Management Response

: Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (Thailand)
: 2020 - 2021 , Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (Thailand) (RO)
: Evaluation of UN Women's Crisis response in Asia and the Pacific
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: Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (Thailand)
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UN Women welcomes the Evaluation of UN Women’s Crisis Response in Asia and the Pacific, which sought to strengthen UN Women’s ability to respond effectively when confronted with crises in Asia-Pacific Region and develop high quality replicable interventions from corporate tools that can be tailored to the operating environment in Asia-Pacific – including specific guidelines, operating procedures, and strategic principles – to enable Country Offices to respond quickly and consistently to crisis settings. The evaluation found that UN Women does not have defined corporate menu of services which can be adapted to the context by the different regional offices and countries. UN Women recognizes that the lack of consolidated guidance and institutionalized procedures is an overall challenge for UN Women’s crisis response, including in Asia and the Pacific. UN Women aims to resolve these issues through the implementation of the new comprehensive set of strategy, policy, guidance and procedures (i.e. the humanitarian strategy, forthcoming crisis response policy, internal guidance notes and fast-track procedures). Since the evaluation was initiated, UN Women has been working at the global level to strengthen its work on humanitarian action. This included the development of UN Women’s new humanitarian strategy through a consultative and co-creating process with the regional and country offices, including in Asia Pacific. As part of the continuous positioning of gender in humanitarian action, UN Women is currently undertaking a mini change management process to strengthen its humanitarian presence in Geneva. The repositioning of the Geneva humanitarian hub is to strengthen policy and advocacy, including resource mobilization with Geneva based humanitarian actors given that Geneva is the global humanitarian hub, while also strengthening its technical and onsite surge support to regional and country offices. This is to ensure that regional and country offices are fit for purpose and able to not only respond to emergencies but have the necessary capacities and tools to programme and mobilize resources in the application of humanitarian – development – peace nexus approach in protracted crises as an integral part of the PSHR section, incorporating humanitarian, peace/security, DRR and human rights. The previous change management of the merge of humanitarian response office with Peace and Security has ensured the integration of humanitarian action, peace/security and disaster risk reduction in the Peace, Security, Humanitarian and Resilience (PSHR) Section/PPID, clearly identifying the business owner for crisis response and uniquely positioning the organization to provide analysis across the nexus. This integrated model has been critical in ensuring increased mobilization of resources to support UN Women’s work on humanitarian action, including through securing multi-year flexible non-core nexus funding to support both its Regional Humanitarian Advisors (including in Asia-Pacific) and its HQ team in New York and Geneva, through the Strategic Partnership Framework with Sida. It has also allowed UN Women to increasingly mobilize humanitarian funding for pilot projects in country, e.g. through the CERF Global Grant that supports 6 countries in GBV in emergencies jointly with UNFPA, including two in the Asia-Pacific region (Bangladesh and Myanmar) and the Gender in Humanitarian Action Coordination pilot programme in 9 crisis affected countries, including 1 country, Afghanistan, in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, the ROAP humanitarian specialist, partially funded through the SPFIII fund (at 50%), has been instrumental in securing regional ECHO funded disaster management coordination with ASEAN as well as providing targeted support to Asia Pacific COs to mobilize CERF and other humanitarian funds when released. The regional office for Asia and Pacific intends to utilize the results of this evaluation to advance measures and preparedness for crisis response with targeted, at risk, country offices as well as with business units. RO will work directly with country offices to invest resources and time and to establish the appropriate preparedness measures in order to support regional and national crisis response. UN Women recognizes that ability to effectively respond to crisis is dependant on how units within UN Women interact and engage between HQ, RO and CO to avoid duplication and clarity of processes. The corporate crisis response policy and humanitarian strategy adoption will therefore provide much needed clarity for the regions, including in the Asia Pacific. The RO will continue to advocate for more resources (financial and human) to be allocated to regions in order to facilitate crisis preparedness and response, in line with the agenda of pivot to the field. [FOR FULL Overall MR please see attachment under reports section]
: Approved
Recommendation: Headquarters executive and senior management to clearly articulate a commitment to crisis response by appointing a business process owner, accelerating the revision, finalization and adoption of a corporate crisis response policy, new and updated standard operating procedures and tools, and corresponding (re)allocation of resources, appointment of a senior humanitarian coordinator, and engage UN Women colleagues who are already on the ground responding to crisis in validating these.
