- Evaluation Plan:
- 2012-2016, South Sudan
- Evaluation Type:
- Outcome
- Planned End Date:
- 12/2016
- Completion Date:
- 05/2017
- Status:
- Completed
- Management Response:
- Yes
- Evaluation Budget(US $):
- 50,000
UNDP South Sudan 2013-2016 CPD Outcomes 1 & 5 Evaluation
| Document | Type | Language | Size | Status | Downloads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 ToRs Outcome Evaluation South Sudan.pdf |
tor | English | 373.53 KB | Posted | 1131 |
| Final Report - Evaluation of UNDP Outcome 1 and 5.pdf |
report | English | 1845.18 KB | Posted | 1174 |
| Title | UNDP South Sudan 2013-2016 CPD Outcomes 1 & 5 Evaluation | ||||||||||||
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| Atlas Project Number: | 72642,86376,77970 | ||||||||||||
| Evaluation Plan: | 2012-2016, South Sudan | ||||||||||||
| Evaluation Type: | Outcome | ||||||||||||
| Status: | Completed | ||||||||||||
| Completion Date: | 05/2017 | ||||||||||||
| Planned End Date: | 12/2016 | ||||||||||||
| Management Response: | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Focus Area: |
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| Corporate Outcome and Output (UNDP Strategic Plan 2018-2021) |
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| Evaluation Budget(US $): | 50,000 | ||||||||||||
| Source of Funding: | UNDP | ||||||||||||
| Evaluation Expenditure(US $): | 40,000 | ||||||||||||
| Joint Programme: | No | ||||||||||||
| Joint Evaluation: | No | ||||||||||||
| Evaluation Team members: |
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| GEF Evaluation: | No | ||||||||||||
| Key Stakeholders: | Ministry of Justice, Judiciary of South Sudan, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Office of the President | ||||||||||||
| Countries: | SOUTH SUDAN |
| Lessons | |
|---|---|
| 1. | The need for nationally driven social cohesion underpinned by an effective governance structure that can respond to political and/or violent crisis through constitutional and rule of law means |
| 2. | The need for outreach to the local level to strengthen and scale up existing capacities for conflict prevention, including restorative justice, reconciliation and accountability mechanisms are to respond effectively to localized or national conflicts. |
| Findings | |
| 1. | UNDP outputs were closely aligned with the SSDP and national priorities UNDP contributed to the two outcomes by implementing four projects: (i) Support to Democracy and Participation, (ii) Support to Public Administration, (iii) Support to Public Financial Management (PFM) and (iv) Support to Access to Justice and Rule of Law (A2JROL). The projects were well aligned to the Governance and Conflict Prevention and Security Pillars of the South Sudan Development Plan (SSDP 211 – 2013). The targeted national institutions also shows that the programme was very relevant and comprehensive in its coverage of the key issues for governance, justice and rule of law. |
| 2. | Interventions addressed critical human development needs including gender equality Interventions were aligned to UNDP’s corporate strategic plan and Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, both of which place governance as a central theme for development. The projects, in particular A2JROL had a strong gender component both at upstream policy level as well as the downstream community level. |
| 3. | Overall impact of UNDP interventions at outcome level was limited The country office participated in the UN-wide programme criticality assessment following the outbreak of conflict in 2013, leading to reduction in scale and scope of most projects to reflect the dwindling resources. In addition, UNDP also refocused its interventions in the “green” states which were accessible and developed an integrated crisis response programme to enhance national capacities for early recovery, peace building and reconciliation. However, majority of key informants interviewed observed that the incidence of vulnerability to multiple stresses, including security, political, economic and environmental shocks was on the increase while also the level of public service delivery was virtually non-existent particularly at the local level. In the Governance sector in particular, various sources, including World Governance Indicators (WGI) compiled by the World Bank and the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) also report a worsening situation on a majority of the governance indicators for South Suda |
| 4. |
UNDP supported the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to revise the Legal Aid Bill, which was signed into law by the President in October 2013, followed by development of the Legal Aid Strategy which was also approved by the Council of Ministers. Two Legal Aid Officers were placed in the state government offices to provide legal aid services, but their performance could not be verified although key informants noted that most of them may have moved on, and those that were still in place were probably not providing any meaningful legal aid services due to the limited resources available to states. A Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) was established in 2016, along with a five-year strategic plan. A toolkit was developed for use by civil society organisations (CSOs) in training, advocacy and engaging various stakeholders including national and state governments, the population, regional and international partners with regard to the use of transitional justice mechanisms. |
| 5. | The country office management arrangements ensure that project processes (planning, implementation and monitoring) are done in the context of the CP Projects were managed under the two substantive programme units: Democratic Governance and Stabilisation Unit; and the Human Development and Inclusive Growth Unit, which enabled the country office to monitor project performance and report on results in the context of the overall CP outputs and outcome indicators. Project Steering Committees or Project Boards were also established in accordance with framework agreements between UNDP and donors although some of the donors expressed concerns about the lack of adequate consultation in respect to major project governance decisions. Project reporting tended to be descriptive and activity-based, rather than result-oriented. In addition, there appeared to be lack of synergy between projects, and sometimes even between interventions under the same project. |
| 6. | The strategy to focus support at the state level through collaboration with civil society has increased the potential sustainability of project results
UNDP made efforts to incorporate sustainability mechanisms in its project design, including through the secondment and attachment of Technical Advisors in national institutions. However, it was noteworthy that government lacked capacity to upscale most of these initiatives as demonstrated by the stopping of governance forums, for examples. In some cases, UNDP deliverables included production of training manuals, but none of the respective government institutions had as yet used them due to lack of resources.
