mainstreaming mostly focused on gender parity and the inclusion of female participants. Only its SGBV support used more responsive approaches with adequate attention to improving the legal framework for women’s rights and opportunities in Zambia. UNDP still lacks a holistic approach that integrates the entire programme in a gender transformative way and in greater alignment with the Leave No One Behind principle of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Based on IEO’s Gender Results Effectiveness Scale, the programme was assessed as mostly gender targeted and focused on inclusion and participation. Select initiatives, like the work with SGBV, used a more gender-responsive but not yet transformational approach, as it lacks a more holistic and integrated approach to address structural and root causes, and barriers, to not only respond to but prevent persistent GBV. The programme lacks a concerted focus on promoting behavioural change among groups that discriminate against others. UNDP’s effectiveness in promoting gender equality is constrained by the limited human resources and institutional capacities of key responsible institutions.
Conclusion 5: UNDP helped improve Zambia’s health supply chain management and access to HIV and other health-related basic services. However, there was limited progress on sustainably strengthening national capacities and removing barriers hindering access of targeted key populations to HIV and AIDS services. UNDP’s work with district health offices was narrowly focused on grants administration training, with limited effectiveness. UNDP missed opportunities to leverage its presence at the district level and work in other areas, and with other partners, to drive greater awareness of and focus attention on vulnerable key populations, especially LGBTQI people, and to address access to HIV and AIDS services in a more integrated way. For example, UNDP’s work on legal policy protections could have been mainstreamed or integrated with its work on capacity building for health practitioners on key populations’ rights and best practices in care. While the SGBV programme worked with courts, police and community groups, it did not bring a strong focus to key populations who are also at heightened risk of SGBV. HIV partners had little awareness of UNDP’s work supporting SGBV or areas closely associated that could be addressed in a more integrated way.
3.2 Recommendations and management response RECOMMENDATION 1. Capitalizing on its unique positioning and long-term partnerships in Zambia, UNDP should position the next country programme to provide more innovative and accelerated development solutions. This would help Zambia recover from the impacts of COVID-19 and build forward better. It would advance inclusive economic diversification for poverty reduction, and good governance for enhanced transparency and accountability. UNDP needs to highlight its focus on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Leave No One Behind principle, but in a more integrated way with other UN agencies and development partners. To this end, UNDP should consider ways for the country office team to expand its efforts to operate in a less programmatic siloed way, and in a more integrated way. This would improve complementarities and synergies that could promote more timely collaborations and investments. To ensure UNDP’s efforts contribute to the achievement of development outcomes, it will be key to develop coherent theories of change for each outcome. These will need to have more realistic outputs that properly map and aim to leverage and integrate the contributions of other strategic partners with cross-cutting issues, such as the principle of Leave No One Behind. They will also need differentiated approaches to work with vulnerable groups, such as youth, women and people with disabilities. It will be key to identify more adequate performance indicators that can more rigorously measure the contributions under UNDP’s control to promote change.
CHAPTER 3: CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND MANAGEMENT RESPONSE
43
