(3rd plenary meeting) UNICEF Executive Board, 2026 Annual Session

May I kindly ask you to your seats, please? Excellencies Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen.
Good morning to you all.
Allow me to welcome you to the second meeting of this annual session for 2026.
It is an honor to be presiding over the plenary meeting this morning.
Before we start the discussions, allow me to share with you a brief procedural note.
We kindly ask delegates to limit their interventions to 3 minutes when speaking on behalf of a single country, their own country, and this time is limited to 5 minutes.
In the case of delegation speaking on behalf of regional groups in the United Nations or when one or more member states are delivering a joint statement, the microphones will start to flash to indicate to the speakers that their time is running out 1 minute before the total time has elapsed and the microphones will be turned off either after three or 5 minutes.
Distinguished delegates, the first topic that we will address this morning is Item seven of the agenda entitled, Updated information on Protection from sexual exploitation and abuse and that features in document E Stroke ISEFSroke 2026, stroke 15.
The report describes how UNICEF is preventing and responding to its sexual exploitation and abuse and also to other risks related to protection in all of its programs and operations at headquarters and in the regional and national plans.
The Associate Director, Andrea Sulet of the Office for Strategy and Data of UNICEF is going to deliver a presentation.
Madam Sula, you have the floor.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Distinguished members of the executive board, observers and colleagues.
I am pleased to present this update on UNICEF's continued progress in strengthening prevention from sexual exploitation and abuse PSEA.
UNICEF remains unwavering in its commitment to PSEA.
Safeguarding the people we serve is fundamental to our mission, central to the organizational accountability, and essential to maintaining trust in UNICEF.
Slide, please.
In 2025, UNICEF continued to scale and strengthen systems to prevent and respond to SEA across our global presence.
A key priority has been expanding safe and accessible reporting mechanisms.
Today, an estimated 74.2 million people have access to SEA reporting channels that meet UNICEF quality standards.
This reflects growing awareness and improve accessibility to trusted reporting pathways.
For example, in Palestine, awareness of available reporting channels increased significantly from 50% in 2024 to 85% in 2025.
As of 2025, 80% of UNICEF country offices now meet organizational benchmarks for comprehensive PSEA system.
This compares with 56% just two years ago.
Slide, please.
UNICEF continues to play a central leadership role in fostering interagency collaboration and advancing a system wide approach to PSEA.
UNICEF continues to contribute coordination capacity across interagency networks in numerous contexts.
We contribute technically in numerous PSEA working groups across the UN and the Interagency Standing Committee.
Essential priority remains ensuring a survivor centered response.
UNICEF is committed to ensuring that all victim survivors who come forward have access to timely, safe, and appropriate support services.
In 2025, UNICEF provided assistance to 39 victim survivors connected to allegations involving UNICEF personnel or implementing partners.
Most cases involve provision of psychosocial support, frequently combined with medical and in fewer cases legal assistance.
Thus, our approach was consistent with multi sectoral victim assistant approaches.
In addition, UNICEF provided assistance to victim survivors as the provider of last resort for children.
UNICEF has sustained its leadership on victim assistance, supporting the establishment of coordinated referral pathways in 24 countries.
While important progress has been made, significant gaps remain, particularly in financing and longer term survivor support.
Adré these challenges will be a priority for the working group led by the victim rights advocate in 2026.
Slide, please.
UNICEF continues to support broader interagency cooperation and system wide reform efforts across the humanitarian and development architecture.
In 2025, 28 countries incorporated PSEA provisions into their UN sustainable development cooperation frameworks.
UNICEF continues to strengthen system wide accountability by supporting common standards across the UN system.
This includes implementation of joint partner assessment mechanisms that promote consistent safeguarding standards and strengthen prevention capacity across civil society implementing partners.
Slide, please.
In 2025, 71 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse were reported to the Secretary-General, the majority involving implementing partners.
Four cases involved UNICEF personnel, two cases are currently under review with decisions pending.
One investigation remains ongoing.
One investigation was closed as allegations were not substantiated.
Beyond formal accountability mechanisms, UNICEF continues to strengthen organizational culture and prevention systems.
In 2025, 97% of personnel completed mandatory PSEA training, while enhanced vetting by using Car check 2.0, strengthen reference checks, and improved performance management processes continue to reinforce the culture of integrity.
