Management Response

: Kyrgyzstan
: 2025 - 2027 , Kyrgyzstan (CO)
: Final Joint Evalua-on of the PBF GPI project: Capacitated Women CSOs Sustaining Peace in Kyrgyzstan
:
:

Kyrgyzstan

:

: Approved
Recommendation: From pilots to systems – scale, institutionalize, and define the UN’s strategic role in nexus programming
Management Response: UN Women agrees with the recommendation. Future programming will prioritize designing scalable models embedded within public systems and aligned with national development priorities, such as the recently approved National Development Programme until 2030, Green Economy Programme, and Action Plan, National Action Plan on 1325, and other relevant policy documents. New projects will include explicit institutionalization pathways at the design stage to ensure that pilots are linked to long-term national frameworks.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women's economic empowerment
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. New programs will be co-developed with government counterparts to ensure institutional alignment from the beginning. Results frameworks will explicitly track institutional uptake and sustainability, rather than just activity delivery. Partnerships will be pursued with the Academy of Public Administration, the State Agency on Local Governance, the Ministry of Economy, to support scaling up and institutionalization. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
2. The management is committed to ensuring that WCSOs, including platforms such as the Central Asia Women Leaders’ Caucus and Yntymak/Peace Week, are recognized and supported as institutional partners. WCSOs have proven to be effective implementing partners and leaders in shaping inclusive and conflict-sensitive approaches. The leadership of WCSOs will be systematically integrated into the design of future nexus programs, including those supported by PBF and the wider UN system. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
Recommendation: Deepen triple nexus integration through context-responsive and measurable peace approaches, centering women’s leadership
Management Response: Management welcomes this recommendation and agrees with the need to design peace approaches that are context-specific, conflict-sensitive, and grounded in women’s leadership.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women's economic empowerment
Operating Principles: Alignment with strategy
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Management agrees that peace outcomes must not be treated as uniform or prescriptive. Future initiatives at the gender/security and gender/climate/security nexus will be informed by thorough conflict and gender analyses at the design stage to identify appropriate pathways through social cohesion, inclusive governance, climate adaptation, and community resilience strengthening. Programme design will include adaptive approaches to enable different strategies across diverse regions of Kyrgyzstan UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
On centering women’s leadership in peacebuilding, building on the demonstrated role of women leaders in conflict-affected communities, management is committed to ensuring their leadership is institutionalized within local governance, climate adaptation, and peacebuilding mechanisms. Efforts will focus on vertical linkages that connect grassroots women leaders with municipal and national decision-making processes, such as Parliament through the national dialogues, or sectoral strategies and institutions working groups UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
3. Management accepts the recommendation to establish MEL systems that track peace-relevant outcomes. Future programs will incorporate conflict-sensitive and gender-responsive indicators, including measures of social cohesion, intergroup collaboration, and the influence of women leaders in governance processes. This will ensure that peace results are systematically captured rather than assumed UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
Positioning social cohesion as a peace-relevant outcome provides access to broader funding streams and promotes sustainability. Future programming will prioritize alignment with ongoing administrative territorial reform and local socio-economic development planning, programmes on climate resilience and green economy, ensuring complementarity with other UN and donor investments UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
On strengthening UN-wide collaboration, management recognizes that triple nexus approaches require collective action. UN Women, in partnership with FAO, UNDP and other agencies, will strengthen joint planning and implementation around nexus priorities. Lessons from Batken and other regions will be shared through peer-learning mechanisms, ensuring coherence and scale across UN portfolios UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
On delivery models for small grants in nexus programming, management accepts the recommendation that where small grants are applied, they should be pooled, time-bound, and tied to specific institutional or policy outcomes. Future projects will establish clear frameworks to link grant-funded activities with policy dialogue, institutional uptake, or collaborative platforms (e.g., local development plans, administrative-territorial reform, or national strategies). This approach will ensure that small grants contribute towards systemic change rather than isolated interventions. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
Recommendation: Clarify the strategic purpose of small grants and channel them through coherent, scalable mechanisms
Management Response: Management welcomes this recommendation and acknowledges the dual importance of small grants: as enablers of grassroots innovation and trust-building, and as strategic instruments to influence institutional change and policy. Management agrees that future programming should strengthen the coherence, purpose, and delivery mechanisms of small grant portfolios to maximize their impact and sustainability.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women's economic empowerment
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Coherence
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Management will ensure that small grants should be viewed more than just community-level funding tools. Rather, they should be seen as catalytic investments that link local innovation to institutional change. Future program designs will include explicit theories of change for small grants, identifying ways in which grassroots initiatives can contribute to broader policy influence or gender-responsive governance. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
