1.Background of the programme

Since February 2023, UN Women, FAO and Public Foundation Roza Otunbaeva’s Initiative (ROI) are implementing a project funded by the Peacebuilding Fund “Capacitated Women CSOs sustaining peace in Kyrgyzstan”. The project is implemented in 9 localities of the two districts of Batken province, that had experienced violent cross-border conflicts in 2021 and 2022.

Although women very often led community-level socio-economic initiatives addressing cross-border issues and are holders of local knowledge of climate-smart livelihood practices, they remain underrepresented at different levels of decision-making and are absent from the mainstream peace processes. The wide range of ways in which climate change and environmental degradation impact women’s security is well acknowledged in Kyrgyzstan and includes internal displacements, decreased incomes, increased incidents of gender-based violence, malnutrition and waterborne diseases as a result of droughts and floods to mention few. At the same time, since approval of National Action Plan (NAP) UNSCR 1325 in 2022 there has been a lot of challenges with its implementation lacking sufficient data and understanding of the interlinkages between the gender, peace and climate security.

The current project is focused on institutional capacity building of Women Civil Society Organizations (WCSOs) and creating a conducive environment for their participation in strategic level decision-making as a basis for addressing climate security leading towards sustaining peace in Kyrgyzstan. The expected outcome of the project is ‘Women civil society organizations in Kyrgyzstan mitigate climate-related security risks in target localities and national level contributing towards sustained peace’. This outcome is planned to be achieved through the following three outputs focusing on:

1) Strengthening the institutional capacities of WCSOs engaged in peacebuilding, especially in the South of the country;

2) Supporting central and local government in creating sustainable and inclusive mechanisms and practices for partnering with WCSOs; and

3) Creating opportunities to test new ways of collaboration between WCSOs and the Government towards mitigating climate-related security risks and thus contributing to sustaining peace.

The current project is implemented within the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) Country Programme Strategy for the period of 2021-2026 developed and approved following the request of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic to the UN Secretary General. The PBF Strategy focuses on supporting social cohesion and addressing risks of border conflicts as key peacebuilding priorities, identified under the following three broad areas of implementation:

1) Strengthening trust between the citizens and authorities;

2) Fostering greater mutual trust between different identity groups; and

3) Facilitating cooperation between border communities

The PBF GPI project “Capacitated Women CSOs sustaining peace in Kyrgyzstan” contributes to the Outcome 1: “Horizontal and vertical trust are enhanced due to improved government mechanisms for inter-group dialogue, inclusivity, and accountability”; and Outcome 3: “Mutual understanding and cooperation within and between border communities are strengthened”. It also contributes to the UNSDCF Priority Area 4” Support national efforts to promote just, accountable, and inclusive institutions and a civil society that fosters peace, cohesion and human rights for all; UNSDCF Outcome 4: By 2027, all people in the Kyrgyz Republic enjoy the benefits of fair and accountable democratic institutions that are free from corruption and apply innovative solutions that promote respect for human rights, and strengthen peace and cohesion.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Targets to which the project contributes include SDG 5, SDG8, SDG 10 and SDG16:

• SDG 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere, contributing to targets 5.1; 5.2; 5.4; 5.5; 5.6; 5.a; 5.c
• SDG 8. Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all, contributing to targets 8.2; 8.3; 8.5;
• SDG 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries, contributing to targets 10.2;
• SDG 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels, contributing to targets 16.6; 16.b

To lead and accelerate for transformative change, the project is engaging a wide range of partners to jointly learn and practice social innovation tools and techniques including digital and climate smart technologies in the target communities as new entry points of mitigating climate related security risks. The project has been adapting its strategies throughout the implementation to respond to the identified challenges and engaging the following approaches to ensure its outcome:

1. Systems thinking approach to address complexities of the peace-building context through revisiting  women movements as a separate issue and seeking for improved understanding of interconnectedness of the WPS agenda leading to actions address these interlinkages;
2. Do ho harm approach to consciously look for and mitigate possible negative impacts on WCSO and other actors;
3. Human-centric approach to ensure the collective process of learning and iteration to ensure participation and leadership of WCSOs at Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda;
4. Recognition and respect of local knowledge through facilitation of defining local solutions;
5. Reconsidering of the concept of WSCOs’ participation based on revised HRBA methodology ensuring right-centered approach when developing models for support;
6. Transformative experimental processes to capacity building engaging diverse range of perspectives and experiences, including through Design Thinking, to re-frame problems and encourage collaborative work to find new solutions.