We are also undertaking coordinated implementation of the management response to the 2025 human resources baseline assessment.
Next slide, please.
Our priorities for 2026 focus on sustaining progress while addressing structural and system wide challenges.
UNICEF will continue building on recent gains across PSEA, across our programs, operations, and organizational culture.
We will continue actively contributing to system wide reforms, including interagency efforts to address key issues identified through the Joint Inspection Unit and the comprehensive assessment.
This includes continued contribution to the rollout of the joint UN government framework for PSEA, leveraging UNICEF's existing entry points and relationships with the governments.
While UNICEF remains fully committed to sustaining progress, the increasingly constrained global funding environment is placing growing pressure on specialized safeguarding capacity across headquarters, regional offices, and country programs.
As part of organizational restructuring and consultations, UNICEF is carefully prioritizing critical actions while identifying opportunities to leverage complementarity expertise, particularly in social behavioral change and gender based violence programming.
Looking ahead, UNICEF remains fully committed to ensuring that PSEA remains a core institutional priority.
Safeguarding, including PSEA is fundamental to our mandate, to the trust communities place on us, and ultimately to our ability to deliver for children.
Sustained commitment and predictable support from donors remains essential to preserving the robust safeguarding architecture and technical expertise that is required to uphold these standards across UNICEF and the UN system.
We look forward to continue engagement and partnership in advancing this essential agenda.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I thank Madam Suet for those remarks Distinguished delegates, the floor is now open for you to deliver your own remarks.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of the United Kingdom.
Thank you very much Chair.
Mr.
Chair, I delivered the statement on behalf of Albania, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, the EU as a donor, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxemburg, Moldova, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Mexico, Zambia, and my own country, the United Kingdom.
We thank UNICEF for its continued efforts to strengthen protection from and response to sexual exploitation, abuse, sexual harassment.
As we made clear in board discussions last year, SAR prevention and response is a non optional core accountability commitment, even amid resourcing constraints.
Leadership is critical to protect gains and drive further change.
We are at a critical juncture.
Across the system, financial pressures and staffing reductions are weakening protection systems, limiting prevention efforts and access to survivor support, and risking hard won progress when needs remain high.
The erosion of gender based violence services is particularly concerning as these constitute essential entry points for reporting.
Under reporting remains a systemic change, challenge, driven by fear, lack of trust, and perceived inaction.
These challenges are acute for children who are among the most vulnerable and depend on specialized child sensitive approaches.
We would welcome greater clarity on how agencies are ensuring their prevention, response, and victim survivor support approaches are child sensitive.
The important 2025 JIEU review on SAA underlined the need for dedicated expertise, clear accountability, and sustained resourcing.
We urge agencies to protect the good practices that The review identified, fully implement the recommendations and prioritize sufficient human and financial resources for SA prevention and response, particularly at country level, recognizing the importance of building country level capacity and strengthening national safeguarding systems.
How will the agency report to the board on implementation of the recommendations of the JIU report and the comprehensive assessment commissioned by the special coordinator? The JIU reviews rightly highlights that tackling CA requires a coherent and consistent system wide effort.
With shrinking resources, collaboration should increase, not diminish.
We encourage UNICEF to strengthen interagency collaboration and improve efficiency and impact through mechanisms such as the common approach for protection from CAA and the misconduct disclosure scheme.
UNAT and the humanitarian reset offer unique opportunity to embed a strengthened, well resourced, sustainable system wide approach to protection from CAA.
We urge agencies to work with member states and each other to influence these reform processes to ensure that this happens.
Last year, the UNICEF board asked management to ensure dedicated, adequate, and sustainable staffing expertise and funding to tackle SAA.
This year, we are concerned that recent changes to UNICEF's approach may have significant implications for this work.
As UNICEF implements its future focus initiative, protection from CAA must remain a distinctly priority, a distinct priority, not diluted within broader safeguarding or risk frameworks.
Integrated systems can add value but are not a substitute for dedicated expertise and capacity.
We are concerned that UNICEF has moved towards a decentralized approach with significant reductions in dedicated roles at headquarters, regional and country levels, removing vital expertise needed to manage CA risk in programs and operations and creating accountability gaps.
This is particularly serious given UNICEF's child focused mandate and the fact that around the third of allegations concerning UNICEF staff or partners involve children.
