UN Transcripts — https://transcripts.un.org/ru/asset/k12/k12cqmof15
Informal briefing for Member States on the work of the UNSDG System-Wide Evaluation Office — 6 May 2026
Language: en
Automatically generated transcript — may contain errors. Not an official United Nations record.

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ECOSOC · Chair [0:02]:

Good morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. Distinguished guests and esteemed colleagues. I warmly welcome you to this informal briefing on the work of the UN SDG System Wide Evaluation Office. This event is organized in advance of the ECOSOC Operational Activities segment in June and today we will focus on System Wide Evaluation. Specifically the annual report of the Executive Director of the UN SDG System Wide Evaluation Office. This report is prepared in response to the General Assembly Resolution 79, 226 on the Quadrennal comprehensive policy review of operational activities for development. Evaluations are opportunities for learning and performance improvement. They contribute to strengthen accountability and transparency. System wide evaluation seeks to provide relevant, timely, credible and high quality evidence to key users including to the governing and legislative bodies of unds. And it is crucial that system wide Evaluation evidence is focused on key strategic issues and that it is made available in a timely manner to contribute to decision making. It must be used and backed by effective management, response and follow up mechanisms to support accountability and transparency. Over the past two years, two full years of operation, we have seen the System Wide Evaluation Office working to elevate existing evaluation evidence on key priorities for the qcpr. We also saw the Office produce system wide evaluations with strategic recommendations. Reports are published along with the management responses and follow up reporting. This is a good moment today to review progress to date. A good moment to reflect on how system wide evaluation evidence is being used to improve performance. To improve result. This session also provides an opportunity to consider how our body, the ecosoc, could better leverage the work of the System Wide Evaluation Office to strengthen its oversight and accountability rule. To this end, today's session is organized into two parts. One, the Executive Director Andrea Koch will present the annual report of the UN SDG System Wide Evaluation Office. She will outline the progress of the system wide evaluation policy, the key findings from recent evaluations and also priorities for the period ahead. Second, we will hear contribution from a panel comprising representative from United nations entities to explore how this system wide evaluation evidence is being used in decision making and performance improvement. Ladies and Gentlemen, it's now my pleasure to welcome Mrs. Andrea Cook, executive Director at the United Nations Sustainable Development Group System Wide Evaluation Office to present the 2026 Annual Evaluation Report. You have the floor, Madam.


UNSDG System Wide Evaluation Office · Executive Director · Andrea Koch [6:11]:

Thank you, your Excellency for those opening remarks. The United Nations Sustainable Development Group System Wide Evaluation Office was established in late 2023. The first year of operation culminated in the formal adoption of the UNSDG System Wide evaluation policy in November 2024 and the conduct of a series of evaluations on topics that are critical to the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review. The first Annual Report was presented to the Economic and Social Council Council at its Operational Activities for development segment in 2025 responding to the request of the General assembly in Resolution 79226 on the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review of Operational Activities for Development. Today I'm very pleased to provide an update on the achievements for 2025 in our second annual report. The UN SDG system wide Evaluation Policy establishes the framework guiding principles procedures for System wide evaluation under the overall leadership and guidance of the Office. It confirms structural independence as a standalone office situated within the United Nations Secretariat with the Executive Director reporting directly to the Secretary General to maintain independence and neutrality. In 2025, considerable progress was being made in consolidating the work of the Office in line with the provisions of the policy, including the development and testing of mechanisms for the planning, conduct, management, response and follow up of System wide evaluations. Key successes included the establishment of reporting mechanisms, office systems and communications. We have made progress on putting in place a functioning System Wide Evaluation Steering Group and developed mechanisms for management, response and follow up and for quality assurance and assessment. Resource constraints have limited progress on the global System Wide Evaluation Plan. Our report provides details of the implementation status of evaluation activities in 2025. In its first two full years of operations, the Office conducted a number of evaluations, all of which have now completed their management responses. We also completed a series of summary reports and evidence maps. In 2025, the office published two major system wide evaluations. Firstly, the System Wide Evaluation on Progress towards a new generation of United Nations Country Teams which was completed in July 2025. This evaluation found that the vision set out in Resolution 72279 for a new generation of United Nations Country Teams remained highly relevant and was increasingly significant in the context of the UN80 initiative. Since 2018, the repositioning of the United nations development system has resulted in many important improvements, notably in more coherent analysis and planning, and showed widespread appreciation for the reinvigorated resident coordinator system. However, the evaluation's findings also showed a substantial gap between operational realities and the strategic intent of cooperation frameworks. The evaluation concluded that the cooperation frameworks had not yet become the most important instrument for the planning and implementation of the United nations development activities at country level. Similarly, UN country teams have not yet significantly reconfigured in line with cooperation framework priorities to meet national needs. The evaluation made seven strategic recommendations to the UNSDG as a collective system wide coordination body, to UNSDG entities individually and to the Development Coordination Office. It also made recommendations for consideration of Member States. The Management Response was published in December 2025. Secondly, we completed the evaluation of the 2019 United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy in August 2025. This evaluation found that the UNDIS has proven to be a relevant and timely instrument for advancing disability inclusion across the United nations system. It has served as a catalyst for system systemic change from a low baseline and accelerated efforts to embrace disability inclusion. However, implementation has varied considerably across the complex United nations landscape. The UNDIS has successfully established institutional frameworks for disability inclusion, but the absence of an adequately empowered and resource coordination mechanism has limited capacity for strategic leadership. The United nations has not yet achieved its ambition of becoming an employer of choice for persons with disabilities or effectively mainstream disability inclusion across development, humanitarian and peace and security programming. This evaluation made five strategies, recommendations to the Secretary General, to the executive heads of the United nations system entities and to the Development Coordination Office. The Management Response has been completed and will be published shortly. In 2025 we also started work on five new system wide evaluations and four synthesis. However, resource constraints have limited or hindered the timely launch of this work. The planned evaluation of the United nations work on youth has been postponed due to lack of funding. In late 2025, we began preparatory work on a rapid sub regional system wide evaluation on United Nations System coordination in the Sahel. This evaluation is now ongoing and it provides an independent assessment of how the United nations system has implemented integrated, coherent and coordinated support to achieve sustainable development in the Sahel. This report will be published in mid-2026. We also commence work on a series of standalone evaluations and reports to assess the contribution of the United Nations Development System to SDG acceleration with a focus at the country level. This evaluation will generate learning and provide strategic recommendations in the period up to 2030 and this work will culminate in a final overarching strategic evaluation report published to inform the 2027 SDG Summit. Within this evaluation, the following standalone reports will be published during 2026 firstly, the evaluation of the United Nations Food Systems Coordination Hub which was created following the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit. Secondly, an evaluation of the Joint SDG Fund to assess the positioning and effectiveness of the Fund as the flagship financing instrument of the United Nations Development System and this will inform the new strategy of the Fund. Thirdly, we will complete three evidence summaries to extract learning from the body of United nations existing evaluation evidence and finally we will complete a meta evaluation and synthesis of learning from cooperation framework evaluations. The first of these reports is the evaluation of the Food Systems Coordination Hub and this will be published in mid-2020 26. There is an extensive but fragmented body of existing United nations evaluation evidence numbering about 1,000 evaluations published across the system every year. However, this is insufficiently accessible to stakeholders and limits its contribution to collective learning. In 2025 the office concluded a pilot testing the use of artificial intelligence to prepare user friendly evidence summaries and evidence maps. In 2026 we will continue to work to strengthen the use of and learning from this body of evidence to improve equitable access to United nations evaluation evidence and promote learning both at country level and by intergovernmental processes. The Office is intended to conduct a small number of evaluations on the most strategic and relevant system wide issues related to the development system and this is meant to be guided by a multi year programme of work which is grounded in independent analysis consultation. However, to date the topics and timing of our evaluation activities has been largely determined by the availability of funds and funders priorities which has implications for independence of the Office. A key priority for 2026 therefore is to finalise the global system wide evaluation plan in consultation with Member States. Turning to learning and use of system wide evaluations. High quality evaluations with relevant, actionable and well targeted recommendations enhance accountability learning and use that effective effective management response and follow up mechanisms are critical to ensure the timely implementation of evaluation recommendations by United nations entities in order to strengthen learning and accountability for development system results. All system wide evaluations require formal management responses, follow up actions must be recorded and the implementation status of evaluation recommendations is tracked to ensure meaningful impact. Member States have a key role in providing oversight on follow up to the management responses through legislative and governing bodies. In 2025, the Development Coordination Office as the UNSDP Secretariat has effectively facilitated the preparation of management responses for all three evaluations completed by the office since 2024 these are published along with the evaluation reports and this in itself is a very strong signal for the uptake of work of the work of the Office system wide. Together with DCO we've learned a lot about how to manage these processes that involve obtaining responses and follow up from a large number of entities. In 2026 the office will explore options for the development of a database to strengthen system wide transparency and accountability of management response and follow up actions informed by learning from the database which is used by the Joint Inspection Unit. By embedding engagement and communication throughout system wide evaluation processes, the Office aims to encourage learning and to strengthen links between evaluation results and decision making processes. The Office has sustained very strong engagement across the UN development system, for example throughout the evaluation on progress towards a new generation of United nations country teams which has contributed to a significant increase in the demand for system wide evaluation analysis and briefings on evaluation results from UN system leadership and Member States, including in the context of a number of UNH work packages. Our ongoing evaluation on the Sahel also seeks to contribute real time Learning to key UN80 work packages on the regional level of UN development system and also the review of special envoys among others mechanisms to promote coordination, collaboration and partnership Fundamental for our work, system wide evaluation is guided by three key collaboration, coordination and subsidiarity which guide our engagement with the evaluation and oversight entities of UN Development System and includes coordination with oios, the Joint Inspection Unit and with external partners. Collaboration with the evaluation officers and units of United nations entities underpins the engagement, use and follow up of their respective entities to system wide evaluations. In 2025 we worked through a variety of partnerships both within the UN and beyond to promote the use of system wide evaluation evidence Turning to resourcing, the General assembly In its resolution 79226 re emphasised the importance of the Independent's credibility and effectiveness for the functioning of the Office. In his 2025 report on the QCPR, the Secretary General noted the continued reliance of the Office on limited voluntary contributions and highlighted this as a challenge in relation to independence, credibility and effectiveness. Since 2024 the office has been reliant on extra budgetary contributions and we've worked successfully to diversify the funding base with continuing contributions from Denmark and Switzerland who supported the Office from the outset, but together with new contributions in 2025 from Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom. In 2025 you can see here that there was a reduction in contributions from UN entities due to a decline in financing resources for many development system entities for 2026, the office has continued to make good progress, continuing to diversify the funding base with new contributions from Germany, Ireland and Spain and funding coming in from entities for specific evaluation activities. Whilst we've made good progress towards our overall budget requirement, a funding gap of 1.7 million remains. This includes a shortfall in funding for the completion of the system wide evaluation on the United Nations Development Systems approach to key transitions for SDG acceleration. And we'd also like to highlight, I think, the small slice of funding of the development system that our budget for 2026 represents, which is 0.015% of development system expenditure in 2024. Finally, we'll turn to the picture of Cooperation Framework evaluations. These are commissioned and managed by Resident Coordinators in collaboration with UN country teams in the penultimate year of the Cooperation Framework cycle. The report provides full details of planned and completed evaluations for the period 2023-25. There have been long standing concerns related to the quality and use of these evaluations and our ongoing meta evaluation and synthesis will identify options and recommendations to strengthen the quality and use of Cooperation Framework evaluations to improve accountability and learning of development system delivery at the country level. And this feeds into the ongoing revision of Cooperation Framework guidance. To close, I'd like to highlight a few critical issues for Member State consideration as we head towards the Operational Activities segment in June. Since 2023, this office has demonstrated its unique value. It is the only evaluative function for assessing the combined contributions of UN entities across the development system to the 2030 Agenda. It is focused on strategic priorities that cannot be adequately assessed through existing accountability mechanisms or evaluation functions. The results delivered in 2025 have proven the capacities and operational model of this small and nimble Office and shown that they are fit for purpose. System wide evaluations are providing valuable evidence on performance at country level and we can see how it is being used for both strategic decision making by entities and system wide. Now is the time to fully institutionalise this important system wide function and to do so, Member States are encouraged to support the shift proposed by the Secretary General to adequate sustainable financing which is fundamental to to our independence, credibility and effectiveness. Thank you for your attention. We will now, with the permission of the Chair, transition to the Panel discussion where we are honoured to have with us distinguished presenters and panellists from dco, the Executive Office of the Secretary General, unfpa, UN Women and the Spotlight Initiative who will bring to us their experience in taking forward recommendations from our system wide evaluations. Our Office has worked very closely with These entities across the three completed evaluations and panellists are going to explain how findings and recommendations from these evaluations have been been taken forwards with a focus on management response, use and tangible follow up and to highlight how they're driving change. Firstly, I'm pleased to welcome Ms. Erin Kenny, the Global Coordinator at the Spotlight Initiative Secretariat who will reflect on the use and follow up to the management response for the final evaluation of the Spotlight Initiative. Thank you Erin.


