Management Response

: Ethiopia
: 2021 - 2025 , Ethiopia (CO)
: Final Evaluation -Preventing VAWG and Delivering Essential Services
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: Ethiopia
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UN Women Ethiopia Country Office (ECO) has been implementing a Programme entitled “Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) and Delivering Essential Services to Survivors in Ethiopia” from 2019 to 2022. The overall goal of the Programme was to ensure women and girls live a life free of violence. The Programme aimed at preventing VAWG and supporting women and girls' survivors of violence and their access to justice, protection and quality essential services. UN Women commissioned an evaluation up on conclusion of the program to assess the overall impact of the program towards ending violence against women and girls in Ethiopia and identify good practices and lessons learned to inform the next phase, including future programming and initiatives on EVAWG, to support strategic policy decisions. The evaluation provided an in-depth assessment of the results against the three outcomes of the Programme and performance in terms of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, impact, inclusiveness, coherence, participation, equality, non-discrimination, and social transformation. The findings and recommendations of the evaluation will be used for organizational learning, future programming and advocacy. In the GATE platform, the external evaluators rated UN Women's final evaluation report of the “Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) and Delivering Essential Services to Survivors in Ethiopia” programme as good. Taking this external feedback seriously, UN Women has carefully considered and either fully or partially accepted the recommendations provided. To ensure transparency and accountability, this management report outlines the key actions, timelines, and responsibilities for implementing these recommendations. Each action step is detailed below to demonstrate our commitment to continuous improvement and the effective application of external insights into our operations.
: Approved
Recommendation: Increasing focus on prevention for enhanced sustainability and effectiveness: Considering the limited resources available for the response against the long-term gains and sustainability of prevention, there is need for UN Women to allocate more resources to prevention to ensure long-term sustainability and impact.
Management Response: UN Women will continue to strengthen its prevention work using evidence based and comprehensive strategies including RESPECT1 Women Framework, community and faith-based level prevention works. The national five years strategy on prevention and response to VAWC as well as the draft GBV prevention and response policy have prevention as a priority area and UN Women will support the roll out and implementation of the two documents. However, given the situation in the country, UN Women is cognizant of the huge need for the provision of essential services to survivors of violence.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Resource mobilization
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Roll out the RESPECT framework to key national stakeholders. UN Women in collaboration with UNFPA, WHO, government counterparts. 2025/01 Initiated UN Women is using various strategies to ensure the RESPECT Framework is being implemented. The inclusion of the RESPECT framework in to the new five years national strategy on prevention and response to VAWC is a big milestone. This will ensure the rolling out of the framework through the national strategy and action plan implementation. Further to this, UN Women is organizing a RESPECT training to key national stakeholders and implementing partners second week of October 2024.
Continue to Advocate for the adoption of GBV prevention and response policy. UN Women, MoWSA and CSO partners 2024/12 No Longer Applicable UN Women in collaboration with government and CSO partners have been advocating for a standalone GBV prevention and response policy. Currently, the Ministry of Planning and Development, a mandated ministry for policy development, provided feedback on the draft policy. UN Women with the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs (MoWSA) and key stakeholders is leading the revision of the policy Regardless of the continued advocacy efforts for the country to endorse a standalone GBV policy, the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Planning and Development (the mandated ministry to review policies) unilaterally decided not to have a standalone GBV prevention and response policy. Decision was made to integrate the GBV policy into the ongoing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment policy. The merging of the two policies have been finalized and submitted to the ministry of planning and development. Despite these challenges, UN Women will continue to advocate for a standalone policy and GBV law.
Support the roll out, implementation and monitoring of the five years strategy on VAWC. UN Women and MoWSA 2026/12 Initiated UN Women with the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Women and Social Affairs in close collaboration with the National Coordinating Body on prevention and response to VAWC (NCB), have been organizing various platforms to familiarize the national strategy and plan of action. In addition, planned activities in the strategy are being implemented where UN Women is tracking implementations and results achieved.
