Management Response

: Ethiopia
: 2017 - 2020 , Ethiopia (CO)
: Final Evaluation Transformative Financing for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Ethiopia Programme
:
: Ethiopia
:

MANAGEMENT RESPONSE TO THE INDEPENDENT PROGRAM END EVALUATION OF UN WOMEN TRANSFORMATIVE FINANCING FOR GENDER EQUALITY
: Approved
Recommendation: RECOMMENDATION 1 (FOR UN WOMEN): As stated under evaluation findings 9,11,12,20,21,25,32 and 33, though the Programme has made some good progress in GRB, a lot still needs to be done to fully integrate GRB in all federal and regional budgetary processes and sectors. Therefore, instead of formulating a new programme, UN Women should consider improving the current Programme (another phase), taking good practices, lessons learned, and recommendations provided in this evaluation. In addition, there should be a prioritization of sectors targeted for institutionalization of GRB as a tool during their planning, budgeting, implementation, and M&E of their program interventions. (UN Women and MoF)-High priority
Management Response: UN Women will strengthen and improve the current program document by taking into account some of the relevant recommendations provided in the evaluation report and continue working on capacity building, revising outdated knowledge products, strengthening the work with Ministry of Finance and build the capacity of members of parliament on GRB. The program will involve more stakeholders such as the National Plan Commission, Ministry of Women and Social Affairs (MOWSA) and CSOs.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Governance and planning (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability, Impact
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Revise the existing program document as per the relevant recommendations provided in the evaluation report. UN Women 2022/07 Completed Phase II of the programme endorsed by R-PAC
Recommendation: RECOMMENDATION 2 (FOR UN WOMEN): According to evaluation findings 16, 20,35 and 42, capacity-building initiatives on GRB should be strengthened and scaled up to other government departments and bodies. The capacity of the parliamentarians should continue for the incoming parliamentarians both at the Federal and Regional levels. All relevant Directorates and Departments under the Secretariat Office, such as the Gender Directorate, M&E Department, and Planning Directorate, should be capacitated to effectively play their role in revising sector plans and evaluating progress. This will enable them to have a gender perspective in providing feedback for sector plans. Capacity building for the leadership and management team of IPs is very relevant hence needs to be strengthened. To address the challenges faced due to staff turnover, capacity-building initiatives should be a continuous exercise, especially when there is a change in leadership or staff turnover, to ensure an increased commitment by all stakeholders. As GRB initiative requires to be institutionalized and draw commitment from the leadership. (UN Women, MoF and MoWSA)-High priority
Management Response: UN Women has already started scaling up capacity building of different government bodies to strengthen the GRB at federal and regional levels. UN Women has been providing capacity building on Gender and Aid effectiveness, program budgeting and GRB for major sectors and MoF experts. UN Women built capacity of the secretariat of the parliament including its Gender Directorate using the Gender Responsive Budgeting toolkit. In 2022 the program will leverage further capacity building strategy targeting members of parliament (women caucus, women and children standing committee and budget standing committee) using the GRB toolkit. UN Women planned joint collaboration with MoWSA in collaboration with MoF on the capacity building process for GRB implementation.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Governance and planning (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance, Capacity development, National ownership
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Impact, Sustainability, Effectiveness, Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Support Union of Ethiopian Women Children Association (UEWCA) to build the capacity of experts and managers on GRB at Federal and Regional level UN Women 2022/01 Ongoing UN Women has signed a letter of agreement with UEWCA to provide training for sectors and bureaus on GRB in Amhara, Diredawa, Oromia, SNNPR and Addis Ababa. The action point will be completed when budget is available
Conduct training for the newly elected members of parliament (women caucus, women and children standing committee and budget standing committee) on GRB using the toolkit developed. UN Women 2022/02 Ongoing This activity will be done in collaboration with WILG and the action point will be completed once WILG Phase II ProDoc is endorsed by G-PAC in July 2022
Recommendation: RECOMMENDATION 3 (FOR UN WOMEN): Based on evaluation finding 14, 27 and 36, there is a need to strengthen coordination and collaboration among key stakeholders to track GRB and promote gender equality and women’s empowerment. These include the MoF, MoWSA, House of Representatives, women caucus groups, plan commission, etc. For instance, since the MoF mainly focuses on the financial aspects, it should work closely with other actors such as the National Planning Commission and the House of People Representatives since they have a significant role in the budget approval process and evaluating sector plans. In addition, the House of People’s Representatives' Gender Secretariat Office, which is responsible for coordinating all gender-related activities and facilitation of GRB interventions with the parliamentarians, should be given the same attention as the women caucus and the standing committees. (UN Women, MoF and MoWSA) The MoF should follow up and track the use of gender budget statements and take corrective actions (including penalties) to hold sectors accountable. The budget directorate in the MoF should play a significant role in this area since the ministry is the one who requests the sectors to prepare their plans and their budget needs and ceiling.
