Since 1978, UN-Habitat has supported the development of human settlements policies in Sri Lanka.1 Since this time, UN-Habitat has cooperated with the Government to initiate a range of national programmes and projects.2 After the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, UN-Habitat increased its support of Sri Lanka. The Southern Coast and North-East experienced severe damage, with 30,000 houses damaged and 70,000 destroyed. UN-Habitat’s activities ranged from advocacy to policy advice, coordination and building partnerships, implementation of housing recovery and reconstruction projects, and technical assistance. 

This report presents the findings, lessons and recommendations of the end-of-phase evaluation of the Global Land Tool Network – Phase 2 (GLTN 2). According to the programme´s design, GLTN 2 aimed to improve the ability of international organizations, UN-Habitat staff and targeted national and local governments to improve the tenure security of the urban and rural poor.

This report summarizes the findings from the Mid-Term Evaluation (MTE) of Making Cities Sustainable and Resilient project enabled through EC DEVCO funding and jointly implemented by UN-Habitat and UNISDR. The project is planned for 36 months from 15 April 2016 to 14 April 2019 with a total budget of EUR7.500.000.

This report presents an evaluation of the Global Water Operators’ Partnerships Alliance (GWOPA) Strategy for the period 2013-2017. Water Operators’ Partnerships (WOPs) are peer-support exchanges between two or more water operators on a non-for-profit basis aimed at strengthening capacity and enhancing performance, thereby enabling water operators to provide better services to more people, with emphasis on the poor. The evaluation has performance, learning and accountability purposes and covers the strategy and the operational level. Lessons learnt as well as conclusions and recommendations of this evaluation will inform preparation of the 2018-2022 strategy.

UN-Habitat has been involved in urban risk reduction and rehabilitation for over three decades and together with UNISDR it has developed user-friendly tools targeting municipal officials for urban risk reduction and resilience. The project on Urban Risk Reduction and Resilience Building in Lusophone Africa is a joint project of UN-Habitat, UNISDR and UNECA. It falls into the Risk Reduction and Rehabilitation sub-programme of UN-Habitat, as part of its 2014-2015 approved programme of work aiming to increase the resilience of cities to the impacts of natural and human-made crises.

The project’s objective was to increase the capacities of municipalities of Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Sao Tomé and Principe for reducing urban risk and building resilience. To achieve this objective, the project intended to firstly increase the levels of technical understanding and knowledge of municipal authorities, leading to an improved capacity to integrate risk reduction and resilience into urban plans and municipal strategies. Secondly, by enhancing the communication and information exchange between cities and towns in each country and across the three countries, the project intended to enhance their risk reduction and resilience practices.

The water, sanitation and hygiene in disaster prone communities programme in Nothern Ghana was implemented from June 2014 – May 2017 in three Northern Regions of Ghana as a joint initiative implemented by UN-Habitat, UNDP, WHO and UNICEF. The programme was funded by the Government of Canada with USD 15,314 million. The programme focused on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in disaster prone communities delivering new and rehabilitating boreholes, school latrines, communityled total sanitation village savings and loan associations, and WASH related awareness raising and training activities.

This evaluation of World Cities Day (WCD) is mandated by Member States through paragraph 24 of the General Assembly resolution 68/239, and was to have been submitted as part of the UN Secretary-General’s report to the 71st Session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (GA). The evaluation was postponed in order to identify new ways of implementing the WCD in the context of the New Urban Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Objectives of the evaluation are:

• Assess the performance of WCD in terms of strategic relevance; nature of external context; shared responsibilities; efficiency and effectiveness (which comprises assessments of the delivery of activities/outputs and achievement of outcomes); likelihood of impact; and sustainability.
• Assess the working arrangements, resources, planning and how these may be impacting on effectiveness of the WCD in raising awareness on urbanization trends and challenges.
• Assess appropriateness of coordination of outreach activities to mobilize governments and other stakeholders for WCD as a key platform to make contributions to global efforts in building sustainable cities.
• Identify lessons and propose forward-looking recommendations to improve performance of WCD

The evaluation of the ASUD programme is to provide the agency, its governing bodies and donors with an independent and forward-looking appraisal of the agency’s operational experience, achievements, opportunities and challenges. What will be learned from the evaluation findings is expected to play an instrumental role in informing decisions of UN-Habitat in the implementation of the New Urban Agenda; in planning and programming projects, in improving strategies, adjusting and correcting as appropriate, exploiting opportunities, replicating
and up-scaling the implementation approach used, and generating credible value for targeted beneficiaries and addressing national priorities. The period of the evaluation covers the start of the ASUD programme in July 2011 up to July 2017 and at a time when the projects of the first phase of the programme are completed.

The evaluability assessment was conducted by the Evaluation Unit, UN-Habitat in 2016, with the purpose of determining appropriateness of both the design and processes of the Strategic Plan and to provide findings and recommendations which UN-Habitat Management could use to improve the design so that evaluating mid-term and final evaluations of the Strategic Plan could be reliable and credible.

The evaluation of the seventh session of world urban forum was conducted by the Evaluation Unit of UN-Habitat with support of a consultant over the period of March to October 2014. The Objective of this evaluation was to provide evidence of results to meet accountability requirements and to promote learning, feedback and knowledge sharing for future planning.