Finally, we encourage UNICEF to continue to play a leadership role in strengthening system wide approaches.
We welcome continued dialogue to support UNICEF's work on Pisa.
I thank you.
I thank the Distinguished representative of the United Kingdom.
I now give the floor to the Distinguished representative of Nigeria to be followed by Guatemala and the United States.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Price.
Mr.
President, Nigeria thanks UNIC for the presentation of its update on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse and commends the organization for its continued efforts to strengthen safeguarding measures, accountability mechanisms, and survivor centered approaches across its oppression.
Sexual exploitation and abuse represent grave violations of human rights and fundamental breaches.
Breaches of trust placed in humanitarian development and peacekeeping actors.
We therefore reaffirm our unequivocal commitment to a policy of zero tolerance for sexual exploitation and abuse in all circumstances.
My delegation welcomes UNICEF's ongoing efforts to strengthen prevention measures through enhanced risk management, staff training, awareness raising, community engagement, and improved reporting mechanisms.
We particularly commend the emphasis placed on fostering an organizational culture that prioritizes integrity, accountability, and respect for the rights and dignity of all individuals, especially children and vulnerable populations.
Nigeria recognizes that effective protection from sexual exploitation and abuse requires a comprehensive and coordinated approach involving governments, United Nations entities, civil society organizations, implementing partners and local communities, Preventing sexual abuse of children is a shared responsibility that must be integrated in all stages of program design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
We also underscore the importance of ensuring that survivors remain at the center of all prevention and response efforts.
Accessible, safe, confidential, and survival focused reporting and support systems are essential in promoting trust.
Facilitating access to justice and ensuring that victims receive the assistance they need without fear of stigma or retaliation.
As humanitarian and development actors increasingly operate in fragile conflict affected and emergency settings, it is imperative that safeguarding measures continue to evolve to address emerging risks and vulnerabilities.
We encourage UNICEF to continue strengthening partnership with national authorities and local actors to build sustainable capacities for prevention, reporting, investigation, and response.
Nigeria further supports continued transparency in reporting.
Accountability for perpetrators and robust oversight mechanism that reinforce institutional integrity and public confidence in the United Nations operations.
In conclusion, Mr.
President, Nigeria remains steadfast in its commitment to supporting collective efforts aimed at preventing I thank the Distinguished representative of Nigeria.
I give the floor to the distinguished representative of Guatemala.
Thank you, President, Madam Executive Director Guatemala is grateful for the report, and we reaffirm our firm commitment to a zero tolerance policy to all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse SEA.
The trust placed in the United Nations system requires acting with the highest standards of integrity, transparency and accountability and placing the dignity, well being and rights of victims and survivors, especially children and adolescents at the center.
We recognize the progress made by UNICEF in strengthening institutional safeguards expanding safe and accessible complaint mechanisms, and improving investigation and response processes.
In addition, we highlight the expansion of training and outreach, strengthening of risk management, and the incorporation of a victim centered approach.
We think it is fundamental for this progress to be sustainable.
Financial constraints should not result in a reduction in prevention, protection, or assistance, especially for the most vulnerable protection from SEA should not be considered an ancillary component of humanitarian and development action.
Rather, it is a fundamental obligation for the protection of human rights.
We would also encourage them to continue strengthening capacities, institutional mechanisms for prevention, reporting, and response, and ensuring that these are safe, accessible, and adapted to the needs of children and other people in vulnerable situations.
The credibility of the multilateral system depends on its ability to prevent, investigate, and punish such acts in a timely manner, while always ensuring the protection, dignity and rights of victims and survivors.
Guatemala reiterates its support for UNICEF's effort to strengthen institutional safeguards and to ensure that no one is left behind in access to protection and assistance.
I thank you President.
I thank the distinguished representative of Guatemala.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of the United States of America.
Thank you, Chair.
The United States strongly supports UNICEF continued efforts to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse.
We welcome the expansion of safe reporting channels now reaching more than 70 million adults and children, as well as improvements in investigative timeliness by the Office of Internal Audit and Investigations and strengthened oversight of implementing partners.
We commend UNICEF's leadership in advancing UN victims assistance Protocol, ensuring that survivors receive timely and appropriate support, and we appreciate the organization's role in enhancing coordination across high risk contexts.
Risk remains despite progress.
