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Protection Capacity and Gender Capacity - Evaluative Review (2 May 2019)

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

ProCap and GenCap

The Protection Standby Capacity Project (ProCap) and the Gender Standby Capacity Project (GenCap) are two inter-agency projects founded in 2005 and 2007 respectively to strengthen leadership, protection and gender capacity in humanitarian operations. The primary function of ProCap and GenCap is the deployment of senior technical advisors to address interagency capacity needs at field level. ProCap and GenCap also support global policy, advocacy and guidance development processes and invest in developing and supporting global, regional, and country-specific trainings. Until 2018, these Projects have been governed by separate steering committees comprising UN agencies while both projects are administered by the Norwegian Refugee Council and the secretariats are hosted by OCHA, Geneva. The steering committees created a joint strategic plan for the first time covering both projects in 2018.

Objectives and stakeholders

This Evaluative Review assesses the relevance, effectiveness, impact and sustainability of ProCap and GenCap and provides recommendations on ways to strengthen their impact at field level. The Review covers 2016 and 2017 project activities and is for the information the Norwegian Refugee Council, the ProCap and GenCap Support Units, Steering Committee Members, Roster Members and project donors.

Methodology

This Evaluative Review is based on desk research, focus group discussions with Project Management, consultations with the Review Reference Group , and 52 interviews spanning the three ProCap and GenCap components of: "Deployments","Policy, Influence and Practice" and "Training". Interviews examined relevance, effectiveness, impact and sustainability of sampled initiatives, focusing on qualitative analysis while also extracting quantitative assessments.

Findings

The Evaluative Review found that ProCap and GenCap have:

• leveraged systemic changes within Humanitarian Country Teams that had requested support to elevate the interagency gender and protection agenda.

• reinforced the leadership of the Humanitarian Coordinator/Resident Coordinator and the accountabilities of key humanitarian agencies towards gender and protection programming.
According to this Review, the key added-value of ProCap and GenCap derives from:

• their neutrality, as they are independent of any specific operational agency • the widely acknowledged expertise and diplomatic skills of their Senior Advisors.

The key enabling factor to the effectiveness of deployments was the degree of support by the Humanitarian Coordinator: her/his leadership and ability to overcome complex inter-agency dynamics influence achievements of the country team.
Conversely, global and local disagreements among key agencies over gender or protection leadership limited the effectiveness of deployments. ProCap and GenCap can only contribute to the partial resolution of such disagreements; the resolution of accountability issues is dependent on senior-level leadership at country and global levels.

The Review found that the occurrence of acute crises within protracted crisis (e.g., natural disasters or sudden escalation of social tensions) created opportunities to reinforce gender and protection leadership and capacity.
Whenever Senior Advisors found strong leadership and manageable inter-agency dynamics within the Humanitarian Country Teams, they were able to leverage significant and sustainable change for gender and protection, such as:

• a collective vision for protection articulated in HCT strategies,

• a stronger accountability framework for gender or protection contributing to greater dedicated funding,

• functioning Protection from Sexual Abuse and Exploitation monitoring mechanisms,

• the systematic increase of technical resources allocated to gender or protection at the service of the HCT, etc.

Project trainings organized at a global and regional level positively impact participants with limited prior exposure to protection or gender training. Humanitarian professionals more experienced in gender and protection issues considered the training too basic.

This is particularly notable in the case of ProCap, where experienced professionals accounted for approximately half of training participants sampled.

Investments in Policy, Advocacy and Influence have varying degrees of relevance and effectiveness. While the deployment of a Senior Advisor to facilitate complex inter-agency policy or guidance development processes is considered relevant by the majority of observers, the effectives of the policy or guidance that ensues was questioned by the majority of interviewees.

ProCap and GenCap, however, have limited to no control over the roll-out of policy and guidance produced.

Recommendations

This Review found that ProCap and GenCap have a positive impact within Humanitarian Country Teams requesting support.

Therefore, the key recommendation of this Review is that protection and gender deployments merit continued investment, and that they should be operationalized in ways that preserve their neutrality and realize the full potential of their mandates.

The key investments recommended to ensure effectiveness and impact at field level include:

• Reaching a formal agreement with protection and gender lead-agencies for structured collaboration with ProCap and GenCap;

• The development of a simple theory of change to guide ProCap and GenCap strategies and investments, overcoming the artificial separation among their three components: (1) Deployments, (2) Policy, Advocacy and Influence, (3)Trainings;

• The development of a solid multi-year plan to accompany the current projects' Strategic Framework, based on an assessment of current protection and gender capacities at global and field level;

• The implementation of a solid Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Framework and the establishment of standard process processes;

• Overall, ProCap and GenCap should adopt a capacity development strategy that could include trainings, peer-to-peer support approaches and other state-of-the-art knowledge exchange methodologies.