Knowledge Bank

UNICEF’s Human Rights and Gender Equity Evaluation Criteria

January 05, 2022, Evaluation Observatory

Human Rights and Gender Equity need special attention while evaluating interventions, as they add valuable principles like equality, inclusion, and non-discrimination to evaluations. As a result, they need to be mindfully integrated into evaluations (UNEG, 2011). UNICEF’s Human Rights and Gender Equity Evaluation criteria are primarily based on the OECD DAC criteria, but given their neutral nature (UNEG, 2014), also deliberately integrate human rights (HR) and gender equity dimensions (GE) into evaluations. A brief overview of the criteria can be understood from the diagram below (UNEG, 2014, p. 79):

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For a broad overview

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• Guidance Document: Integrating Human Rights and Gender Equality in Evaluation-Towards UNEG Guidance

  Published by United Nations Evaluation Group, this document provides guidance on integrating Human Rights and Gender Equality dimensions into evaluation. The document will be specifically beneficial for UN evaluators conducting evaluations and helpful to those who want to promote the inclusion of Human Rights and Gender Equality in M&E systems. It also provides practitioners with a checklist for the Human rights and gender equality-based evaluation.

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• Guidance Document: Human Rights and Gender Equality in Evaluation (Refer page 13)

  Written by Shravani Reddy, Janie Eriksen, Janice Muir and Published by UNICEF, this paper explains the meaning of human rights and gender equality. It provides the rationale and guidance for their integration into the evaluation framework.

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• Video: Integrating human rights, leave no one behind, and gender equality into UN Cooperation Frameworks

  Published by United Nations Sustainable Development Group, This video explains how to integrate guiding principles underlining sustainable development goals and targets into the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks.

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• Video: Good Practices Integrating Gender Equality and Human Rights in Evaluation

  Published by the UNEG secretariate, this video seeks to highlight good practices for integrating gender equality and human rights in evaluation. It discusses insights from good practices that can better integrate these principles.

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• Video: Human Rights & Gender Equality

  Published by UNEG Secretariat, this video discusses how to strengthen human rights and gender equality dimensions in evaluation in the UN system.

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• Video: Integrating Gender Equality and Human Rights in Evaluation

  From the UNEG Secretariat, this video guides practitioners in integrating gender equality and human rights in evaluation through illustrations. It also discusses the successes and areas of attention for mainstreaming gender equality in the work of UN entities.

For in depth understanding

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• Report: Integrating Human Rights and Gender Equality in Evaluations

  Developed by UNEG, this report provides an in-depth guidance and serve as a field guide to improve human rights and gender equality responsive evaluation throughout the UN system. This document outlines practical steps on how to prepare, conduct and use HR & GE responsive evaluations and provides additional theoretical and applied information, tools and suggestions.

Case Study

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• Gender Integration and Effectiveness of the UNICEF COVID-19 Response in South Asia

  Developed by UNICEF, this document assesses the extent to which gender has been integrated to the response and evaluates the gender effectiveness of the response measures by using the gender scale towards improving UNICEF and the host government’s policy and programmatic responses measures.

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• Using a human rights approach to evaluate ILO’s discrimination strategy (Refer p. 222)

  Written by Francisco L. Guzman and published by UNICEF, this paper summarizes the challenges and lessons learned by evaluating the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) strategy for the elimination of discrimination in employment strategy using a human rights lens.