Management Response

: Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (Turkey)
: 2021 - 2025 , Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (Turkey) (RO)
: Final joint evaluation of the “EU 4 Gender Equality” Regional Programme
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: Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (Turkey)
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This is a management response to the recommendations of the final evaluation of the EU 4 Gender Equality: Together against gender stereotypes and gender-based violence programme, implemented jointly by UN Women and UNFPA in the countries of Eastern Partnership. The evaluation was conducted during the last year of programme's implementation and covers the period from 1 March 2020 to 28 February 2023. The evaluation was jointly commissioned by UN Women and UNFPA. The intended use of the evaluation is to contribute to effective programming, organizational learning, accountability, knowledge management in the region, and strategic decision making on future programming on social norms change. The evaluation found the programme to be highly successful. The programme’s commitments and targets were met and surpassed despite a complex, changing and volatile environment. The evaluation also recommended learning from lessons related to elements of the programme’s modality, structure and successes of the first phase to inform the next phase of the programme and contribute to the ongoing global dialogue for understanding and valuing long-term social norms transformation. UN Women and UNFPA welcome the findings and recommendations of the evaluation and generally agree with the four recommendations. The management response is based on the key proposed actions by the evaluators. Most of them (incl. commitment to flexibility and innovation, commitment to long-term social norms change and optimization of allocation of resources) were already among the priorities of UN Women and UNFPA, and some work in this respect had started. UN Women and UNFPA will build on the ongoing work and follow up on the action points, as specified below.

: Approved
Recommendation: In Phase II programme development, the two agencies and the EU should clearly articulate the commitment to flexibility and innovation in programme design and delivery, and to strengthening the agencies’ commitment to tackling social norms in this challenging region.
Management Response: UN Women and UNFPA accept the recommendation. The key actions are developed to describe concrete measures to carry out implementation of the recommendation, and most of them refer to the development of the programme’s phase II.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind
Organizational Priorities: UN Coordination
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Coherence
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. To ensure alignment with corporate priorities of UN Women and UNFPA, for the phase II of the programme a shared Theory of Change and measurement framework that articulates and values experimentation, innovation and adaptability will be developed. Programme Team UN Women, UNFPA regional offices, EU 2024/01 Completed The second phase of the programme is driven and informed by UN Women’s and UNFPA’s regional and global commitments to social norms change, as stated in the 2022-2025 Strategic Plans of UN Women and UNFPA and respective regional programmes of each agency.
2. To ensure flexibility and adaptability of the programme’s phase II, a three months strategic planning phase will be set up. It will allow fine-tuning year 1 action plan of activities, more accurately assessing possible risks and defining mitigation strategies, and finalizing the review of the indicators together with their metadata and overall results framework. Programme Team UN Women, UNFPA regional offices, EU 2024/04 Overdue-Initiated
3. To ensure flexibility and adaptability of the programme’s phase II, a participatory mid-term review of the second phase of the programme during its second year of implementation will be conducted with the involvement of all stakeholders, including relevant government counterparts, CSOs and beneficiaries. It will cover adjustments to the programme interventions based on the progress trends and learning, including changes to the logframe, if required. Programme Team UN Women, UNFPA regional offices, EU 2025/09 Initiated The mid-term review will facilitate flexibility and programme adaptation to the changes and challenges of the country contexts, particularly the war in Ukraine, conflict escalation between Armenia and Azerbaijan and political challenges in Belarus, as well as retrenching of authoritarian values in the region.
4. To strengthen the commitment of the agencies, programme’s phase II will be developed in a consultative, inclusive and participatory manner with programme colleagues at the regional and country levels, and in consultation with programme partners. Programme Team, UN Women, UNFPA regional offices 2024/01 Completed This will help to ensure that expected results are mutually defined, agreed upon and committed, formulation of indicators and their metadata is jointly developed and owned by colleagues at the regional and country levels.
5. To foster innovation in the design of programme’s phase II, partnerships with civil society and women's organizations through subgrants modality will be well-articulated as a means of affecting grassroots transformation. Programme Team UN Women regional office, EU 2024/01 Completed The programme’s phase II will continue supporting successful and innovative initiatives by the CSOs and women’s organizations from phase I and will explore new partnerships through sub-grants modality to implement more innovative interventions.
Recommendation: UN Women and UNFPA should reaffirm their commitment to a joint Programme and regional structure, reframing and communicating the nature of the commitment to more clearly articulate the shared goals. This includes reconstructing the 50/50 split approach and reconceptualizing the concept of a shared commitment.