Recommendation: Concentrating interventions in limited areas for greater impact: UN Women should concentrate interventions in one or two regions and implement pilots whose results and impact will be more visible. Based on the success of the pilots, UN Women would advocate for the government to roll out the successful interventions across the country.
Management Response: UN Women acknowledges that the Programme implementation areas are dispersed and thin. UN Women started to scale down some intervention areas (for instance in 2023 pulled out from Gambela region) and plans to concentrate the different interventions (prevention and responses) in similar areas. However, there are good initiatives that needs to continue where UN Women is planning to expand at scale. Scaling down all intervention in to one or two regions will highly affect UN Women’s work as well as visibility. Further to this, the current conflict and insecurities in the countries are exposing women and girls to VAW where UN Women is expected to be flexible enough to expand.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Advocacy
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Impact
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
During the development of the new EVAW prodoc, the unit will consider the recommendation and focus interventions for greater impact. UN Women in consultation with key government stakeholders 2024/06 No Longer Applicable This has been discussed with the management and it was agreed to use the current SN instead of having a separate EVAW prodoc. Therefore, the team is using the SN to mobilize funding and concept notes that are in line with the SN.
Recommendation: Strengthening the ToC: The current ToC is not sufficiently detailed to give guidance in implementation. For the coming programme there will be need for broader consultations with all relevant stakeholders in the development of the ToC to ensure that it captures the appropriate interventions.
Management Response: UN Women is developing a new programme document, and the Theory of Change will be developed in consultation with key stakeholders and will be as comprehensive as possible.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: National ownership
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Work on the TOC per the recommendation during the development of the prodoc. UN Women with IPs 2024/06 No Longer Applicable This has been discussed with the management and it was agreed to use the current SN instead of having a separate EVAW prodoc. Therefore, the team is using the SN to mobilize funding and concept notes that are in line with the SN.
Recommendation: Need for UN Women to strengthen its own M&E: Although UN Women has invested substantial resources into strengthening its own M&E system and that of its CSO partners, weaknesses have been observed in the systems that need to be addressed. There is need for a more systematic approach to identifying the gaps and ensuring that they are covered through more focused capacity building interventions.
Management Response: UN Women, under its EVAWG unit, will internally conduct M&E system assessment to see the overall UN Women and implementing partners’ M&E processes. Following the findings, UN Women will work on strengthening its M&E system and processes.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Capacity development
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Conduct internal M&E system assessment and identify key areas for improvement. UN Women with partners 2025/01 Not Initiated Planned to conduct the first joint M&E system assessment in the 4th quarter.
Develop data collection tools and EVAW specific M&E system for different interventions (service provision, prevention works etc) for ease of tracking results and documentation. UN Women in consultation with IPs. 2025/01 Not Initiated Planned to conduct the first joint M&E system assessment in the 4th quarter
Capacity building to implementing partners- on the job and trainings. UN Women 2025/02 Not Initiated To ensure harmonized way of data collection, analysis and use, UN Women will organize capacity building trainings including on RBM, project and financial management and M&E.
Recommendation: Need to strengthen women agency: UN Women should come up with strategies to strengthen women’s agency to enable women to play a more active and meaningful role in advocating for their rights. As rights holders, women are best placed to articulate their issues using their own lived experiences to make their case.
Management Response: UN Women will continue to strengthen its work around strengthening women’s agency in its prevention work (where women and girls are mobilized and used as change agents in community and faith settings, schools, and universities) and in the provision of services through empowering survivors to advocate for the rights of women and girls. UN Women will also engage women rights organizations through continuous capacity building and experience sharing from other countries to revitalize the women’s movement, documentation of best practices and women’s champions.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: National ownership
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women will organize capacity building sessions for IPs, building on the CSO harmonized capacity building strategy under the current SN. UN Women 2025/01 Initiated UN Women established a partnership with the Network of Ethiopian Women Association to strengthen women’s movement particularly the anti-GBV movement. The objective is to build women and adolescent girls to be able to voice their concerns and claim their rights. A number of civil society organizations have become members of this movement. A new strategy for this has been drafted. In the year 2024, UN Women plans to organize further capacity buildings with its implementing partners.
