EVALUATION OF UNHCR-LED INITIATIVES TO END STATELESSNESS – FINAL REPORT – VOLUME I offices, multi-country offices or regional representation offices. Similarly, data for Qatar is combined under the multi-country office in Riyadh. 93. There are almost two dozen countries where States do not report any data on stateless populations but there are suspected substantial populations of stateless persons of concern 64. Among these countries UNHCR has budgeted for and reported on statelessness indicators in some (China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic (under the United States multi-country office), Lebanon, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe). However, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Eritrea, and Libya have no statelessness-related budgets or indicator reporting, and Liberia had no budget and no reporting since 2017. Afghanistan and Bhutan are also omitted from the last two iterations of the GSIP, though they are included in the internal GAP Map. Finding 6: UNHCR’s results-based management system suggests achievements being in the unacceptable range in relation to global standards for all but one of the key statelessness indicators in its Results Framework. However, due to awkward performance assessment criteria, target setting, and incomplete reporting the system has not meaningfully supported assessment of the results of its statelessness work. 94. UNHCR’s Global Strategic Priorities (GSP), first developed for 2010-2011, are revised every two years. They reflect areas of critical concern to UNHCR within its overall efforts to strengthen protection, provide assistance and seek solutions for refugees and other persons of concern. The GSPs set key priorities and guide planning for UNHCR operations worldwide. Each GSP includes a set of priority indicators for measuring progress drawn from the Results Framework, which outlines the results chain including impact indicators (total of 185), and provides the foundation for UNHCR’s RBM software ‘Focus’, established in 2010. Operations integrate the relevant GSP impact indicators into their operations plans and set their own targets for progress, tracking results in Focus biannually, with achievements assessed in relation to global standards. 95. Since 2012, the current Results Framework has incorporated statelessness objectives, outputs and indicators. 11 impact indicators have been identified as directly relevant to the GAP 65, most of which66 have been used as relevant by operations since 2015. 96. Analysis of the RBM system data, however, shows that UNHCR has struggled to meet the statelessness targets for impact indicators selected in their COP and recorded in Focus, or to meet the global standards for acceptable indicator achievement thresholds defined in the Results Framework for statelessness related indicators. The heatmap in Table 7 shows the assessment of consolidated year-end results based on the global standards for Results Framework thresholds, with all but one indicator showing achievements in the unacceptable or critical range against global standards in each year since 2015. 97. None of the data that was used to measure the key indicators on statelessness was disaggregated by age, gender or diversity (AGD) characteristics. As such, it was not possible to track how different subgroups within populations were impacted by activities generally, nor how outputs for particular case studies aligned with the findings around AGD in needs assessments or mapping studies. 98. The evaluation found serious limitations of the RBM system for measuring UNHCR’s success in achieving planned statelessness results, which is not surprising as the indicators are very similar to GAP indicators that UNHCR has not been able to track. Many operations do not report on statelessness indicators, or choose only a few. A number of internal stakeholders questioned the rationale for targets and were unclear how assessment criteria had been selected or applied for their operation. The evaluation did not find any evidence to suggest that the degree to which targets for impact indicators are achieved has influenced resource allocation decisions in subsequent years. Parallel monitoring – UNHCR’s RBM system and the separate monitoring of GAP actions by the Statelessness Section – complicate the task of analyzing overall results. Neither exercise, separately or combined, provides a holistic overview of statelessness achievements and challenges. See analysis in: Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, “Statelessness in numbers 2019 – an overview and analysis of global statistics”, July 2019, accessed at: https://files.institutesi.org/ISI_statistics_analysis_2019.pdf UNHCR, Guidance relating to programming statelessness in the Operations Plans, Additional Guidance for Planning: 2016-2017. 66 Some indicators are cross-cutting and may relate to different population groups. Two of the indicators (‘Extent persons of concern can obtain identity documentation’ and ‘Extent status determination procedure meets minimum procedural standards advocated by UNHCR’) were not analyzed because there were too few results available (10 and 13 respectively across the five-year time period). 64 65 28 UNHCR / May, 2021