1.1. Project beneficiaries and key stakeholders 

The project targeted 19 WSCOs mainly representing southern regions of the country as the main partners and beneficiaries of the project. They have been benefitting from extensive capacity development initiatives of the project but also participating as agents of change providing support to local communities, and partnership with other mainstream WSCOs with a peacebuilding mandate to engage them in peer-to-peer support and exchanges with the WCSOs.

The project also targeted nine Local Self-Governments, five in the Batken district and four in the Leilek district, with total population of 75,000 citizens who directly or indirectly benefited from project interventions, as well as the whole population of Batken province that learned about climate-smart initiatives and agro-technologies.

On the stakeholder’s side, the project engaged several national authorities including relevant ministries such as the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Ministry of Water Resources, Agriculture and Food Processing, Minister of Natural Resources, Environment and Technical Supervision, Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Labor, Social Welfare and Migration. It has also worked closely with the Security Council of the Kyrgyz Republic, the State Agency on Civil Service and Local Self-Government, and the office of Plenipotentiary Representative of the President in the Batken Region. On several initiatives and key policy-making processes, the project has been cooperating with the Cabinet of the Ministers of the Kyrgyz Republic, the Commissioner for Children’s rights, and the Gender Council on Women and Children Affairs of the National Parliament, Jogorku Kenesh.

The project also partnered with WSCOs and CSOs which are external to WPS agenda such as academia, think tanks, private sector and media, engaged in climate change agenda, security and youth.

As the result of the first 1.5 years of implementation, the project managed to:

• Conduct climate risk assessment in a participatory manner in all of the 9 target locations;
• Integrate climate change, conflict prevention, and promotion of gender equality priorities including measures on preschool education into 9 Local Socio-Economic Development Plans (LSDEP) in target municipalities;
• Enhance the capacity of 149 LSG representatives  from targeted communities to engage community members into LSEDP and integrate gender and climate security as priority areas;
• Provide knowledge to WCSOs on efficient natural resource management, including land and water resources, UNSCR 1325 and peacebuilding, and green entrepreneurship;
• Launching of ‘Laboratory KADAM’ to build institutional capacities of WCSOs with 12 of them being its active members and testing new models of interaction between LSGs and WCSOs;
• Test and introduce three mechanisms with the participation of  772 (486 w/286m) of community residents incl. 109 representatives of LSGs  (Speed dating, Design Thinking, Visioning);
• Conduct a number of dialogues to discuss related policies between the WSCOs and the Government and institutionalize annual forum with engagement of WSCOs including from affected cross-border areas at the Jogorku Kenesh (National Parliament) platform;
• Finance and implement 60 out of 140 co-created by WSCOs and LSGs small-scale initiatives to address the climate, conflict prevention and gender equality.

1.2. Budget, timeframe and geographic scope

The project budget is 1,9 million USD and it was distributed among the recipient agencies in the following way with 50% of the budget intended to be managed by WSCOs:

UN Women – 900,000 USD

FAO – 450,000 USD

ROI – 550,000 USD (women led CSO)

Project duration was initially planned for 24 months, starting from February 2023 to February 2025. But due to various changes in the legislative context and seasonal factors related to small grants initiatives implementation, it was extended for 6 months until August 2025.

The project is nationwide by its scope, with the focus on community-level activities in Batken Province, Batken and Leilek districts in the South of Kyrgyzstan bordering Tajikistan. The following 9 municipalities in Batken Province were targeted:  Dara AO, Kyshtut AO, Kara-Bulak AO, Suu-Bashi, Tortkul AO in Batken district and Toguz-Bulak, Ken-Talaa, Sumbulla and Leilek AO in Leilek district.

1.3. Management arrangements of the project

This project was designed to be implemented through a joint working team of UN Women, FAO and ROI under the coordinated management structure. The UN Women sub-office in Osh coordinated fieldwork by Recipient organizations and ensured cooperation with local authorities. Recipient organizations worked closely with national counterparts and supported their implementation by liaising with authorities in cross-border areas. Recipient organizations in Bishkek worked directly with the project team and field specialists based in Osh.