Spotlight Initiative Secretariat · Global Coordinator · Erin Kenny [27:39]:

Great. Thank you Andrea. And thank you to the System Wide Evaluation Office for organizing this informal briefing for Member States. Thank you all for being here. It's great to see such a full room for this topic. It's a privilege to join you today to reflect on how we are taking forward the the Management response to the Final Evaluation of Spotlight Initiative's First Phase Excellencies, distinguished representatives and guests, this conversation comes at a critical moment in our collective efforts to advance human rights, promote gender equality and end violence against women and girls. Progress is rarely linear and the backlash has been fierce. Funding is tightening, yet the need for sustained, sustained coordinated action to end gender based violence and advance women's rights remains urgent and universal. I will start with a bit of background on the initiative before turning to how we are taking forward the evaluation's recommendations. Launched in 2017 with 500 million from the European Union, Spotlight Initiative is the UN High Impact Initiative to end violence against women and girls. The initiative was established with a triple objective one to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, 2 to advance UN reform and 3 to demonstrate that efforts to end violence against women and girls accelerate progress across the Sustainable Development Goals and the initiative did so through large scale comprehensive programming bringing together the UN UN system to drive coordinated system wide action. The final evaluation in the accompanying Value for Money study confirmed that this model works, demonstrating clear proof of concept and good value for money. Now in its second phase, with six programs underway, this approach remains central to how we operate. We are actively taking forward the evaluation's recommendations, building on what works while sharpening the model for greater impact. Let me highlight a few ways we are doing this. First, we are strengthening and sharpening the comprehensive model. During its first phase, the initiative rolled out comprehensive programming that brought together the UN system in a complementary and integrated way to accelerate progress. The final evaluation was clear. This comprehensive whole of UN whole of government approach worked, demonstrating proof of concept and driving higher order change for women and girls across laws and policies, institutions, GBV services, data, social norms and civil society engagement. At the same time, it called for stronger coherence and linkages across pillars and program levels. In response, we have streamlined from six pillars to four and alongside this, revised the Global Results framework and updated technical guidance together, making the model more integrated, coherent and responsive to diverse contexts, strengthening how interventions connect and reinforce one another while maintaining its comprehensive core. Second, we are building greater flexibility into the model. The evaluation recognized the Initiative's adaptability, particularly during COVID 19 and called for this to be deepened. We have reflected this through the development of a fragility framework, are applying the model in diverse and complex contexts, including humanitarian settings, and are further embedding do no harm principles in all we do. Third, and perhaps most critically, we are continuing to place civil society, particularly women's rights and feminist organizations, at the center of the Initiative's work. The evaluation highlighted the Initiative's leadership in elevating civil society through innovative governance mechanisms such as civil society reference groups and through direct resourcing. In this second phase, we are doubling down on this commitment. In 2025, 33% of program funding went to civil society and we are pushing to reach the 40 to 50% target the initiative has set for itself. Notably, about 80% of this funding went directly to national and local organizations at the forefront of change in their communities. Every Spotlight Initiative program includes a civil society reference group to advise, advocate and help hold the initiative accountable. Fourth, we are using the evaluation to drive Civilization system wide transformation. The evaluation explicitly called for the Spotlight standard to be embedded across UN processes, including the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan and UN country level planning and programming frameworks. We are actively working across the system through UN reform and UN 80 processes, engagement with the Development Coordination Office and support to resident coordinators and UN country teams to scale this model. Notably, over 80 UN teams have already reached out expressing interest in implementing this approach. And finally, we are addressing sustainability. The evaluation pointed to challenges related to national ownership strategies and the variability of external factors such as donor priorities and the broader funding landscape. One clear lesson is at pooled, flexible and sustained financing is essential to making comprehensive approaches work. We are advocating strongly with partners and contributing to system wide discussions on pooled funding to ensure this model can be sustained and scaled. The final evaluation surfaced critical lessons for the UN system as a whole about what works and what does not in ending gender based violence. The evaluation found that when UN entities work together to deliver evidence based, comprehensive approaches that address the underlying drivers of violence, the system can deliver change at scale. The imperative is clear. The UN must work better together. Ending violence against women and girls cannot sit with one agency alone. It requires a Coordinated system wide response commensurate with the scale, scale of the challenge. Leveraging the collective expertise of the UN system to accelerate action. The evaluation also reminds us that our efforts must remain grounded in the principles of leaving no one behind and doing no harm. Progress remains uneven and those facing the greatest barriers, whether due to geography, disability, sexual orientation or living in conflict or crisis settings, must be at the center of our response. Let me close with a call to action. This is a moment that demands urgency. It requires governments, many of whom are here today, to match political commitment with sustained investment in action. It calls on donors to fund differently, to provide the large scale, flexible, long term financing needed to support approaches that we know are effective. And it calls for solidarity with those on the front lines, activists and civil society, women's rights organizations and communities working every day to end violence. Thank you so much.