On aligning with scalable and coherent mechanisms (e.g., WPHF), management takes note of the potential to align with or leverage existing global funding mechanisms such as the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF), which is co-managed by UN Women. While WPHF is not yet active in Central Asia, management will explore opportunities to engage with the WPHF Secretariat to assess feasibility and advocate for its expansion to the region, particularly under its climate security and WPS windows. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
On financing and MEL arrangements, management agrees to integrate stronger monitoring, evaluation, and learning frameworks around small grants, focusing not only on activity delivery but also on how funded initiatives contribute to scaling, policy influence, or institutional ownership. Financing modalities will be designed to ensure flexibility for grassroots WCSOs while maintaining coherence with programme objectives and broader UN and donor financing streams. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
On delivery models for small grants in nexus programming, management accepts the recommendation that where small grants are applied, they should be pooled, time-bound, and tied to specific institutional or policy outcomes. Future projects will establish clear frameworks to link grant-funded activities with policy dialogue, institutional uptake, or collaborative platforms (e.g., local development plans, administrative-territorial reform, or national strategies). This approach will ensure that small grants contribute towards systemic change rather than isolated interventions. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
Recommendation: Strengthen MEL systems to support scale-up and triple nexus integration
Management Response: Management agrees with this recommendation and acknowledges that robust monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) systems are essential for scaling successful models and integrating triple nexus approaches into national systems. Although the project demonstrated strong participatory approaches, management recognizes the gaps in baseline data and results frameworks that limited the ability to systematically capture institutional and peacebuilding outcomes. Future programming will prioritize the design and resourcing of MEL systems as core strategic components, not afterthoughts.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women's economic empowerment
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
On embedding robust MEL systems from the outset, management agrees to ensure that future programmes are developed with comprehensive MEL frameworks that capture both quantitative and qualitative data on outcomes. This includes conflict-sensitive baselines, perception surveys, and tools to measure shifts in participation, resilience, institutional legitimacy, and gender equality. Particular attention will be given to tracking behavioral and institutional change beyond activity delivery, ensuring measurement of systemic transformation. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
Management will integrate ensure that disaggregated data (sex, age, ethnicity, disability) will be systematically collected and applied to ensure participatory MEL approaches. Tools such as Outcome Harvesting and Most Significant Change will be embedded to capture locally defined results, elevate the voices of WCSOs and affected communities, and strengthen the evidence base for advocacy and policy dialogue. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
On positioning MEL as a tool for learning and influence, the management will use MEL as a platform for strategic learning, adaptation, and policy influence—not only as a reporting mechanism. Evidence generated through MEL systems will be actively used to inform programme adjustments, shape national planning and budgeting processes. It will also consider improving partnering with government and academic institutions to enhance MEL, within ongoing collaboration with the National Statistical Committee, and other institutions UN Women will work with. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
MEL systems require dedicated expertise and financing. Future proposals will allocate sufficient resources to MEL components, including staff and partners training, innovative tool development, and participatory evaluations. To ensure methodological rigor, partnerships with regional and global UN Women evaluation specialists will be leveraged. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
Recommendation: Use limited funding to unlock difficult reforms that advance triple nexus objectives
Management Response: Management will direct limited funding toward politically sensitive but transformative areas—such as gender-transformative peacebuilding, conflict-sensitive governance, and inclusion of marginalized women—where catalytic investments can de-risk innovation and unlock reforms. This approach will be structured to promote domestic ownership and sustainability through joint training, policy reviews, and institutional partnerships.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women's economic empowerment
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
One of the areas identified as potentially catalytic in terms of de-risking innovation and unlocking reforms in gender-transformative peacebuilding could be the promotion of a green economy in conflict-sensitive settings to strengthen women/community resilience. A project concept is being drafted on this in partnership with FAO, based on the lessons learnt from the current PBF GPI project and other. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated
Recommendation: Strengthen inclusion in nexus programming through inclusive design, monitoring and safeguarding civic space
Management Response: Management agrees with this recommendation and fully endorses the principle that triple nexus programming must embody Leave No One Behind (LNOB) from the outset. Management recognizes that while the project successfully engaged women-led CSOs, dimensions such as disability, age, ethnicity, and displacement were not systematically integrated at the design stage, which limited the ability to demonstrate intersectional outcomes. Future programmes will therefore embed inclusive design, monitoring, and civic space safeguarding as core priorities.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Women's economic empowerment
Operating Principles: Knowledge management
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Management commits to integrating intersectional approaches into programme design, expanding conflict analyses to systematically identify specific risks, needs, and opportunities for marginalized groups, including women with disabilities, youth, ethnic minorities, and displaced populations. These insights will inform programme theories of change, ensuring that inclusion is built into both activities and results frameworks. UN Women Kyrgyzstan CO and UNFPA Kyrgyzstan CO 2026/12 Initiated