Management Response

: Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (Thailand)
: 2024 - 2024 , Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (Thailand) (RO)
: Regional Office Asia and the Pacific SN Evaluation
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Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (Thailand)

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The evaluation of the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) Strategic Note was strategic as it supported the office in the development of the new Strategic Note for 2026-2029. The methodology was highly collaborative, leveraging initial evaluation findings and Theory of Change workshops. This ensured strong alignment between impact areas and systemic outcomes, and normative frameworks throughout the SN’s design and implementation. Further, the process emphasized coordination and the embedding of normative frameworks, with a clear focus on subregional engagement. This collaborative approach fostered clarity among UN Women personnel and partners regarding strategic priorities and approaches. The recommendations that emanated from the evaluation report are timely as they intersected with the recommendations coming out of the UN Women Functional Review, which prompted the Regional Office to clarify internal structures, processes, and guidance for knowledge management, innovation, and capacity building. Building on the UN Women global Strategic Plan, the Strategic note reflects a sharper focus on upstream engagement, through systemic outcomes which will enhance and leverage the four impact areas. Further, the establishment of standardized guidelines and a centralized SharePoint hub for knowledge products are notable outcomes.
: Approved
Recommendation: Leverage the development of the next Strategic Note as a timely opportunity to sharpen UN Women’s strategic focus in the region by clearly defining priorities, deepening coherence and leadership in normative work, and institutionalizing adaptive, forward-looking planning that responds to emerging trends and subregional dynamics.
Management Response: The RO SN was developed through a highly collaborative and synergistic approach, with initial findings from the SN evaluation providing critical guidance for its formulation. The RO conducted theory of change workshops to ensure that the four impact areas were fully aligned with the three systemic outcomes—normative, institutions, and agency. By framing the SN around these three systemic outcomes through the four impact areas, the normative work will be further strengthened. The approach places greater emphasis on coordination and on embedding normative frameworks throughout the design, delivery, and implementation of the SN. The SN also articulates subregional engagement, maintaining strong collaboration with ASEAN, while driving a focused engagement strategy for South Asia and the Pacific.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Alignment with strategy, Internal coordination and communication
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Ensure UN Women personnel and partners have clarity on RO strategic priorities and its approach to how it will advance them Regional Office senior management with support from thematic units and the Planning, Monitoring and Reporting unit 2025/09 Completed UNW personnel and partners have a clear understanding of the RO’s strategic priorities and approach. Through a highly collaborative process—including orientations, feedback sessions, and sub-regional discussions with CSOs/NGOs, donors, bilateral partners, UN agencies, and Representatives—the RO SN was developed using evaluation findings and Theory of Change workshops. These sessions took place during Q1-3 in 2025
Leadership group reconfigured, with allocated time focusing on thematic discussion, which includes coordination, to drive normative work through impact areas, including a focus on trend analysis and forecasting for cohesive approach to emerging trends RD, DRD, Thematic leadership for impact areas Political participation. WEE, WPS/HA, EVAW and Coordination 2026/03 Completed The Regional Office leadership group has been reconfigured to serve as a central mechanism for integrated planning, strategic alignment, and performance oversight across thematic and functional areas. The group is composed of thematic leads across impact areas—Women’s Political Participation, Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE), Women, Peace and Security/Humanitarian Action (WPS/HA), Ending Violence Against Women (EVAW), and Coordination—as well as leads of functional and cross-pillar teams. The Thematic Leadership function focuses on strengthening strategic direction and coherence across all impact areas, ensuring that normative priorities are systematically embedded in regional programming and support to UN Women presences. It serves as a platform to align technical leadership, coordination, and normative functions to drive delivery of the three systemic outcomes under the Strategic Note. Through this structure, the Regional Office enhances its ability to influence regional normative agendas, respond to emerging priorities, and ensure that technical, coordination, and policy advisory services are integrated and mutually reinforcing. Complementing this, the Functional/Cross-Pillar dimension of the leadership group focuses on strengthening operational effectiveness, oversight, and coordinated support to country offices. It provides a structured space to review delivery performance, address implementation bottlenecks, and ensure alignment with corporate requirements (including QBR processes, compliance, and risk management), while supporting second-line oversight in line with delegated authorities. Since the start of 2026, leadership group meetings have been institutionalized as a monthly, two-hour forum (first Monday of each month), providing a predictable and structured mechanism for both operational oversight and strategic dialogue.
