Developing and strengthening evaluation policies in countries is important for good governance and effective development. The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015 and their focus on country-led evaluation in line with identified priorities for SDG targets that are most relevant to the national and local context have also emphasized the need for countries to strengthen their data collection, analysis and review processes. One of the key principles of SDGs “No one left behind” is important to achieve equity focused and sustainable development. It is a challenge in many countries that disadvantaged communities sometimes do not get benefits of the development. That is why equitable development needs to be emphasized with equity focused and gender responsive evaluation.

More over EvalPartners in collaboration with other stakeholders developed and launched the Global Evaluation Agenda 2016-2020 at the Parliament of Nepal according to which national evaluation policies and systems play and important role at country level. According to the study on “Mapping status of national evaluation policies”, only 20 countries have established national evaluation policies. It shows how far the journey is and where we stand now. The Global Parliamentarians Forum is planning to further advance the important work on NEP and systems and proposes the following strategy.

Goal:

The goal of the Global Parliamentarians Forum is to advance the enabling environment for nationally owned, transparent, systematic and standard evaluation processes in line with the principles of “No one left behind” and National Evaluation Policies with equity-focused and gender responsive lens at the country level that are aimed at contributing to good governance and sustainable development.

Objectives:

1. To enhance evaluation technical capacity of parliamentarians and national parliaments to promote evaluation culture.
2. To advocate more parliamentarians and national parliaments to create enabling environment for evaluation.
3. To promote evaluation function for Sustainable Development Goals in the framework of “No one left behind”.
4. To mobilize and advocate for international community including United Nations to strengthen evaluation capacity of national parliaments.