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Evaluation Office

Evaluation Office

The Evaluation Office regularly analyzes and interprets the work we do as UNHCR, to help us deliver better services and results for refugees, stateless persons, internally displaced people and other persons of concern.

Continuously reviewing our operations enables us to assess the effectiveness of our work, learn from experience and improve the development of policies, strategies, programmes and projects.

What's new: reports, news and publications

Read the blog
UNHCR and its partners conducted three evaluative exercises of the global nature of the COVID-19 pandemic: The Joint Evaluation of the Protection of the Rights of Refugees during the COVID-19 Pandemic, The Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation of the COVID-19 Humanitarian Response and A synthesis of evaluative evidence of UNHCR’s response to COVID-19.
View the report: West and Central Africa Regional Shelter and Settlement Evaluation
This evaluation assesses the performance of UNHCR’s shelter and settlement interventions, including their contribution to protection outcomes and an integrated response across sectors, both internally and externally, in seven countries across West and Central Africa.

Listen to the podcast which presents key findings of the shelter and settlement evaluation in English and French:

Podcast in English | Podcast in French

Three women cross a road.
Building upon the findings of the original evaluation conducted between 2018 and 2021, this report extends the analysis into 2022, shedding light on UNHCR’s progress, challenges faced, and the remaining issues UNHCR need to address.
Iran. Afghan Refugees during COVID19 times

The collective global response to the COVID-19 pandemic fell short in protecting the rights of refugees despite extraordinary efforts by local actors and the international community, according to a major international report released today.

Embedding AAP principles in Evaluation Practices

Watch the video: Evaluating UNHCR's Repatriation Programmes

Evaluating UNHCR's Repatriation Programmes

UNHCR and the Nexus Agenda

What we do

UNHCR’s Evaluation Office provides evaluative evidence so we can obtain an impartial reflection on our performance and results, generate lessons from experience and find ways to improve. The overall purpose of any evaluation is to contribute to both learning and accountability and inform our strategic choices.

With our evaluations, we seek answers to questions such as: Have the right things been undertaken? Are we doing them on a scale that will make a difference in the lives of persons of concern? How well have things been done and how do we know this? What results have been achieved? Are there better ways of achieving them? To what extent can a certain result be attributed to a specific intervention?

The Evaluation Office is independent of the management functions and reports directly to the High Commissioner.

How we work

All evaluations are conducted as a partnership between the UNHCR Evaluation Office and the concerned Bureau, Office and/or Division, who play a critical role in a successful evaluation process. Evaluations are scoped and defined jointly between the Evaluation Office and concerned Bureaux, Divisions and country offices, and need to be carried out by external consultants. UNHCR Staff with specific thematic and operational expertise may join an evaluation team in an advisory capacity, to give technical advice and/or quality assurance.

Evaluations can broadly be classified into two categories:

  • Centralized evaluations: commissioned, funded and managed by the Evaluation Office. Senior Executive Team members will be requested to oversee the management response to the evaluation.
  • Decentralized evaluations: proposed and initiated by offices, bureaux and divisions; co-managed with the Evaluation Office; can be undertaken jointly with partners. Concerned representative/bureau/division directors will prepare management responses.

How are evaluation topics selected?

The Evaluation Office facilitates an annual process of consultation with headquarters and field-based colleagues to develop an annual work-plan. Whereas topics for centralized evaluations are set at the beginning of each year, suggestions for decentralized evaluation topics (put forward by bureaux, operations or divisions) can be shared with the Evaluation Office throughout the year. See the Evaluation Workplan 2024-25.

Explore our evaluations

At this point in time due to a technical error with our website, UNHCR evaluations may not be accessible via the links below. We are working to fix this as soon as we can and expect to resolve the issue within the next few weeks. If you would like to view one of our evaluations, please email our evaluations team at [email protected]. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Contact us

Contact us at [email protected].