Management Response

: Ethiopia
: 2021 - 2025 , Ethiopia (CO)
: Final Evaluation of UN Women’s Programme on Women’s Empowerment in Sexual, Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (SRMNCAH) Rights in Humanitarian Settings in the Horn of Africa (POWER)
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: Ethiopia
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The final evaluation of POWER has resulted in a report produced by Universalia, which analyzes the achievements of the programme in the two countries where it was implemented – Ethiopia and Uganda – as well as the Horn of Africa region. The findings provided in the report focus on the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability of the evaluated programme and with the recommendations the report suggests how achievements and lessons learned can feed into future programming and work of UN Women in addressing gender equality in the sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health in humanitarian settings. The recommendations are especially concerned with the need for a continuation and expansion of the work in this field including: for programme design, the evaluation recommends that UN Women should consider a longer period of implementation and a greater level of investment for the next phase of the programme; in the next phase of the programme, UN Women should seek greater integration between country and regional dimensions of programing and leveraging existing partnerships with UN agencies and leveraging the strengths of other UN partners providing SRMNCAH services in humanitarian settings; to design robust interventions that transform social norms, UN Women needs more focused investment on monitoring and evaluating this work, including further development of pathways of change and measurement, including the availability of baseline data; for strategic considerations UN Women should continue to focus on empowering women and girls to demand SRMNCAH services as part of a rights based approach and the evaluation confirmed that UN Women’s emphasis on demand generation filled important gaps in the SRMNCAH rights for women and girls in humanitarian settings; and finally, UN Women should continue to invest in areas that were identified as success factors for POWER, including continuing to engage local leadership, building capacities of gender equality and women’s empowerment champions and embedding gender-responsive SRMNCAH in local frameworks, structures and institutions, as well, economic empowerment activities provided another promising strategy for its effects on agency, shifts in social norms and ability to enhance access to quality SRMNCAH services. UN Women appreciates the guidance given by this evaluation. In its final version, the report presents recommendations that are sufficiently relevant and actionable. This management response addresses the five recommendations of the evaluation report and presents key actions for implementing these recommendations. It incorporates the feedback, input and actions of HQ, regional and country offices. In certain cases, where the key actions are similar or the same, they have been consolidated, without articulating country-specific actions. The management response was prepared by HQ: Nazneen Damji, Elena Kudravtseva, RO: Sunita Caminha; CO-Uganda: Elizabeth Mushabe and Emmanuel Molo Achar; and CO-Ethiopia: Addisalem Befekadu.
: Submitted
Recommendation: UN Women should consider a longer period of implementation and a greater level of investment for the next phase of the programme. It is noteworthy that POWER was able to achieve its outputs with a high volume of implementation activity within a very short timeframe. Yet stakeholders noted that the design was too ambitious even before COVID-19 led to a more compressed timeline. Programme duration is a critical factor affecting the potential for social norm and behavioural change that can sustain demand generation. Thus, future initiatives should consider a timeline of that allows for delivering activities and carrying out the necessary follow-up measures.
Management Response: UN Women agrees with this recommendation. The program was highly ambitious, but implementation had to be compressed due to budgetary constraints as well as challenges posed by COVID-19. We agree that while behavior change and shifting gender norms is possible, it requires significant investments of time and resources. However, the implementation of the POWER program has demonstrated that even a program of short duration can bring about meaningful change if responding to local needs and leveraging local resources and initiatives with a multi-level approach. In particular, POWER program was able to increase awareness of SRHR and bolster capacities of rights holders and duty-bearers for policy development. This has created an enabling environment, paving the way for adoption and implementation of right-based policy frameworks that promote and protect SRMNCAH in humanitarian settings. UN Women will now build on this momentum with greater investments in time and resources and change harmful gender norms and behaviors that prevent women and girls from accessing SRMNCAH services.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. Develop a new proposal that will leverage the success of the POWER program to secure funding for a Phase 2 of the project, drawing upon UN Women’s corporate social norms learning and UN Women humanitarian response strategy underway, that will ensure a longer timeframe for implementation and increased budgetary allocations to match the ambition. Headquarters (HQ), Regional Office (RO), Country offices (COs) 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated This should include a consultation with ADA (Austrian development Agency) to build shared vision/understanding of the concept and change pathway, and resources required
2.Strengthen engagement with non-traditional partners, existing local mechanisms and systems in the coming phase to influencing social and cultural norms RO, COs 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated UN Women will engage local actors including community and religious leaders, grassroot organizations, community members (men and boys, women and girls) to address discriminatory and negative social norms around Gender equality and SRMNCAH
Recommendation: In a next phase of the programme, UN Women should seek greater integration between country and regional dimensions of programming, including leveraging existing partnerships with UN Agencies. Due to resource limitations and time constraints, UN Women was not able to consistently link regional training and dialogue to strategic priorities at country level. Regional training activities should be linked to Country Office strategies so that there is appropriate follow up on the interest generated by initiatives such as SIGI and GRB and to ensure application of new knowledge and skills. Greater synergy at the various levels can be further reinforced with more clear linkages with UN Women’s Strategic Note, with greater integration with existing related programmes. Similarly in a subsequent phase of a POWER programme, UN Women should consider a coordinated/joint programming modality that leverages the strengths of other UN partners for providing SRMNCAH services in humanitarian settings.