Recommendation: The Regional Office should prioritize its core functions as the basis for regional engagement, use clear criteria to guide regional programming, rebalance subregional focus, and clarify direction and expectations of non-physical presences ensuring alignment with regional support capacities.
Management Response: The Regional Office has already taken concrete steps to prioritize its core functions and clarify the basis for regional engagement. The RO has strengthened its dual roles—operational backstopping and regional thought leadership/innovation—and this distinction is now clearly reflected in practice and in the SN. Day-to-day cross-regional support, operational and functional oversight, and strategic interventions continue to be delivered cohesively and region-wide. The SN further articulates the RO’s approach to ensuring a balanced subregional focus and clarifies expectations for support to Country Offices, NPPs, and non-physical presences, in line with regional support capacities. The UNW footprint in region is maintained through technical and coordination support across all modalities. The RO has also established mechanisms that reinforce strategic alignment, including an internal resource-mobilization repository managed by External Relations and a streamlined concept-note development process. These ensure a coherent, system-outcomes–driven approach to regional programming and engagement. The RO continues to advance the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan and to leverage human rights and normative mechanisms to strengthen regional support.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Internal coordination and communication
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Coherence
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Clearly articulated sub-regional focus within the strategic note, with prioritization of resources, improved internal coherence and regional presence. Regional Director 2025/11 Completed The Strategic Note articulates sub-regional priorities, emphasizing ASEAN, South Asia, and the Pacific. It strengthens south–south and north–south collaboration—particularly through UN Women’s presence in ROK and China—which creates important opportunities to advance regional focused programming. Implementation and follow-up will be coordinated through the Thematic Leadership Group, ensuring coherence and alignment. The realignment of activities to the SN’s systemic outcomes further enhances internal coherence and enables the RO to provide more targeted and integrated support across sub-regions.
Develop and test international guidance to prioritize regional programmes that align with RO core functions and regionality criteria. improved alignment of regional programming with RO strategic role. DRD 2025/10 Completed Guidance and procedures based on regionality criteria were developed in Q2 and are being applied. This includes a strengthened process for resource mobilization, including centralized donor intelligence, concept note review, alignment with systemic outcomes and based on a sub and regional needs analysis. Coherence between programme delivery and core functions enhanced through aligned functional and technical support capacity, tracked by the Leadership group. Working with corporate leads, enhancing RO internal guide on RM partnership, to support cross regional/sub regional.
Track thematic support to country offices to identify priorities, opportunities and entry points for streamlined programming. DRD 2026/03 Completed Rather than introducing a standalone tracking tool, ROAP has operationalized a more integrated, process-driven approach to tracking and aligning support to country offices through existing management and reporting mechanisms. Support to country offices is systematically reviewed and tracked through the monthly ROAP leadership group meetings, where one dedicated session focuses on thematic updates and contributions to country-level delivery. This provides a regular platform for: • enhancing visibility of support provided across thematic and functional teams; • identifying gaps, overlaps, and opportunities for more strategic engagement; • aligning regional priorities, entry points, and resource allocation in a coordinated manner. This approach is further reinforced through the introduction of clearly assigned focal points per outcome and output who are responsible for leading the six-monthly reporting processes under the new SN, including: • convening cross-team discussions to assess collective progress and contributions; • consolidating inputs across units to reflect a coherent view of support to country offices; • identifying trends, emerging priorities, and areas requiring strengthened engagement across subregions. Together, these mechanisms provide a more dynamic and collaborative alternative to a static tracking tool, enabling real-time alignment, joint planning, and continuous stocktaking. They also support evidence-based prioritization of regional engagement, informing where and how the Regional Office should deploy its technical, normative, and coordination capacities.
