92 . MOPAN 2017-18 ASSESSMENTS . UNITED NATIONS RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY FOR PALESTINE REFUGEES IN THE NEAR EAST Element 6: Monitoring and evaluation procedures explicitly include the requirement to assess the extent to which procedures for accountability to beneficiaries have been addressed within the 3 intervention MI 6.7 Analysis Source document UNRWA’s Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) framework sets out formal and informal mechanisms, standards and practices at the field and programme level to engage Palestine refugees throughout the programming cycle. The AAP framework focuses on information sharing, information gathering, consultation, participation of vulnerable groups, and complaints and feedback mechanisms to deliver on its commitments to Palestine Refugees. The statement is explicitly aligned to global standards, set by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, on accountability to affected populations. UNRWA deals with the unique scenario of having beneficiaries who are also staff. With this, UNRWA interfaces with area staff as a first port of call for decision making to determine how UNRWA’s work will be carried out. Each of UNRWA’s programmes has guidance on how to strengthen refugee participation. For example, Education has extensive guidance and practice on participation, the ICIP Camp improvement Manual has extensive guidance on how to ensure participation. However, Protection Audits highlight that refugee participation can be further strengthened and that, with the exception of Education and some specific projects, UNRWA does not adequately enable the participation of Palestine refugees in the whole programme cycle. The Terms of Reference of Project Review Committees do not include the requirement to assess the 1, 3, 5, 8, 31, 37, 40, 61, 109, 110, 111, 134 extent to which procedures for accountability to beneficiaries will be addressed within an individual intervention. UNRWA’s corporate documents state that AAP is monitored through management compacts with senior staff; monitoring of and reporting against results, including in the Agency’s Annual Operations Report; formal programme evaluations; and biennial protection audits in all fields. However, the practice of refugee participation during the programme management cycle is not thought to be fully embedded across UNRWA. There are examples of feedback mechanisms, such as the Perception survey undertaken by the Education division, but these are not systematically in place across the Agency. The 2016 UNRWA Protection Audit found that complaints and feedback mechanisms are not used or fit for purpose. For example, UNRWA installations have an anonymous complaints box, however, the boxes are often not used or not emptied out and recommendations not followed up and that Palestine refugees and UNRWA staff, even if aware of the existence of the boxes, are not always convinced of their effectiveness as a complaint mechanism. MI 6.7 Evidence confidence High confidence MI 6.8: Participation with national and other partners in mutual assessments of progress in implementing agreed commitments n/a Score Overall MI Rating Overall MI score N/A Element 1: Evidence of participation in joint performance reviews of interventions e.g. joint assessments N/A Element 2: Evidence of participation in multi-stakeholder dialogue around joint sectoral or normative commitments Element 3: Evidence of engagement in the production of joint progress statements in the implementation of commitments e.g. joint assessment reports Element 4: Documentation arising from mutual progress assessments contains clear statement of the organisation’s contribution, agreed by all partners N/A N/A N/A