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| UNFPA at
work in India Managing with Flair Working with the Grass-roots Review and Renewal Box:Seven days in October |
Review and Renewal Every four to five years, UNFPA carries out a major review to evaluate past programmes and initiate new ones. The review team includes specialists in the various areas of UNFPA’s work and is usually led by a senior United Nations official or academic. In the case of India, the leader was Dr. Giuseppe Benagiano, a specialist in gynaecology and human reproduction, and a team of five other experts: Dr. Charlotte Gardiner, an expert on reproductive health from UNFPA in New York; Azfar Khan, a population and development expert from the ILO in Geneva; Najib Assifi, an 31 IEC and advocacy expert from UNFPA’s Country Support Team in Nepal; Firoza Mehrotra, a gender and women’s empowerment specialist from UNFPA, New Delhi; and Don Hinrichsen, an environment and population expert, who also acted as rapporteur. The mission began with a rapid assessment of the overall population situation, examining critically not only UNFPA’s past five-year programme but also the rest of the donor community’s work in India. This review, together with the analysis of needs on which its report and the eventual country programme would be based, was submitted as an aide-memoire to government at the end of August. The draft final report was completed by October. The initial document took six weeks to write and edit, with the help of Wasim’s programme staff and Patrizia Franceschinis of UNFPA’s Asia and the Pacific Division in New York. It covered UNFPA’s core areas, weaving gender issues into each of the three major sectors, and included a review of NGO capacities and programmes, international assistance to India, specific recommendations for UNFPA and extensive annexes. After review in New York, the document was revised in New Delhi and a final report prepared, with recommendations on which the new five-year UNFPA country programme was based. Working out the details of the new country programme called for help from the Country Support Team, based in Nepal, and from overseas and national consultants. The programme was prepared and specific project proposals developed in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the project implementing agencies. By January 1997, the new population programme was already being implemented by Wasim’s staff. |
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