Management Response

: Multi-Country Office for India, Bhutan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka
: 2019 - 2019 , Multi-Country Office for India, Bhutan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka (MCO)
: "From Opportunities to Capacities: A Multi-Sectoral Approach to Enhancing Gender Responsive Governance”
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Multi-Country Office for India, Bhutan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka

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The Evaluation Report commends the relevance of the programme in strengthening national and sub national governance processes from a gender perspective, further acknowledging the critical role played by UN Women in building the capacities of the governance institutions. The Evaluation further commends UN Women’s approach to capacity building as a strategic investment in ensuring institutionalization and sustainability of Gender Responsive Governance (GRG) interventions in India. The Evaluation highlighted that UN Women leveraged its unique position as an intergovernmental agency to bring together national and state government and other stakeholders on the same platform to implement the programme. The programme was successful in identifying the needs of the target beneficiaries and addressing them. The Evaluation brought forth the fact that UN Women was able to leverage partnerships and networks from phase I and expanded them for better quality results and coverage for the phase II of the programme. This has resulted in expansion of necessary capacities at national and local levels. Complementarity of efforts with duty-bearers was critical to continuing and expanding these efforts. The programme was able to successfully navigate existing political, practical and bureaucratic constraints, particularly with respect to GRG. The programme also had several unintended positive impacts that were not a part of the original programme objectives. The programme had detailed reporting mechanisms.

