Parliamentarians for Evaluation on the way to achieve SDG

Bishkek, 18 June 2016 – Every society aspires to a transparency, sustainable changes and development. Echoing this aspiration, parliamentarians around the world united to advocate for evaluation in the context of Sustainable Development Goals and formed the Global Parliamentarians Forum for Evaluation.

On 14-15 June, Kyrgyzstan, the only parliamentarian country in Central Asia, initiated the Regional Inter-parliament Meeting on Monitoring and Evaluation of Parliament in Bishkek to advocate for national evaluation policies. Parliamentarians from Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan participated in the high-level meeting, which included more than 60 Members of the Kyrgyz Parliament, governmental officials, experts, and civil society representatives.

Vise-speaker of the Kyrgyz Republic’s Parliament Altynai Omurbekova opened the meeting and stated, “Evaluation plays a key role in Parliament’s work. Every party brings its programme for parliamentary elections, which after becomes the agenda for the Government. So, evaluation helps to understand whether we have chosen the right pace for development”. 

During the meeting, participants had shared the practices of evaluation in neighboring countries and discussed the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of the legal frameworks. The participants agreed that an integrated monitoring and evaluation system is a national priority, which will be the vital instrument to track the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.

UNICEF, as a partner of the Global Parliamentarians Forum for Evaluation initiative in Kyrgyzstan, supported the organization of the meeting. UNICEF experts called participants to consider evaluation as a strategic tool for the system of knowledge in order to facilitate decisions and identify and correct shortcomings in the implementation of programmes.  Addressing the participants of the inter-parliament meeting, OIC Deputy Representative of UNICEF Kyrgyzstan Munir Mammadzadestated: “Strengthening the systems for evaluations is the crucial part of the UNICEF work that enables us and our partners at local, regional and global levels to better understand the impact of our joint efforts and plan future interventions aimed at achieving equitable results for children”. 

The headliner of Global Parliamentarians Forum for Evaluation in Kyrgyzstan, Member of Parliament Natalya Nikitenko presented the history of evaluation development in Kyrgyzstan.  Although the first Parliament’s efforts on evaluation were engraved in the committees’ documents back in 2000, the topic on evaluation is still new for the Parliament of Kyrgyzstan.  Natalya Nikitenko stressed the need to build evaluation culture and create national policy on evaluation, putting evaluation at the core of the agenda in the country.

National parliamentarians also supported a global campaign ‘Parliamentarians for Evaluation’ initiated by the Global Parliamentarians Forum. The MPs recorded video addresses stating how evaluation can enrich the effectiveness of Parliament work.

Inspired by the whole discussions and knowledge sharing, parliamentarians decided to form a Regional Forum of Parliamentarians.