By UNICEF own account, 67 of the 71 allegations last year involved implementing partners.
This is where oversight is weakest and more involvement is warranted.
Safeguards on paper do not mean success.
93% of partners were rated full capacity, but that category of partner also produced the most allegations.
We ask that UNICEF report partner accountability as an outcome to include cases detected and perpetrators removed with attention focused first where funding is greatest.
The report notes a high turnover among the staff conducting these investigations.
This work takes an excruciating, well documented mental toll on staff.
Turnover can't be addressed by training.
We ask how UNICEF is also considering the welfare of locally employed staff and frontline workers, not just its headquarters staff.
At the same time, the United States must be clear, our support for UNICEF's operational progress does not imply endorsement of terminology in the report that is inconsistent with US policy positions.
As we have made clear, the United States does not endorse and has serious concerns with the use of gender, gender based violence, or related terminology.
Wanted to emphasize the importance of accountability, rigorous vetting, and strengthened workforce screening through tools such Clear check.
Consistent safeguards are essential when working with implementing partners and vendors.
Finally, we encourage UNICEF and UN partners to sustain interagency coordination, including through joint risk assessments and to ensure that safeguarding capacities remain protected even amid resource constraints.
Thank you.
Hello.
I thank the distinguished representative of the United States.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Sweden.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Sweden fully agrees that a strong and effective safeguarding framework for protecting against sexual exploitation and abuse is critical for public trust in UNICEF and for preventing harm to children.
And it's good to hear from you that this is a top priority for UNICEF.
The impact of budget constraints on the operational capacities of UNICEF's PCA efforts is concerning.
And we would appreciate detailed information on the number of positions dedicated to PCA that have been cut and how many remain.
We would also be grateful if you could elaborate on the possibility of safeguarding capacity through increased interagency collaboration.
The report mentions that system wide budget reductions threaten the sustainability of the 30 existing coordination posts.
Could you say something about the possibility of pooling expertise going beyond coordination, creating joint positions on PCA between agencies as a way of preserving capacity in the context of limited funding.
Thank you.
I thank the distinct representative of Sweden.
I now invite the Secretariat to respond.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
And thank you, executive board members, for your thoughtful feedback and your continued interest in this critical area of work.
We are very clear in our position that PSEA remains fundamental and a core priority.
We are looking across our operations and our staff where to prioritize our efforts most.
But prioritization doesn't mean doing less.
It means deciding what to do first, what is most impactful, and where to focus our efforts.
Our consultations across partners on the ground in countries, across our offices and with many of your colleagues have identified core areas of work, many of which you spoke to today that are critical to sustain systems and sustain impact.
First and foremost, strengthening community awareness and access to safe trust at reporting channels.
Several of you spoke to the importance of that today and we could not agree more.
It will remain a priority in our efforts.
Enhancing government engagement and ownership.
Nigeria, you spoke of this.
This is critical.
We are very happy with the number of governments that adopted the PSEA clause and the new cooperation frameworks, and we look forward to working with government and local partners on the ground, critical for making sustainable change.
Effective capacity building for our staff and implementing partners.
Our mandatory training, the numbers have gone up.
We continue to broaden more technical training across all staff to ensure that we have robust prevention and response mechanisms across our country offices where it matters most.
On the implementing partners, certainly our first line of assessment is joint assessments done with other UN ages to understand capacity.
However, that is not where it stops.
We do verification of those capacity assessments when we're doing our monitoring and our ongoing review with partners.
It is an area that we do need to strengthen and we're complementing that with increased program monitoring and more training to our staff, including the technical experts that exist in our country offices to ensure that joint assessments are verified and followed up on.
And ensuring effective victim survivor assistance and support systems are in place a huge priority.
I spoke to some of the numbers of the support that we provided, but in addition to the support we provided to victim survivors impacted by UNICEF implementing partners or personnel, we continue to provide child sensitive support to many survivor victims as a provider of last resort across our operations.
The The UK, you spoke of child sensitive service provision.
That's at the core of everything we do.
We continue to look forward to work with our partners on the ground to support other agencies, to support local actors, local civil society, and government to ensure that all services being provided to children, including survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse are child sensitive.
UK, you also spoke to concerns around the implementation of some of the measures that you spoke of before in last year's decision, and that being the misconduct disclosure scheme.