: Approved
Recommendation: UN Women should build upon its agency as an independent, nonpartisan coordinating body for furthering the issue of gender responsive governance.
Management Response: The Country Office (CO) in 2021 has already prioritised, postured and positioned its work under inclusive governance in alignment with the leading, national discourse of “Women Led Development.” The CO’s longstanding work under Governance on Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB), Ending Violence Against Violence (EVAW) and Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) established it as the go-to gender expert at both National and Sub-national levels, resulting in the CO establishing new partnerships with Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Ministry of Skill Development and Entreprenuership and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology along with the States of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Embedding the CO’s work in the national discourse will allow for institutionalizing change for longer term, irreversible gains. The India CO has strengthened its presence in states like Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Delhi NCR and further expanded its outreach to newer states like Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Manipur
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Description: UN Women should continue to facilitate coalitions and partnerships among the government ministries and departments, CSOs, and the community. They should also engage the private and corporate sector in the advocacy for gender responsive governance mechanisms. This will ensure additional resources for escalated impact. The aim should be to leave no one behind at the panchayat, state or national levels and build an evidence-base that can feed into its global normative and advocacy work.
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: National ownership
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women will work towards institutionalizing its relationship with national and state governments to mainstream gender in governance and planning processes. UN Women 2021/12 Completed NA
UN Women will continue its work as a convening agency to bring together government and non-government stakeholders on the same platform to promote Gender Responsive Governance UN Women 2021/02 Completed NA
Recommendation: UN Women should leverage the current institutional partnerships with the government to create a unified platform committed for gender responsive governance.
Management Response: UN Women through the UNCT will collaborate with NITI Aayog, the premier policy ‘Think Tank’ of the Government of India (GoI), through direct technical support as well as by convening dialogue platforms where we advocate for strengthened implementation of gender commitments in the SDGs, including those on Gender Responsive Governance. UN Women will continue to advocate with Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the nodal Ministry for collecting data on SDGs, to ensure an increased focus on improved data collection systems for effective monitoring of SDGs and gender indicators in the national indicator framework for the SDGs. UN Women in India will continue to work with Gender Equality and Women Empowerment (GEWE) advocates and its Civil Society Advisory Group (CSAG) to strengthen policy advocacy and dialogue platforms to reign in greater coordination with the key stakeholders.
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Description: UN Women, in collaboration with MoPR and other critical ministries create a multi-thematic and unified platform for all stakeholders by leveraging existing partnerships. The programme should use existing partnerships as fulcrum for engaging with other agencies and bringing them to the platform for shared accountabilities. It is also recommended that UN Women explores the possibility of usage of powerful communication tools and platforms to highlight the success stories of this programme in order to establish linkages with states currently not a part of the intervention.
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Advocacy
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Impact
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women will work with NITI Aayog to develop a Gender Equality Index to rank states based on their performance on gender indicators. The indicators on Gender Responsive Governance will be included in this index. UN Women, NITI Aayog 2022/12 Completed NA
Develop e - governance tool on GRB for Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD). UN Women 2021/12 Completed NA
Recommendation: UN Women should redesign the programme to become multisectoral with appropriate resource allocation across thematic areas
Management Response: The CO’s longstanding work on GRB, EVAW and Women’s participation in urban planning is now reflected under its work on Governance (Impact Area 1) as the flagship/headline for UN Women’s work in the country. This will help leverage the existing political will, national resources and advocacy. Additionally, given the complex challenge of working on the issue of violence as an urgent national issue, this structure allows us to engage with the larger agenda of women led development governance, a key national discourse. Embedding the CO’s work in the national discourse will allow for institutionalizing change for longer term, irreversible gains. The first outcome is towards a project on Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting (GRPB) with a budget envelop of approximately USD 2.1 million over 3 year. These resources were actualized in 2020, allowing the CO to resurrect the Impact Area and use it to comprehensively and strategically position its work on Violence, GRB and Women’s participation in governance processes.
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Description: There is a strong emergent need for the programme to prioritise its thematic strength while still reaching wider impact. Selecting one or two strategic ‘signature’ programming models within the sub-thematic areas that are innovative, low-cost and with potential for scale-up, sustainability and potential to apply UN Women’s universal mandate could be beneficial. At the same time, internal and external collaborations could avoid potentially overlapping mandates, reduce resource burden and lead to prioritization of strategies for reaching impact at scale. It should also invest in a thematic resource mobilization approach that builds on existing, innovative, flexible and longer-term funding mechanisms and that addresses regional priorities.
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Resource mobilization
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
To streamline the Gender Responsive Governance thematic area to ensure that it is multisectoral with adequate resources UN Women 2021/01 Completed NA
Recommendation: UN Women should integrate new and innovative approaches in its theory of change for better results.
Management Response: The CO is working with new partners at the policy level to ensure that newer approaches are integrated with its Theory of Chance (TOC). Towards this the India CO has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the State Government of Kerala to establish India’s first public Gender Data Hub to collect, analyse and use gender data, including data on Gender Responsive Governance, to inform policy making at the sub-national level. This data center is expected to become operational in 2021. The CO is also investing in innovative technology solutions to provide access to justice and essential services along with ability for the government to monitor progress on GEWE indicators.
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Description: UN Women should invest in innovative programming on social norms change, which comple¬ments its GRG work and develop effective methods to monitor and report on progress in the long-term such as working with Parliamentarians, who can act both as targets and contributors to social norm change through constituency development models etc. It should also build on existing upstream and downstream work to effect social norm change such as engaging with elected men representatives for women’s active participation in political leadership. At the national level, UN Women should provide tactical support to MoPR and other ministries to develop the Gender Responsive Index for federal competitiveness and establishing the Gender Friendly Panchayats in the institutional mechanism of MOPR. With progressive states such as Rajasthan and Odisha, the programme should be recalibrated for intensified efforts across sectors. Similarly, in Maharashtra and MP, the interventions of public safety and safe spaces should be deepened
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Innovation and technology
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Establish public Gender Data Hub in Kerala UN Women and State Government of Kerala 2021/12 Completed NA
WhatsApp chatbot (to be launched in 2021) for women citizens and their allies caregivers was developed to register their complaints or requests related to all forms of violence, along with a Grievance Redressal & Management system that will be provided to the Government Department employees to collect, manage, assign and resolve the complaints registered through the WhatsApp chatbot. UN Women 2021/12 Completed NA
Develop a chatbot (Facebook and Websites) (to be launched in 2021) for information dissemination to bridge the knowledge and information gap for women survivors of all forms of violence and their allies/caregivers by supporting them in understanding and navigating the mental health, medical, legal procedures and other related systems. UN Women 2021/12 Completed NA
Recommendation: UN Women should develop a long-term capacity-strengthening plan to enhance its ability to deliver results.
Management Response: The India CO continues to build capacities of different government and non-government stakeholders including Private sector and Civil Societies on different thematic areas under GRG. Although the CO in 2021 is not focusing on political participation, it is working closely with elected representatives at the national levels on GRB, EVAW and WEE. Further expansion of stakeholder engagement will be included in the next SN.
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Description: UN Women should develop communities of practice across states on integrating gender responsive governance mechanisms across sectors, information exchange and policy dialogues. It should also strengthen corporate capacities and systems to manage and mitigate risks related to women’s political participation in different political system and contexts, including how to identify and deal with potential backlashes to engendering political participation.
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Capacity development
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Capacity building of governance and justice institutions (line ministries and local governments, including service providers) for gender equality outcomes UN Women 2022/12 Completed NA
Strengthening governance systems in 4 states in India to promote transformative financing for women and girls through setting up and strengthening institutional mechanisms on GRB. UN Women 2022/12 Completed NA
Building capacities of private sector organisations to become gender responsive under the framework of Women Empowerment Principals. UN Women 2022/12 Completed NA
Recommendation: UN Women should make its programme more efficient to reach large coverage.
Management Response: UN Women as per its operational mandate and current Strategic Note (SN) pilots scalable programmes and projects to generate evidence, advocate and build capacities of stakeholder both government and non-government to upscale and implement these pilots at large scale. The GRG programme also saw some of its initiatives being replicated and institutionalised by the government.
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Description: UN Women should institute efficient systems and processes that are flexible and can adapt to the type of partnerships without affecting programme outreach and results. Comprehensive monitoring and reporting framework should be instituted with dedicated personnel, right till the lowest level of intervention. Use of technological platforms to collect, analyse and disseminate reports at regular intervals may be considered. A comprehensive communication plan needs to be executed to showcase the high points of the programme, be it capacity building, technical support or advocacy. While highlighting achievements in the annual forum of EWRs should continue, there needs to be consistent communication with the target group, and more importantly, with the public in general.
Management Response Category: Rejected
Thematic Area: Leadership and participation in governance systems (SP 2018-2021)
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Key Action not added.