Management Response: UN Women has been already closely working with the different directorates of the MoF throughout the program period on different aspects of GRB implementation. UN Women will continue to work with the MoF on the implementation of the Gender Equality strategies and capacity building. UN Women also worked with the gender secretariat of the parliament in building their capacities on GRB using our toolkit developed for parliamentarians. In 2022, UN Women is planning to build capacity of the newly elected members of parliament on GRB, gender budget statement and organize south-south experience sharing with other African countries, if the situation allows. UN Women will also closely work with the National Plan Commission for gender responsive planning. UN Women is also planning to work closely with MoWSA on capacity building on GRB and to conduct assessment on GRB implementation by sectors.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Governance and planning (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: National ownership, Capacity development, Oversight/governance
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability, Impact
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Build capacity of experts at federal and regional level on GRB tools. UN Women 2022/01 Ongoing UN Women will transfer the fund to UEWCA and MoF to implement the activities and will closely follow up with them.
Conduct assessment on gender responsive planning for National Plan Commission (NPC) UN Women 2022/04 Ongoing UN Women will hire a consultant to undertake this assessment, no fund is available for 2024 and the work will be started soon.
Provide training for members of parliament on GRB UN Women 2022/01 Completed UN Women executed three rounds of trainings on GRB for budget standing committee & women caucus.
Recommendation: RECOMMENDATION 4 (FOR UN WOMEN): Based on evaluation findings 23 and 24, there should be more experience sharing with other African countries as was done with South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda. These countries were chosen based on their successful implementation of GRB initiatives and efforts to meet international commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment. There should also be experience sharing among different sectors, including strengthening experience sharing with sectors that have piloted the gender budget statement. (UN Women, MoF)-Medium priority
Management Response: UN Women is planning to organize a south-south experience sharing with Morocco and Uganda for members of parliament (women and children and budget standing committee) if the situation allows. Additionally, UN Women is planning to organize experience sharing workshop to share the gender budget statement (GBS) with sectors ( Ministry of Health, Ministry Education, Ministry of Industry, National Plan Commission, Ministry of Labour and Skill, Ministry of Water and Energy, Ministry of Revenue, Federal Auditor General, Ministry of Irrigation and Low land areas) at federal level by Agriculture and Federal Job creation that piloted the GBS.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Governance and planning (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Advocacy, Knowledge management, South-South cooperation
Organizational Priorities: Partnership, Normative Support
UNEG Criteria: Impact, Effectiveness, Relevance, Human Rights
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Conduct experience sharing workshop on Gender Budget Statement for priority sectors by Agriculture and Federal Job Creation and food Security office. UN Women 2022/02 Completed UN Women conducted and experience sharing workshop on gender budget statement in Adama on 15-17 July 2022
Conduct south-south experience sharing for members of parliament and MoF to Uganda and Morocco to share experience on accountability mechanisms on GRB UN Women 2023/01 Completed South-south experience sharing MoF to Morocco to share experience on accountability mechanisms on GRB and member of parliaments to South Africa.
Recommendation: RECOMMENDATION 5 (FOR UN WOMEN): According to evaluation findings 11,39 and 42 to ensure timely implementation and follow-up, key actors, including the UN Women, MoF, MoWSA, etc., should track progress and achievements jointly. Collecting or sharing feedback from each implementing partner will improve coordination and accountability, and therefore, GRB plans should be prepared jointly or shared among IPs and implemented accordingly. Establishing a dedicated steering committee will also facilitate implementation and working together on joint action plans. (UN Women, MoF and MoWSA) Medium priority
Management Response: UN Women is continuously following up with key implementing partners to make sure that projects are implemented efficiently and effectively despite the shortage of staff within the National Planning team, who is spearheading the programme. In addition, UN Women always plans its annual workplan in collaboration with partners.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Governance and planning (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance, Internal coordination and communication
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities, Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women is continuously following up with key implementing partners to make sure that projects are implemented efficiently and effectively despite the shortage of staff within the National Planning team, who is spearheading the programme. In addition, UN Women always plans its annual workplan in collaboration with partners. UN Women 2022/03 Completed The Gender Equality Strategy has been incorporated within MoF's AWP and UN Women works closely with MoF on the implementation of the Gender Equality Strategy
Recommendation: RECOMMENDATION 6 (FOR UN WOMEN Based on evaluation findings 1, 38 and 40, best practices and good lessons learned, such as identifying gender gaps/assessments, joint planning and monitoring, capacity building (training), and developing more knowledge products and toolkits, should be documented and scaled up. There should be regular revision and updating of the already developed tools and guidelines to adapt to change in governance structures and priorities. Sector offices should be encouraged to conduct situation assessments to identify their respective gender gaps and specific strategies and plans developed to ensure institutionalization of gender financing. This would ensure the tracking of public finance allocations and expenditures for different programmes. To measure the contribution of such a programme, GRB initiatives should be supported with baseline information for planning, monitoring, and tracking the changes in budgeting. (UN Women, MoF and MoWSA)- Medium priority
Management Response: For the last four years of the program UN Women has been conducting diversified and tailored capacity building interventions, producing different knowledge products, and conducting assessments. Gender gap analysis of the PFM has been already conducted, sectors assessment on resource allocation within GTPII in 7 regions conducted and findings were shared among sectors. In addition, a discussion forum and experience sharing were organized to 120 experts from Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Women Children and Youth Affair, Ministry of Finance, Federal Urban Job Creation and Food Security Agency, Ethiopian Road Authority, Federal General Attorney, Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Ministry of Urban Development and Construction, Ministry of Science and Higher-Level education, Transport Minister, National Plan Development Commission from all regions except Tigray. UN Women is planning to conduct assessment on GRB implementation in collaboration with MoWSA to identify the level of implementation at sectors level.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Governance and planning (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance, Capacity development, Knowledge management, National ownership, Evidence, Data and statistics, Resource mobilization
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency, Operational activities, Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency, Effectiveness, Impact, Sustainability
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Conduct assessment on GRB implementation in collaboration with MoWSA to identify the level of implementation at sectors level. UN Women 2022/04 Ongoing Assessment on GRB implementation is ongoing in 5 regions.