UNDP’s collaboration with CSOs also provided a platform for sustainability based on national ownership. However, most of the projects did not have specific sustainability plans and exit strategies with clear monitoring indicators, which was clearly demonstrated by the CSOs noting that they would not be able to sustain the interventions without funding support. |
| 7. | Integration of gender and social inclusion varies across interventions Although it varied across projects, there was evidence to suggest that UNDP integrated gender and social inclusion, including through a dedicated section for reporting on gender development results. Some of the projects also had specific gender targets, for example, Support to Public Administration project had a specific target of 30 percent women CSSOs, of which 20 percent achievement was reported in the 2015 annual report. The A2JROL project in particular had strong gender responsiveness, including through the community policing, legal aid services, both of which had specific emphasis on SGBV. |
| Recommendations | |
|---|---|
| 1 | UNDP should enhance coordination with its partners, including particularly donors, to ensure that project governance is not only transparent, but is seen to be transparent. This is even more important given the challenges in funding support and potential donor fatigue in a context where there could be doubts about government’s commitment to implement the peace agreement. |
| 2 | UNDP should continue to focus its interventions at the state level and enhance engagement with civil society to develop demand-side capacities for governance and access to justice. |
| 3 | UNDP Programme Staff should enhance synergies between their projects and interventions in order to increase impact at outcome level. In particular, project managers should consider specific ways to ensure collaboration among implementing partners (IPs), including through joint review meetings. The aim should be to ensure that the results delivered by one IP can feed into subsequent processes and results of other IPs though pass-on activities and referrals. This should be made clear in the agreement signed with the IPs. |
1. Recommendation:
UNDP should enhance coordination with its partners, including particularly donors, to ensure that project governance is not only transparent, but is seen to be transparent. This is even more important given the challenges in funding support and potential donor fatigue in a context where there could be doubts about government’s commitment to implement the peace agreement.
Management Response: [Added: 2017/06/13]
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Donor engagement in 2014-15 was affected by the crisis in SS. Development partners continuously advised UNDP to minimise engagement with government as the government was a party to the conflict. Any support to the government was perceived as reinforcing conflict and violation of human rights. Thus, UDP had limited collaboration with government. Civil society engagement was enhanced during the period. Donor – almost all of them withdrew their programme and staff from national and subnational levels and channelled their funding to humanitarian needs. |
Key Actions:
| Key Action | Responsible | DueDate | Status | Comments | Documents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UNDP will strengthen the project governance structure for each project, conduct regular board meetings and periodic consultative meetings with donors
[Added: 2017/06/13] [Last Updated: 2018/08/22] |
Project managers, DCD (P) | 2018/06 | Completed | Board meetings and donor consultations have been conducted for projects covered under this outcome evaluation History |
2. Recommendation:
UNDP should continue to focus its interventions at the state level and enhance engagement with civil society to develop demand-side capacities for governance and access to justice.
Management Response: [Added: 2017/06/13] [Last Updated: 2017/06/13]
Due to fluctuating levels of security and irregular infrastructure, partnering with civil society allows for greater reach to the most remote, vulnerable and needy segments of the population. This approach will improve the reach and impact of Access to Justice work.
Key Actions:
| Key Action | Responsible | DueDate | Status | Comments | Documents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UNDP will provide more grants to CSOs to increase public knowledge and awareness, and provide services, such as legal aid, victims’ groups and community-level paralegals, to increase the demand side of justice
[Added: 2017/06/13] [Last Updated: 2018/08/22] |
DCD (P), Project managers | 2018/06 | Completed | UNDP is implementing most of its field level of activities through a network of CSOs and CBOs with field presence in the areas of operation. This has increased project reach to underserved, and hard to reach areas, an contributed towards capacity building of local institutions. Partners' capacity and performance was continously assessed and corrrective actions taken. Attached is a spot check report for a sample of CSO partners History |
3. Recommendation:
UNDP Programme Staff should enhance synergies between their projects and interventions in order to increase impact at outcome level. In particular, project managers should consider specific ways to ensure collaboration among implementing partners (IPs), including through joint review meetings. The aim should be to ensure that the results delivered by one IP can feed into subsequent processes and results of other IPs though pass-on activities and referrals. This should be made clear in the agreement signed with the IPs.
Management Response: [Added: 2017/06/13]
Agreed. Bringing together peacebuilding, livelihoods and rule of law will improve living conditions for the people and encourage dignified and voluntary returns.
Key Actions:
| Key Action | Responsible | DueDate | Status | Comments | Documents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The CO will adopt an area based approach to programming, whereby relevant projects will converge the geographic locations of their respective projects for unified and complementary programming.
[Added: 2017/06/14] [Last Updated: 2018/08/22] |
DCD (P), project managers | 2018/06 | Completed | UNDP has, in collaboration with other UND agencies designed and is implementing area-focused programmes in AWeil and Yambio. This has enhanced each agency's programme impact,and synergies within and accros agency programme. Attached is a report from the Aweil joint programme. History |