Project Coordination and oversight arrangements included the following:

1. The PBF Joint Steering Committee (JSC), as the main decision-making body, included UN Resident Coordinator, representatives of Recipient organizations, Secretariat of the Security Council, Ministries: of Foreign Affairs, of Interior, of Health and Social Development, and of Agriculture, and the implementing partners. The joint program (JP) team conducted regular meetings to review its progress and ensure coherence, adjust programming to remain conflict-sensitive and prepare joint annual work plans that were presented and approved by the JSC. Key staff from Recipient organizations and partners based in Osh and Bishkek contributed to these planning sessions and engaged in the implementation of the annual work plans approved.
2. The Recipient organizations collaborated actively with the UN Peace and Development Advisors (PDA) and the Peace-Building Support Office in Bishkek. This PDA-team provided strategic guidance in joint planning, framing monitoring and evaluation, and quality assurance of the project.
3. The project team that comprised the Project Manager, Responsible for the entire project coordination and implementation (UNW), Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Associate, responsible for monitoring and reporting of the project implementation and learning from and communication of project results (UNW); Two coordinators responsible for project technical aspects of activities implementation by FAO and ROI, 3 project assistants, Climate security specialist responsible for agriculture related activities, and Social mobilization specialist of ROI).

2. Evaluation purpose, objectives, and use

A final joint evaluation of the PBF GPI project is taking place during the last year of the project implementation with a focus on assessing the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, and sustainability of the project.

The objectives of this evaluation are to:

• Assess how the project design matches with the complexity of addressing the triple nexus of gender, climate and security;
• Assess how effective have the selected programme strategies and approaches been in progressing towards achieving project results and contributing to peacebuilding;
• Assess to what extent expected outputs and outcomes have been achieved;
• Assess how adaptably and rapidly did the project react to the changing country context, including political and legal;
• Assess if the coordination mechanism established led to better project results;
• Analyze if targeted WSCOs have voice and influence to mitigate climate-related security risks in target localities and national level;
• Provide recommendations with regard to future work to address the triple nexus of gender, climate, and security to implement WPS and CPS agendas.

The findings of the evaluation are expected to contribute to strategic decision-making, organization learning, and accountability, and will be used for the design of future related interventions in the country. The evaluation should provide specific recommendations as to the priority areas that should be considered to inform future programming. They will also be a key input to knowledge management on gender, security and climate programming and actions in the region.

Targeted users of the evaluation are WCSOs, government counterparts and development partners, UN agencies and the personnel working in this field of climate and gender, and UN Women, which also administers the joint evaluation adhering to the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) norms and standards for evaluation.

Within six weeks after the approval of the final evaluation report partner entities will produce a joint Management Response (MR) to evaluation recommendations in consultation with key partners. The final evaluation and related MR will be disseminated among development partners, national and local governments, CSOs and other relevant partners.

3. Scope of evaluation

The final project evaluation of the project will be conducted during the final stage of the project implementation and will cover the period from March 2023 to June 2025. The project’s social innovation approach with its scope and broad range of partners and stakeholders engaged in a series of co-creation activities to contribute to an enabling environment for WSCOs to participate in strategic level decision-making for addressing climate security leading towards sustaining peace has been one of the key challenges in its implementation. New way of doing “business” from one hand, and changes in the political and normative spheres from the other hand like an adaption of amendments to the Law “On non-commercial organizations” or the so-called “Foreign Representatives” law initiated in 2023 and adopted in March 2024 introducing new procedures for the ways local CSOs will operate, demanded project’s strategy and activities adaptation, resulting in the project extension for another 6 months period.

The evaluation will be conducted during March- June 2025 and will include data collection and missions to the country and its targeted communities to cover all aspects of the programme implementation.

4. Evaluation methodology and evaluation questions

4.1. Evaluation methodology 

The joint evaluation will be a transparent and participatory process involving relevant stakeholders and partners in the countries. The evaluation will be based on gender and human rights principles and adhere to the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards and Ethical Code of Conduct and UN Women Evaluation Policy and guidelines^[1].

This is a final project evaluation but there is an ambition to continue support of the programme related to gender and climate security, especially under the ongoing effects of climate change impacting lives of thousands of women in various communities. The evaluation will hence follow both a summative approach (backwards looking) to support enhanced accountability, assessing the achievement of the objectives and results, as well as a formative (forward-looking) approach, focusing on capturing the lessons learned during the implementation of the project to foster strategic planning and decision-making for the next possible programme.

The evaluation methodology will follow a Theory of Change approach and employ mixed methods including quantitative and qualitative data collection methods and analytical approaches to account for the complexity of triple nexus (gender/climate/security), and gender relations in general to ensure participatory and inclusive processes of decision-making.

Methods may include but are not limited to:

• Desk review of relevant documents such as project and programme documents, project progress reports and implementing partners reports, baseline and endline study, financial records, meeting minutes and monitoring reports, and secondary data or studies relating to the country and region context.
• Semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, surveys, including perception ones, with direct and indirect beneficiaries, implementing partners, donor and other key stakeholders.
• Field visits and observation at selected programme sites.
• Interviews with key stakeholders to ensure further triangulation.

