Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The ILO (International Labour Organization) is honoured to host the 7th National Evaluation Capacities Conference, at our International Training Centre (ITC). For the first time ever, this Conference includes all of the traditional ILO partners: governments, and workers’ and employers’ organizations.
Your topic, resilient National Evaluation Systems for sustainable development, is both relevant and timely. Development is still leaving too many behind. Progress has undoubtedly been made since the 2030 Agenda was adopted. But there have also been significant setbacks.
The COVID-19 crisis aggravated pre-existing economic and social crises. Just as we saw the first signs of recovery, the food, fuel and finance crises hit. It brought economic uncertainty, and deepening inequalities. All of this on top of the pre-existing crisis of climate change. These are massive challenges. Working together, we can, and we will, tackle them. But in doing so we must ensure that our hard-won advances in social justice are preserved. Not just preserved, but reinvigorated.
To do this we will need a new social contract, supported by a social justice coalition. This must be centred around human, environmental, economic and societal values. And it must be supported by the knowledge and evidence that quality evaluation can provide.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused great hardship. But it also led to innovation in development and humanitarian work. Access to data and real-time evidence allowed for rapid policy responses, supporting a human-centred recovery. For example, the ILO Evaluation Office issued guidance and protocols on how to continue evaluations during the pandemic. We also designed a ‘nowcasting’ model to track the disruption in labour markets caused by COVID-19. The ILO Monitor on the World of Work became the go-to data source for policymakers and development partners. Equally, ILO’s traditional ways of working also stood the test.
Once again, we saw that social dialogue is key to economic and social cohesion – and good governance. It plays an important role in promoting harmonious labour relations. Good governance also goes hand-in-hand with evaluation. Evaluation promotes public accountability and contributes to public trust in governments.
Evaluations also show us the how and the why of the changes we need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals - the SDGs. And evaluations can also offer accountability, transparency and learning. It is for this reason that evaluation must be seen as an essential partner in sustainable development.
In the past decade ILO has placed increased emphasis on national evaluation capacities and systems. They play a vital role in assessing and boosting progress in our Decent Work Country Programmes - and by extension the SDGs.
With the support of our Evaluation Office, ILO has empowered governments and our social partners - workers and employers. Through capacity-development, they can contribute to National Evaluation Systems that measure progress towards the SDGs, including SDG 8 on Decent Work for All. Since 2018 the ILO Evaluation network has trained more than 500 tripartite constituents to track progress on the SDGs. The training covered knowledge
systems – such as the ILO i-Eval Discovery database. And it showed them how to use these tools to improve decision-making.
The i-Eval Discovery database is public. And it contains thousands of evaluations reports, lessons learned and good practices. These can help shape policies and programmes, based on evidence of what works and why. We still have a way to go. But I’m sure collaborations, such as this conference, will greatly advance efforts to create resilient National Evaluation Systems. And, in turn, these will support the goal of sustainable development.
Thank you.
