The Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE) participated in the 2017 United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Evaluation Week, which was comprised three key components: Annual General Meeting, Evaluation Practice Exchange (EPE) and High-level Event.

The 2017 Evaluation Week provided a unique forum for UNEG members to get together, share and exchange latest activities, best practices and lessons, and knowledge in evaluation. The main theme  was “Eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a changing world.” It focused on the evaluation of seven Sustainable Development Goals of the 2017 fifth High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development and will be structured under the three streams:

• No one left behind: evaluating vulnerable and marginalized groups
• Evaluating transformational change
• National evaluation capacity

The Annual General Meeting provided an important business forum to review UNEG’s current work and discuss its upcoming strategies and work programmes. Oscar A. Garcia, in his capacity of Director IOE and UNEG Vice-Chair for enhancing the use of evaluation in the UN system, chaired the session on Evaluation informs UN system-wide initiatives and emerging demands and participated as a speaker in other sessions.

 The Evaluation Practice Exchange seminar is an informal forum for UNEG members to share their experiences on a range of topics. The Deputy Director of IOE, Fabrizio Felloni, delivered a presentation on: Case study: Impact evaluation of the Jharkhand- Chhattisgarh Tribal Development Programme in India at the session titled Evaluating Interventions with No One Left Behind lenses: Case studies and approaches.

Johanna Pennarz, IOE Lead Evaluation Officer, chaired a session on "Evaluating Gender Transformative Change" which was part of the annual Evaluation Practice Exchange. The session included presentations by IFAD, UNDP, UNICEF, UN-Women, ESCWA and UNODC on concepts and methods to evaluate gender-transformative change processes. All of the presentation followed the general definition of transformative change by UNRISD (2015), which emphasizes the importance of going beyond the symptoms of social, economic and political problems by addressing root-causes of inequality and deprivation.

One of the key features of the Evaluation Week was the ‘High-Level Event,’ where a group of prominent development thinkers and practitioners were invited to discuss and directly engage UNEG members on issues of critical importance to today’s development agenda.