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UN-Women welcomes the findings and recommendations of the Corporate Thematic Evaluation of UN-Women's Contribution to Governance and National Planning. The evaluation assesses UN-Women's contribution from 2011 to 2017 to "strengthen the responsiveness of plans and budgets to gender equality at all levels" (Goal 5 of UN-Women Strategic Plan 2011-2013) and to ensure that "governance and national planning fully reflect accountability for gender equality commitments and priorities" (Impact Area 5 of UN-Women Strategic Plan 2014-2017). Based on extensive document review and consultations with stakeholders, partners and UN-Women staff at Headquarters, Regional Offices and Country Offices, the evaluation presents an assessment of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and lessons to inform future Governance and National Planning (GNP) strategy development, planning and implementation.
UN-Women appreciates the evaluation's recognition of the pioneering role of Unifem and UN-Women over two decades in promoting gender-responsive GNP. It identifies gender-responsive GNP as foundational for achieving gender equality and as an area for UN-Women to leverage its comparative advantage in providing integrated policy support, specifically in the context of United Nations Development System (UNDS) Reform. It recognizes UN-Women's influence and coordination with other UN agencies as supporting integration of and coherence on gender equality in key normative agreements, particularly the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. The evaluation notes that UN-Women has, through strategic partnerships with ministries of finance, national women's machineries and civil society organizations, successfully enabled government actors to establish and apply gender responsive approaches to policy making, planning and budgeting. It also points to the consistently high-quality technical support provided by UN-Women as contributing to the strong relationship of trust amongst partners and recognizes UN-Women's strength in orienting its GNP work to government partner priorities.
The evaluation allows UN-Women to reflect on main areas of progress, challenges and lessons learned to identify ways to expand and further embed gender responsive GNP in national systems. UN-Women particularly notes with appreciation the evaluation's recommendations to consolidate and strengthen its programme offering, review its contribution on HIV/AIDS, coordination within the UN system and financing among others. UN-Women recognizes that responding to these recommendations will require a refined strategic vision for this area of work, enhanced capacities at all levels, increased linkages between GNP and thematic areas, and improvements in internal systems and knowledge management over the course of implementing the 2018-2021 Strategic Plan. UN-Women appreciates that the evaluation recognizes the necessity of additional human and financial resources at all levels to fully implement the recommendations.
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