During 2011, the Evaluation Office conducted a series of evaluations of UNDP’s global and regional programmes. This evaluation covered the Regional Programme for Asia and the Pacific 2008-2013, implemented by the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, through its Asia- Pacific Regional Centre in Bangkok and the Pacific Centre in Suva. It examined the results achieved by the 14 thematic programmes established to implement the regional programme and the complementary technical support services that the two regional centres provided to country offices and other national or regional partners.
The evaluation found that despite the constraints of operating in an extremely diverse region the regional programme was highly relevant, had addressed critical regional development challenges and operated efficiently. The programme implementation was guided by the ‘regionality’ principle that required the programme to focus on issues of regional or cross-border nature, and activities with which a regional approach would make sense, allowing the sharing of knowledge and experience or producing scale economy.
The key message that emerged from the evaluation was that UNDP was most effective when its various components, the global, regional and country programmes, worked together to make the difference on the ground. To attain the maximum development results, the regional programme initiatives have to be organically linked to country programme operations, leveraging their objectives. The country programme should also need to put regional programme initiatives into action on the ground and ensure the sustainability of their results. If implemented in isolation, the regional programme with its limited size would not make much of an impact in the vast and diverse Asia-Pacific context.
The Regional Programme for Asia and the Pacific was found to have been playing an important leveraging role in this regard, technically backstopping country operations, and facilitating knowledge exchange and promoting the adoption of normative values in the regional context. The regional programme, and the regional centres, can further enhance the values that UNDP brings into the region by playing these roles most effectively. The report’s recommendations mainly suggest how UNDP could do this. The shared responsibilities and mutual accountability between the regional and country programmes should be built into the programmes and their implementation modalities. The regional programme could play the role of knowledge manager and innovator in the regional context more effectively.