UNSDG System Wide Evaluation Office · Executive Director · Andrea Koch [35:01]:

Thank you, Erin. Next, I will welcome Ms. Helena Fraser, the Chief at the Policy and Programming branch of the Development Coordination Office. Helena will reflect on the coordination of management management responses to the system wide evaluation on progress towards a new generation of UN country teams. And we'll also highlight how elements of this evaluation that are under DCO's direct purview are being taken forwards. Over to you, Helena.


DCO · Chief, Policy and Programming Branch · Helena Fraser [35:36]:

Thank you very much, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be here today to talk about what is really been an absolutely transformative system wide evaluation for the UN Development system, putting evidence and data on the table to inform the ongoing UN development system reforms. So thank you so much for this opportunity to brief in particular on the role that DCO is playing as secretariat to the UN Sustainable Development Group. I'm going to touch on three points. Why this evolution evaluation is super important from in our perspective, how the management response effort was coordinated and what it looks like. And then thirdly, how we're taking forward the management response into actionable implementation. So as you all know, I hope because you've read this wonderful evaluation, I mean, I'm really passionate about it, it really is a really robust document putting in place suggestions based on really compelling set of data and interviews and system wide consultations. The evaluation was requested by the principals of the UN Sustainable Development Group specifically to identify good practices and opportunities for improvement on two core issues. Key to Member States vision as articulated in Resolution 72, 279 that called for a new generation of country teams. And the two specific areas that it looks into is how UN entities, country programs derive from and align with the cooperation framework which you, our member states called for to be the primary instrument guiding UN efforts in country aligned to national priorities and secondly, how UN country team footprints and presence on the ground is configured to ensure delivery against this cooperation framework that we commit to with government. So, as I mentioned, the evaluation provides critical evidence to inform the sort of stock take of the UN reforms that member states asked for back in 2018 and to help inform the next iteration of these reforms, including now, ladies and gentlemen, through the UN80 work streams. And I'll touch on that in a minute. The evaluation recommendations specifically touch on how the system delivers against this Member State vision, how country programs deliver derive from a common articulated cooperation framework, how we approach resourcing UN activities at country level, how the accountabilities work on the ground between members of the UN country team and the Resident Coordinator, and how we ensure transparency and accountability to host governments against the full suite of policy advisory work, service delivery work and related support that country team members provide in our efforts in host countries. And it also provides very important feedback to the RC system, the Resident Coordinator system itself, on how we can also do a better job of delivering on the mandate that you have conferred on us. The recommendations were divided into three groups. Recommendations specifically to Member States. And for us this is very important because it should be a two way dialogue. The recommendations addressed to you, the Member States, are around governance of the UN system and all its different constituent entities and on how you fund the UN system. And that helps in ensuring a two way conversation between the UN leadership and the intergovernmental oversight bodies. The second group of recommendations were addressed to the UN Sustainable Development Group as a collective. And those recommendations were really seeking change in existing practice and guidance based on the evidence and data that the evaluation put together. And the third set of recommendations were addressed specifically to each and every one of the 34 UN Sustainable Development Group members. And they were requested to respond individually and commit to follow through on their response to each of those. So how did we translate this evaluation into a management response? Essentially, the idea of a management response is to ensure that the data and evidence provided inform implementation and that there is a measurable accountability benchmark against which we can be held to account individually and collectively as a group, including through regular reporting to the system wide evaluation office. And it's an important tool for you as Member States to look at and determine whether you think we are in, indeed living up to what we have committed to in the management response. It turns commitments that are quite broad brush into an accountability framework with trackable commitments. Essentially. So the UNSDG principles accepted all the recommendations that were targeted to them as a collective. On the seven sub recommendations which were targeting individual entities, there is a more mixed picture. 15 UN SDG entities only partially accepted the sub recommendation on the importance of transparency standards and sharing their work plans and budgets with the Resident Coordinator and the country team. Only 14 partially accepted the I mean 14 out of 34 partially accepted the sub recommendation on accountabilities and incentives within UN SDG entities, etc. Etc. You can see this all for yourselves in the management response and I recommend you take a look. The level of non accepting is low. A few recommendations had two or three maximum four UN SDG entities not accepting the recommendations and in each case they have given written feedback on the sub recommendation. Now for the recommendations that went to Member States, obviously they are for you to consider and revert. So there was no management response on those relevant recommendations. But we are very much taking forward the evidence and data put forward by the Evaluation Office into the different discussions around funding and governance that are percolating through the UNAT process. So what did we do specifically about the evaluation recommendations? Recommendations that are addressed to the UN SDG as a collective? These recommendations have far reaching implications on for example, how we articulate the next generation of UN Cooperation frameworks, how we approach the accountability framework between members of the Country Team and the Resident Coordinator, how we ensure transparency and accountability against UN collective results on the ground, and how the RC system delivers on its role. So in order to take this forward, the UNSDG Principles have essentially divided the sub recommendations into a set that are to be taken forward by DCO in its role as the UN SDG Secretariat and that is a Director level body that that I chair that is looking specifically at revising the Cooperation Framework guidance to take account of the recommendations findings and the UN SDG Principles channeled a subset of the overall sub recommendations to the UN 80 system wide working Group that is convened by the Deputy Secretary General to take from forward in particular the discussion on country configuration and Regional reset. So those work streams have been moving apace. You have heard the updates that the Secretary General, Guy Ryder and the Deputy Secretary General have been giving to Member States. So you have the latest on the country configuration and regional reset and you know the process that will last. But I just want to emphasize that a huge amount of the context that is informing those discussions is the evaluation and the commitment that has been made to take forward the evaluation recommendations on the Cooperation Framework guidance revision and the revision of the Management and Accountability Framework, both of which fall to dco, these are moving in parallel. And once, once the UNAT decisions are taken and based on due and appropriate dialogue with Member States, then we will be finalizing these two very important documents that will inform how we collectively as a system, deliver again on the vision that you articulate, articulated in Resolution 72, 279. I hope that that covers the issues that are of interest to you today. And I'm happy to take any questions later. Thank you.


UNSDG System Wide Evaluation Office · Executive Director · Andrea Koch [45:59]:

Thank you, Helena. So we'll now turn to two colleagues who are going to speak about the system wide evaluation that looked at the disability inclusion strategy. So firstly I'd like to welcome Ms. Mina Motajedi, the Senior Social Affairs Officer from the Disability Inclusion Team which sits within the Sustainable Development Unit in the Secretary General's office. And Mina will reflect on the use and follow up to recommendations from the evaluation. Thank you. Over to you, Mina.


EOSG · Senior Social Affairs Officer · Mina Motajedi [46:35]:

Thank you. Excellencies and distinguished delegates. I'm very pleased to be here to brief you on how the Executive Office of the Secretary General is taking up the recommendations from the evaluation on the UN Disability Inclusion Strategy. I'd like to start by providing a little bit of a background on the strategy itself in case some of you may not be familiar with it. The UN Disability Inclusion Strategy, or how we call it undis, is a Secretary General initiative that was launched that he launched in 2019. And it's been a significant landmark for the UN system. It's the first comprehensive system wide framework on disability inclusion that, that drives accountability and action across all entities, across all country teams. It applies to operations and programs and all pillars of the UN's work. In the five years covered by the evaluation, Andes has successfully catalyzed changed and we've seen significant increase in the implementation of disability, including inclusion. In terms of the number of entities. We've seen growing leadership at senior. Sorry, growing leadership commitment at senior levels and also the development of policies, guidance and tools that didn't exist before and that form the structural change that advances disability inclusion. Now. This represents a real and meaningful progress in a relatively short time, particularly considering the low baseline from which the UN system started on disability inclusion. UNDIS has laid a strong foundation to drive this progress. And at the same time, the evaluation pointed to gaps in the system wide transformation that has not yet been fully achieved. So the UN has not fully realized its ambition on disability inclusion. From the start. The strategy itself envisioned an external review after five years of implementation. And that is what the evaluation office has indeed completed last year. And what they told us was that the progress has been uneven across entities and country teams and across areas of work, and that this reflects a number of procedures persistent challenges, primarily in relation to capacity and resource constraints. In other words, there continues to be a low level of technical capacity on disability inclusion and also institutional arrangements that ensure the sustainability of the work. Andrea did cover the recommendations that they made moving forward, but just very brief. Briefly, to recap, there were five key areas of recommendations. Firstly, the evaluation called for strengthening and updating the strategy with a clearer vision and a stronger theory of change and time bound and measurable objectives. Secondly, it emphasized the need to strengthen the means of implementation through institutional arrangements to support UNDIS action plans for entities, country teams and for the system as a whole. Thirdly, the evaluation recommended sustainable and efficient investments on this implementation, leveraging partnerships, especially with a view to scaling up disability inclusion and along with this, also monitoring the resource allocation to disability inclusion. Fourth set of recommendations was around institutionalizing and strengthening system wide knowledge management, learning and capacity to promote disability inclusion. And indeed, from our work we know that this is really central to advancing disability inclusion generally. And then lastly, the evaluation made clear that the organizational culture at the UN must be more inclusive to persons with disabilities through investments and stronger action on accessibility and reasonable accommodation. So how are we at the Executive Office responding to these recommendations? Firstly, the recommendations, we welcome them and the recommendations have been broadly accepted. This really reflects a shared recognition that the next phase of UNDIS has to be more ambitious, more coherent and more results driven. So we've taken several actions to implement the evaluation recommendations. Many of them are underway and expected to be completed by the end of the year. So firstly, we have already updated the strategy, what we now call Undisputed 2.0. It's in the final stages of endorsement by the UN system and this was done through an extensive consultation process with UN entities, with country teams, with external stakeholders and especially organizations of persons with disabilities. And just to highlight that the entities represented here, so un, women, unfp, DCO and others are among many that participated in the process. The revised strategy has a strengthened emphasis on country level programming and support to Member States. It more closely aligns with broader UN priorities such as digital transformation, as well as aligns better with other system wide strategies, for example on gender and youth. It also includes a stronger accountability framework with more rigorous and clearer targets that are used then to monitor progress each year. Secondly, we are moving towards institutional arrangements for the monitoring, coordination and support to UNDIS. 2.0 the Secretary General assigned a task force led by Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed to develop solutions and deliver a roadmap for the transition. And we expect those decisions to be made in the next months. Thirdly, we are placing a greater emphasis on partnerships and on systems for tracking resource allocations. We will be consulting with the relevant entities across across the systems to develop this. Fourthly, and very importantly, we are significantly scaling up the capacity and knowledge by expanding training, strengthening the technical supports and improving knowledge sharing across the system. And we'll be doing this in collaboration with key entities that have specific mandates around learning. For example, units are many of the you will know in the unssc, the UN system staff college as well as in the Secretary at the Office of Human Resources. And lastly, and very importantly, we're increasing efforts to advance workforce inclusion of persons with disabilities by improving accessibility and improving the provision of reasonable accommodation, especially through a centralized funding mechanism. Working with Office of Human Resources in the Secretariat to strengthen recruitment, retention and addressing an inclusive organizational culture. In closing, I want to say that the evaluation has really laid the foundation for the future of disability inclusion across the UN system. The evaluation provided to us and for the Secretary General's decision making a clear roadmap for the next phase for UNDIS 2.0. And the UN system as a whole is committed to translating this into accelerated and measurable progress. So we're now in the process of moving forward with a focus on scale, on coherence and transformation to ensure that disability inclusion is fully embedded across all areas of the UN's work. Thank you.


