Human Rights and Gender Equality

Ensuring fully inclusive and participatory evaluations is of outmost priority for IES. In support of these efforts, IES has taken measures to mainstream gender, human rights and inclusivity throughout its work, for instance through developing guidance for evaluators, including new guidance on inclusive, gender-responsive and human rights sensitive evaluations. See below.

NEW GUIDANCE ON INCLUSIVE, GENDER-RESPONSIVE AND HUMAN RIGHTS SENSITIVE EVALUATIONS

Guidance Note for Evaluators on Inclusive Evaluations (new) strengthens the inclusion of marginalized and/or underrepresented groups, in particular persons with disabilities and youth throughout the evaluation process.

This guidance complements and should be read in conjunction with the other guidance documents.

Guidance Note for Evaluators on Gender Responsive Evaluations (new) provides practical guidance to mainstream a gender perspective throughout the evaluation process.

It addresses issues related to gender equality, such as power dynamics, social transformation, equal inclusion and women's empowerment.

Guidance Note for Evaluators on Human Rights Mainstreaming (new) supports the mainstreaming of human rights in the different evaluation phases.

This includes e.g. human rights mapping of the operational context, human rights-sensitive evaluation methodology and evaluation questions, as well as the "do no harm" principle.

See also a Guidance Note for Managers and Evaluators in the context of a pandemic or other crisis. It addresses mitigation of potential risks, including selecting respondents in an inclusive manner and adjusting data collection to ensure under-represented group, further addressing identified challenges in implementing gender-related evaluation recommendations.

IES INVESTMENTS

The Strategic Evaluation of UNOV/UNODC's work to advance Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (GEEW) was finalized in 2022 (Evaluation Report; 2-page Evaluation Brief), with its results being integrated in the UNOV/UNODC Gender Strategy 2022-2026.

The strategic evaluation is further aligned with UNODC Strategy 2021-2025 highlighting that "UNODC will conduct evaluations in its mandated areas of work as well as utilize evaluation results to create a learning organization".

UNODC evaluations for 2022 "met or exceeded" the requirements set by the Evaluation Performance Indicator of the UN-SWAP on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.

To ensure independent evaluations provide credible information for evidence-based programming, IES commissions independent external evaluation quality assessments of all evaluation reports, including the review and scoring of the UN-SWAP on gender equality.

All UNODC evaluations are guided by the principles of gender equality and leaving no one behind.

The Evaluator Toolkit for Evaluating Interventions on Preventing and Countering Crime and Terrorism is guiding evaluators in fully implementing gender-responsive evaluation methods and tools, addressing gender equality and issues such as power relations, social transformation, equal inclusion and participation, as well as the empowerment of women.

In line with UNEG Evaluation Norms and Standards and the 2030 Agenda, all UNODC independent evaluations are guided by the principles of human rights and leaving no one behind, with one dedicated section on human rights and the whole evaluation process fully incorporating human rights considerations. At least one in each evaluation team should further have expertise in human rights and gender equality. Moreover, evaluation tools and guidance have been adapted to specifically address marginalized, disabled, hard-to-reach and vulnerable populations, especially important in the context of a pandemic or other crises.

The Evaluator Toolkit for Evaluating Interventions on Preventing and Countering Crime and Terrorism further fully mainstreams human rights aspects and guides evaluators in this regard. Moreover, the joint system-wide meta-synthesis of evaluations and oversight results under the Global Counter Terrorism Strategy placed particular emphasis on identifying human rights-related evaluation results and entails a dedicated chapter on human rights and gender equality.

GENDER MAINSTREAMING

The process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres, so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is gender equality.

GENDER EQUALITY

An overarching and long-term development goal. Gender mainstreaming is not a goal in itself but a set of context-specific, strategic approaches as well and technical and institutional processes adopted to achieve gender equality. Achieving this goal requires systematic and purposeful integration of gender at all stages of the project cycle from strategic planning, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all UNODC programmes and projects.