Management Response

: Bangladesh
: 2016 - 2016 , Bangladesh (CO)
: Final evaluation of Gender and Climate Change project
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Bangladesh

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The Final Evaluation of the project “Reducing Vulnerability of Women affected by Climate Change through sustainable livelihood options” offered highly instrumental findings, lessons and recommendations for future gender inclusive climate change and disaster risk reduction programing. The recommendations have been taken into consideration in the development of Bangladesh Country Office Strategic Note for 2017-2021 and 2017 AWP. The resources initially allocated for final evaluation had been reduced by 70% due to funding loss in the final year, as a result of the currency fluctuation. So the scope of the evaluation was made limited. It focused only on relevance, effectiveness and results/impacts of the project. Major adjustments in other deliverables for last year of the project had also been made. Within the limited scope of the evaluation, the objectives of the project found to be really fruitful. Overall it was a very positive evaluation. It provided enough evidence that the project initiatives were inevitably relevant and appropriate according to local as well as national need. The project contributed towards the inclusion of gender in the climate change actions and strategies in Bangladesh and enhanced women’s participation in dialogues and discussions. There were significant achievement in terms of use and influence of the knowledge products produced. UN agencies as well as other UN Women country offices have been using the study findings, while experts developing policy instruments for the government were being motivated to incorporate gender aspects with evidence provided by the studies. UN Women’s efforts through the project continue to be relevant to the future needs. The recommendations spelled out in the evaluation are mostly identifying programme areas where there is scope of further intervention and improvement. The evaluation recommended UN Women to consider contextualized needs of the target women during and after disasters, developing women friendly early warning system for better preparedness considering their mobility, school awareness programme since girl students can be the frontline actors of making women aware about vulnerability of women, strengthening the capacity of local disaster management committees so that they can connect people with their activities from community to household level for strengthening future programme. Emphasis should also be given on institutional strengthening to bring real changes in women’s lives.

: Approved
Recommendation: • Continue supporting most vulnerable women to reduce their vulnerability and enhance resilience through climate resilient and green livelihood options. New innovative areas of women engagement could be added that are not stereotyping instead empowering in intervention design, therefore; needs of the target people could be contextualized • Coverage of project beneficiaries can be more diversified - divorced, widow, separated women, ethnic minority could be brought under the programme intervention in greater portion since they are usually more vulnerable. • Develop women friendly early warning system for better preparedness. Enhance capacity of institutions to deliver and establish mechanism to disseminate women friendly early warnings. • Different capacity building initiatives such as trainings on leadership, microfinance, disaster management, green livelihoods etc should be scaled up; adult education programme for vulnerable can also be thought of so that the capacity of the women is enhanced and they can utilize the knowledge and capitalize on what they earned from the project more efficiently. • Enhance capacity of local disaster management committees on gender mainstreaming in disaster risk reduction and climate change actions and connect people with their actions from community level to household level. The participation of women in UDMCs has to be increased and their active role needs to be ensured. • Local governance system should come up with an effective action plan to improve gender and DRR governance and make UDMC more accountable • Women’s representation and leadership at all levels of CCA/DRR actions should be encouraged and ensured. • Gender based violence during and after disaster should be taken into account • Continue strengthening the capacities of the government and other relevant stakeholders (individuals and institutions) to advance gender equality agenda in DRR-CCA.
Management Response: UN Women Bangladesh Country Office is in full agreement with all of these suggestions and in the response details actions that will be taken to implement these recommendations.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category:
Thematic Area: Women economic empowerment (SPs before 2018), Ending violence against women (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind, Advocacy
Organizational Priorities: Partnership, Climate change, UN Coordination
UNEG Criteria: Human Rights, Gender equality
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
In response to the recommendations above, UN Women has developed a concept note on Gender Equality: Key to climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and recovery which addresses most of the suggestions/recommendations the evaluation team made. Gender & Climate Change Team 2016/11 Completed Draft prodoc developed and shared with potential donors
On the issue of widening coverage of beneficiary groups (ethnic, widow, single mother, minority), on finalizing the National Resilience Programme Document, and implementation modality of the programme to deliver the intended results, this would be worked out tentatively in the last quarter of 2016. However, consideration been already made or being planned for the diversified beneficiaries. Gender and Climate Change Team 2017/04 Completed In addition to NRP, different beneficiary groups e.g. widow, single women, female headed households, transgender, adolescent girls and women faced violence or harassment have been considered for Landslide response project in Chittagong Hill Tract areas.
Recommendation: • Continue to feed in knowledge gap in gender aspects of disaster management, climate change and humanitarian actions through research, dissemination events, workshops, discussion etc. and contributes to development gender sensitive actions. • Advocate for incorporation of gender perspectives into local and national level planning, policies and strategies • Establish mechanism for systematic gender analysis; collecting and utilizing sex-disaggregated data for effective planning and implementation of DRR-CCA-HA projects /programme • Make linkages and establish network with other development organizations and activities in the specific community to get multiplier effect and holistic support. This positive externality effect may magnify the project outputs to ten times. • Awareness and Behavior Change Communication (BCC) component could be added in the project design. • School awareness programme (especially girl’s school) could be considered as girl students can be the frontline actors of making women aware about vulnerability of women due to disaster and its way forward. • Build partnerships women organizations and strengthen their capacities to get involved in DRR-CCA-HA sector so that women’s voices are heard
Management Response: UN Women Bangladesh Country Office is in full agreement with all of these suggestions and in the response details actions that will be taken to implement these recommendations.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category:
Thematic Area: Global norms and standards (SPs before 2018)
Operating Principles: Knowledge management
Organizational Priorities: UN Coordination
UNEG Criteria: Gender equality, Human Rights
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
After the completion of this project UNW aims to continually provide space for sharing and exchange best practices and lessons learned among stakeholders through holding conferences, seminars, dialogues, knowledge sharing events, multilogues etc. Gender and Climate Change Team 2016/11 Completed Significant contribution has been made in capacity enhancement of the Government of Bangladesh through support to participation in regional and international knowledge sharing events e.g. Asia and the Pacific Conference on Gender and DRR at Hanoi, Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) at Delhi and South Asian Peer Learning Regional Consultation on Disaster Preparedness for an Effective Response for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at Kathmandu at Nepal. Undertook two action researches/studies followed by findings sharing event with policy makers and practitioners. A number of knowledge sharing events and researches are planned under NRP to establish knowledge partnership with the eminent persons, policy makers and practitioners engaging them in addressing gender aspects in disaster, climate Cagney and humanitarian programme; enhancing quality of decision making within the GoB organizations through debates and dialogues.
UNW aims to continue strengthening the capacities of the government e.g. MoDMR, DDM, MoWCA, DWA for gender mainstreaming in DRR-CCA and BBS for gendered data/info generation) for effective planning and implementation Gender and Climate Change Team 2016/11 Completed Capacity of the government institutions e.g. DWA, DDM, MoDMR, MoWCA had been assessed during the NRP development phase and dedicated activities are planned to enhance their capacity to deliver gender responsive DRR programme. This will contribute to future gender inclusive DRR-CCA project development and implementation.
Establishing mechanism so that women’s voice are adequately and properly reached to DRR-CCA actors and heard. In response to that women’s grass root organizations capacity should be enhanced so that they can act as bridge between community people and govt. and non govt actors. Gender and Climate Change Team 2017/04 Completed Vulnerable women groups had been consulted to identify their needs, priorities, and capacities for gender responsive DRR interventions. Their expectations/recommendations are reflected in new National Resilience Programme(NRP). In addition, capacities and and skills of local level women’s organizations will be built under NRP.