Decentralized evaluations

The majority of UN Women’s evaluations are decentralized, which means they are managed by regional, multi-country, and country offices in partnership with national stakeholders and other development partners and conducted by independent external evaluators. The Independent Evaluation Service, mainly through its regional evaluation specialists, provides support and technical assistance to field offices to strengthen evaluation culture and capacities and help fulfill their responsibilities under the Evaluation Policy.

To improve the quality and use of decentralized evaluations, the Independent Evaluation Service has established the Global Evaluation Reports Assessment and Analysis System (GERAAS). The GERASS is an organization-wide system established to assess the quality of the evaluation reports of UN Women. In addition to providing the UN Women Executive Board and management with an independent assessment, the System’s executive feedback, detailed analysis, and recommendations improve the quality of evaluative evidence and evaluation oversight functions. The GERASS uses the United Nations Evaluation Group evaluation reports standards as a basis for review and assessment while ensuring specific standards relevant to UN Women. All final evaluations are assessed by an external independent reviewer.

In addition to the technical support of Regional Evaluation Specialists, internal evaluation capacities are developed through guidance, such as “UN Women Evaluation Handbook: How to manage gender-responsive evaluation”, e-learning courses, and the “UN Women country portfolio evaluations: Revised guidelines”.