Management Response

: Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division
: 2016 - 2017 , Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division (HQ)
: Evaluation of "Promoting and Protecting Women Migrant Workers’ Labour and Human Rights: Engaging with International, National Human Rights Mechanisms to Enhance Accountability (Jan 2014-Jan 2017)"
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Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division

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UN Women is pleased that an external independent evaluator has validated our own belief that we must build on the success of this pilot project, and establish future programmatic work in the field of gender and migration to continue positioning ourselves as leaders in this field. Nevertheless, the Economic Empowerment Section which managed this evaluation, has considered the final evaluation report and its subsequent recommendations, and finds them to be largely ineffective as they lack specificity and a thorough understanding of the subject matter. Though the report identifies key areas of action for continuing and replicated many of the successful strategies employed by this programme, they were all areas which had been already identified by the programme management team irrespective of this evaluation report. The overall quality of this evaluation falls short of the expectations set out in the TOR and we note that the majority of the recommendations make broad statements, which only loosely link to specific elements of the programme. There are numerous recommendations which stress the need for resource allocation to ensure the sustainability of the programme results or maintaining already established partnerships, and whilst these statements are true, we would have benefited from more specific and targeted recommendations identifying which elements of the project could be strengthened or improved. For example, recommendation four ‘Invest to maintain strategic partnerships’ fails to provide any supporting evidence gained from the in-depth evaluation conducted.

