Independent evaluation of the UNFPA Strategic Plan 2022-2025 presented to the Executive Board

The independent evaluation of the UNFPA Strategic Plan 2022-2025 provides evidence on what works and what does not to accelerate progress towards achievement of UNFPA’s three transformative results - ending preventable maternal deaths, ending unmet need for family planning, and ending gender-based violence and harmful practices - and informs the design of the next UNFPA Strategic Plan 2026-2029.

On 31 January 2025, in her opening address to the Executive Board First Regular Session 2025, Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA Executive Director, presented an emerging vision for the new strategic plan guided by the evaluation. She emphasized the urgency of accelerating progress towards the existing transformative results, while positioning UNFPA to better reflect the full scope of its mandate and the ICPD agenda. This includes the introduction of a proposed fourth outcome on demographic resilience. Dr. Kanem remarked that a measured focus on demographic resilience will enhance and reinforce the organization’s vitally important work to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights across the life cycle. It will help UNFPA to adapt to the range of country contexts in which it works, and to provide the diverse support that governments are requesting from UNFPA.

Dr Natalia Kanem: From the data and evaluative evidence, we already know a great deal about what works, where and why, and about how our work can support national governments to build demographic resilience while upholding the rights of women and girls.

At the Executive Board session on 30 January 2025, Marco Segone, Director of the UNFPA Independent Evaluation Office (IEO), presented the evaluation highlights to the Executive Board. He emphasised the evaluation’s efficient and innovative approach, which included coordinating with six concurrent regional programme evaluations to avoid duplication of effort and enhance synergy. The evaluation also leveraged ethical and responsible artificial intelligence for data collection to increase efficiency.

Diene Keita, UNFPA Deputy Executive Director, Programme, presented UNFPA's management response to the evaluation, further affirming UNFPA’s commitment to leverage evaluative evidence to strengthen UNFPA as an organization and its programming.

She expressed appreciation for the evaluation's valuable insights and outlined concrete steps to ensure the implementation of its recommendations in the development of the new strategic plan.

Diene Keita: UNFPA needs to retain its focus in its next strategic plan on its core mandate and comparative advantage. This is more important than ever as we strive to accelerate progress towards the transformative results, the ICPD Programme of Action, and the SDGs and ensure that efforts to protect the population and development agenda are fully integrated into the approach.

All evaluation materials are available here, including the evaluation report, brief (EN, FR, ES), presentation, short video, management response, evaluation quality assessment, as well as the Executive Board paper (EN, FR, ES, AR, RU, ZH) and statements. Watch the full video of the UNFPA evaluation session at the Executive Board.