Management Response: UN Women agrees with this recommendation. Due to budgetary and time constraints, along with added complexity of COVID-19, the POWER program was not able to ensure proper integration between country and regional office strategies as well as leverage existing partnerships with UN agencies as originally intended. However, the inclusion of indicator 5.6.1 (proportion of women aged 15-49 years who make informed decisions regarding sexual relations, contraceptive use, and reproductive health) as part of SDG goal 5, and its inclusion in UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025, provides an important opportunity for greater integration of SRMNCAH program and services with UN Women’s regional and country level programming as well as improved coordination with other UN agencies.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Global norms and standards (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Internal coordination and communication
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1.UN Women will share results of the evaluation and knowledge products with country and regional offices as well as with H6 members to generate awareness and seek buy-in for better integration and coordination in future programs COs 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated
2. UN Women will identify entry points for engagement on SRMNCAH within existing joint programmes (e.g. under UBRAF, Gender for Development and A2J, and joint programming under the H6 partnership etc.) and discuss opportunities with the Humanitarian units in Regional, country and HQ HQ, RO and COs 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated CO offices in the Horn of Africa have existing and pipeline joint projects that can be leveraged to expand the learnings and models from POWER.
3. UN Women shall also build on the documentation of the transformative models evolving from the POWER project for possible replication and use by other pillars of the Strategic Plan. RO and COs 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated CO have several lessons drawn from POWER implementation that can be referenced as implementation science; and can be shared widely internally as well as externally with key partners working on SRMNCAH, including in humanitarian contexts and for the UN Women Humanitarian Strategy.
4. UN Women shall share the evaluation outcomes with the donor at regional, country and HQ as possible to highlight the strategic nature of their support and request for extended investments in a second phase of POWER (POWER 2.0) aligned with the country Strategic Notes and regional workplans. HQ, RO and COs 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated This will be done in close consultation with COs and the regional office as well as including voices from beneficiary communities
Recommendation: To support interventions to transform unequal gender norms, UN Women needs a focused investment on design, monitoring and evaluating this work. The agency should seek to create a more common understanding of the conceptual work required to develop pathways of change and to support its success in results reporting with the commensurate level of monitoring and evaluation methods and instruments. Knowledge sharing with UN sister agencies that are grappling with similar issues and are still in an inchoate stage of developing the guidance would accelerate this work and position UN Women in its coordination role to consolidate the gains and evolve collectively in designing robust interventions in transforming social norms.