Recommendation: The Regional Office should develop a theory of change and strategy for its regional coordination work, focusing on working collaboratively – both internally and externally – to advance shared goals and leverage investments for gender equality and women’s empowerment, including for women’s civil society
Management Response: The Regional Office acknowledges the recommendation and welcomes UNW corporate focus to develop theory of change and strategy for our UN Coordination work. For the SN actions outlined have already been initiated, and the Strategic Note has strengthened its focus on normative and UN Coordination functions in alignment with regional priorities. Building on this progress, the Regional Office has enhanced its collaborative approaches internally and externally to advance shared goals and maximize investments in gender equality and women’s empowerment, including support to civil society working on women’s rights. SN articulates how our UN Coordination will be central to our normative, programmatic and partnership modalities. This will enable the ROAP to enhance UN collective ownership of our normative principles. It will also promote more coherent and integrated efforts, and UN Women will be better positioned to leverage the efforts and resources of the UN system in advancing GEWE. – and greater collective impact across the region. A mechanism for coordinating the approach to women’s civil society will be developed by the thematic leadership which includes coordination with the view to ensure synergistic approaches and embedding the normative. .
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: UN Coordination
UNEG Criteria: Coherence
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Strategy For Internal And External Coordination Partnership Work Developed RO Coordination 2025/12 Completed The RO continues to strengthen internal and external coordination as part of the IBC on HR-GEWE and as part of the Strategic Note 2026-2029, have developed a Theory of Change for ROAP’s Coordination work. This includes strengthening support to our NPPs, ensuring country offices in our region carries out their Country Gender Equality Profile and overall implementation of the GEAP. Since January 2026 the reconfigured RO leadership team meetings take place monthly with one hour dedicated to oversight work/cross-pillar and the following hour dedicated to advancing the three systemic outcomes in the ROAP Strategic Note 2026-2029, spearheaded by thematic leads under the four impact areas. The work was underpinned by a Strategic Workshop at the start of the year i.e. leadership lock-in, where thematic leads agreed on priorities for the year.
CSO/women’s movement engagement strategy/approach developed. Coordination + thematic leads. 2026/03 Completed Following a series of dedicated discussions on engagement with Civil Society Organization (CSO) and women’s movement held among thematic leads during the leadership lock-in at the beginning of 2026 and further consultation with senior management, it was agreed that a centralized, stand-alone coordination mechanism would be less effective than embedding CSO engagement directly within thematic and coordination workstreams. As a result, ROAP has adopted a decentralized but structured approach, whereby responsibility for CSO and women’s movement engagement is integrated across relevant thematic areas and coordination functions, aligned to their specific mandates and entry points. This ensures that engagement with civil society is context-specific and strategically targeted, based on thematic priorities and regional dynamics and closely linked to normative and convening functions, rather than treated as a parallel or standalone stream of work. To ensure coherence and accountability across this distributed model CSO engagement is being systematically captured and reflected in six-monthly Strategic Note reporting, including contributions to outputs, outcomes, and normative processes. In the monthly leadership group meetings, CSO engagement is regularly discussion in order to provide a regular platform to review progress, exchange lessons learned, and align approaches across thematic areas. Further, cross-team discussions enable identification of opportunities for joint advocacy, convening, and knowledge generation involving civil society partners. In parallel, in the context of UN80 and broader strategic shifts, ROAP has intensified its engagement with civil society as a key stakeholder group in shaping organizational priorities and approaches. Since the start of 2026, ROAP has convened two regional briefings with CSOs and women’s movement representatives, providing a platform for consultation and dialogue on the implementation of the Strategic Plan in the context of UN80.