UNSDG System Wide Evaluation Office · Executive Director · Andrea Koch [55:11]:

Thank you, Meena. We'll now turn to Mongeral Kabir who is the Senior Global Advisor and Team Leader on Disability inclusion and intersectionality at UN Women who will be reflecting on UN women's use on follow up to the recommendations. Over to you, Manjarobi.


UN Women · Senior Global Advisor and Team Leader on Disability Inclusion and Intersectionality · Mongeral Kabir [55:45]:

Yeah, thank you very much, Andrea. And thank you the UN system wide evaluation Office for inviting UN women. It has been a very, very collaborative work together on this evaluation. I actually want to and all protocols observe. Of course I actually want to touch base four aspects. One is UNDIS and the evaluation. Second is UN human contribution to evaluation. Third is changes and challenges within and in the context of UN City as Helena was alluding to new generation of UN cities, how it is impacting us on this aspect of inclusion agenda. And four, if you call to action. If you call to action. So let me focus on the on this and the evaluation for UN women. Of course UN disability inclusion strategy poses different challenges because it is a dedicated gender entity. When we started working, of course, many questioned from field, from regional Offices that where our focus should be. And we ended up focusing on more gender and disability inclusion intersectional approach which was at that period of time when UNDIS was launched in 2019 by the Secretary General. The intersectional approach in terms of capacity as knowledge wise was missing in many across our offices and UNCT relationship. In that way we are looking at ethnic minority women, women living in rural and poor areas and main of course. And then you are presented with a whole set of challenges which presents actually. So we adopted that approach leaving no one behind NSDGS and how really we can push the needle with from that perspective. It has been a remarkable journey. And the evaluation came on a very timely because we submitted four or five report and then evaluation looked at it. And I completely agree and I would not repeat what Mina has already said about the evolution and Andrea has alluded to it. But I think what what actually was for us very unique that we decided to take it very seriously. And we launched a separate report. During the evaluation report and I'm very grateful to also UNFPA joining us. We looked at 2023 reports submitted by the UN entities. Almost 35 entities who voluntarily shared the report they submitted to USG. And we assessed from an angle of gender and how the UNDIS is actually contributing to gender aspect. And it came up with a fairly robust recommendations which we shared with the evaluation team. And I think that have been appreciated from the angle of bringing some aspect which was missing. One of the key aspect of our report for the evaluation at that time which is now publicly available in UN human website as well is we focus on intersectionality and looked at not only disability, but gender and age which creates distinct experience of discrimination. We looked at progressive integration. Some entities have successfully incorporated gender. But many entities looked at UNDIS but didn't look at of course the specific challenges that women and girls are facing in disability. In terms of trauma, in terms of the stigma, the invisibility of it all the challenges and discrimination. Of course then the collaborative action how it can create synergy not only within UN system but multilateral system and private sector public sector who are also increasingly getting ahead with the accessibility agenda. We are looking at also joint programming how joint program, for example unpaid care disability and gender transformative approach. There are many joint programs at the country level with the UNCT are contributing to from the angle of disability accessibility, gender and some of the recommendation that we leave through it is integrated accountability. Of course the shared indicators whether we can develop a common indicator to measure system wide coherence on gender disability Intersectional work, targeted capacity development, increased collaboration and of course advocacy. One the third thing I want to say that some of the changes and the challenges we are seeing out of this report and the evaluation Andrea, you have mentioned that was very helpful and I think Mina mentioned about the wind is 2.0 and I'm very grateful that wind is 2.0 has adopted some elements of intersectionality. But one thing you would probably many of you would be happy to know that this really help us to also influence multilateralism. When Global Disability Summit is being hosted in Germany with German and Jordan and calling for man Berlin Declaration, we also push in the same way using UNDIS and the evaluation and our approach to intersectionality and the Declaration incorporated intersectionally for the first time out of the third Global Disability Summit. So we are also looking at collaborating with the normative angle where UN CRPD committee looked at this and started talking to CEDAW committee, which is an interesting development because CEDAW committee and CRPD committee they work together, but sometimes they are not necessarily the two normative body talking to each other on many issues of gender and disability. So I think that on the normative angle on multilateralism and within UN system, this has been a remarkable journey in terms of the last element of my discussion. But before that I also want to highlight that together with intosai UN Women evaluation guideline emphasized the principle of no one leave behind and we published a guidance on inclusion of persons with disabilities in evaluation. This was also for the independent audit offices but also is sort of shared with all our UN human country offices. Now in terms of the call to action, I think there is no alternative but to look at alternate resource base given the declining non core resources and ODA in the UN system and across multilateralism. We are also looking at how we can partner better with private sector academic institution on accessibility agenda. I'll give you one or two examples how diverse UN women and the field is now looking at from this angle. Women with disabilities for the first time participated in the evaluation of the first National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security in Mozambique. Women and girls with disabilities survivors of gender based violence in Cote d' Ivoire could also benefited from recommendation to remove obstacles to access to justice, particularly in the court accessibility. The Court for Women with Disabilities Tanzania employs an audit tool to address accessibility issues in government buildings where a lot of women related meeting happen but the women with disabilities never enter those buildings or the planning processes or the discussion. Women with disabilities in Jordan engaged in livelihood opportunities in four OASIS centers in the the campus thanks to enhanced accessibility work out of the UN women and the Undist processes and lastly with UNDPA Joint Program on Behavioral Insights to combat stigma and discrimination were strengthened. We worked with Pakistan, Republic of Moldova and Samoa and of course Occupied Palestine territories. So all these things to suggest that we have to focus more at the UN city level, entity level, there have been some progress. I'm not saying the progress is enough, but at the UN city level, as UN is looking at new typology and new strength of the UN as a system, how can UN City benefits from robust partnership and that can help Member states so that it becomes win win collaboration for member states with UN stem and we also caught up with the whole challenges of access, disability, inclusion and taking a very broad based intersectionality and Eleanor approach. I'll end here. Thank you very much.


