, refugee, and host communities and the diversity of assistance required to support them

Management Response:

UN Women recognizes that social norms are something that it needs to address better and will continue to expand its work on this.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. UN Women in Jordan is developing its social norms work further, with a focus on WEE and will launch research on this in 2019 and 2020. JCO 2020/06 Completed "COVID-19 and Women's Economic Empowerment: Policy recommendations for strenghtening Jordan's Recovery" - May 2020; "The Role of Care Economy in Promoting Gender Equality" which counts with a specific chapter on Jordan. 2. UN Women in Egypt is undertaking a cross sectoral gender assessment to identify the gaps and opportunities in its response and coordination with other partners operating on the ground ECO 2021/12 Completed The Gender Assessment Study was completed under LEAP 3 during 2020 on 4 sectors (Protection, Basic needs, Health and Livelihood) and the outcomes of the study has been presented for validation at the UNHCR Sub Working Group among other partner agencies and INGOs that works in the field. 3. UN Women at regional and country level will support consultations and awareness raising on the value of women’s work and equal sharing of domestic work and unpaid care with CSOs, private sector, national institutions, traditional and religious leaders, communities. RO / COs 2020/12 Completed The regional research on care economy in the Arab States, with deep dive chapters & policy briefs for Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Tunisia, has been published as a key piece of evidence & with set of recommendations feeding into policy dialogue in the region on promoting recognition, redistribution and reduction of unpaid care, as well as investing into paid care services. Regional and 4 country level launch events & discussions with stakeholders took place throughout December 2020. https://arabstates.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/12/the-role-of-the-care-economy-in-promoting-gender-equality . In Palestine, work is advanced in challenging norms in care economy, particularly in light of COVID-19 (awareness raising & advocacy, particularly in terms of advocating for shared household responsibilities and unpaid care work, in addition to the value of women’s work inside and outside the household).