NO ONE LEFT BEHIND

collaboration with other stakeholders on accountability
on the SDGs.
Parliamentarians and policymakers also have a role to
promote M&E nationally. Parliamentarians work as a
conduit between the government and the people, and
are accountable to the people much as the government
is to parliament. Parliamentarians also have a
role to demand and support legislation on M&E and
national M&E policies (e.g., amendments on M&E
and gender-responsive budgeting), to facilitate capacity
building of M&E systems nationally. Parliaments
should empower oversight units (e.g., committees,
commissions and M&E units) to promote evaluation
reports to the decision makers. Parliamentarians attending
the workshop also raised practical concerns
including budgetary provisions for and independence
of M&E at the national level.
Parliamentarians also emphasized their role to
strengthen equity-focused and gender-responsive
evaluation for SDGs. This includes working with
VOPEs, civil society, evaluators and other stakeholders
on building capacity; developing gender-responsive
budgets (e.g., Colombia, Mexico, Tunisia); promoting
gender and human rights expertise in all amendments
in the parliament (e.g., Kyrgyzstan); promoting
oversight committees and commissions to demand
equity-focused and gender-responsive documents
and disaggregated data; and pushing the agenda of
equity-focused and gender-responsive evaluation and
building it into national policies and legislation.
In some countries, parliamentarians are engaged in
promoting an evaluation culture. In Kenya, a parliamentary
caucus has been established to advocate to
the Parliament for evaluation. In Nepal, the National
Parliamentarians Forum for Evaluation Policy has been
established with representation from many political
parties. Furthermore, evaluation is included in the
national constitution in Nepal due to advocacy by
several parliamentarian champions; the draft National
Evaluation Policy Act is ready to be submitted to the
Parliament. In Kyrgyzstan, the M&E Law (Law of the
Kyrgyz Republic #35) was passed in February 2014 and
introduced amendments to existing laws requiring
M&E of legislation and programmes. A parliamentarian
champion and evaluation community leaders took
the lead in passing the law.
The Global Parliamentarians Forum for Evaluation and
regional forums are encouraging parliamentarians
to help create and strengthen an enabling environment
for evaluation, and in particular, equity-focused
and gender-responsive national evaluation policies
and systems.
Evaluating the Sustainable Development Goals with
an Equity-focused and Gender-responsive Lens 21