: Approved
Recommendation: Systematize and disseminate lessons learned: The programme was intended as a pilot for learning what UN Women could do to protect and promote Women Migrant Workers’ (WMWs) rights, and how it could most effectively achieve this. It has succeeded in identifying methodologies that can have a significant impact. It has also succeeded in promoting methodologies that can help leverage outside resources through strategic partnerships, particularly relevant at a time when resources for development are scarce. This Evaluation has identified many of these lessons learned and best practices. UN Women should systematize this learning, identify factors for success and put together a “how to” guide that offers a quick insight into these. Informal presentations (such as internal brown bags or others) will further help to raise awareness about lessons learned/best practices and promote their use.
Management Response: UN Women agrees with this recommendation, and recognises the importance of disseminating and sharing best practices and lessons learnt. UN Women continues to leverage the strategic partners that were developed from this project, through the establishment of the Expert Working Group for addressing women’s human rights in the global compact for migration for which UN Women acts as the substantive Secretariat. UN Women understands the need to raise awareness about lessons learnt and best practices in order to improve future programming activities, and UN Women takes note of the suggestion to hold informal brown bags to allow other colleagues the chance to learn from the experiences of this project.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women economic empowerment (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance, Capacity development, Advocacy, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Partnership, Normative Support, Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency, Sustainability, Impact
Key Actions
Key Action not added.
Recommendation: Identify programme results at risk: There are results that will continue with or without the involvement of the programme or UN Women, for example, the Moldova Migrant Women’s Movement. Other results or outputs would benefit from continued support, for example, knowledge products would benefit from continued dissemination at appropriate meetings to promote their use. Still other products/outputs are at risk of not being used, finalized or reaching their full potential impact at all, unless they receive further support from UN Women. Some of these products at risk have been identified in this report, but a thorough analysis should be undertaken to carefully identify outputs at risk as well as the necessary actions needed to secure their implementation. This will involve advocating for and allocating any future funds secured.
Management Response: UN Women agrees with this recommendation – although rather generic in nature. The vast catalogue of knowledge products produced as part of this project fill an important gap in the literature vis-à-vis addressing the situation and rights of women in migration. Although, UN Women ensured that all knowledge products were made available on the corporate website and promoted through the EmpowerWomen online platform, we do need to ensure that we continue to further disseminate these products. Throughout 2016, UN Women presented an intervention during each of the thematic sessions as part of the preparatory phases of the Global Compact for Migration, during these interventions the expert recommendations – a key output of this project – were cited and references were made to the other knowledge products which have been produced and made available. UN Women agrees that mobilising funds is a priority to ensure the work in this area can continue and have an opportunity to build on the results achieved from this project.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women economic empowerment (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance, Capacity development, Advocacy, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities, Partnership, Normative Support
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability
Key Actions
Key Action not added.
Recommendation: Continue resource mobilization efforts: In what can be interpreted as recognition of the success of this programme, UN Women has already secured resources to provide continuity to some of the programme’s actions. For example, UN Women has already secured resources from the Swiss Developing Cooperation to operationalize the global compact working group consisting of experts from CEDAW, CMW, CERD, UN agencies and civil society. In addition, and jointly with ILO, UN Women has submitted a project proposal to the EC to address WMWs’ rights in Asia. Mobilizing resources will be key to securing the gains of the programme, especially maintained continued presence of UN Women in new spaces where UN Women has the possibility of playing an important advocacy role.
Management Response: UN Women agrees with this recommendation and in addition to having mobilized funds for the Expert Working Group for which UN Women is the substantive Secretariat, a proposal is currently being drawn up to mobilise further funds for a global migration project. This proposal seeks to build on the experiences and the strong partnerships gained from the previous project, and will help secure a legacy for UN Women as a strong and important organisation in the migration field.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women economic empowerment (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Capacity development, Oversight/governance, Advocacy, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Normative Support, Partnership, Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability, Impact
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Mobilise resources to initiate a new global migration project, which builds on the success of the previous EU-funded project, to commence by the start of 2019. Inkeri von Hase Michael Stewart-Evans 2019/01 Overdue-Initiated
Recommendation: Invest to maintain strategic partnerships: Important and non-traditional partnerships have been established as a result of this programme, some with very high strategic potential such as the CEDAW and CMW Committee members. Time and resources will be needed to maintain them.
Management Response: UN Women partially agrees with this recommendation. Although resources are key to the development and implementation of a future migration project, the strong partnerships which were established between UN Women and other stakeholders will continue. The partnerships are extremely important to the work of UN Women and therefore their ongoing engagement and maintenance has been considered a critical priority. The Expert Working Group continues to be the main channel through which UN Women maintains and strengthens the partnerships which were established during the previous migration project.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Women economic empowerment (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance, Capacity development, Advocacy, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Partnership, Normative Support, Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability
Key Actions
Key Action not added.
Recommendation: Strengthen regional approach: While the programme sought to link the grassroots level with the macro level, the area that received a lesser focus was the regional level. The programme could continue to strengthen the regional approach by promoting both multi-stakeholder meetings as well as CEDAW-compliant analysis of regional level agreements, such as the MIRPS (Marco Integral Regional de Protección y Soluciones), which looks at regional migration movements, using the experiences of the programme.
Management Response: UN Women partially agrees with this recommendation. The programme was anchored in three pilot countries – Mexico, Moldova, and the Philippines – and whilst these countries were not intended to be a representative sample, they each represent a distinct labour migration system across three geographic regions: Latin America, Eastern Europe, and South-East Asia. Further, this was considered to be a pilot programme and were more resources and time made available, it would have allowed for expansion into other countries thereby increasing the availability of data as well as deepening the work of the programme to engage with regional mechanisms.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Women economic empowerment (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Capacity development, Oversight/governance, Advocacy, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Normative Support, Partnership, Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Impact
Key Actions
Key Action not added.
Recommendation: Advocate for and replicate effective strategies: Whenever possible, the programme should seek to replicate strategies identified as effective, including: a. The multi-stakeholder meetings in preparation for country reports that bring together Committee members as well as civil society, government and other UN agencies. b. Sustained and substantive participation of civil society. c. Identification and use of Positive Deviance as a means to inform policy.
Management Response: UN Women agrees with this recommendation. The project championed several successful methods of engagement and capacity building which will be replicated in future and/or other programmes. In particular, the multi-stakeholder approach used by this project has been lauded for bringing together a number of different stakeholders – in particular several human rights treaty bodies – which would not otherwise have collaborated on the intersection between gender and migration. This innovative approach not only increased the capacity of the individual organisations/ bodies to address the linkages between gender and migration, but also increased their opportunities for the treaty bodies to work collaboratively in their reporting functions which helped to strengthen their work in relation to women and migration.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women economic empowerment (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance, Capacity development, Advocacy, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Partnership, Normative Support, Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Sustainability
Key Actions
Key Action not added.
Recommendation: Geographic and/or thematic expansion: A similar pilot programme could expand to Africa and the Middle East, in order to pilot in areas not included in the programme. It could also look at the interaction between migration and insecurity, when the push is not solely economic, and how this impacts migrants and the work of UN Women.
Management Response: UN Women partially agrees with this recommendation. There continues to be a need for UN Women to have programmatic work addressing the rights of women in migration, and an extension to this initial project would have been welcome. However, with the development of the global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration taking place in 2018 it is important that UN Women capitalises on its expertise in the field of gender and migration – building on the knowledge and experiences gained from this project – to ensure that the rights of all migrants are being addressed and prioritised in migration governance. UN Women agrees with the suggestion to expand any migration project to other areas, in support of the work of the country and/or regional offices.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Women economic empowerment (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Capacity development, Oversight/governance, Advocacy, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Normative Support, Partnership, Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Sustainability, Impact
Key Actions
Key Action not added.