EVALUATION OF UNDP’S SECOND REGIONAL COOperATION FRAMEWORK FOR ASIA AND THE PACIFIC 2002–2006 Evaluation Office, May 2007 United Nations Development Programme REPORTS PuBLISHed Under THE RCF EVALUATIon SerIES RCF for the Arab States 2002-2005, (2005) RCF for Africa 2002-2006, (2007) RCF for Latin America & the Caribbean 2002-2007, (2007) EVALUATION TEAM Team Leader Steen Folke International Consultant Pao Li Lim Team Member and Juha Uitto EO Task Manager Research Assistant Elizabeth K. Lang Copyright © 2007 United Nations Development Report Evaluation Office One United Nations Plaza New York, NY 10017, USA Website: http://www.undp.org/eo Email: [email protected] Foreword The report of the Evaluation of the Second and communications technology for development; Regional Cooperation Framework (RCF) for Asia and crisis prevention and development. and the Pacific 2002-2006 presents the findings The evaluation examined UNDP’s regional of the evaluation of the RCF carried out by the programme and its contributions to regional Evaluation Office. The evaluation assesses UNDP’s development in terms of its relevance, effectiveness, performance, achievements and results, the scope efficiency and sustainability. It combined a meta- and range of strategic partnerships formed, and evaluation approach with an in-depth investigation its strategic positioning in the region. It is one of of the programme. Three outcome evaluations three evaluations carried out this year, prior to the had been commissioned in 2006 in the areas of submission of new RCFs for the Executive Board’s poverty, governance and HIV/AIDS, which were approval. The aim of the evaluation is to provide made available to the present evaluation team. The accountability for the achievement of results and evaluation team made visits to the UNDP regional resources used, as well as to help identify success- centres in Bangkok and Colombo and the Pacific ful approaches and challenges, and to learn lessons Centre in Fiji. In addition, visits were undertaken from implementation in a regional setting. The to a sample of six countries in the region where evaluation is intended to feed into the development interviews were conducted with partner agencies, of the third Regional Cooperation Framework for regional institutions and UNDP country office Asia and the Pacific. staff. Altogether, the evaluation team conducted Initially intended to finish in 2006, the RCF was some 200 interviews in New York and in the EVALUATION TEAM extended to the end of 2007 as a result of the countries, and carried out detailed reviews of the corporate decision to harmonize UNDP regional programme. It found that the overall thrust of the Team Leader Steen Folke and global programme cycles with the next UNDP- RCF was highly relevant and the programme has wide strategic plan 2008-2111. The second RCF for provided a people-centred perspective for dealing Asia and the Pacific was developed in response to with the challenges of the region in achieving the International Consultant Pao Li Lim the Millennium Declaration and within UNDP’s Millennium Development Goals. The regional corporate mandate for poverty reduction. The RCF governance initiatives have raised awareness on Team Member and Juha Uitto takes a regional public-goods perspective that seeks issues of gender mainstreaming, civic engagement, EO Task Manager to minimize negative transboundary externalities accountability and transparency, and how those or secure positive spillovers allowing the countries issues promote good governance. In addition, the in the region to work cooperatively on cross- unique position of the regional programme allows Research Assistant Elizabeth K. Lang border concerns. The programme also promotes operation in areas that are sensitive at the country regional advocacy. level, such as justice and human rights. Overall, the RCF has created strategic opportunities for future The RCF was originally designed around three interventions by UNDP and other organizations themes: democratic governance for human develop- to deal with regional development challenges and ment; sustainable development; and globalization trends to work towards achieving the MDGs in the and economic governance. While the main thrust of Asia and Pacific region. the programme remained, the relative weights given to these topics changed during implementation. While the programme has been effective in produc- Other programmatic activities were added related ing an impressive number of knowledge products to HIV/AIDS and the programme also responded – and these have been on the average of high qual- to the Indian Ocean tsunami that occurred in ity – the evaluation found that the dissemination, December 2005. The programme contained a cluster capacity development, advocacy and policy advice of projects centred around subregional cooperation, activities have not been given enough attention. as well. In addition, three crosscutting issues were This is largely because of insufficient human and included: gender and development; information financial resources allocated for the programme. The effectiveness of the RCF has been somewhat The preparation of the evaluation was also thanks to hampered by the spread of the limited resources the excellent collaboration of the Regional Bureau over too many areas and topics. Moreover, the of Asia and the Pacific led by the Regional Director links between the RCF and the UNDP country and Assistant Administrator, Hafiz Pasha. Particu- programmes have been too inadequate. Ideally, lar thanks go to Selva Ramachandran and his much of the capacity development and advocacy regional team in the Bureau in New York; Elizabeth work should be undertaken at the country level. Fong and Marcia Kran, Regional Manager and The gender dimension has remained a weakness in Deputy Regional Manager, at the Regional Centre the programme despite UNDP’s commitment and in Bangkok; Minh Pham, Regional Manager of efforts to mainstream gender across practice areas. the Regional Centre in Colombo; Garry Wiseman, Sub-regional Manager at the Pacific Centre in The recommendations emanating from the evalua- Suva; and all programme managers and advisors in tion highlight the need for a clearer strategic focus the Regional Bureau, the Bureau for Development for the regional cooperation framework based Policy and UNDP country offices who shared their on the human development concept and focused insights with the evaluation team. We would espe- on the interlinkages between governance and cially like to thank the UNDP resident representa- poverty reduction and achievement of MDGs. The tives and country directors in the countries visited programme should concentrate on fewer objec- for their support: Marcia de Castro (Indonesia), tives, themes, projects, service lines and intended Richard Dictus (Fiji), Douglas Gardner (Cambo- outcomes. There must also be a better balance in dia), Frederick Lyons (Sri Lanka), Pratibha Mehta the programme between the basic production of (Mongolia), Joana Merlin-Scholtes (Thailand), knowledge products and capacity development, Nileema Noble (Philippines) and Sonam Yangchen advocacy and policy advice. This will lead to better Rana (Lao PDR). The evaluation has greatly bene- utilization of the many qualified outputs and hence fited from the interest and support of government greater effectiveness. representatives in the region, regional partners, A number of people contributed to this evalua- representatives of civil society and academia, and tion, particularly the evaluation team composed of executing agencies. Steen Folke as team leader, Pao Li Lim and Juha I hope that the findings and recommendations of Uitto, who also served as the Evaluation Office task this evaluation will assist in improving the effec- manager. Elizabeth K. Lang supported the team tiveness of UNDP’s regional level assistance in Asia as research assistant. We would also like to thank and the Pacific in the coming period, and contribute Kutisha Ebron and Anish Pradhan who provided to the achievement of its development goals. excellent administrative and technical support at the Evaluation Office. Saraswathi Menon Director, Evaluation Office Table of contents Acronyms and Abbreviations ....................................................................................................................vii Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................ix 1. Background ................................................................................................................................2 1.1 Second Regional Cooperation Framework for Asia and the Pacific ...................................................... 2 1.2 Implementation ...................................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Financial resources ................................................................................................................................. 3 2. Context: The Asia-Pacific Region ................................................................................................5 2.1 Profile of the region ................................................................................................................................ 5 2.2 Millennium Development Goals ........................................................................................................... 6 3. Approach and Methodology