UNSDG System Wide Evaluation Office · Executive Director · Andrea Koch [1:04:31]:

Thank you to Monjaro. So it's very helpful for UN women to highlight some very sort of tangible sort of country level examples of what this all means, what sits beyond the evaluation recommendations and their implementation. I'm now going to turn to our final panellist who's going to make some brief comments from the perspective of UNFPA. So I'm happy to welcome Ms. Valeria Carew, senior Evaluation Officer who also spent time with the Office of Evaluation the last two years on secondment. And she's going to reflect on how UNFPA engages with and supports the system wide evaluation function and also to highlight how UNFPA as an organization is using system wide evaluation evidence to improve its own learning and performance. Over to you Valeria,


UNFPA · Senior Evaluation Officer · Valeria Carew [1:05:29]:

Andrea, Excellencies, distinguished representatives and guests, thank you for being here today. Evaluation is a priority for UNFPA and a key element of organizational learning, accountability and and evidence based decision making. The Independent Evaluation Office strives to play an active role in promoting a more accountable, efficient and coherent United nations system. Recognizing the strategic importance of the UN SDG System Wide Evaluation Office, the Independent Evaluation Office has actively contributed to its constitution and program of work since 2024. This included the secondment of an evaluation advisor for 18 months to manage two of the system Wide Evaluations Office flagship System wide evaluations. The Independent Evaluation Office of UNFPA has also participated in several evaluation management groups for evaluative exercises and provided substantial inputs to the development of the system wide evaluation policy. The results from system wide evaluations have informed learning and decision making at the program and management level levels at unfpa demonstrating the strategic value of generating system wide evaluative evidence to improve organizational performance and efficiency of particular Relevance were the results of the system wide evaluation of progress towards a new generation of United nations country teams, the results also of the Spotlight Initiative evaluation for learning and action in the area of UNFP support to gender based violence and the results of the evaluation of the United Nations Disability Strategy to inform UNFPA's work on disability. The Independent Evaluation Office will report on the results and use of evaluation evidence from a system wide and un 80 driven transformation. The Independent Evaluation Office is committed to continue the strong collaboration with the system wide evaluation with half of the evaluative exercises planned for the next four years identified as joint interagency or system wide evaluations.


UNSDG System Wide Evaluation Office · Executive Director · Andrea Koch [1:07:46]:

Well, thank you. Brief highlights. Thank you Valeria and many thanks to our panel. I will now hand back to our chair to continue to the next segment of the meeting. Your Excellency.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:08:04]:

Thank you Andrea for the presentation of this annual evaluation report. Thank you panelists for the insight on the use of and the uptake of system wide evaluation evidence by United nations entities, some United Nation entities. I will now open the floor for Member States to share reflection. I hope very frankly and ask question blunt question to the Executive Director and to our panelists. Who will break the ice. Yes, could you present yourself because we have not the. Thank you. You have the floor, Madam.


Republic of Korea · Hae San [1:09:25]:

Good morning everyone. This is Hae San from Republic of Korean Mission. I'm in charge of funds and program in our mission. First of all, thank you for the briefing and discussion and I'm very delighted to learn more about the work of the UN Evaluation office and definitely I can have a better understanding on how systematically the evaluation system works. Actually I have very general question so it is not too specific so I ask your understanding. But yeah, I have curiosity on this matter. So first of all I'd like to ask question from the cultural perspective. Given the largest scale of the UN system, the daisy diversity of its agencies, I think that it may be not easy to effectively share evaluation findings across organization and UN entities and ensure that they are actually used to improve programs and policies. Definitely you have the system evaluation recommendation and management response and follow up actions, but to truly promote learning from evaluation and connect evaluation findings to the improvement improvement of future development program. I believe it is very important not only to manage the evaluation recommendation, but also to foster an evaluation friendly culture within UN so and I think that it can also contribute to make the better implementation implementation of evaluation recommendations. So in this regard I'd like to ask what kind of efforts that your office is making to encourage organization learning and promote the application of evaluation result and strengthen the implementation of evasion recommendations and finally build a more evaluation friendly culture across UN system. That is my first question and my second question is given the current UN reform reports, I have curious to see whether the evaluation office will be affected in terms of its organizational size and human resources or potential merger with other evaluation offices in other UN agencies. Yeah, that's my second question is my brief very quick third question is whether you will share the presentation material to every everyone after the meeting or not. Thank you.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:12:11]:

Ladies and gentlemen. This panelist came to inform you. You have the floor, Madam.


Ireland · Ashton O'Leary [1:12:21]:

Thank you. My name is Ashton o' Leary from the Permanent Mission of Ireland. Thank you to all the panelists and the Executive Director for the presentation and for the report. We're glad to support the work of the office in the small way that we can and I think in particular in the UN80 context have found some of the reporting from last year really helpful in digesting the many work packages that dealing with in Workstream 3. I see, Andrea, that you make reference in your presentation and in the slides to your partnerships with external actors who are also working on evaluation in various ways. Mopan and others. I wonder if you can say a word about how that functions and how those relationships work, because I think anywhere where you can limit duplication and share knowledge and experiences is useful in this context as well. Thanks.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:13:18]:

Member state. I will add one question, not as president but as representative of our. I noticed that most of the panelists are coming from, let's say the social sector of the UN and especially unfpa. UN women. Two important body. Two important bodies threatened. You all know about this project to amalgamate, streamline and amalgamate UN women and UNFPA from your own experience. I'm talking to panelists and also member states from your own experience. What will be the gain of the merger of these two bodies? What will be the loss. You are all smiling. What will be the loss for the United Nations? You might help us a lot with your experience if you can respond to our concern and our interrogation. Thank you. Other icebreaker right here in the back. Yeah, in the back, yeah.


Switzerland [1:15:38]:

Sorry for sitting there and sorry for coming late. Andrea, just a question, sir, from Switzerland. We are one of the staunch supporters of the System wide Evaluation office and earlier contributors. Hopefully it can stay that way. I just wanted to make a point. I mean it was raised on UNITY connection because I think it would be very important to understand how your work could really inform unity different work streams in particular. Now, as some of the packages so to speak, are yet to be considered. So I think that's one thing. Second of all, I would have a question to you, Elena, if I may. I think you mentioned something that kind of struck me a little bit. He says some of the recommendations were not accepted. Other some partially, particularly when it comes to transparency. I think you mentioned something about transparency. I got that. Right. So could you just perhaps elaborate a little bit why entities in the field were not necessarily accepting some of the recommendations? That sounds to me a bit content creative. So I'd be interested to understand that. Thank you very much. Again, supporting the work and I think the proof of concept is here. I think some of the presentation that we got are clear and I think very happy to see and hopefully that your funding will be sustained and sustainable. You know, hopefully once the conversation in the fifth committee will get through that. So that's all I can wish for you.


Speaker 19 [1:17:15]:

Thank you.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:17:16]:

Thank you. You have the floor, Mother.


Sweden · Os Anderson [1:17:20]:

Thank you very much. Os Anderson from the Swedish mission. And yes, to lean in and also say that we are supporting, of course, all the work that Swear is doing and is trying to also look at how financially support the office and I think the resources are extremely important going forward and how do you sustain a very nimble and small office that have, as my distinguished colleague from Switzerland said, have done the proof of concept. And we know we have used your evaluations a lot. So I'm having discussion with my 5C colleague and let's hope that all supportive member staff are doing the same with their 5C colleagues so we can see if we can get through it. The funding gap is 1.7 million if I understand correctly. So it on the larger, you know, on the whole scale, it's not something that couldn't be breached in terms of doing that. So. And just also said that a lot of the questions around education that has already been put forward from other colleagues are very important for us also to understand going forward in this process. So thanks a lot.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:19:06]:

Yeah, you have the flowmeter.


Indonesia · Nona [1:19:08]:

Thank you, Excellency.

Good morning everyone. Thank you very much for a very insightful presentation on the system wide evaluation that we are dealing with now and from a perspective. I'm Nona from Indonesia, so just want to register some concerns from developing country. We recognize that this evaluation is important to ensure the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and also the ongoing UN80 discussion. But there are four actually main concerns that we would like to address in terms of this evaluation. First of all, that from the perspective of program countries, I saw some of the Slides earlier they're mentioning of Indonesia as part of the evaluation. And we're truly grateful for that. And we've been very active in the evaluation process. And from the perspective of program country, we think that the reform should remain firmly anchored in our national ownership and responsiveness to country priorities. That's the first. And then the second one, we think that the success of the reforms should ultimately be measured by whether they strengthen the concrete delivery and also support at country level and tangible outcomes, not only institutional coherence or reporting structures. And then the third one, we noticed that there is an incredible importance for predictable funding and sustainable financing for the office. And we thank the donors. I saw Ireland over there. Thank you also for the donor countries that ensure this evaluation. But we also underlined the importance of that evaluation priorities should be remained balanced and also transparent and reflective of the needs of the program countries, especially developing countries. And since this discussion, the whole discussion of the evaluation also UN80 process, there are so many. I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the reports, maybe many of us also drowning in all the reports. And I support the suggestion made by Korea. Maybe the slides can be also provided to us. And I would like to explore is there a more user friendly and streamlined formats for all the evaluations. And I realized that there are many reports that we have to to study before the OAS in June. And maybe there can be shorter summaries and clearer prioritization of recommendations. And if there are, can you please also send it to email again, because we're also drowning in emails and there's a recommendation. I also have some questions regarding the potential merger of the UN women and unfpa. Both offices are operating very active in Indonesia. But I would like to ask, will any future restructuring ensure that operational delivery at country level, especially in terms of connecting the nexus between humanitarian development, development and also peace is not disrupted. So how do you address the nexus? And also we also note that the previous assessment report, it's not discussed in this meeting, but in the context of UN80 that donor concentration, earmarking and constraint financing already create pressures on board entities. So since we have both representatives here, can you also give us certain clarity how any restructuring could avoid creating additional uncertainty for program countries? And thank you very much for this meeting, Excellency.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:23:53]:

Thank you. Okay, you have the floor to respond, madam.


