Evaluation Annual Report 2024 presented to the Executive Board

On 3 June 2024, Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA Executive Director, in her address to the Executive Board Annual Session 2025 welcomed the Annual Report of the UNFPA Independent Evaluation Office (IEO).

Evidence-based decision-making and organizational learning are vital for accelerating progress on UNFPA’s transformative results. - Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA Executive Director

Dr. Kanem remarked that evaluation is central to the monitoring functions of UNFPA. Evaluations provide us with the evidence to determine whether our decisions and actions are working and under what conditions, allowing us to course correct as needed.

On 4 June 2024, during his presentation of the 2024 Annual Report on Evaluation, Marco Segone, Director of the UNFPA IEO, highlighted the evaluation function's strong performance at both centralized and decentralized levels, its innovative, strategic and adaptive approaches, and key areas for growth. The report further elaborates on UNFPA's significant contributions to inter-agency evaluation collaborations and its focus on building national evaluation capacities through multi-stakeholder and intergenerational partnerships.

Evaluation remains a cornerstone of accountability and learning at UNFPA. It is not simply a compliance mechanism. It is a catalyst for strategic decision-making and a driver for evidence-based programming Diene Kieta, UNFPA Deputy Executive Director, Programme

Ms. Diene Keita, UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme), delivered the management commentary on the 2024 Annual Report on Evaluation. She highlighted that at a time when the world faces converging crises—from persistent gender inequalities and rising humanitarian needs to shrinking fiscal space—the role of evaluation is more vital than ever. She noted that centralized evaluations remained responsive to changing organizational needs and priorities, and that decentralized evaluations also continued to generate vital evidence to inform country programming and played a key role in optimizing and scaling impactful interventions.

We commend the IEO for maintaining a strong strategic and adaptive evaluation function during another complex year. – Joint statement by 25 Member States

A joint statement by 25 Member States (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Moldova, Norway, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom), welcomed the 2024 Annual Report on the evaluation function.

Member States commended the IEO for maintaining a strong, strategic, and adaptive evaluation function during another complex year, highlighting that the outcomes in the annual report reflected both the robustness of the evaluation function and a growing organizational culture of evidence-based decision-making. Member States further applauded the IEO for its leadership and transparency in the evolving area of responsible AI integration in evaluation. They also valued the IEO's active contributions to inter-agency evaluations, the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG), and the System-Wide Evaluation Office. The joint statement further supported the continued prioritization of youth engagement in evaluation.

The statement reaffirmed Member States' shared commitment to a strong, independent, and well-resourced evaluation function at UNFPA. Furthermore, it emphasized that at a time of reform and change, decisions need to be informed by evidence. Member States noted that the strong relationship between the IEO and UNFPA management continues to drive progress, accountability, evidence-based decision-making, and learning, contributing to the effectiveness of both the organization and the broader United Nations development system.