We're pleased to announce that we've now launched the implementation of the misconduct disclosure scheme.
We recognize that it's taken a little bit longer than anticipated.
The delay reflects the need to ensure that implementation was legally sound, aligned with data protection requirements, and fully integrated into UNICEF's existing safeguarding and HR processes.
It's very sensitive, some of the information that goes through those misconduct disclosure schemes.
We've now initiated a pilot, the implementation plan for the last quarter of 2026.
This phase will allow us to ensure that the approach is operationally robust, fair, and effective before scaling further.
We remain fully committing to advance this work and provide regular updates to the board.
Sweden, you requested detailed information on staffing numbers.
We'll provide that to you after in writing so that it is detailed in response to your question, and we look forward to remaining engaged in discussion with you and your feedback.
Your ongoing support and feedback is critical to this essential area of work.
I thank the Distinguished Deputy Director for those remarks.
I do not see any other request for the floor.
So given that there are no other speakers under this item, we will return to the report under item 19 in relation to approving draft decisions.
Distinguished delegates, the Executive Board will now consider agenda item six, the extensions of ongoing Cory programs.
Do E slash ICEF slash 2026 slash P slash L 0.10 in accordance with Executive Board decision 2009 slash 11 proposed extensions of country programs of more than one year, or multiple extension that in the aggregate access one year are submitted by the executive director for approval by the executive board on the basis of a short proposal document, including the reasons for the proposal.
In accordance with Executive Board decision 20009 slash 11, the Executive Board is being requested to approve an additional one year extension of the country program of Lebanon following a previous one year extension and to approve the additional one year extension of the country program for South Sudan, following a previous one year extension.
Are there any objections? I recognize the US is asking for the floor.
Please proceed.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
The United States must take the floor to call into question the transitional government's investment into the CPD.
The transitional government's failure to allocate public resources appropriately towards basic services has severely crippled South Sudan's health, education, and social protection systems, leaving millions of vulnerable children completely reliant on international donor support.
Rather than act as a partner, transitional government officials at all levels creates impediments, including the collection of illicit taxes and fees, extortion, and harassment of aid workers, and the denial of humanitarian access.
To safeguard the lives and future of South Sudan's children, the transitional government must work with UNICEF and prioritize transparent domestic investment in essential services while immediately guaranteeing safe unimpeded access for humanitarian programming.
We strongly urge UNICEF and the transitional government of South Sudan to work together to ensure these counterproductive practices cease and that the country program is fully implemented in full compliance with UNICEF's rules, regulations, and operating procedures.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Are there any objections? I see no objection.
It is so decided.
Distinguished delegates.
We will now consider item 13 on our agenda, the annual report of the OS to UNIC Executive Board in relation to 2025.
And the response in accordance with the decision 1997 slash 28 of the executive board and later decisions.
In this document, you will find general information about the office, including the main issues highlighted in its internal audit investigation, and a summary of the follow up with implementation of the recommendations made in it.
You will also find information about the dissemination of the report in 2025.
The report that features in document E stroke ICF 26 AB slash accompanies is accompanied by two editions, one where they provide details of the measures agreed for internal audit that were still pending 18 months following the 31st of December 2025, EISF 2026 AB three a one, and another where the case is closed following investigation of cases closed following an evaluation where financial losses were found in 2025.
Document EIF 2026 ABL three a two is that document.
And there was also a response from the administration found in document E ISF 2026 ABL four.
Additionally, the annual report of the Advisory Committee for audits of UNICEF to the Executive Board and Relation A 25 is available on the website of the Executive Board today.
We have with us a representative of the Advisory Committee who will also share some remarks with the committee first.
Allow me to invite Mr.
Stephen Zimmerman, director of the OIS, to introduce the annual report on the work of that office.
You have the floor, sir.
Yes.
Thank you.
And members of the executive board and colleagues, I have the pleasure of sharing with you an overview of the 2025 annual report of the Office of Internal Audit and Investigations or OIAI Next slide.
I can confirm that OAI was independent and free from management interference in determining the scope of our work, performing our duties, and communicating our results throughout 2025.
Let me share highlights from our work last year.
2025 brought significant disruption to UNICEF in a rapidly shifting risk landscape.
We adapted our oversight approach in real time, providing targeted advisory support to senior management.
