Changing the way UNHCR does business? An evaluation of the Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming Strategy, 2004-2009

The UNHCR Age Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming (AGDM) strategy was intended to introduce a new model of development for UNHCR, towards planning and implementation that put the diverse priorities and needs of persons of concern at the heart of what UNHCR does. Such a way of doing business requires proactive Executive Board and senior management leadership, effective accountability functions, and adequate resources and capacity. The evaluation concludes that despite some good progress UNHCR is still a considerable distance from being the organization envisaged in the AGDM strategy, or an organization where age, gender and diversity have been taken into account at all operational levels and have been adequately mainstreamed.

This report contains the evaluation of the AGDM strategy 2004-2009. The purposes of the evaluation were to: Review and assess the design and delivery of the AGDM strategy. Identify lessons learned, good practices and constraints. Identify interim results, vis-à-vis the results statements set out in the AGDM ACTION Plan 2007-2009. Provide recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of the AGDM strategy, follow-up, capacity building and monitoring. Feed into the AGDM ACTION Plan 2010-2012, so as to enhance UNHCR?s ability to meet this aspect of its Global Strategic Objectives.

The evaluation methodology included: establishing a Steering Committee/user group; background document review; regional and country visits to Colombia, Ethiopia and Central Europe, including an-depth participatory evaluation methodology in Colombia; HQ interviews; an electronic questionnaire; and review of the AGDM Accountability Framework (AF). Triangulation revealed that data sources tended to corroborate each other. Bias and limitations included self -selection of reviewed country operations and questionnaire respondents, and financial decisions made by UNHCR which hindered the evaluation team?s ability to spend an adequate amount of time with persons of concern in country.