1. INTRODUCTION Purpose and scope of the ICPR The Independent Country Programme Review (ICPR) is an independent validation of the self-assessed performance of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Belize country office, for the period 2017-mid 2020. The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of UNDP conducts an ICPR in the penultimate year of a UNDP country programme, to support the development of the next UNDP CPD and strengthen UNDP accountability to the Executive Board and national stakeholders.
THE PURPOSE OF THE ICPR IS TO:
1. Support the development of the next UNDP Country Programme Document; 2. Strengthen UNDP accountability to national stakeholders; and 3. Strengthen UNDP accountability to the Executive Board.
The ICPR Belize is expected to address two questions in relation to the current CPD 2017-2021: • •
What progress has UNDP made in delivering planned CPD outputs, and how is this contributing to UNDP/United Nations Multi-Country Sustainable Development Framework (UN MSDF) outcomes in the current programme period? How has UNDP performed in the planning, implementation, reporting and evaluation of development results?
Methodology The ICPR adheres to the United Nations Evaluation Group Norms and Standards, 3 and is carried out within the overall provisions of the UNDP Evaluation Policy.4 Starting with a review of the CPD Results and Resources Framework, the ICPR Belize included an extensive desk review of programme and project-related documents, decentralized evaluations,5 an extended questionnaire with the country office, as well as virtual interviews with UNDP staff and stakeholders,6 and a survey with civil society organization (CSO) partners7 to obtain the required information. The ICPR further benefited from an in-depth review of the governance thematic area’s theory of change by the University of Belize. The detailed methodology of the ICPR is presented in Annex 3. The ICPR employs the following ratings system: • •
Country programme’s progress towards planned CPD outputs: To determine the appropriate rating, the IEO examined the results chain between support to interventions to result framework outputs. The rating is determined based on the progress towards the associated indicators. Country programme’s assessed contribution to UN MSDF/UNDP CPD outcomes: The IEO examined the results chain between UNDP CPD outputs and support to interventions of the results framework
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http://www.uneval.org/document/detail/1914 UNDP Evaluation Policy 5 Documentation from UNDP, UNCT, Government and other stakeholders, including strategic documents, project documents, work plans, reports, studies, audits/Global Fund spot check reports, decentralized evaluations (eight evaluations for seven projects – three national projects and four regional/global projects, out of which seven evaluations have been quality assessed by the IEO – six moderately/satisfactory, one with low quality), external impact assessment of the Global Fund, among others. 6 Fifty-two persons (50 percent women) were interviewed, including UN staff, UNDP personnel, international development partners, Government counterparts, donors and civil society organizations. 7 Eleven CSO partners were surveyed; responses from four CSOs received. The respondent CSOs have been interviewed, individually. 4
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