Data from different research sources will be triangulated to increase its validity. The proposed approach and methodology must be considered as flexible guidelines rather than final requirements, and the evaluators will have to revise and make a refined methodological proposal at the inception phase of the evaluation. It is expected that the Evaluation Team, the service provider for this evaluation, will further refine the approach and methodology and submit a detailed description in the inception report. The methodology and approach must, however, incorporate human rights and gender equality perspectives.

Evaluation team must consider the evaluation’s management structure (see section 4. Evaluation governance structure and process) to validate all evaluation products. Comments provided by the Internal Evaluation Reference Group (IERG) and External Evaluation Reference Group (EERG) are aimed at fostering high level of stakeholder’s participation, enhancing methodological rigor, factual errors, errors of interpretation, or omission of information and must be considered by the evaluators to ensure high-quality products.

4.2. Evaluation questions

The evaluation will address questions under the OCDE/DAC evaluation criteria, including relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and impact. Given the mandates to mainstream human rights and gender equality in all their work, and the UN Women and FAO evaluation policies that promote the integration of women’s rights and gender equality principles, these dimensions will receive special attention in this evaluation and will be considered under each evaluation criterion

It is anticipated that the evaluation team will develop an evaluation matrix, which will address the questions below[2] (and refine them as necessary), the areas they pertain to, the criteria for evaluating them, the indicators and the means for verification as a tool for the evaluation. The final evaluation matrix will be validated by the evaluation task manager and the evaluation reference groups constituted in the framework of this evaluation process and approved in the evaluation inception report.

Relevance

• To what extent was the design of the programme and its results relevant to the needs and priorities of the beneficiaries?
• To what extent the programme addresses the main needs of the project´s target groups?
• To what extent is the programme consistent with the national development strategies in the area of promoting gender equality, climate change adaptation and security?
• To what extent has the programme been aligned to country strategies and policies on gender equality and women’s empowerment?
• To what extent key national and regional level partners were involved in the programme’s conceptualization and design process?
• To what extent have gender and human rights principles and strategies been integrated into the programme design and implementation?

Coherence 

• To what extent the programme adheres to corporate strategic priorities of UN Women, FAO and ROI?
• Is the programme achieving synergies between the larger UN Women’s and FAO’s portfolios and the work of the UN Country Team?
• Is the programme achieving synergies between UN Women and FAO and the national and local government counterparts?
• Is the programme achieving synergies between FAO, UN Women, ROI and CSOs working at national and regional level?
• How was the development and implementation of the project document supported by the UN PBF team?
• To what extent UN Women, FAO and ROI possess a comparative advantage in the programme’s area of work in comparison with other UN entities and relevant stakeholders?

Effectiveness

• To what extent have the expected results of the programme been achieved on both objectives and results levels? How they have contributed to peacebuilding?
• Has programme achieved any unforeseen results, either positive or negative? For whom? What are the good practices and the obstacles or shortcomings encountered? How were they overcome?
• How effective have the selected strategies and approaches been in achieving programme results?
• Has the programme managed to pilot effective approaches to address triple nexus of gender/climate/security and affect ?
• To what extent are the programme approaches and strategies innovative for achieving actual stated objectives? What,  if any, types of innovative good practices have been introduced in the programme for the achievement of the results?

Efficiency 

• Have resources (financial, human, technical support, etc.) been allocated strategically to achieve the programme outcomes?
• Has there been effective leadership and management of the programme including the structuring of management and administration roles to maximize results? Where does accountability lie?
• Have the programme’s results been delivered in a timely manner?
• To what extent has the programme’s management structure facilitated (or hindered) good results and efficient delivery?

Sustainability

• What is the likelihood that the benefits from the programme will be maintained for a reasonably long period of time after the programme phase out?
• How effectively has the programme generated national ownership of the results achieved, the establishment of partnerships with relevant stakeholders and the development of in-country capacities to ensure sustainability of efforts and benefits?
• To what extent the programme fostered the participation of  WCSOs in strategic level decision-making to address climate security leading to towards sustaining peace in the country?
• To what extent has the programme been able to create and promote conducive environment for WCSOs to participate in strategic decision making to address climate security?
• To what extent have different strategies fostered been successful in establishing the mechanisms that would ensure the continuation of work WCSOs in climate security after programme’s implementation? What factors are/will be critical to maintain programmes’s results in the long term?

5. Evaluation governance structure and process 

5.1. Evaluation governance structure 

A threefold management structure will be established comprising a joint Evaluation Steering Committee (ESC), a joint Evaluation Management Group (EMG), and a joint Evaluation Reference Group (ERG).