Recommendation: The Regional Office should strengthen its leadership in knowledge generation, innovation and capacity strengthening by clarifying the structures to support it, establishing clear processes and internal guidance for the planning, dissemination and measurement of the use of knowledge products and capacity-building efforts, while finalizing its strategy for integrating AI responsibly into its work
Management Response: RO accepts this recommendation. In line with this recommendation, the RO has initiated actions to clarify the internal structures that will guide and support these functions, ensuring that roles, responsibilities, and decision-making lines are clearly defined. RO has established standardized processes and internal guidance for the planning, quality assurance, dissemination, and monitoring of knowledge products. This will include the development of tools and protocols to measure uptake, assess relevance, and track the contribution of knowledge and learning efforts to regional and country-level results. In addition, the RO will continue the emerging work on integration of AI anchored in UN system-wide principles on ethics, human rights, and transparency, and will ensure that innovation processes remain safe, inclusive, and aligned with the organization’s normative mandate. This will be continued through targeted technical assistance. Collectively, these measures will reinforce the Regional Office’s leadership role, enhance institutional learning, and strengthen the impact of knowledge and innovation efforts across the region.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Innovation and technology
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Knowledge management guidelines, structures and priorities in place DRD 2025/06 Completed Guidelines and processes for knowledge management were finalized in Q2 2025. These include the integration of normative guidance—covering CEDAW, disability inclusion, and related human rights frameworks—across knowledge generation and dissemination workflows. The guidelines specify sign-off by all thematic areas to ensure that the product is relevant to the work of UN Women and of high quality. Publication guidelines have been established, and a centralized SharePoint hub has been created to support consistent documentation, access, and use of the knowledge products.
Ensure streamlined coordination and coherence with UN Women knowledge and partnership centre capacity-building and knowledge generation with regional normative, coordination and thematic work. DRD 2026/09 Initiated Working closely with the RO and HQ in shaping Phase I, the Centre has deepened its thematic focus by advancing work on the care economy, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and strengthened knowledge generation and capacity-building. Phase II will be fully aligned with the Regional Office Strategic Note, including its normative and coordination priorities. The ongoing evaluation of the Centre will further guide actions to reinforce coherence between HQ, the RO’s thematic priorities, and the Centre’s focus areas, ensuring effective and synergistic delivery across the region. This will be actioned when Phase II of the Centre is in place.
Building enabling culture for innovation by piloting incentives, knowledge sharing on innovative practices integrating ai for gender equality, backed by relevant expertise DRD 2026/03 Completed ROAP has operationalized the establishment of a roster of AI and digital innovation consultants under retainer contracts, providing on-demand expertise to country offices. These consultants support a range of functions, including: capacity-building on the use of AI and digital tools in programming and coordination; provision of technical advisory services to integrate innovative approaches into ongoing and new initiatives; and support to enhance data-driven decision-making and evidence-based programming. In parallel, and in response to the 2025 Functional Review recommendations, ROAP has established a Knowledge Management (KM) Focal Points Group, comprising representatives from both thematic and functional teams. The group serves as a key enabler for institutional learning, knowledge sharing, and scaling of innovative practices across the office. The KM Group operates under a formalized Terms of Reference and Action Plan, and convenes on a bi-monthly basis to: strengthen coordination and coherence of knowledge management practices across teams; improve visibility and accessibility of tools, guidance, and innovative approaches; promote systematic learning and exchange of good practices, including those related to AI and digitalization; reduce duplication and foster more efficient use of institutional knowledge and resources. Progress against KM priorities is collectively reviewed and tracked, reinforcing accountability and ensuring that innovation and learning are embedded into regular ways of working. Together, these measures contribute to building a more adaptive, learning-oriented organizational culture, where innovation is incentivized, knowledge is actively shared, and teams are equipped with the expertise and tools needed to integrate AI-enabled and digitally driven solutions into their work. This strengthens ROAP’s ability to respond to evolving regional priorities and supports more effective delivery of its normative, coordination, and operational mandates.
Recommendation: The Regional Office should clarify roles and expectations of both thematic and functional units with the aim of enhancing cross-unit collaboration; coordinated support to UN Women presences; fostering innovation and results-based learning across teams; and strengthening approaches for coordinated and sustainable resource mobilization.