We also developed a new four year strategic framework for the next quadranum that will focus our work where it matters most, but within the available resources.
This year, we compiled recurring findings from both audits and investigations into a single synthesis.
I'll highlight some of the key themes during this presentation.
We also worked with other UNICEF divisions to develop several new critical key policies, including a new donor notification policy, a new anti fraud policy, as well as a new mechanism to sanction implementing partners found to engage in misconduct.
On the technology front, we expanded our use of AI and data analytics to help our teams conduct research and planning faster than before.
These efforts have put us among the leading oversight functions in the UN system.
I can report that based on the scope of work undertaken in 2025, the office did not identify evidence that would lead it to conclude that UNICEF's governance, risk management, and control processes were overall inadequate or ineffective in supporting the achievement of the organization's objectives.
The basis for this opinion for the first time, also considered insights from our advisory engagements and investigations.
Next slide.
OII issued 20 audit reports and six advisory reports last year.
Of the overall conclusions of the reports issued, 60% had a rating of either satisfactory or partially satisfactory.
74% of agreed actions from the prior four years, 2022 to 2025 were implemented as of last December 31.
22 agreed actions remained open for over 18 months as of the end of last year.
We published two thematic audit reports, one on investment management and a second on business continuity management.
Advice from advisory engagements in 2025 is summarized in our annual report.
Next slide.
The investigation team managed a total of 1,837 cases, a 32% increase from the prior year.
The number of new cases continues its upward trajectory with the receipt of 906 new cases this year, which constitutes a 77% increase over the last two years.
Despite continued growth in overall case volume, the investigation section made notable progress in reducing its backlog, increasing closures by 107%, particularly in cases of fraud and sexual exploitation and abuse.
The office established financial losses to UNICEF of over $1.2 million.
OII issued 57 investigation reports, including eight reports to the newly established Implementing Partner Review Board and three to the vendor Review Committee.
The chart on the right of this slide details the types of allegations that we receive.
The largest category of new allegations remains fraud and financial irregularities.
Next slide.
I want to take a moment to put our work in the broader context of helping UNICEF deliver outcomes for children.
Good risk management is what makes that possible.
Think of the challenge along the way as a windy road.
Oversight and internal controls are the guardrails along that road that let UNICEF run faster and with greater confidence and when need arises, despite the risks.
But guardrails must be tended to.
Audits and investigations, among other tools are how we find where they need repair.
This year's annual report includes a synthesis of two years of our most significant audit and investigation findings.
A few recurring themes stood out.
The Hack framework does not require implementing partners to submit supporting documentation upfront.
So when we are called in to investigate, documents are often not there.
We're currently auditing the Hack assurance process in 2026, so more to come later this year.
We've also seen instances of limited program monitoring and last mile verification.
At times, we may not always be sure whether programs are fully reaching beneficiaries.
We've seen repeated patterns of last minute purchasing before grant deadlines, gaps in vendor due diligence and contracts not properly closed or monitored.
Controls often exist, but they are not always applied consistently.
There's also still work to be done on fraud risk assessments and escalation, but a significant development last year was the creation of the IPRB, the Implementing Partner Review Board.
But we have no equivalent mechanism for government partners.
Risk management is always the thread running through all of these themes, and when risk registers are incomplete or management is not regularly reviewing significant risks, emerging problems may not get caught in time.
The good news is that this year we have seen renewed emphasis from the UNICEF senior leadership on strengthening the governance and oversight environment, and we anticipate positive developments in the near term.
Next slide.
The findings I just described directly shaped OII's future strategic priorities, which we have developed deliberately for a period of significant organizational change.
We will work to strengthen our role as a trusted advisor, close the gap between risk and assurance coverage, further embed data analytics and AI into oversight practices, and invest in our people.
For the audit section, we'll continue to expand IT risk coverage and strengthen the internal systems that keep our work sharp and consistent.
For investigations, we will continue our focus on fighting fraud, establish a dedicated sexual misconduct team, expand referrals to the IPRB and the vendor review committee.
We will continue rolling out our donor notification policy and are already exploring extending it across the full UN community.
And across both sections, we will deepen our collaboration, looking for opportunities to work together to support good governance and accountability.
Next slide.
We look forward to continuing to support UNICEF as we go through a period of change and evolution.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
I thank Mr.
Zimmerman for those remarks.
