‘thematic’ agencies, resulting in them taking the lead in this area. UNDP needs to coordinate better with MoIC for acceleration of the necessary clearance processes. This evaluation found that UNDP did not take proactive steps to work with national stakeholders on broad GEWE issues planned under Outcome 1, beyond its work on gender mainstreaming with existing sectoral partners. Stakeholder interviews corroborated this, showing somewhat conflicting views on the UNDP role in GEWE. Some government and development partners saw the potential for UNDP to add value to the area, while a number of other actors noted that smaller United Nations agencies with a dedicated GEWE mandate should lead such efforts, considering their strong technical expertise and experience in the country. UNDP was involved in a joint programme with other United Nations agencies on GEWE issues, but its role was somewhat marginal, focusing mostly on coordination and linking with different actors. There was a general perception among key informants that UNDP should have done more consultation and analysis before embarking on a standalone GEWE outcome, to make sure of the added value it could bring. UNDP tried to fill this void by expanding Outcome 3 outputs to cover social inclusion development solutions, but these efforts were not fully integrated into the theory of change of the CPD and did not organically link to Outcome 1. Finding 16. UNDP work on GEWE mainly focused on the socioeconomic empowerment of women. Such support has had positive results on enhancing women’s access to business financing. UNDP activities in the field of women’s rights and gender are focused on the clear overarching goal of the standalone gender pillar in the CPD, and a review of the wider UNDP portfolio shows that a number of strategic interventions have had a strong GEWE focus. For instance, UNDP cooperation with MSMEDA resulted in positive gender mainstreaming efforts. UNDP reinforced its work with MSMEDA to achieve its gender strategy goals in general, including: a) increasing access to MSMEDA services for women entrepre‑ neurs (financial, non-financial and access to jobs); b) ensuring representation of the interests of women and men entrepreneurs at all governance levels; and c) ensuring an organizational culture conductive to women ́s empowerment, internally and externally. In line with these efforts, UNDP supported MSMEDA to provide direct financial services to 43,492 women,116 and non-financial services through online training to 185 women, one of the most tangible outcomes of the programme. As noted in Finding 2, UNDP support was also instrumental in helping MSMEDA to achieve the Gender Seal Award for public institutions. Stakeholder interviews with MSMEDA confirmed that UNDP support was important to raise awareness and catalyse changes in the way that they apply a gender lens to entrepreneurship and socioeconomic development, though challenges persist. Interviewees noted persisting gender norms and traditions which are obstacles for women to engage in business activities. Though some improvements were voiced overall, these could not be directly correlated to UNDP support. Another challenge discussed in Finding 2 links to the continued focus of MSMEDA on maintaining gender standards after the expiry of UNDP support, as most of the practices introduced need time to take root and become engrained in institutional culture, which is still not the case. Finding 17. UNDP GEWE efforts, outside of entrepreneurship support to women, lacked consistent and sufficient funding, leading to small-scale, fragmented, one-off activities without strong catalytic potential. UNDP set a rather ambitious results framework in the CPD to work on GEWE across all programme portfolios. However, it encountered difficulties in securing funding for the planned activities, in particular on FGM, leading to a very scattered, underfunded and abandoned portfolio, without a clear strategy or resourcing 116
UNDP (2020) ROAR, p23.
Chapter 2. findings
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