An Evaluation Steering Committee (ESC) will be the key accountable body that will ultimately endorse the evaluation report and will be responsible for the development of an evaluation Management Response (MR) to address the recommendations included in the report. The ESC will be co-chaired by the UN Women Country Representative, FAO Country Representative  and Director of the Public Foundation of ROI .

The Joint Evaluation Management Group (EMG) will be formed by a designated Monitoring and Evaluation Specialists of UN Women, FAO and ROI and will provide oversight and quality assurance to the evaluation process. The UN Women Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist will be assigned as the task manager to oversee the evaluation process and will be responsible for quality assurance of different deliverables and for the day-to-day management of the evaluation (in close coordination with UN WOmen Programme Manager and FAO and ROI programme coordinators). The ESC will endorse the evaluation products and, once the evaluation process is completed, will issue a joint evaluation Management Response (MR) to act on the evaluation recommendations.

A joint Evaluation Reference Group (ERG) will also be conformed to foster a highly participatory approach and will be consulted throughout the evaluation process. Specific ToRs for the different bodies that integrate the evaluation management structure will be developed and endorsed by the implementing entities. The role of the ERG will include the following tasks, but not limited to:

• Participates in any relevant ERG meeting;
• Facilitates access of the evaluation team to information sources (documents and interviewees) to support data collection;
• Advises on the quality of the work done by the evaluation team;
• Provides comments on the main deliverables of the evaluation, including the draft final report;
• Assists in feedback of the findings, conclusions and recommendations from the evaluation into future programme design and implementation.

To ensure the greatest degree of independency of the evaluation process, the UN Women Regional Evaluation Specialist will provide guidance ensuring that the evaluation is conducted in accordance with the UN Women and FAO Evaluation Policies, and UNEG Norms and Standards for evaluation in the UN System.

5.2. Phases of the evaluation process

The evaluation process has five phases:

1) Preparation: gathering and analysing programme data, conceptualizing the evaluation approach, internal consultations on the approach, preparing the TOR, establishment of the evaluation management’s structure, stakeholders mapping and selection of evaluation team.

2) Inception: consultations between the evaluation team and the Steering Committee, programme portfolio review, finalization of stakeholder mapping, inception meetings with the ERG, review of the result logics, analysis of information relevant to the initiative, finalization of evaluation methodology and preparation and validation of inception report.

3) Data collection and analysis: in-depth desk research, in-depth review of the programme documents and monitoring frameworks, in-depth online interviews as necessary, staff and partner survey/s, and field visits^[3].

4) Analysis, validation and synthesis stage: analysis of data and interpretation of findings and drafting and validation of an evaluation report and other communication products.

5) Dissemination and follow-up: once the evaluation is completed UN Women, FAO and ROI are responsible for the development of a joint Management Response to evaluation recommendations within 6 weeks after the final approval of the evaluation report, publishing the evaluation report, uploading the final evaluation report on the UN Women and FAO evaluation databases and the dissemination of evaluation findings amongst key stakeholders.

The evaluation team will be responsible for phases 2, 3 and 4 with the support of UN Women and FAO,  while UN Women and FAO are entirely responsible for phases 1 and 5.

Description of Responsibilities/ Scope of Work

Deliverables

6. Expected deliverables and timeframe 

6.1. Evaluation deliverables

The Team Leader is responsible for the following deliverables:

• An inception report: with the support of the National Consultant, a Team Leader will present a refined scope, a detailed outline of the evaluation design and methodology, evaluation questions, and criteria for the approach for in-depth desk review and field work to be conducted in the data collection phase. An inception workshop will be planned in the context of the inception phase. The report will include an evaluation matrix and detailed work plan.
• Presentation of preliminary findings: A PowerPoint presentation detailing the emerging findings of the evaluation will be shared with the evaluation task manager for feedback. The revised presentation will be delivered to the reference groups for comment and validation. The Team Leader will incorporate the feedback received into the draft report.
• A draft evaluation report: the first draft report which structure will be defined in the inception phase of the evaluation and will include a background, methodology, limitations, findings, conclusions, lessons learned and recommendations sections.
• The final evaluation report: The final report will include a concise Executive Summary and annexes detailing the methodological approach and any analytical products developed during the course of the evaluation.
• Evaluation communication products: A PowerPoint presentation of the final key evaluation findings and recommendations, and a 2-pager/infographics on the final key findings, lessons learned and recommendations.

Regarding the validation process of all products, those will be shared with the evaluation reference groups for feedback and validation. The Team Leader will maintain an audit trail of the comments received and provide a response on how the comments were addressed in the final evaluation report. Final evaluation report will