One of the primary aims of the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) is to strengthen evaluation capacity within the United Nations system and peer reviews are one of UNEG’s flagship initiatives to achieving this aim.
The peer review mechanism was created in 2004 as a joint initiative of UNEG and the OECD DAC Evaluation Network (EvalNet). In 2011, a new Framework for Peer Review proposed a more streamlined approach to Peer Reviews shifting the overall responsibility and ownership of the mechanism to UNEG.
Since 2013, 14 UNEG member agencies have undergone a peer review guided by a framework designed to be adaptable to evaluation functions of different sizes. This study highlights how each Peer Review has contributed to positive changes in the peer reviewed evaluation function; outlines the influence these peer reviews have had on the independence, credibility and utility of these evaluation functions; and, finally, makes recommendations to UNEG on how to enhance the utility of peer reviews.