Reports - United Nations Development Programme

COUNTRY EVALUATION: ASSESSMENT OF DEVELOPMENT RESULTS – TURKEY
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The expected development results are only
vaguely identified.
(iv) Strategic Results Framework
The SRF was introduced to Country Offices by the
UNDP in October 2000. It is designed to capture the
UNDP’s major areas of intervention and the broad
development outcomes to which it is contributing at the
country level through its programme outputs. The SRF
is an internal planning, reporting and management tool
for the UNDP, based on the CCF and on current country
priorities. It is meant to be used for strategic planning
and performance assessment through the ROAR to
its Headquarters. These country reports are then
consolidated into a global ROAR presented to the
UNDP’s Executive Board. (See also Chapter 5.)
Based on the global framework of UNDP goals, the
specific sub-goals and strategic areas of support selected
and elaborated for the Turkey SRF have changed over
the years, but have generally included the following four
main goals:
Governance
Poverty
Environment
Gender
In addition, at various times “Special Development
Situations” and “UN Support” have been included among
the main goals.
The link between the four recurring priority areas in
the SRF and the priority areas of the CCF is unclear. It
is noteworthy that the SRF framework clearly specifies
poverty reduction as an overarching goal while the CCF
does not.
(v) New Directions since 2001
In 2003, under new Country Office management, the
UNDP began an in depth process of repositioning itself.
Starting with a “visioning exercise” informed by a
partnership opinion survey, the Country Office has now
finalised a Vision Statement (see Annexe 8), which can be
summarised as follows:
“UNDP works in Turkey for democratic governance
and growth without poverty, in support of EU
accession and for the achievement of the MDGs.”
All ongoing and new initiatives are now grouped
under the four main SRF thematic areas mentioned
above, representing the UNDP’s strategic thrust: 30
“Improve governance, reduce poverty, achieve
gender equity, protect the environment.”
In addition, the current management has started to
reduce the number of activities in the ongoing portfolio.
However, the key flagship products, which formed the
core of the UNDP’s programme over the last ten years,
still remain.
At the same time, the UNDP Resident Representative,
in his capacity as the UNDP Resident Coordinator,
has revived the UNCT process with a view to
(a) reinvigorating the existing four working groups and
(b) preparing a new UNDAF process. As mentioned
below, these new initiatives, conducted in the context
of the Government’s EU accession policies, appear
highly promising.
C. ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FOR
THE UNDP’S STRATEGY IN TURKEY
The preceding summary overview of the UNDP’s
statements of strategic priorities and themes in Turkey
show that there have been frequent shifts in the
documents describing the UNDP’s positioning, especially
in the last five years. It appears that these shifts have not
been related principally to changes in country needs or in
Government priorities. Rather, it seems they were a
response to shifting strategic postures of UNDP
management in Turkey and at Headquarters.
Despite these changes in strategy statements, key
planks of the underlying programme seem to have
changed remarkably little over the years, as major
programmes supported by the UNDP – GAP, LEAP, LA
21, Environment for Development, GEF Small Grants
Programme, gender initiative(s), TCDC, NHDRs,
disaster assistance, etc. – continued to form a lasting core
of its activities. These activities and their results will be
reviewed in depth in Chapter 4.
The good news in all this is that there now seems to
be a convergence of key strategy themes for the UNDP as
it has started to engage in a fundamental repositioning
that is in tune with Turkey’s efforts to gain EU accession
and with an enhanced focus by the UNDP in Turkey on
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30. The UNDP Turkey web-site (www.undp.org.tr), however, uses yet another
framework for categorising programmes by focusing on the UNDP’s six
thematic practice areas: democratic governance, poverty reduction, crisis
prevention and recovery, energy and environment, information and
communications technologies, and HIV/AIDS. These are complemented by four
priorities: MDGs, gender mainstreaming, partnership and policy assistance, and
TCDC. This approach is mandated by UNDP Headquarters as part of a worldwide
effort to present a uniform corporate strategic framework.