UNSDG System Wide Evaluation Office · Executive Director · Andrea Koch [1:24:06]:

Frankly, I shall thank you very much. And thank you to Member States for those helpful sort of reflections and questions. I'll take them sort of one by one if I may, because I think they warrant and we have Time for clear responses. So firstly, I mean, thank you to Republic of Korea for that important reflection. And you're exactly right, you know, the issuing of the reports, the management response and follow up reporting are procedures. They're not about how we instill learning, deep learning in the entities that we're working with and are able to promote that learning to member states. I'd say at the moment, the work of our office has been very much really focused on delivering our evaluations. And each and every one of our evaluations has a very detailed stakeholder engagement plan, working closely with what are called evaluation reference groups. So these are made up of key representatives of the entities that we're looking at. In the case of the new generation of UN country teams, we took the decision with Helena to position that within the group that she coordinates. That brought all of the entities at director level into a direct engagement with the evaluation process. And it's a little bit corny, I think, but we try through the evaluations to take the entities through a learning journey as we work together to identify and sharpen the questions, look at what people want to learn and reflect that in the evaluation. And every step of the way we're looking to build opportunities to come together and reflect on the learning. So that starts with a very early presentation. Once we get into the reporting of an evaluation on the preliminary findings and initial conclusions of the evaluation and really discussing that and getting validation, identifying areas that are missing. And it's, but it's importantly an opportunity to get people to really listen and understand to that. At the same time as we start then to move forwards, we produce a report, then people sort of read and absorb the report and provide detailed commentary, very detailed commentary, but very, very importantly. We then move to formulating the recommendations where the evaluation team sets out areas for recommendations and then we discuss them in a very deep way. We workshop those recommendations with representatives. So in the case of the UN country teams evaluation, we did that four times. So we did that through in person workshop with entities based in Geneva. We did that with representatives of entities based in New York, again in person. We did that with the resident coordinators. And then we also put in place a virtual mechanism to do that with entities that were based outside of New York to really think through what the recommendations should be and to make sure that they're really actionable and that people really understand what's being asked of them and that they're sharing their thinking into that. So those processes then enable you to go forwards into these processes when the report lands to have progress. And I've been in the world of evaluation for many years now in different UN entities as directors of evaluation evaluation. I've been very amazed actually at it usually takes some time, particularly for very strategic evaluation recommendations and learning to be picked up. I've been amazed at how quickly, despite the fact that in the case of UNDIS, you know, there are over 100 entities involved and all of those UN country teams that Mina was talking about, just how quickly people pick up and seize on it and start to sort of think through what that means for their entity and what that means to then put in place very rapid responses, as Mina was describing there, to the evaluation on the disability inclusion. We also do those processes with, with senior representatives. So as Helena said, the evaluation on the new generation of country teams was requested by the UNSDG at principal level. So I, and Tom here, who was the evaluation manager, we interacted many times with the UNSDG principals, again taking them on this kind of learning journey and discussing with them the recommendations, the conclusions from that evaluation, again to sort of build that in. And then this evaluation, as Helena said, is really connected to many of the elements on the UN 80 work packages that are focused on this delivery of results results at country level. And there we offered briefings to entities and many directors, executive directors and director generals of UN entities asked us to give distinct briefings tailored to their senior management groups. And we also were called on to brief some of the work package leads for UN80. So it's these things, it's the personal engagement, it's the opportunities for this interaction, but you need to kind of hardwire that into the processes right from the beginning. So it's really fundamentally important and sorry, I've taken time to talk about that, but this is really what it takes to get a system to shift. Just producing another report amongst many, many reports that you're all struggling with. It's a waste of time. Yeah. So we will share the slides. That was the other request from Republic of Korea and from Indonesia. If I move on to Ireland's point on the external actors. So here I'd say in addition to working with UN SDG evaluation entities who make up the majority of the membership of our steering group for system wide evaluation, where we work with them to think about the function, how we will work together to deliver on the function, we are also a very active member of the UN evaluation group which is working to strengthen the practice of evaluation right across the UN system. And then there are 50 plus entities who have evaluation officers who come together to work on how to strengthen the conduct and the use of evaluation across the system. And really coming back to this point point that's come up again from Republic of Korea to help to work together to engage with leadership within entities and across. But through a concerted effort to build the learning culture and the evaluation culture across the organization, which is one of the critical commitments in the United nations evaluation norms and standards where we've all committed to to work together to promote that. We also work in coordination with OECD Development Assistance Committee Evaluation Network because we feel it's vitally important to make sure that there's an understanding of our approaches and that there's trust so that the donors to the United nations system have confidence in our work. And so we use that as a channel again for technical dialogue primarily. But it's also to make sure that again they are working within CEDAR or you know, the Department of Foreign affairs in various countries to again build an understanding of why this system wide evaluation work is important to support that engagement and funding of the system. We collaborate closely with the evaluation officers of the international finance institutions and we also work closely with mopan, which was created to the multilateral. Organization Performance Assessment Assessment Network. Sorry, my brain is getting a bit scrambled. To again make sure the learning from our work and evaluation learning that's carried out across the system by all of these different evaluation officers connects to their assessments that they make of both UN and IFI organizations. Moving on to Switzerland, I don't believe it's for me to talk around the kind of unity processes other than to note there's this very active dialogue and many, many reports and opportunities for discussion sort of coming up at this month and I'm sure will keep everyone very busy right through to the end of the year, if not beyond, but maybe turning to Switzerland. So thank you for the support from Switzerland. Really right from the onset of establishing and thinking through this office, I think I've sort of outlined already how this office has been working to inform and engage with the UN80 processes. So it's been this dynamic engagement and you know, we're called upon to give briefings and to share evidence, to extract evidence from the reports that sort of connect. And this is the evaluation on the new generation of country teams and to offer insights to those processes. But also, you know, we try to adapt our work and the way we do our work as well. So one of the UNHE packages was the special Envoy review. One of the commitments there that the Secretary General made last year was to close the Office of the Special Coordinator for the Development in the Sahel, but reached out to our office to request the Advisory Group on the Sahel, which is chaired by the Deputy Secretary General, for us to commission this evaluation at looking at coordination in the Sahel to inform what comes next, but also to. So that's required us to move very, very fast on this very challenging evaluation to make sure the learning is coming through in a timely way, to inform the decisions on what comes next, but also to feed the learning across into, as I said, the ongoing work, to look at the special envoy side of things, but also some of the regional work packages for UN80. And we're now sort of coming into the reporting stage. So that's then enabling us to have dialogue with the colleagues across the system who are leading that work. But importantly, we will be coming back to this learning journey. We've started to share and circulate some of the findings and discuss the findings with key support senior colleagues in the system. But we'll also be coming together in a face to face workshop next week in Dakar that brings together regional directors from UN entities in the region, but also resident coordinators to really then start to think through, well, this is what we're learning. What needs to happen next to respond to this very challenging development, humanitarian and peace and security dilemmas in that region. The financing of this office, this is emphasized by Switzerland and Sweden, also Indonesia. This is crucial. I tried to highlight as we were going through the presentation that our budget, which is for this year is 3.1 million. It's very, very small if you think about that in comparison to entity evaluation budgets or even the evaluation budgets of the main evaluation functions, say of the funds and programs. World Food Program, whereas there's activity, whereas Director of Evaluation until 2023 has an evaluation budget of over 30 million a year. UNDP is fairly similar to that. So the added value of this relatively small slice, not insignificant but relatively small, I think is very important and immense. Particularly because we are really focused on the things that cannot be evaluated by the individual entities alone. We're looking at the collective contribution and our work is really strongly focused. And I cannot emphasize this enough on looking at development results at country level and how the UN is responding to the requests and requirements of national development priorities. So I really welcome our colleague from Indonesia for highlighting that, because this is precisely what this office was set up to achieve in the 2018 development system reforms, which in itself responded to a long standing request from Member States in the General Assembly. Assembly dating right back to 2010, you know, and to speak frankly, Mr. Chair, this office really provides the ability to look across the system and for Member States to see the wood for the trees. Too often at the global level, the regional level and in particular at the country level, there are all the little bits and slices of the system. There are accountability mechanisms provided through audits and evaluations and progress reports. But it's very confusing to really see what impact has been made, to see how the system, as Helena said, is coming together to deliver on the request of Member States for the system to come together to really support and accelerate progress towards the SDGs. So our work is really fundamental in supporting and driving that and providing the kind of reports that are needed. The funding gap for this year is 1.7 million. Looking into next year with the the request that will be provided by the Secretary General to the regular budget process for 2027 is looking for 2.7 million of regular budget resources. And as colleagues have highlighted from Sweden and from Switzerland, the key decision making side on that of course, as you, you all know, sits with the Fifth Committee processes last year. So I really do call upon, as Sweden has highlighted to if this is something that's valued, to make that connection with Fifth Committee colleagues and priorities. And this comes back to end with Indonesia, this point about why that funding is important. It comes back to what you said. It has to be balanced and transparent. All of the evaluations we have done so far have come out of requests, strategic requests backed by funding that's allowing us to move forwards. That doesn't mean they are necessarily the very top priorities. Our office is meant to do maybe two or three evaluations maximum a year, really looking at critical strategic issues. So it's fundamentally important for our independence and the transparency of the work that's meeting the needs of all member states and particularly program countries. I should say that we are setting out a multi year work program. We're looking at a four year work plan running up to 2030 that is based on solid analysis that identifies critical strategic priorities and that we then seek to work out which are the really critical issues that we work on because there will be many more strategic priorities than we can manage within our resources. But also which, if you're looking at system wide change, the systems can't absorb too much sort of direction, otherwise they're not able to respond in a focused and timely way. So there has to be a pacing of our work as well. So we need to have this work plan to identify the critical priorities from an independent perspective, but also to phase the work so that it comes at the right time to inform the critical decision making processes. We've had to work very, very hard to make sure that our work was positioned to support the 2024 QCPR. It's been more accident by design that we were working on this new generation of UN country teams evaluation, which is proving so important, important for the UNHE processes focused on country and regional. And we've had to work very, very hard to deliver on that and sort of set things out and connect to the system. We're looking now for starting to look forward to 2030 and the SDGs and what comes out of Agenda 2030. So we really want to be in a situation where we're positioning the right evidence in the right way at the right time to support intergovernmental decision making and also for entity decision making too, of course. Maybe my final point is to highlight, yes, there's a plethora of reports and an only useful evaluation report is something that's really understood and embraced by different decision makers. So all our reports are published on our website. The actual evaluation reports are quite hefty documents. They come into about 40,000 words or 80 pages. However, we produce summaries. So summaries are about 6,000 words, say 10 to 15 pages. And we also provide two page summaries which are invaluable for very busy decision makers. And all of those are made available on the report. And of course to any Member States, if you want something bespoke, please do reach out and we'll try to come back with something very focused in relation to to your particular requirements that extracts in a timely way what you need. So with that, perhaps move to panellists who would like to take up the floor. Sorry, Mr. Chair.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:46:26]:

