16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

5 Discussion on the Draft Conclusions and
Recommendations
231. The discussion and adoption of the conclusions and recommendations of the 16th
Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the United Nations system and host country
agencies dominated the deliberations on the third day. Based on the many working
papers and contributions thoroughly discussed during the previous two days of
the meeting, the final conclusions and recommendations were drafted and adopted.
232. The participants conversed extensively on the issue of monitoring and evaluating host
institutions. In this regard, participants agreed to consider the issue on a wider scale.
They recommended “Fellowships Impact Assessment” to be one of the major agenda
items of the 17th Meeting in 2008. In addition, they recommended the creation of a
Task Force on the Impact Assessment of Fellowships. The Task Force would face the
challenge of coming up with heretofore non-existent methodology for measuring the
impact of fellowships programmes.
233. Due to the impossibility of UNDP country offices to submit cost-of-living questionnaires
for countries whose stipend rates had not been reviewed since 1989, the meeting
recommended that UN/DESA request the High Level Committee on Management to
authorize delegation of authority to complete the questionnaires to other UN agencies
present in the field and directly involved in fellowships programmes. The whole set of
Conclusions and Recommendations is reproduced in Annex I.