Management Response: UN Women partially accepts the second part of the recommendation which is to accelerate the revision and finalization of the corporate response policy to strengthen coherence within the organizational overall crisis response. This will benefit all Regional and Country Offices, including the Regional Office for Asia-Pacific which was the focus of the evaluation. UN Women acknowledges the crucial importance of accelerating the finalization and adoption of the new humanitarian strategy, crisis response policy, internal guidance notes and tools. The recommendation to appoint a senior humanitarian coordinator is not accepted. In 2019, UN Women merged the Humanitarian Action and Crisis Response Office (HACRO) and WPS team in 2019 as part of a Change Management process and following the comprehensive evaluation of UN-Women's humanitarian work (2018/2019). As a result, the Peace and Security, Humanitarian and Resilience (PSHR) Section within the Policy, Programme, and Intergovernmental Division (PPID) is the designated business owner of crisis response with the organization and coordinates UN Women’s humanitarian work. The integration of UN Women’s WPS, humanitarian and DRR team has proven particularly critical in successfully mobilizing resources thorough nexus funding and programming. UN Women does not accept the recommendation to reallocate resources for humanitarian action but will intensify efforts to secure more non-core humanitarian funding.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Capacity development, Knowledge management, Internal coordination and communication, Alignment with strategy
Organizational Priorities: Humanitarian action, Operational activities, Culture of results/RBM, Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Impact
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Finalize UN Women’s comprehensive package of a new humanitarian strategy, crisis response policy and internal guidance notes. PPID Director with endorsement of ELT 2022/12 Completed In progress The UN Women Humanitarian Strategy 2022-2025 has been completed, published and socialized. Internal guidance notes that accompany the Humanitarian Strategy were also issued in 2023. The guidance notes are on: 1) working with men and masculinities in humanitarian settings; 2) developing women empowerment centers; 3) working with women's organizations in humanitarian settings; 4) intersectionality in humanitarian settings; and 5) gender in humanitarian action coordination mechanisms. The Crisis Response Policy and Procedure are in its final stages or review and clearance.
Institutionalize after action reviews to compile actions taken to respond to recent crises and analysis of workflows and bottlenecks and lessons learned to enhance timely procurement and human resources deployment and ensure flexibility for partner engagement in crisis-affected countries. ROAP/PPID 2022/12 Completed A comprehensive after-action review process has been developed by ROAP and has been regularly implemented following emergency responses in the region. This toolkit has been shared with UN Women humanitarian agencies globally through the humanitarian knowledge management platform
The Regional Office of Asia-Pacific (ROAP) to contextualize and align Corporate Crisis Response Policy and Fast-Track procedures to Country Offices and program presence in crisis affected countries to strengthen coordinated approach to crisis response in the region, support the identification and mitigation of risks in implementing the Policy. ROAP Humanitarian Action, Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Adaptation Team 2023/04 Completed A detailed Crisis Response Standard Operation Procedure (Crisis SOP) has been developed by ROAP, which contextualized the draft Crisis Policy to the region. The Crisis SOP aligns and streamlines processes and coordination between functional teams (senior leadership, programmatic, operations, and security) at the regional level to support country offices during emergency response
Update a ROAP regional knowledge management database on SharePoint with regional and country-specific information and documents. ROAP Humanitarian Action, Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Adaptation Team in coordination with the Humanitarian Unit in HQ 2023/04 Completed ROAP supported the global humanitarian team to develop a shared humanitarian knowledge hub at the global level containing regional and country-specific programmatic and budgetary information, resource mobilization documents, briefs, concept notes, proposals, and other relevant materials to ensure relevant information is organized and easily accessible.
Recommendation: Corporate business owner for crisis response, once identified, to continue advocating for and prioritizing gender in humanitarian action coordination efforts, including technical assistance and knowledge generation, capacity-building efforts and inclusive approaches. Advocate for streamlining the various gender focused mechanisms where possible and strengthen a set of guidance and tools for consistent approaches and enhancing measurement of change through UN Women coordination efforts in crisis response.