Panelists? Yeah. Then, Frizer.


DCO · Chief, Policy and Programming Branch · Helena Fraser [1:46:34]:

Thank you very much, Mr.

Chair.

And thank you Switzerland for the question. So, as I said, a number of the sub recommendations were partially accepted by multiple entities in most. And because of the lovely commitment to transparency, which I think is super important for you, the Member States, the management response, which is very long. So I am sorry, but to get 34 entities to describe why they are only partially accepting each sub recommendation requires a certain amount of text. But this management response lays out for every only partially accepted recommendation why it's only partially accepted in most cases. And this speaks to the beautiful diversity of the United nations family. This is due to governance interpretation of governance issues. So, for example, a number of entities say they cannot open performance appraisal of UNCT representatives to input from the resident Coordinator because they would need a governing body decision to allow them to do that. Or some of them say that, that while they support the funding compact, they would need a governing body decision in order to take further measures to enhance implementation of the funding compact. Some of them say that in order to share work plans and budgets that have been approved by executive bodies, they would need a governing body approval or feedback. So in a sense, the fact that some of them were only able to partially accept is linked to the recommendation to you, the Member States on governance, because the conundrum for development, although it is a member of the UN SDG and therefore was required to report, and a few other entities just did not accept very specific recommendations. And again, it's usually to do with internal mechanisms or governing body mechanisms. So it's a mix of those reasons. Thanks.


Spotlight Initiative Secretariat · Global Coordinator · Erin Kenny [1:49:05]:

Thank you to the Chair. Thank you to Member States for, for the excellent questions. I want to speak first to the just to the importance of this evaluation. This evaluation was incredibly robust and it was at a moment when Spotlight was born from a deep investment by one single donor, 500 million from the European Union that really had was unprecedented. It was unprecedented in the level of investment to a social issue, in this case ending violence against women and girls. In my lifetime I have never seen this level of investment to this issue and the fact that it set out with this triple objective, this objective to end violence, to drive the reforms and to empirically show how ending violence against women and girls can, can advance the SDGs. So it was not a small thing. And in order for us to meaningfully pivot to our 2.0, we needed to ground that in an evaluation. And I cannot speak highly enough into the work of the system wide evaluation office in enabling us to have this strong grounding that brought the 13 UN entities who are part of Sponsor Initiative along on the journey to 2.0, which is a completely different landscape for us. We do not have a 500 million investment from the EU and in fact we have a diversification of donors and a much stronger grounding actually in national priorities linked to country frameworks, responding to fragility and other needs. And that all came out of the findings from the evaluation. So just to appreciate that in terms of UN 80, this also, you know, because we were born out of the reform, the original reform vision of the Secretary General, we had always had a lot to say about reform and we're very well placed with the outcomes of the evaluation to help contribute to UN80 conversations. And we continue to do so, including with the messaging around the spot standard for this work. And in fact, in many of my conversations I'm often asked, could the model that Spotlight Initiative has presented be used in other development issues? And I would argue very soundly, yes. Now I'm going to maybe spare my dear colleagues from UNFPA and UN women from having to answer the merger conversation. As an initiative that is hosted by DCO and reports to the Deputy Secretary General, maybe I can offer a bird's eye view on this issue and bravely respond to your question to the chair, which is a tricky one honestly, and I see both sides. On the pro side, there is redundancy to be sorted out, particularly in the area where Spotlight Initiative works in ending violence against women and girls. I have seen it myself, both from my work when I was at unfpa, but also from my work in Spotlight. I will say also that there is the opportunity to create a gender entity that is a powerhouse. The DSG often says that the opportunity in merging these two entities means that you will now have a single gender entity, a gender and SRHR entity. I should say that is the seventh largest UN entity and can have that strong role in the UN system. That is very exciting for me actually to know that we could have that opportunity to have this truly robust powerhouse of agenda, an SRHR entity who has an equal seat at the table. Now, the risks are many. I would say that the two primary that I have heard are the risks to mandate, particularly for unfpa, I would argue, and the concern that by putting the merger on the table there will be an erosion of the critical mandates that each entity that are distinct and that each entity brings. I think Indonesia, your points were really well heard and I've heard this myself, concerns that ongoing complementary, distinct work on the ground could be disrupted. I've heard that particularly honestly in the Asia and Pacific region. And I think that's really well founded and needs to be protected because I think that would be a worst case case scenario. And then, you know, the vision from the merger from the DSG is that one plus one equals two and a half in terms of funding. So the idea is that these merging these two entities will result in significant efficiencies. And the concern that I have heard from both within the UN and really significantly from civil society is that one plus one will equal half that member states, and I'm putting this back on the member states in this room will, rather than continuing to invest at the level that they currently invest in the two entities will rather retract the funding they would have given to one entity and just do that single entity investment into that new entity, thereby reducing the amount of funding going into these already significantly underfunded issues. This that would be absolutely devastating for the sector. Frankly, as I said when I spoke earlier, gender based violence work relies on a multiplicity of actors, each offering complementarity to this sector. We cannot have one UN entity doing everything on gender based violence. That would not work. So I would say in any merger conversations there has to be an acknowledgement that we need to continue to recognize the complementarity that the whole UN system can bring to this to this issue. Thank you.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:55:18]:

Thank you. Panelist. Yes, sir.


UN Women · Senior Global Advisor and Team Leader on Disability Inclusion and Intersectionality · Mongeral Kabir [1:55:23]:

Kabir, Sorry, my microphone doesn't bug of course. But I will just focus on one element that Andrea, you mentioned in also in the report that was highlighted is how do you really build back on evaluation recommendation? Because we have seen as Indonesia and Corey have mentioned the reports coming up and more important thing is how do you really catalyze them, use them, pilot them and then implement them. We have three instances which can show point shed light on the aspect we can do better. One is this. For example, one of the success case within UN women is gender responsive budgeting grb. Right. So we looked at GRB and then translate that success into gender responsive and disability inclusive budgeting. And a number of our offices now are working with Ministry of Finance on both aspects which is always win win when you go with consulate approach. And since GRB is already well known as a success case, we also looked at from external partner as well on assistive technology and growing of use of assistive technology for women and girls in a lifecycle approach. And we have looked at that and then started talking about and you would be happy to know that one of our projects from Pakistan, UN Women Pakistan have won the award from the SG's Innovation Award this year which looked at how assistive technology helped women in the frontier of Pakistan and Afghanistan who lost their limbs and then use assistive technology to continue the livelihood. And that has been also a good recognition. Third is the care agenda. We looked at care agenda from a perspective of gender before only. But we also realize that women and girls who are with disabilities, the burden on the family, the invisible burden on the mothers, on the other family members and the communities. How can we address and transform the care agenda so that it doesn't become only one sided care agenda. The care recipient and caregiver, both sides are connected. And the last one is basically we are looking at not only discrimination but the stigma which sometime we cannot Touch. We can only talk about its stigma. But there is no UN convention or no accountability model. We can assess the major the stigma. And we have now did a study and methodology and many of our offices looked at the assessment. So I would say these are the examples of incremental new generation of growth that's happening across UN system. And thanks for touching the other aspect, which I will not repeat. Then thank you very much.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:58:17]:

Thank you. Mr. Chabir. Any other. Yes, madam. Push. Okay.