Mr.
Richard Chambers, President of the Advisory Committee for audits of UNICEF has joined the session online and will present his remarks to the executive board.
Distinguished members of the Executive Board, good morning and welcome for greetings from Singapore.
It is my pleasure to present the 2025 annual report of the UNICEF Audit Advisory Committee or AAC following the committee's second informal briefing with the executive board last month.
The AAC is a multidisciplinary body of the six independent professionals serving pro bono with expertise in governance, oversight evaluation, risk management, ethics, and finance.
The committee advises the executive director on governance, management, and oversight, and informs the executive board through the annual report.
The AAC's advice does not constitute statutory recommendations.
Rather, we provide independent strategic advice to strengthen decision making, accountability, and institutional resilience.
We live in a period of global Perma crisis in 2025 unfolded with global instability, funding pressures, organizational restructuring, and increased humanitarian demands.
Despite these challenges, UNICEF personnel continued delivering critical support to children globally, often in fragile and high risk environments.
The committee also adapted its work modalities in 2025 to support UNICEF's austerity measures by conducting one of our regular sessions virtually deferring a plan field visit and holding need based virtual sessions all to fulfill our chartered responsibilities.
Before highlighting the key advice, let me acknowledge several positive developments.
The committee was pleased to note the issuance of an unqualified opinions by both external and internal audit functions in 2024 for 2024.
The AACs further welcomed the introduction of annual risk reporting to the executive board and strengthening UNICEF's policy framework through the revised anti fraud policy, the AI strategy, and the environmental and social standards.
We were also encouraged by increased collaboration across oversight functions and the practical use of secure artificial intelligence tools within oversight activities Incidentally, the committee also leveraged approved AI tools to enhance its own effectiveness.
Section six of our annual report presents the AAC's advice under strategy and governance, enterprise risk management and oversight.
I will briefly highlight the key areas.
First on strategy, governance, and accountability.
Given the difficult funding environment, the committee advised management to undertake structured scenario planning to better understand thresholds that create sustainability risks and to conduct timely independent evaluation of the future focus initiative.
The AAC encouraged establishing a dedicated corporate governance function, emphasized timely succession planning across senior leadership and internal oversight, advised responsible use of advanced artificial intelligence, and reiterated its advice to develop a combined assurance map to improve visibility over assurance coverage gaps, and the overlaps across the oversight actors.
Next on enterprise risk management, the AAC continued advocating for accelerated ERM maturity, including actionable risk appetite statements, refreshed accountability frameworks, and updates to regulatory instruments beyond mandatory review dates.
The committee also advised strengthening fraud risk detective controls, given the disparity between the estimated fraud exposure as per global benchmarks and the actual reported losses.
On technology, the AAC highlighted IT capacity constraints in the face of growing cyber, AI, and shadow IT risks.
On human capital, the importance of actively managing workforce resilience and morale during organizational contraction and change was emphasized.
Next, on oversight matters, the committee advised assessing risks associated with the widening gap in internal assurance and evaluation coverage due to resource pressures and reiterated the importance of co locating the leadership of all of the internal oversight offices in New York.
For internal audit, the AAC encouraged increased IT audit coverage, refining annual opinion language, reviewing the audit universe, clarifying criteria for audit versus advisory work, and expanding coverage of organizational culture and anti money laundering On the evaluation, the committee encouraged structural dialogue between management and the evaluation office regarding budget expectations and sustainability coverage.
On ethics, the AAC reiterated the importance of finalizing the ethics charter to reinforce the independence and visibility of the function.
Finally, the committee emphasized the need for significantly strengthening controls over high risk areas of cash transfers and last mile supply monitoring, areas integral to the business model.
Before closing, I wish to thank my fellow members for their continued dedication and service and also recognize our secretary, Mr.
Sunil Rahman, for his exemplary secretarian leadership in a challenging year.
Looking ahead, the AAC's priorities for 2026 will include governance remodeling, executive risk monitoring, oversight effectiveness, leadership transition, implications from decisions on the JIU recommendations on board governance and strengthening the UN Oversight Advisory Committee Network.
Mr.
President, Executive Director, and distinguished board members, I thank you for your attention.
I thank Mr.
Chambers for sharing those remarks with the committee.
I now invite Madam Hanan Suleiman, Deputy Executive Director for management to deliver the response from UNCf's administration.
