Good morning colleagues, it is good to see many of you who I have seen right from 2009.
My comments are going to be quite short. I echo the excellent introductory remarks by Oscar and Alison and Andrea, these are totally relevant and will help to shape this very important conference. Resilient evaluation systems for sustainable development Proceedings from the 2022 National Evaluation Capacities Conference 15
The Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD based here in Italy, congratulates the IEO of UNDP under the very able leadership of Mr. Oscar Garcia and his able team as well as a Global Evaluation Initiative with Ms. Alison Evans and her team, for successfully co-hosting the seventh National Evaluation Capacity Global event here in Italy. It is a fantastic venue, and we all are extremely impressed by the excellent organizational capability.
This event comes at a time when resilient government systems are all the more important to mitigate crises like the ones we are still emerging from. The role of all United Nations agencies is critical, and in the food security sector, the one that I work for in IFAD, we find it has become absolutely relevant because we have seen what the impact of the crisis has had on increase in poverty levels.
The NEC series has now moved across the globe from its origins in 2009 in Morocco, and it has built steam and momentum over the past decade through very strategic partnerships with key evaluation entities and hosting governments, which include South Africa, Brazil,Thailand, Turkey and, in 2019, Egypt. This event is also fortunate in that it has all the partners here; it draws on the very formidable capacity of GEI offering more support to governments in the important work of delivering better results to citizens.
I wish to congratulate the organizing teams as well as all the partners and sponsors, and all of you for getting here. We welcome you to Italy and I’m sure the deliberations are going to be rich and fruitful, and as they would say in Italy - you really are going to have a fantastic time.
Thank you very much!