EU · Jana Delay [1:58:31]:

My name is Jana Delay and I'm from the EU delegation. I want to to thank for this excellent briefing and for all the work done by the Office. We really appreciate it. We find it valuable. We were quite surprised in what you were explaining about the funding on evaluation of the particular entities and funding of your office. Maybe that is also something that should be reviewed within the system as a whole. But what I want to address here is the operational activity segment that this year will have a special part dedicated to the work of your office. And I simply want to ask you, how do you envisage it? What do you think will be gained from this?


UNSDG System Wide Evaluation Office · Executive Director · Andrea Koch [1:59:27]:

How will it be?


EU · Jana Delay [1:59:29]:

How? What do you want? How do you want the meeting to feed into also the outcome of the operational activities segment? Or do you see this meeting as a repetition of what we shared here now? And we do have a higher expectation from our side. So thank you.


ECOSOC · Chair [1:59:51]:

Thank you. Please Madam.


Pakistan · Alina [1:59:57]:

Thank you. This is Alina from the Pakistan Mission. First, I do want to acknowledge and appreciate the work done with Pakistan on the topic of assistive technology. Just a question for Andrea. Perhaps when you create these evaluations, because we get the briefings every year on the report of the office, but do you individually or brief Member States on the evaluations themselves and their findings or do you interact with them during the process of creating these evaluations? For example, especially on the UNCT evaluation, I think engaging not only with the uncts but also perhaps with program countries could give you some different insights from the Member State perspective as well. Because I think one of the roadblocks is you mentioned that the issue is many entities cite their governance structures as an obstacle to taking forward your recommendations. But I think the issue is many of the recommendations from your evaluations are not socialized within Member States well in advance before a negotiated outcome especially so they come in blind. So instead of just briefing on the office, perhaps doing in depth briefing on specific evaluations you've done and then on funding. Just a question and I'm sorry I missed the beginning of the briefing on the extra budgetary contributions you receive. So those are earmarked for specific thematic topics. So you are constrained to no or when you receive funding.

Thank you.


UNSDG System Wide Evaluation Office · Executive Director · Andrea Koch [2:01:31]:

So thank you very much to the first of all to the EU delegation. Yeah, we're obviously working with the Vice President responsible for the operation activities segment and colleagues in UNDESA on that particular session. We won't be going into, you know, a repeat of this. This is providing this sort of detailed opportunity to brief on the work, to hear from Member States what you're thinking and to enable a dialogue the other session and for us to be able to answer very specific questions. So I think this meeting has been excellent to provide that. And this is the first time we've had this informal briefing on an annual report. You mentioned how ECOSOC exerts its sort of oversight across the system, including exploring that connection, I think between ECOSOC and governing bodies, which is also something which kind of is being centered right this moment, I think within the General assembly. The interactions between the General assembly and governing bodies of entities in relation to a such of the UN 80 work packages. And Helena has already I think highlighted for that evaluation on the new generation of country teams, how these connections between what's positioned from our office at the request of ECOSOC then informs Member State sort of dialogue and thinking that needs to take place in other legislative and governing bodies across the system. So I'm hopeful that the operational activities segment will enable some reflection of that. So obviously our office, our contributions are a very small offering to inform the evidence based decision making of ECOSOC as a body. We're not claiming much, but we provide, I think a very valuable source of independent kind of credible, impartial evidence that can be taken up by Member States to inform their thinking and enable to make some of those connections. Turning to Pakistan, thank you very much. It is our intention to actually hold informal briefings like this on each and every sort of major report that we produce. And ideally those need to take place together with the relevant representative system wide who can also talk about the management response. Because those of you who are familiar with the way of working of the, say the governing bodies of the agency's funds and programs here in New York and beyond. That's how things happen. You know, I can provide a briefing on the findings and conclusions and recommendations of an evaluation, but I think that needs to sit for Member States to get full value of it with the organisations also sort of setting out how they're responding to the, to the management responses. I should say that is something we have tried to do this past year, but it's been a particularly busy and complex year with all the UN80 processes, and the UN80. Sort of interactions is still being worked through. So there's been challenges in sorting out diary time and finding space within the intergovernmental calendar to be able to do that. The Disability Inclusion Management Response has only recently been completed. Getting that management response together was a really significant undertaking to have got so many entities globally to be responding. So that took a lot longer than we had anticipated. And it's only now, I think, as the elements are being sort of moved forward, as Mina has outlined, that I think it would be appropriate to be organizing that kind of briefing. So we're trying to work out how to do things so we present things to members of the states in a timely way. But that Member states, you don't have time to come to too many of these kind of briefings. You know, they're the most meaningful interaction for you. Saying that. Last year, when we published the report on the new generation of country teams, the mission of Switzerland and Rwanda very kindly hosted an informal briefing at the Swiss mission to which all member states were invited that allowed us to present the findings from that report. And we also had very interesting contributions coming in from resident coordinators in key countries to sort of say what the report meant for them. We've been working with the Disability Inclusion Team and the Group of Friends on On Disability to try to find time for an interaction on the Disability inclusion sort of evaluation, which I think is imminent. But again, that will provide an informal sort of opportunity where we'll be able to explain a little bit more than we've had time to do today. Turning to the issue of the extra budgetary contributions. So I'm very thankful to the member states that have supported us because they have provided entirely unearmarked contributions to our trust fund, which has largely enabled us to support the staffing and operational costs of the office. It's actually been the entities who have made contributions to the specific evaluations, and those are earmarked. And to get an idea, we're sort of patching together small amounts of funding in many cases. So, for example, the evaluation on transitions, we received from entities, small contributions of between sort of twenty and thirty thousand dollars to that evaluation, but restricted to that evaluation. Other evaluations, such as the evaluation of the UN Disability Inclusion Strategy and the evaluation of the Sahel, because they came to us as requests, they came with a funding package that has been routed to our office by the session Secretary General's office, but again, sort of earmarked. As I noted, there is a funding gap for this evaluation on the SDG transitions, which we are sort of seeking to fill through either member state contributions. And we are continuing to push, with the support of the Deputy Secretary General, for entities to step up and help to fill that funding gap. So that's the issue coming back to why is it important? It's the timeliness. So this evaluation is going to put very important evidence on looking more at the results, in particular SDG transition areas onto the table as we go into 2027. We were ready to start this evaluation in October last year. We actually started it properly in March. So now we're working very, very hard in a very small team. There are three professional evaluation officers in our team and a junior professional officer to really deliver this on time, because an evaluation that's late is not useful either. It has to come at the right time. The new generation of UN country teams was requested by the UNSDG principles in 2022. The end of 2022. We only were able to get that evaluation moving in 2024 when we had pushed very hard. Once I'd arrived as the Executive Director, we'd pushed very hard to raise a put together a funding package with a significant contribution from dco, but also many contributions from entities. So that was a good model. But now, as I highlighted, because of funding pressures on entities, there's less coming through. Most of the funding that's come to us from entities is coming out of evaluation office budgets, which again are being squeezed. Others are coming out of executive officers, for example. So the new generation of country teams we had from UNDP funding that came from the Administrator's office, but also from the evaluation office, for example. But as we're seeing, and we met our steering group in February, you know, they're still indicating that as the funding pressures are coming on their entities, their evaluation budgets are being squeezed. So I hope that illuminates that a little bit. So it's the timeliness, but it's also this independence. As I said, I think all of the evaluations we've done are of critical strategic importance, system wide. But what if we wanted our member states wanted us to evaluate a topic that was genuinely challenging and unpopular? If we can't raise the funding for that, it will not go forwards. So this sort of underlines this need for stable and predictable resourcing that allows us to operate in this kind of very timely way, but also independently so that we're not a hostage to Fortune. Thank you.


ECOSOC · Chair [2:12:46]:

Thank you, Madame Andrea. And thank you to the other speaker. Today's discussion has reinforced the important contribution of a system wide evaluation to performance improvement across the United nations development system. We spoke especially about funding. Very frankly, I didn't expect that this meeting be fundraising session. I hope that we will discuss about operational activities, About what members that are seeing as problems. Very frankly, what we feel. Is that the delivery is not yet there. And we hope from a system of evaluation like yours to propose on a timely manner the improvement otherwise, because things are going very quickly nowadays, your evaluation will be too late. Although it is meaningful, it is very smart, but too late to be implemented. How to maintain the balance between efficiency and the pressing time we are facing here. But looking ahead to our operational activity segment next month. To what extent these evaluation findings are taken on board by Member State, by the Secretariat at a very high level. What to do in order to ensure that your evaluation, your recommendation are consistently used at strategic level? Second, what practical step practical step can be taken to improve the system wide evaluation? The system wide recommendation. Be red first, be accessible to Member States. I'm talking about the Global South. We have very small missions. And we need short sharp papers and clear recommendation. We diplomat, we know ambiguity, we know vocabulary. You are expert, should show us clearly the way forward. Third, at the level of ecosoc, How can we at ECOSOC Member States and also desa, how can we better leverage the work of your office to strengthen and we insist on that accountability to strengthen office oversight. And also I'm always insisting on that the follow up, clear follow up of the recommendation you made. We will discuss about that next month and it's late. I think that it's time to adjourn the meeting. Thank you again.