Evaluation at UNFPA serves three main purposes. It strengthens accountability, evidence-based decision making and learning at UNFPA.
The evaluation function is governed by the UNFPA evaluation policy. The Executive Board is the custodian of the policy. The independent Evaluation Office (EO), established in July 2013, is the custodian of the evaluation function and, with support from the Executive Director, is accountable for implementing the policy. The EO reports directly to the Executive Board, including through the Annual Report on Evaluation.
UNFPA evaluations fall into two categories. Centralized evaluations to assess organization wide issues, and decentralized evaluations of country, regional and global programmes. The EO also prepares a quadrennial budgeted evaluation plan and budget, which is approved by the Executive Board.
All UNFPA evaluations are publicly available on the UNFPA Evaluation Database together with their management response.