Management Response: UNW partially accepts this recommendation as there is an existing business process owner at the corporate level. UNW has been the lead UN entity advocating for the integration of gender into humanitarian action (GiHA) coordination efforts in all UN led humanitarian response efforts at the global, regional and country levels, having been instrumental in developing the standards and commitments, as well as the official guidance and training resources to convert them into action in support of humanitarian response. Wherever UN Women has a presence and has been engaged in humanitarian coordination, UN Women leads in taking on the gender and humanitarian coordination role. Corporately, UN Women has developed a set of tools and training modules on Gender in Humanitarian Action to strengthen internal capacities on crisis response.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Alignment with strategy, Internal coordination and communication, Knowledge management, Oversight/governance, Capacity development
Organizational Priorities: Humanitarian action, Organizational efficiency, Culture of results/RBM, Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Gender equality
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Roll out UN Women’s new Gender in Humanitarian Action Coordination Model, which clearly articulate UN Women’s role in coordination, with strong emphasis on local accountability and monitoring. PPIS/PSHR 2022/12 Completed UN Women has launched is 2022-2025 Humanitarian Strategy which is being implemented through its two-pronged approach – Approach One: To strengthen accountability towards gender commitments in coordination and implementation of UN-led humanitarian and refugee responses. Approach Two: to strengthen comprehensive protection and livelihood support to crisis-affected women and girls. Additionally, the strategy includes the cross-cutting area: amplifying women’s voices and leadership in humanitarian and crisis response and recovery. The Humanitarian Strategy builds on good practices replicated by UN Women offices in multiple crisis situations, UN Women has established a Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) Coordination model - with specific coordination UN Women has launched is 2022-2025 Humanitarian Strategy which is being implemented through its two-pronged approach – Approach One: To strengthen accountability towards gender commitments in coordination and implementation of UN-led humanitarian and refugee responses. Approach Two: to strengthen comprehensive protection and livelihood support to crisis-affected women and girls. Additionally, the strategy includes the cross-cutting area: amplifying women’s voices and leadership in humanitarian and crisis response and recovery. The Humanitarian Strategy builds on good practices replicated by UN Women offices in multiple crisis situations, UN Women has established a Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) Coordination model - with specific coordination functions, mechanisms, outputs and deliverables to be led by UNW - as articulated in the Humanitarian Strategy, and in the internal guidance note on Gender in Humanitarian Action Coordination Mechanisms. This vision has been reinforced by the finalization of the Core Commitment document that was recently submitted to ELT for review and clearance.
ROAP to continue co-chairing GiHA in Asia and Pacific. ROAP 2022/12 Completed UN Women continues to co-chair the Asia Pacific Regional Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group (GIHA WG), presently along with UNOCHA and CARE International. At the national level in the region, UN Women leads GIHA coordination bodies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.
UN Women to corporately strengthen its support to country and regional offices to build capacities for rapid response and provide additional resources, including surge capacity for countries/regions with humanitarian emergencies. PSHR/PPID 2023/04 Completed At the global level, UN Women continues to implement partnerships with standby partners including the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC – NorCap), Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), RedR Australia, CANADEM, and iMMAP. By facilitating deployment of experts from standby partners, UN Women HQ/Humanitarian Unit has provided critical support to UN Women offices responding to crises across the peace, security, humanitarian, and disaster risk reduction areas of work. In 2023, 25 UN Women offices received the support of 42 fully-funded experts translating to 280 months worth of support from Standby Partners.
Standardize and socialize corporate tools to support field offices including the ROAP to take on these responsibilities (standard GiHA terms of reference, training modules, advocacy messages, etc.). PSHR/ROAP Humanitarian Action, Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Adaptation Team 2023/04 Completed UN Women has completed and published five corporate guidance notes on implementation of humanitarian interventions based on the UN Women Humanitarian Strategy: 1) working with men and masculinities in humanitarian settings; 2) developing women empowerment centers; 3) working with women's organizations in humanitarian settings; 4) intersectionality in humanitarian settings; and 5) gender in humanitarian action coordination mechanisms. Dissemination of the relevant guidance tools has taken place through dedicated webinars, training sessions, as well as a humanitarian knowledge hub platform enabling access to humanitarian documents for colleagues working on the humanitarian file.
ROAP to develop a short note (2-3 pages) clearly defining and articulating ROAP priority humanitarian action goals and intended outcomes for the Asia-Pacific region for a determined timeframe. ROAP Humanitarian Action, Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Adaptation Team 2022/12 Completed In line with UN Women’s new humanitarian strategy, ROAP has developed a short draft paper to define and articulate the priority humanitarian goals and intended outcomes for the region, as well as highlight UN Women's comparative advantage and value add.
Develop and establish a regional Rapid Response Member Pool for Asia and the Pacific, comprised of UN Women staff for short and medium-term deployments at the onset of emergencies, with special focus on expanding opportunities for national staff in country offices within the Asia-Pacific region. ROAP Humanitarian Action, Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Adaptation Team 2023/04 Completed At the regional level in Asia and the Pacific, UN Women has developed a roster of UN Women humanitarian and operations experts who can support UN Women offices through rapid deployments and detail assignments. Additionally, ROAP maintains a roster of retainer expert consultants who can provide remote and in-person surge support during crisis. Finally, at the ROAP level, a humanitarian programme coordinator has conducted surge missions to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Viet Nam to support emergency response.
Recommendation: Building on UN Women’s added value in the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, clearly articulate a menu of services to be delivered during crisis response (both sudden onset and protracted), including criteria for determining office capacities and resources to respond, based on engagement with colleagues already on the ground responding to the crisis to validate. Continue enhancing and socializing corporate tools to systematize crisis response within the organization and enhance monitoring so that it can help tell the impact story and feed into enhanced understanding and credibility of the organization in the crisis response. In line with these actions, support enhanced resource mobilization efforts for crisis response.
