FAO at Evaluation Week 2017

From 15 to 19 May, evaluation officers of 47 United Nations agencies came together in Vienna for their annual meeting, the "Evaluation Week".

The week started with a two-day Exchange of Evaluation Practices seminar with an overarching theme Eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a changing world.  It was organized in three thematic strands:

1. No one left behind - evaluating vulnerable and marginalized groups
2. Evaluating transformational change
3. National evaluation capacity

FAO Office of Evaluation contributed to each one of these strands:

No one left behind
Lessons learned from the Guatemala and the Myanmar Country Programme Evaluations were presented by Amélie Solal-Celigny and Harvey Garcia. The focus was on how to engage indigenous communities and marginalized groups in the evaluation process. This was an occasion to show the video on the Guatemala evaluation that was very much appreciated by the participants.

Evaluating transformational change
Carlos Tarazona presented the approach used in the recent evaluation of FAO’s contribution to rural poverty reduction, which assessed the relevance and effectiveness of FAO’s support to rural transformation. Read the full report.

National evaluation capacity
Serdar Bayryyev presented a new joint initiative of FAO, IFAD, WFP and CGAIR on the creation of a Community of Practice on Evaluation in Agriculture, Food Security and Rural Development. This initiative will be a global knowledge sharing and networking platform for evaluation practitioners with a focus on strengthening national evaluation capacities. The presentation generated an interesting discussion, in which participants shared experiences on their involvement in other Communities of Practice and made suggestions how to ensure the sustainability of such networks.

The seminar was followed by the Annual General Meeting that reviewed the work carried out during the past year and discussed the way forward for each of the four UNEG Strategic Objectives.

In the session on UNEG Strategic Objective 1 “Evaluation functions and products of UN entities meet the UNEG Norms and Standards for evaluation”, participants appreciated the wide dissemination of the updated UNEG Norms and Standards for Evaluation (2016) and the publication of the revised Evaluation Competency Framework. These were recognized as among the milestones of UNEG work.

In the session on UNEG Strategic Objective 2 “UN entities and partners use evaluation in support of accountability and programme learning”, Natalia Acosta, from FAO Office of Evaluation, presented the draft paper, the Principles and Good Practices for Stakeholder Engagement. The presentation drew great interest of participants.

In the session on UNEG Strategic Objective 3 “Evaluation informs UN system-wide initiatives and emerging demands”, Carlos Tarazona, from FAO Office of Evaluation, reported on the outcomes of the consultation among the Rome-based agencies’ Evaluation Offices on the role of UNEG in support of the achievement of SDGs. The points raised by the agencies were well taken by the participants, and will be considered in the 2017 work-plan of UNEG.

The UNEG week was also the occasion to welcome two new members of the UNEG Executive Group: Susanne Frueh, Director of the Internal Oversight Service (UNESCO), who became the new UNEG chair, and Masahiro Igarashi, our Director of the FAO Office of Evaluation, who became the new Vice Chair for UNEG Strategic Objective 4 "UNEG benefits from and contributes to an enhanced global evaluation profession”.

The 2018 UNEG week will take place in Rome, and hosted by the United Nations Rome-based agencies!

For more information on the upcoming UNEG Events visit the UN Evaluation Group webpage.