How to assess and promote integration of the “leave no one behind” principles?

Workshop | Online

About the Event

The commitment to ‘Leave No One Behind’ (LNOB) is a central transformative promise of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. For UN agencies, it means integrating the principles of equality, equity, and non-discrimination into programmes and operations at global, regional and country levels. In 2022, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) conducted the Formative Evaluation of the Integration by UNDP of the Principles of “Leaving No One Behind” to set out the extent to which UNDP strategies and performance had integrated LNOB and its twin promise ‘Reach the Furthest Behind First’ (RFBF) into its work.

Among other aspects, the LNOB evaluation assessed LNOB integration into UNDP’s six ‘signature solutions’ or programme areas, i.e. poverty and inequality, governance, resilience, environment, energy, and gender equality, using complex evaluation methodologies. Upon presentation of the conclusions and recommendations of the evaluation, the UNDP Executive Board urged the organization to take decisive actions to fully integrate LNOB and RFBF principles into all aspects of its work. What does this mean for UNDP and how can the organization stay on track?

The training/workshop aims to provide participants with a practical overview, tools, and methodologies to assess to what extent LNOB principles have been integrated into the work of their organizations and to strengthen LNOB and RFBF-based programming, including intersectionality and non-discrimination, through adequate mainstreaming across contexts and countries.

Through a dynamic presentation and group work, participants will gain a greater understanding of:
• What is the LNOB and RFBF promise? Why does the LNOB and RFBF promise matter?
• How does equity, equality, non-discrimination, and the human rights-based approach (HRBA) seek to address inequalities and factors of exclusion that lie at the heart of development challenges, and redress discriminatory practices that impede development?
• Why is the integration of LNOB and RFBF principles important not only to evaluators but also to every individual?
• How can the integration of LNOB/RFBF into programmes and operations be assessed?

After the presentation, participants will be split up into breakout groups to work on sample results statements from the UNDP formative evaluation, addressing two questions:
o Question 1: Is this results statement about equality, equity, or non-discrimination? Why? If unsure, which question(s) would you ask to ascertain this?
o Question 2: Which factors of disadvantage and deprivation is this example about? Explain your choice. (Use your five-factor framework handout to check.) If several, how do you expect these factors to overlap? What else do you need to know to understand intersectionality in this example, and whether UNDP targeted the furthest behind first?

Participants will then report back on lessons and challenges (of the exercise), and utility of the tools for analysis (for an evaluation), using the following guiding questions:
o How was this exercise for you? What did you learn?
o What challenges did you come across?
o Will you be able to apply this in your work?

The presentation will close with a call for action to encourage participants to help organizations integrate the LNOB/RFBF principles of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) into the programmes and operations of their organizations through effective Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E).

Speakers

Name Title Biography
Claudia Villanueva Senior Research Analyst, Independent Evaluation Office (IEO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Claudia Villanueva has over 10 years of international development experience with the UN System in the fields of evaluation, monitoring, research, and programme management focused on gender equality, poverty reduction, and sustainable development. At the IEO, Claudia has been instrumental in completing country programme evaluations, corporate thematic evaluations, capacity development initiatives, and quality assessment of decentralized evaluations. She served as senior research analyst on the LNOB evaluation. Prior to joining UNDP, Claudia led an assessment of UN Women’s planning and reporting, and RBM, and provided technical guidance for the implementation of the UN-SWAP. Before this position, Claudia worked at the UN Independent System-Wide Evaluation Coordination Secretariat, and contributed to evaluations at UNICEF, UNOCHA, and CARE International in Kenya, Burundi, and Tanzania. Claudia holds a Master in Business Administration and a diploma in European Management.

Topics and Themes

Evaluators Evaluation Comissioners Evaluation users Evaluation and transformational change: balancing ambition and realism

Event Details

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