Management Response: RO accepts this recommendation. Actions will be undertaken through the development of a strengthened management and ways-of-work approach informed by functional review and aligned with the roll-out of the Strategic Note. This approach will ensure that RO is fit for purpose and able to deliver the Strategic Note effectively within current resource parameters. RO build on the thematic leadership group organized around the three systemic outcomes of the SN, anchored in the four impact areas—Women’s Economic Empowerment, Women’s Political Participation, Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action, and Ending Violence Against Women—underpinned by Gender Statistics, and Coordination to ensure evidence-based decision-making. The thematic leadership model will embed coordination functions to drive both normative commitments and internal and external coordination results. The thematic leadership group will be collectively accountable for advancing coherent and integrated implementation across the three systemic outcomes, strengthening synergies, reducing fragmentation, and ensuring that regional efforts contribute meaningfully to corporate and country-level impact. Functional leadership group will focus on operational, programmatic, planning, monitoring and evaluation results.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Knowledge management, Internal coordination and communication, Innovation and technology, Resource mobilization
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Institutionalize cross-unit planning and review mechanisms as platforms that go beyond corporate reporting requirements, fostering genuine collaboration, alignment and visibility into each team’s work through joint planning, reporting and periodic stocktaking. DRD 2026/03 Completed The ROAP leadership group has been reconfigured as a central platform to institutionalize cross-unit planning, review, and decision-making processes, in line with the Functional Review recommendations. Since the start of 2026, leadership group meetings are convened on a monthly basis (two-hour sessions held on the first Monday of each month), providing a structured and predictable mechanism for both operational oversight and strategic alignment across teams. The meeting structure explicitly reflects the dual objectives of functional oversight and thematic coherence: • First hour – Functional / Cross-Pillar focus • Second hour – Thematic and normative focus This reconfigured leadership platform goes beyond traditional reporting requirements by: • Enabling joint planning and prioritization across thematic and functional teams; • Providing regular stocktaking moments to assess progress against strategic priorities and adjust course as needed; • Strengthening transparency and visibility of each team’s work, interdependencies, and contributions to regional and country-level results; • Fostering a more collaborative and integrated way of working, reducing silos between thematic and cross-pillar functions; • Supporting evidence-based decision-making, through regular review of performance data, country-level feedback, and operational insights. In addition, the leadership group serves as an anchor for advancing a more systematic and tiered approach to regional support, ensuring that programmatic, normative, and operational assistance is aligned with country typologies and needs, and that support is coordinated across teams. Overall, this mechanism represents a shift toward a more integrated management model, where planning, reporting, and review processes are consolidated into a single, structured platform that strengthens accountability, coherence, and collective ownership of results across ROAP. To ensure harmonized and coherent reporting on Strategic Note progress, ROAP will adopt a coordinated, output-based reporting approach for periodic (six-month) reporting against outputs and outcomes. For each output, a designated lead unit—identified based on its relative contribution (including scope of activities in the workplan, number of indicators, and financial weight of the output)—will be responsible for leading the reporting process. The designated lead will convene all contributing teams under the respective output to jointly review progress, consolidate inputs, and ensure that reporting reflects a comprehensive and integrated view of results across units. Team focal points will be responsible for collective drafting and iterative refinement of narrative inputs, ensuring that contributions are aligned, evidence-based, and capture both achievements and challenges. The lead unit will further ensure quality assurance and consistency of reporting, including: adherence to Results-Based Management (RBM) principles, with a clear focus on results, outcomes, and contribution to systemic change; alignment between reported results, indicators, and evidence; coherence across outputs to avoid duplication and fragmentation of reporting; integration of cross-cutting priorities (e.g. gender equality, LNOB, coordination results) where relevant. This approach strengthens cross-unit collaboration, mutual accountability, and shared ownership of results, while enhancing the overall quality, consistency, and strategic value of reporting. It also enables more structured stocktaking and performance reflection, supporting adaptive management and informed decision-making at the regional level.