Management Response: UN Women agrees with this recommendation. A monitoring framework was designed, however, due to constraints of time, budget, and unforeseen environmental contexts – such as COVID19 and subsequent lockdowns, extensive monitoring visits and data collection were hampered. In addition, the short duration and timeframe did not permit for extensively examining and capturing the impact on changing social/gender norms and behaviour. UN Women’s Strategic plan 2022-2025 for the first time recognizes the importance of promoting positive social norms including by engaging men and boys as a key systemic outcome that needs to be addressed to have impact at scale opening the door to deepen our programmatic work in this area. We will leverage this commitment to invest in a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework and data collection activities in future programs to understand the impact of our programming and policy efforts on transforming social norms.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. As part of the design for the next phase of POWER, greater investments will be made to ensure program learnings and impacts are captured with a robust monitoring and evaluation plan, and data collection activities utilizing methodologies to capture change in norms and behaviours, including putting into place a monitoring and evaluation specialist. RO, COs 2024/01 Overdue-Not Initiated
2. UN Women will continue supporting and strengthening capacity development for programme staff and implementing partners on gender-responsive and rights-based programming and results-based management including programme design, monitoring and reporting. RO,COs 2024/01 Overdue-Not Initiated
3. UN Women will ensure baseline surveys are conducted during the inception phase of the POWER 2.0 development, and funding for development of the baselines, milestones and targets are incorporated in the programme budget. COs 2024/01 Overdue-Not Initiated
Recommendation: UN Women should continue to focus on and communicate its work in empowering women to demand SRMNCAH services as part of a rights-based approach. The evaluation confirmed that UN Women’s emphasis on demand generation filled gaps in the SRMNCAH rights for women and girls in humanitarian settings, both for refugee and host populations. This focus is a critical component of reducing discriminatory legislation, norms and service-delivery practices and enhancing access to quality services for women and girls. However, it requires collaboration with key partners and other UN Agencies strategically positioned on the supply-side for a comprehensive and complementary approach.
Management Response: UN Women accepts this recommendation. UN Women’s mandate and experience ensures that we are uniquely positioned to contribute towards lasting solutions for social norms change at institutional and community levels. Addressing extreme vulnerabilities and the risk of being left behind to generate demand, ensure the leadership is accountable, coordination and tracking results within the UN system remain central and a key pillar to UN Women advocacy on the fast track towards the attainment of gender equality and women’s empowerment. UN Women’s strategic plan for 2022-2025 lays out the importance of cross-cutting outcomes such as global normative frameworks and laws, positive social norms, women’s voice and participation, and women’s access to services and goods as essential to achieve impact at scale in our different program areas. The success of POWER can be leveraged to raise awareness on how demand generation work can reduce vulnerability, enhance access to services and build greater resilience to disease and other shocks.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Advocacy
Organizational Priorities: Humanitarian action
UNEG Criteria: Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1.Disseminate the microsite developed for the programme to share the knowledge products and learning with wider programme and policy audiences, particularly UN partners, including the H6 and other partners working on SRMNCAH in humanitarian settings. RO, COs, HQ 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated
2. UN Women will, engage actively in coordination mechanisms, and showcase UN Women’s comparative advantage and thought leadership, through disseminating learnings from POWER. COs, RO, and HQ where relevant 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated
Recommendation: UN Women should continue to invest in areas that were identified as success factors for the POWER programme. This includes continuing to engage local leadership and embedding SRMNCAH in local frameworks, structures and institutions. Building the capacities of champions of GEWE and engaging men, children and youth in this regard has also been critical in POWER’s efforts to raise awareness and demand creation for SRMNCAH rights. Awareness raised through POWER needs to be followed up with improved accountability for duty-bearers in order to sustain this momentum and the progress achieved. Economic empowerment activities provided another promising strategy for its effects on agency, shifts in social norms, and ability to enhance access to quality SRMNCAH services. Measurement of progress also requires the availability of baseline data to assess changes with the onset of the programme.
Management Response: UN Women accepts this recommendation. UN Women’s value-add of engaging with communities particularly at the local level, and engaging key actors and allies for gender equality, ensures the viability of efforts to continuously build and develop capacities of communities to be champions for gender equality. Similarly, working with duty bearers at local and national level, as per UN Women’s triple mandate – working on operational, normative, and coordination efforts, is yet another area for ensuring accountability for commitments to gender equality within the humanitarian and health ecosystem. This value-add can be a great addition to the efforts to address women’s access to SRMNCAH services, and support their demanding and realizing these rights.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women economic empowerment (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: National ownership
Organizational Priorities: Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Human Rights
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. Prepare a sustainability plan as part of future programme design HQ, RO, CO 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated
2. Develop a step –by –step guidance for consensus building and community action using lessons from POWER CO, RO , HQ 2023/12 Overdue-Not Initiated Community action platforms could be expounded to show how strategic players at that level are critical for sustainable change in norms and behaviours.