Evaluation of UN Women country programme in Afghanistan

This evaluation had two overarching purposes: to help Sida, Norway and Finland, as well as UN Women, to assess progress of the on-going UN Women country programme in Afghanistan to learn from what works well and less well. UN Women’s programme has been and remains broadly relevant to the context of Afghanistan, although the balance of priorities has been driven more by funding availability than by a strategic or long-term vision. There has been some progress made in the achievement of outputs, but much less progress in the achievement of outcomes. While the difficult context in part helps to explain the limited successes in the programme, many of the issues affecting the implementation of the programme come from the management of the programme. The main focus in UN Women’s programme has been on working with government partners and, to a much more limited extent, with some CSOs. In both cases, there is only anecdotal evidence that capacity has been built. It has been difficult to find evidence of the direct contributions that UN Women has made to poverty reduction and to gender equality results.