Recommendation: RECOMMENDATION 7 (FOR UN WOMEN): Based on evaluation finding 7 and 13, future programming should focus more on institutionalizing GRB through its integration in various planning and reporting frameworks/templates and also strengthening the use of the gender budget statement and other systems to ensure the inclusion of GRB in programme budget templates, M&E frameworks, etc. In addition, the programme should invest in Information Technology (IT) database management system to maintain efficient and reliable data management for simplified data processing and future analysis. (UN Women, MoF)- Medium priority
Management Response: To institutionalize GRB UN Women has been working on the gender budget statement (GBS) shared as the best experience from Rwanda to be up scaled to other sectors at federal level. The experience sharing will target all sectors at federal level by selecting two experts from each sectors. The planning and budgeting and gender directorate will be working on GBS. UN Women has been developing and revising templates, manuals and toolkits to institutionalize GRB in different institutions. Working on IT system is very difficult with Government institutions we have been trying to communicate with MoF to improve their financial system known as Aid Management Platform (AMP) however it has been a challenge to work with the ministry on the issue as they were resistant to this structural change in their work. UN Women will continue to communicate on the issue in the future.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Governance and planning (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: National ownership, Knowledge management, Evidence, Data and statistics, Innovation and technology
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM, Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability, Impact, Effectiveness, Gender equality
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Organize experience sharing workshop to share the Gender Budget Statement. UN Women 2022/02 Completed The experience sharing workshop on the Gender Budget Statement has been conducted in Adama on 15-17 July 2022
Develop Gender Equality Strategy for Federal Job Creation and Food Security Agency UN Women 2022/04 No Longer Applicable The Job creation re-structuring is ongoing and UN Women need to identify the specific roles of the restructured unit to work together.
Recommendation: RECOMMENDATION 8 (FOR UN WOMEN): Based on evaluation finding 17, 23 and 26, key stakeholders should advocate for the inclusion of gender budget lines in the programme budget section and incorporate them in the management training provided by the civil service university (capacity building programme of the public sector). In addition to the MoF gender equality strategy, the stakeholders should also lobby and advocate for some of the major sectors to develop their own GRB strategy to effect all the gender-related proclamations in the country. They should also lobby and advocate for gender-responsive curriculum development in Civil Service University and plan to establish a CSOs platform to advocate for GRB. Advocate for the allocation of additional resources (technical and financial) to equip the UN Women team with additional staffing for close support, follow-up, monitoring to the partners. (UN Women, MoF and MoWCYA)- Medium priority
Management Response: UN Women is working with the Civil Service Organization called Union of Ethiopian Women and Children Association (UEWCA) on GRB advocacy by building capacity of different CSOs on GRB. It is also planned to develop Gender Equality Strategy for Federal Job Creation and Food Security Agency as it is one of the sectors with large amount of budget allocation. The Gender Equality Strategy of Ministry of Finance will be launched to lobby and advocate among other sectors as well. UN Women encountered challenges working with Civil Service University in revising the education curriculum , due to the lack of will to revise the curriculum. Nevertheless, UN Women will continue pursuing the initiative in collaboration with GoE. There is a plan to add additional staff for the National Planning program in 2022. This will depend on the availability of budget.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Governance and planning (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Knowledge management, National ownership, Capacity development, Oversight/governance, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Impact, Sustainability, Gender equality
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Build capacity of Civil Service Organizations to advocate GRB UN Women 2021/11 Completed The capacity building has been completed in 2021
Launch the Gender Equality Strategy of Ministry of Finance to lobby and advocate to other sectors UN Women 2022/12 Ongoing The Gender Equality Strategy is awaiting its endorsement by MoF