Building women’s agency will be included in the new prodoc at output level. UN Women 2024/06 No Longer Applicable This has been discussed with the management and it was agreed to use the current SN instead of having a separate EVAW prodoc. Therefore, the team is using the SN to mobilize funding and concept notes that are in line with the SN.
Recommendation: Engendering social media: After its success with mainstreaming gender in the mainstream media, UN Women should focus on engendering the social media, which is the fastest growing media form. The agency should identify best practices in the engendering social media and suggest sanctions that should be applied to media operators who deliberately denigrate and degrade women in their depiction of them.
Management Response: The Ethiopian Media Authority (EMA) has the mandate to oversee and regulate mainstream, religious and online media (including social media). Thus far, there were efforts to engage EMA, however, its capacity to monitor every content on social media is limited. Building on existing partnerships by WILG and WPS GIHA units, the EVAWG unit will use a cross thematic approach to work with EMA. Further to this, the online violence that is increasing is perpetrated usually using social media where UN Women will also work with EMA and other media influencers.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Advocacy
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Organize consultation with the EMA, media houses and the Editors Guild Ethiopia to better understand the authority’s capacity and jointly plan follow up actions. UN Women 2025/01 Not Initiated This will be conducted in November 2024.
Recommendation: Empowering women economically: Given that one of the root causes of GBV is poverty, which increases women’s vulnerability through their dependence on men, it is crucial to tackle poverty to reduce violence. In this regard, UN Women should advocate for the government to come up with strategies, programmes and policies that empower women economically to make them more independent. But given the current funding constraints the government is facing against other equally pressing needs, UN Women should consider launching a basket fund among key development partners to support women’s IGA.
Management Response: Even if UN Women has standalone Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) unit, UN Women believe that economic empowerment should be mainstreamed in the EVAWG portfolio. UN Women has been advocating for the development and adoption of the five years strategy on VAWC which includes strengthening income and economy of women and vulnerable households. UN Women will also liaise with the WEE unit to better respond and reduce the vulnerability. UN Women is also cognizant of the funding landscape where most funds for EVAW are dedicated for prevention and response to VAW and economic empowerment component is dedicated to survivors only. UN Women will exert efforts to also mobilize funding dedicated for women’s economic empowerment.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: National ownership
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Include economic empowerment component in future programme development and employ cross fertilization approach between WEE and EVAWG in the ongoing as well as new projects. UN Women 2025/01 Initiated The EVAWG unit is collaborating with the WEE team particularly in ensuring economic empowerment components under the EVAWG units are reviewed by the WEE unit including support on intervention and indicator refinements. There were initiatives of facilitating discussions with other UN agencies to jointly mobilize resources.
Recommendation: Need to update prevention strategies to take into account new types and forms of violence: The dynamics of VAWG show that its form and types are changing rapidly. For instance, online sexual exploitation and abuse is a new form of violence, which many partners are not equipped to deal with. There is need to revisit current prevention strategies to take into account new and different forms of violence.
Management Response: Efforts are being made to incorporate different forms of violence against women and girls. For instance, a new study is commissioned by UN Women on “Technology-facilitated Violence against Women and Girls” where findings will help tailor the new programme interventions. UN women will engage movements, mainstream media and social media influencers to address the issue. Cyber violence is also integrated in the national five years strategy where UN Women continue to support the implementation of the strategy. Further to this, UN Women implemented flexibility to integrate conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) in past few years and will continue to respond in this regard.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Alignment with strategy
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Finalize and disseminate the study on “Technology-facilitated Violence against Women and Girls” UN Women 2025/01 Initiated The study has been finalized and submitted to UN Women. Currently, UN Women ECO in collaboration with HQ plan to organize a validation workshop and professional editing.