Management Response: The recommendation is accepted by UN Women and UNFPA. The key actions stated below, describe concrete measures to carry out the implementation of the recommendation, and most of them refer to the development of programme’s phase II. The concept of shared commitment was strengthened by focusing on a results-based budgeting approach being driven by results and a set of interventions required to achieve it together with the estimated budget. The arrangements for programme’s phase II are made based on the available resources.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance
Organizational Priorities: UN Coordination
UNEG Criteria: Coherence
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. The Programme Document for programme's phase II will reflect the commitment of UN Women and UNFPA to jointly work on social norms change to demonstrate a reduction in a siloed approach and increase in shared learning. The programme document will consider the logic of the integrated results and resources frameworks of both agencies’ 2022-2025 SPs by particularly paying attention to common and complementary results areas in social norms work. The regional and, to the extent possible, country programmatic work will include joint activities and make sure the two agencies complement each other. Programme Team UN Women, UNFPA regional offices 2024/01 Completed Examples of a joint regional intervention include the work on monitoring change in attitudes among programme beneficiaries The regional component will include at least one annual regional event bringing together programme team, partners and stakeholders to ensure cross-country learning and exchange of experiences.
2. To ensure that internal and external communications clearly articulate shared commitment and country office expectations, the Communication Protocol will serve as a guide to explain the steps for approval procedures and the EUDIGITOOL will ease the approval process. Programme Team UN Women, UNFPA regional offices 2023/09 Completed
3. To set up a shared approach to administering the programme in countries without a UN Women presence, the programme work in Armenia and Azerbaijan will be covered by UN Women Georgia Country Office, while Belarus will be covered by UN Women Moldova office. Programme Team UN Women regional office 2024/01 Completed
4. To increase regional knowledge-sharing activities and interventions, the budget of programme’s phase II includes a necessary allocation to conduct at least 1 regional event per year. Programme team 2024/01 Completed
Recommendation: Programming resources should be reframed to ensure optimal allocation.
Management Response: UN Women and UNFPA accept the recommendation. The key actions are developed to describe concrete measures to implement the recommendation. The reframing will be done to ensure country readiness to embark on specific interventions, to allocate adequate financial and human resources to achieve expected results and simplify approval processes.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance
Organizational Priorities: UN Coordination, Operational activities, Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. To determine the most contextually appropriate areas of focus and avoid selecting interventions that cannot be implemented, consultations with participating country offices, programme partners and stakeholders will be conducted. Selected programme interventions for programme’s phase II will be aligned with country programme priorities. Programme’s phase II will identify the most challenging issues and ensure that the programme prioritizes responsive interventions. 2024/01 Completed
2. To ensure more accurate results costing and the overall programme budgeting for phase 2, the actual cost of similar interventions of phase 1 will be used as a basis. This financial review will be made in consultation with the country offices to ensure that countries get more accurate budget portions. Programme Team 2024/01 Completed Regional and country colleagues conducted reviews of the actual spending under phase I and used this information for making budget estimations for phase II.
3. To ensure allocation of adequate human resources to achieve expected results, team composition at the country level will be strengthened by including a dedicated position of a programme specialist/analyst responsible for managing programme implementation in the respective countries. Programme Team 2024/01 Completed
4. To simplify approval processes and benefit from existing modern communications tools, EUDIGITOOL will be used. This will allow avoiding multiple back-and-force correspondences to receive approvals of communication products, produced under programme’s phase II. Programme Team UN Women, UNFPA regional offices 2024/01 Completed
Recommendation: The agencies and the EU should develop a clear, shared approach to understanding, articulating and valuing the Programme’s contribution to long-term social norms change. This may mean accepting and valuing a certain amount of uncertainty.
Management Response: UN Women and UNFPA accept the recommendation. The key actions stated below describe concrete measures to be undertaken to implement the recommendation.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: UN Coordination
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability, Impact
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. To ensure contribution to long-term social norms change, the programme phase II will be developed in consultation with UN Women and UNFPA HQ, that are currently in the process of developing the corporate approaches to social norms change. The programme is used as a learning tool for both organizations. Programme Team UN Women, UNFPA regional offices 2024/01 Completed The programme’s phase II is developed in alignment with the Strategic Plans of UN Women and UNFPA for the years 2022-2025, as mentioned under A.P.1 recommendation 1.
2. To ensure contribution to long-term social norms change, the programme’s phase II will apply strategies and implement interventions that address issues across personal, interpersonal, institutional and societal dimensions, creating an interconnected foundation for change. The programme’s phase II will challenge a conventional cross-cutting approach of applying LNOB principle. Instead, the programme will focus on specific groups facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, such as persons with disabilities, fathers of children with disabilities, refugees etc., and apply the leaving no one behind principle whenever its appropriate and relevant for the intervention. Programme Team 2026/06 Initiated
3. To ensure commitment to sustainability of programme’s interventions, the programme will apply policy advocacy, empowering women and men through support to grassroots organizations, capacity building of programme’s partners and stakeholders, strategic communication and awareness raising, building networks of national and regional partners and allies, and developing and disseminating knowledge and tools. Programme Team 2026/07 Initiated