Outcome LKA_O_1

Assuring an accountable organization through principled performance

UN Women has made steady progress on this Output in 2023 to position itself as an accountable and trustworthy organisation committed to advancing the gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE) agenda in Sri Lanka. In 2023, the office faced significant challenges in ensuring delivery on its humanitarian assistance programme, hampered by the global transition to the new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, Quantum. This significantly impacted the office’s ability to reach critical and vulnerable populations, having lost out on at least half of the year to system issues and lack of functionality. However, the office continued to capacitate its staff on navigating the new system and managing such externalities to the extent possible. As a result of these issues, the office’s delivery is expected to be below the standard corporate target of 85%. Despite these challenges, the office continued to reach significant results particularly in the latter half of the year by reaching crisis-affected populations and ensuring that women’s safe houses and shelters continued to operate without interruption, thereby providing a lifeline for those in dire need. Additionally, the office’s convening and coordination role on GEWE within the UNCT was strengthened by its appointment as the Chair of the inter-agency UN Gender Task Force, as enshrined by the UNSDCF. This enabled the office to take on a more proactive leadership role in steering the UNCT’s programming, policy advocacy and upstream support related to GEWE. Furthermore, the office was recognised for its instrumental role in the development of the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, which is a landmark achievement in relation to gender-responsive policy-making. Given the significant challenges encountered in both the country and organisational contexts, it is clear that as a Non-Resident Agency (NRA), the UN Women office is seen as a credible and technically-sound partner. It is also evident that for further success, UN Women’s operational capacity would need further organisation-wide consideration to ensure that it is fit-for-purpose and that NRA offices would substantially benefit from further core resource investment to continue to realise concrete results.

Assuring an accountable organization through principled performance

UN Women has made steady progress on this Output in 2024 to position itself as an accountable and trustworthy organisation committed to advancing the gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE) agenda in Sri Lanka. In 2024, the office continued to capacitate its staff on navigating Quantum and managing any externalities to the extent possible. At the time of writing, the office’s delivery rate is 61% (which is expected to increase by the time of submission) while the utilization rate is 98%. The office continued to reach significant results particularly in the early half of the year by reaching crisis-affected populations and ensuring that women’s safe houses and shelters continued to operate. Additionally, the office continued to play a significant role in convening and coordinating on GEWE as the Chair of the inter-agency UN Gender Task Force. This enabled the office to take on a more proactive leadership role in strengthening collaboration between the UNCT and women’s civil society. Given the challenges encountered in both the country and organisational contexts, it is clear that as a Non-Resident Agency (NRA), the UN Women office is seen as a credible and technically-sound partner. It is also evident that for further success, UN Women’s operational capacity would need further organisation-wide consideration to ensure that it is fit-for-purpose and that NRA offices would substantially benefit from further core resource investment to continue to realise concrete results.

Assuring an accountable organization through principled performance

UN Women has made steady progress on this Output in 2024 to position itself as an accountable and trustworthy organisation committed to advancing the gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE) agenda in Sri Lanka. In 2025, at the time of writing, the office’s delivery rate is 85% while the utilization rate is 92%. A key issue encountered in 2025 were concerns raised by project participants on delays in receiving their awarded in-kind assistance from UN Women’s service provider, Chrysalis. To ensure accountability, the office closely followed up on all pending cases until all were fully resolved. This involved the following measures: the office conducted field visits to directly hear from beneficiaries, contacted all 400+ beneficiaries for full accuracy, and subsequently disallowed some payments to Chrysalis. Management level discussions were held, and stronger mechanisms imposed on future partnerships with Chrysalis such as 100% verification of submitted documents, mandatory training for personnel. Chrysalis has in turn undertaken certain actions including their own field visits, convening of all participants with local officials, initiating their formal feedback and complaints mechanism, and HR inquiries of concerned personnel, alongside completion of all pending deliveries to participants or replacement of equipment. This has been a critical learning experience with the UN Women office building in stronger monitoring mechanisms within the THRIVE project to ensure non-recurrence and accountability. Despite these challenges, the office has continued to raise its profile as a technically-sound partner on gender equality and women’s empowerment in Sri Lanka. The limited core resources allocated in 2025 have allowed the office to expand its portfolio into emerging areas such as addressing technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), and gender-responsive climate action. High-profile visibility events such as SamaTheevu, and the commemoration of 25 years of the WPS Agenda, are other key factors which contributed to UN Women’s positioning as a credible partner on GEWE.