Evaluation of UN Women Regional Office WCA Strategic Note (2023-2025)

Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

The WCARO SN (2023-2025) focuses on four thematic areas i.e., Inclusive governance, Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG), Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE), Women Peace and Security (WPS). The Climate Change and Humanitarian Action are cross-thematic. The Regional Office’s outcomes are aligned to corporate outcomes, namely: i) SP Outcome 1: Normative frameworks and gender-responsive laws, policies, and institutions, ii) SP Outcome 3: Positive social norms (including by engaging men and boys), iii) SP Outcome 4: Women’s equitable access to services, goods, and resources, iv) SP Outcome 5: Women's voice, leadership and agency and v) SP Outcome 6: Production, analysis and use of gender statistics and sex-disaggregated data and knowledge. 

Description of the evaluation

The evaluation will apply the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Development Assistance Committee (OECD/DAC) evaluation criteria (relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability) and a Human Rights and Gender Equality criterion. The evaluation has the following objectives: 

1.  Assess effectiveness and organizational efficiency in progressing towards the achievement of gender equality and women empowerment results.   
2. Assess the relevance and coherence of UN Women’s regional programme, vis-a-vis the UN system, and the added value of UN Women at the regional level in West and Central Africa region. 
3. Analyze how a human rights approach and gender equality principles are integrated in the design and implementation of UN Women’s work at the regional level and contribute to transformative change and sustainability of efforts.   
4. Provide lessons learned and actionable recommendations to support UN Women strategic positioning at the regional level moving forward.   

This evaluation will answer the key questions below. During the inception phase after consultation with the Management and Reference groups, the evaluation team will revise the questions to ensure they reflect the priorities of key stakeholders and elaborate the sub-questions in the evaluation matrix: 

1. Relevance: To what extent is UN Women’s regional level support relevant for influencing gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE) policy and legal frameworks, considering the impact of the sociopolitical context in West and Central Africa? 
2. External Coherence: How effectively is UN Women leveraging its coordination mandate to strategically position itself and contribute to a more coherent and gender-responsive approach by UN partners and other development actors with respect to GEWE in the region, including in countries where UN Women is a non-resident agency? 
3. Internal Coherence: How are Regional Office efforts fostering internal coherence, bridging corporate, regional efforts across UN Women offices in the region, and ensuring coherence within the Regional Office itself to achieve its integrated mandate to advance GEWE? 
4. Organizational Efficiency: To what extent is UN Women RO’s Knowledge Management (KM), Results Based Management (RBM), capacity development, resource mobilization, partnership development and management, and advocacy and communications effectively catalyzing and supporting the delivery of UN Women results in the region, particularly in light of the region's sociopolitical dynamics? 
5. Human Rights and Gender Equality, and Sustainability: Has the portfolio been designed and implemented in line with human rights, the Leave No One Behind (LNOB) principle, including a disability perspective, social and environmental safeguards, and development effectiveness principles, ensuring national ownership and sustainability of programming efforts? 

Description of Responsibilities/ Scope of Work

1. Based on document review, elaborate the evaluation design and scoping and draft the inception report including data collection instruments and survey design; 
2. Conduct data collection through interviews, focus groups and survey(s); 
3. Analyze data to develop preliminary findings and drafting of final report; 
4. Draft final 2-page brief outlining the evaluation process, conclusions, and recommendations; 
5. Communicate with evaluation stakeholders, including attending exit briefs, validation meetings etc.   

Deliverables

Deliverables Expected completion time (due day)