Management Response: UN Women has in draft form, and currently undergoing consultations, a comprehensive package for humanitarian action and crisis response, including a new Humanitarian Strategy (2022-2025), accompanied by five internal guidance notes on its programming models. These are to codify and humanitarian response at the global, regional and country levels and ensure that humanitarian results are measurable, clearly attributable to UN Women, demonstrating not only UN Women’s added value but comparative advantage. To ensure the organization is fit for purpose –financing, coordination, procurement, fast track programming models, human resources/surge capacities, increased delegation – UN Women is in the process of finalizing a consolidated and overarching organizational Crisis Response Policy, clearly defining crisis response governance and procedures which will strengthen humanitarian crisis response across the organization and especially simplify processes to enable Regional and Country Offices respond to the needs of the most affected women and girls. The major challenge not highlighted in the Evaluation findings is the limited ability of Regional and Country Offices to mobilize humanitarian funding from regional/country appeals and humanitarian pooled funds to implement humanitarian responses. This in particular has an impact on ROAP’s capacity to respond effectively to humanitarian crises and employ a wide range of services and interventions. The lack of sustained funding means that there are not enough resources for staffing and programming, and humanitarian response highly dependent on highly technical and knowledgeable staff on gender and humanitarian action. Despite this factor, ROAP is encouraged by the findings from the evaluation to strengthen its existing resources to mobilize and scale existing resources and capacity. The use of retainer consultancies to support the Humanitarian/DRR/Climate Change portfolio has been essential to helping the team deliver support in a timely manner. ROAP’s support to and leadership in GiHA coordination has resulted in the development of key tools and guidelines for integrating gender into humanitarian response, which has in turn influenced and supported humanitarian interventions conducted by other actors in the sector.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Capacity development, Oversight/governance, Internal coordination and communication, Alignment with strategy, Resource mobilization
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities, Organizational efficiency, Humanitarian action
UNEG Criteria: Gender equality, Efficiency, Effectiveness
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Conduct a mapping and analysis of country office needs, priorities, existing programmes, and specific crisis response interventions in the countries in Asia and the Pacific. Identify gaps in programming and services provided, as well as gaps in the programmes and services provided by other UN agencies and humanitarian actors that could be filled by UN Women. This is to identify the countries with the most needs for humanitarian programming and prioritize support, focusing on UN Women’s comparative advantage. ROAP Humanitarian Action, Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Adaptation Team 2023/04 Completed ROAP has conducted extensive mapping of UN Women country offices programming and capacity and supports on building capacity in preparedness and response. The team conducts regular missions to UN Women country offices to support with development of climate, DRR, and humanitarian strategies at the country level.
Support COs in Asia-Pacific to develop a crisis response and humanitarian profile for each country based on the mapping results, highlighting risks, existing capacity, potential for humanitarian crises (and type of possible crisis), resource mobilization, partnerships to strengthen humanitarian analysis and data generation in countries and provide a framework of support needed from ROAP. ROAP Humanitarian Action, Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Adaptation Team 2023/07 Completed Through the Regional GIHA WG, UN Women leads ongoing development and updating of pre-crisis gender profiles, which include review of existing gender analysis including against key humanitarian sectors. Furthermore, ROAP has an ongoing process of refining country level contingency plans for priority humanitarian country offices highlighting risks, existing capacity and potential for humanitarian crisis and develops a framework for UN Women response.
Identify key focal points in each office (in addition to existing humanitarian focal points) responsible for different aspects of the humanitarian response (logistics, gender analysis, livelihoods, etc.). Develop and regularly update a working list of humanitarian response focal points on the ground in each country office. Identify staffing gaps and potential needs for deployment of additional staff for preparedness and response efforts. ROAP Humanitarian Action, Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Adaptation Team 2023/04 Completed ROAP maintains a list of humanitarian focal points at the country office level and provides ongoing support through the Resilience Community of Practice. ROAP provides further support to staffing in key crisis contexts, both protracted and sudden onset.
ROAP will work in partnership and collaboration with HQ and regional communications and external relations teams to improve and advance effective communications efforts during humanitarian crises, refine existing guidelines and policies for humanitarian response communications, ensure alignment with HQ corporate crisis communications, provide consistent messaging, and generate visibility for UN Women’s work in Asia and the Pacific. ROAP Humanitarian Action/Disaster Risk Reduction/Climate Action team, in collaboration with the ROAP Communications team, HQ Communications team, Resource Mobilization Focal Points, and Asia-Pacific Country Offices 2023/04 Completed ROAP has continued to build UN Women’s crisis communications capacity through the Resilience Community of practice, linking humanitarian, DRR, climate. ROAP conducted a regional workshop with the Resilience and WEE thematic areas, which included specific components on crisis communications. Additionally, the topic was included in the programme management training conducted in 2024 for all country offices. Finally, crisis communication is included and streamlined in the Crisis SOP and ongoing socialization is provided to UN Women country offices in the region.