Evaluation at UNFPA serves three main purposes. It strengthens accountability, evidence-based decision-making and learning. It helps UNFPA become more agile and adaptive amid changing contexts, to reach the furthest behind first.
The evaluation function is governed by the evaluation policy, approved by the Executive Board. The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) reports directly to the Executive Board, including through the Annual Report on Evaluation.
UNFPA conducts centralized evaluations to assess organization-wide issues, and decentralized evaluations of country and regional programmes. A large majority of the centralized evaluations at UNFPA are either joint or system-wide evaluations. All UNFPA evaluations are publicly available together with their management response. A multi-year costed evaluation plan approved by the Executive Board, provides a basis for monitoring and reporting on the evaluation function.
The IEO prioritizes enhancing the use of evaluations to contribute to evidence-based decision making; intensifying coherence with other United Nations entities; and strengthening national evaluation capacities through multi-stakeholder partnerships, including with young and emerging evaluators. To propel the global evaluation community toward the achievement of SDGs by 2030, the IEO co-leads the Decade of EVALUATION for Action, also known as the Eval4Action campaign.