Strengthen collective resource mobilization by embedding joint donor engagement and planning across thematic units. strategy led by external relations unit and driven by thematic leadership group, grounded in established guidance for concept note development which requires senior leadership sign-off before development and submission. RD/DRD/ERU 2025/09 Completed New SOPs in place Strengthened and collective resource mobilization will be embedded as a core function in the implementation of the new SN. RO has established a concept note development procedure in which the RD makes the final go/no-go decision, confirms country focus, and allocates roles and responsibilities across units. This ensures alignment with regional priorities, prevents duplication, and promotes an efficient and strategic approach to donor engagement. Collective resource mobilization will be driven jointly by the Thematic Leadership Group under the overall coordination of External Relations Unit, operating within established corporate and regional guidance. Joint donor engagement, coordinated planning, and harmonized messaging across thematic units will ensure a unified and coherent approach to resource mobilization. Through these measures, the RO will strengthen its ability to mobilize resources collectively, enhance donor confidence, and ensure that investments are strategically aligned with regional priorities and the delivery of systemic outcomes.
Recommendation: The Regional Office should systematically apply intersectionality and environmental standards across all its programming and coordination efforts to ensure meaningful inclusion of marginalized groups and strengthen environmental safeguards in line with UN Women’s global commitments.
Management Response: RO partially accepts the recommendation recognizing that intersectionality and LNOB has been systematically been integrated in convenings and programming, although recognizes that this can be conducted more systematically. Further, it is acknowledged that environmental sustainability standards can be measured across all programming and coordination efforts, in line with UN Women’s global commitments and corporate priorities. To operationalize this recommendation, RO will ensure that LNOB and intersectionality are embedded within technical programmes through the provision of shared tools, guidance, and specialized expertise accessible to Country Offices and NPP. The modality will be made available through cost-recovery or pooled resource arrangements to promote consistency, efficiency, and long-term sustainability. In parallel, climate risk and environmental sustainability measures will be integrated into relevant corporate systems and processes, including the OEEF indicators and the regional risk register review. This will strengthen the systematic incorporation of environmental considerations into programme design, implementation, and oversight, reinforcing the RO’s commitment to environmental safeguards and resilience-building. The Regional Office is committed to ensuring that these measures are fully implemented and monitored, contributing to more inclusive, equitable, and environmentally responsible programming across the region.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Human Rights, Gender equality
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Leave no one behind agenda and intersectionality to be sourced through technical programmes, shared resources to be made available on a cost recovery/pooled resource basis DRD 2026/03 Completed ROAP has taken a number of concrete steps to operationalize the systematic integration of intersectionality, Leave No One Behind (LNOB) principles, and environmental sustainability across its programming and coordination functions, moving from concept to implementation through dedicated technical support, institutional mechanisms, and oversight processes. To strengthen technical capacity and ensure consistent application of both LNOB and environmental standards, ROAP has established rosters of specialized consultants under retainer contracts, providing on-demand support to Country Offices and Non-Presence Presences. In addition, targeted technical expertise is being mobilized to advance inclusion priorities including a regional Disability Focal Point, supported on a cost-recovery basis, provides dedicated guidance to strengthen the inclusion of persons with disabilities across ROAP programming and coordination efforts, and LNOB and intersectionality are being embedded within technical programme support, with shared tools, guidance, and resources made available to Country Offices and NPPs through flexible delivery modalities.
Climate risk and environmental sustainability measures reflected in OEEF indicators and risk register review DRD/Operations 2026/03 Completed Environmental sustainability considerations are also being systematically integrated into operational and oversight mechanisms: • Climate and environmental sustainability issues are regularly discussed through regional Operations Management (OM) meetings, ensuring that operational practices are aligned with environmental standards and that offices are supported in implementation; • A Regional Risk Management Committee has been established, with environmental and climate-related risks included as a standing agenda item, ensuring structured identification, monitoring, and mitigation of environmental risks across the portfolio; • Environmental sustainability and climate risk considerations are being reflected in OEEF indicators and incorporated into regional risk register review processes, strengthening accountability and ensuring that environmental safeguards are embedded into programme planning, delivery, and oversight.