UN Women will employ flexibility to address emerging types of VAWG including online and CRSV during and beyond the SN period. UN Women in collaboration with IPs. 2025/01 Initiated
Recommendation: Strengthening administrative data collection: There is weak administrative data in Ethiopia for legal, health and social services to enable decisions and programmes to be run from an informed and evidence-based perspective. UN Women should support the government to come up with strategies to strengthen the country’s administrative data base. Such a strategy would involve strengthening the Statistical Agency to enable it to collect the data.
Management Response: UN Women will continue supporting administrative data management system in the different sectors including the ongoing support to MOJ management information system.The national strategy is also having a focus on enhancing administrative data across sectors. UN Women will identify existing sector specific administrative data management system, its use for decision making, work on strengthening and linking them.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women will continue to strengthen the MoJ criminal proceeding Management Information System (MIS) through the procurement of IT equipment and training on the new system. UN Women 2025/01 Initiated A new agreement was entered with the Ministry of Justice to strengthen the Management information system and there are ongoing efforts.
Under the new programme, UN Women will consult with key stakeholder to identify the existing administrative data management and use to come up with workable strategies to enhance the administrative data collection, analysis and use. UN Women with key sector service providing institutions. 2025/01 Initiated Thus far, UN Women identified that the administrative data collection of shelters, one stop centers, police and prosecutors’ office. There are no uniform way of administrative data collection. The MIS that UN Women is supporting will help standardize data collection system in the criminal justice system in Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa cities as a pilot cities and this can be scaled up.
Support the strengthening of administrative data management in the health, social and justice sectors through capacity buildings, development of tools. UN Women with key sector service providing institutions. 2025/12 Not Initiated
Recommendation: Supporting partners to broaden funding base: Currently shelters are being supported financially 100 percent by UN Women. UN Women should support partners to broaden their funding base by seeking funding from other donors. UN Women should also lobby the government to fund shelters and recognise them as critical elements in the rehabilitation of VAWG survivors.
Management Response: UN Women will continue to support the Ethiopian Network of Women Shelters (ENWS) to continue its advocacy to access land as well as government’s ownership of shelters. UN Women will also build capacities of shelters to mobilize better resources and also come up with sustainability strategies. However, due to the current funding landscape and situation in the country, the required fund might not be addressed through those efforts. Rather UN Women will advocate for government’s ownership.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: National ownership
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women will organize resource mobilization and grant management training to ENWS members. UN Women in partnership with ENWS. 2025/01 Initiated
UN Women will also scale up its work with government owned shelters to ensure sustainability and ownership. UN Women 2025/01 Not Initiated
Recommendation: There is need to address gaps in gender budgeting that are mainly the result of lack of prioritization and low institutional capacity. UN Women should support interventions to build capacity in the Ministry of Finance on gender budgeting. Support should also be provided to other government ministries to build their institutional capacity on gender budgeting. A parallel advocacy campaign should be launched on the importance of institutionalizing gender budgets.
Management Response: UN women has a dedicated unit on National planning and budget where ensuring gender budgeting is a priority area. The EVAWG unit will continue to support and advocate for a dedicated gender, particularly EVAW budgeting. The national cost of intimate partners violence study commissioned by UN Women identified the cost incurred by households and service providers costs and there is a huge need for budget allocation for prevention and response to VAWG.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: National ownership
Organizational Priorities: Normative Support
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
The EVAWG unit will continue to share the findings of the “national cost of intimate partners violence” study for policy makers and continue to advocate for budget allocation for VAWG. UN Women 2024/12 Initiated UN Women conducted a workshop to share the findings of the study for key stakeholders. Experiences of the National planning unit on gender budgeting was also shared. Such discussions will continue in collaboration with the National planning and Budgeting unit.