NO ONE LEFT BEHIND

The diversity of actors involved in an intervention in
current contexts and their different interests—often
conflicting—is one of the dimensions that needs more
attention. This is especially true given the importance
of “hearing all voices” and building a vision and agreement
on the assessments made. Evaluation design
needs to take into account in-depth understanding of
local contexts. It also needs to be fully-customized and
context specific. It is essential to understand local scenarios
and how they interact with global processes, as
this allows evaluators to understand how the “global”
is manifested in the local. In addition, understanding
the role of the environment in each process and its
relationship with the population is key—especially for
the most disadvantaged populations. Methods that
advocate horizontal evaluation processes and encourage
dialogues with various actors and reflection with
the population are critical.
A multi-layer, multi-dimensional and multi-method
approach is needed to address complexity of interventions.
Monitoring has a privileged place in the context
of interventions in complex environments. Monitoring
requires one to pay attention to the story, patterns,
events and simple numbers that are used to measure
things. Participatory monitoring with different stakeholders
is particularly important in evaluations of
complex programmes.
Theory of change of localized SDGs will need to consider
the complexity of programmes. However, theory
of change may not capture all aspects. Therefore evaluation
designs, evaluation methods and processes need
to be concise to capture different dimensions of the
programme and complexity.
National evaluation policies and systems
National M&E systems should focus on the SDGs as
they cover all aspects of interventions. National evaluation
policies are key in all countries. According to the
Global Study on Mapping National Evaluation Policies,
only 20 countries have formalized national evaluation
policies. And of those existing policies, only a few
include equity and/or gender equality provisions. For
example, Kenya, Nepal and Zimbabwe include some
gender equality aspects in their national evaluation
policies and Afghanistan includes an equity-focused
and gender-responsive section.
Countries such as Mexico, Chile, Colombia and South
Africa have strong national evaluation systems and
Malaysia has a strong results-based planning, budgeting
and monitoring system. However, these systems
need to strengthen equity-focused and gender-responsive
aspects in evaluation. Currently, the main focus in
many countries is on financial monitoring rather than
results. The government capacity to plan, commission,
disseminate and use evaluations needs to be increased.
Moving beyond financial monitoring requires
capacity to lobby evaluation, capacity to manage the
evaluation process, capacity of individual evaluators to
successfully conduct evaluations and capacity to use
evaluations. Peer learning from successful national
evaluation systems needs to be strengthened.
Localizing SDG indicators
All countries need to work on localized SDG indicators,
monitoring data collection and evaluation of SDGs.
The 230 global indicators cover all 169 SDG targets,
which helps countries measure their own progress
of indicators. The discussion on localizing indicators
needs wider stakeholder consultation. It is also needed
to identify targets, data needs, data sources and who is
finally managing indicators at the national level.
Demand for and use of evidence from
equity-focused and gender-responsive
evaluation to inform equitable development
Political will is key in any country in order to strengthen
evaluation culture. Parliamentarians and political leaders
need to demand high-quality evaluations in order
to make policy decisions and allocate resources for
development interventions. Evaluation reports can
be key information sources for parliament debates,
committee meetings and cabinet papers. For this,
Evaluating the Sustainable Development Goals with
an Equity-focused and Gender-responsive Lens 23