Following Madam Suleiman's statement, we will hear from Mr.
Nazem Keisa, Deputy Director for Financial Administrative Management.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Mr.
President, distinguished members of the Executive Board, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce the management response to the 2025 Annual Report of the Office of Internal Audit and Investigations to the Executive Board.
I would like to begin by thanking Mr.
Steven Zimmerman, Director of the Office of Internal Audit Investigations and his team for their excellent work in 2025.
Management appreciates the great contributions of OIAI which has strengthened the adequacy and effectiveness of the UNICEF framework of governance, risk management, and control, especially in these challenging times.
In opening this item, management is pleased to share with you that in 2025, OIAI concluded that the overall UNICEF framework of governance, risk management, and control were generally adequate and effective.
I would also like to highlight the collective efforts made by the controller and her team, including other divisions and offices to implement the recommendations from the audits.
Mr.
President, please allow me to also express our sincere appreciation and thanks to Mr.
Richard Chambers, as chair of the Audit Advisory Committee and other members of the committee for their valuable contributions and advice to our Executive Director.
Thank you very much, Mr.
President and with these few remarks, I now hand over to Mr.
Nazim Hasar, Deputy Director of DFAM to present the management response.
Thank you.
Mr.
President, members of the Executive Board, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to make this presentation on behalf of UNICEF Management.
First you on OIAI is independence.
The Office of Internal Audit and Investigation as an independent function as a firm that it was free from management interferences in determining the scope of its internal audits and investigations, performing its work, and communicating its results.
The audit reports in line with the Executive Board decision 2012 slash 13 were published and are in the public domain.
This demonstrates our accountability and transparency to stakeholders.
I would also like to emphasize that OAI was exempt from the 25% cost reduction in IBRR budget under the future Focus Initiative, underscoring the importance management places on the internal audit and investigations function.
On the assurance opinion, OAI issued 20 audit reports in 2025, of which 12 audit reports had generally satisfactory conclusions, while seven audit reports had a conclusion of partially satisfactory major improvements needed, and one country office audit report had an unsatisfactory conclusion.
The audit reports included 138 recommendations of which 50 or 36% are high priority.
I also indicated that in its view individually or collectively, these high priority actions are not expected to adversely impact the achievement of expected global outcomes.
UNICEF overall framework of governance, risk management, and internal controls remains adequate.
Management welcomes the satisfactory audit opinion which has been sustained over past years.
In response to the key themes emanating from the 2024, 2025 audits and investigations, we have significantly tightened our operational oversight by rolling out targeted hack trainings and implementing easy hack system controls.
This is complemented by risk based monitoring enhanced Procurement oversight, where we have integrated e tools to ensure all action points and vendor performance reviews are rigorously tracked.
On the policy side, we're strengthening our governance through the new ERM framework and robust anti fraud measures, including the establishment of the Implementing Partner Review Board effective July 2025.
UNICEF continues to lead interagency efforts to adapt to PSEA capacity strengthening process for government implementing partners by the implementing Partner Protocol Working Group.
On the status of implementation as of 31st December 2025, 75% of agreed actions from all audit engagements completed in 2022 to 2025 had already been implemented by UNSF offices.
Management appreciates the collaboration with OIAI in revising the implementation dates for the 22 long outstanding recommendations which are inherently time intensive.
Management will continue to prioritize the implementation of these actions within the revised timelines agreed with OIAI.
The 138 agreed actions issued in 2025 include implementation timelines beyond the 2025 calendar year.
We are proactively developing structured plans and prioritizing action implementation in recurring areas to ensure timely implementation of all 2025 agreed actions.
Mr.
President and distinguished delegates, please also note that for the year ended 31, December 2025, the total financial loss for cases substantiated by the Office of Internal Audit Investigations was $1.258 million of $155,000 has been recovered as of April 2026.
Management is working with offices concerned to keep pursuing the recovery of losses and will continue supporting country offices to put mitigating measures in place.
In addition to the issuance of the policy on anti fraud and corruption, management is developing a global fraud risk assessment guide to assist country officers in fraud risk management.
To enhance our ability to deliver results for children, management is currently undertaking an ongoing initiative to strengthen leadership oversight across the organization as a core element of accountability.
By aligning incentives and strengthening our organizational systems and culture, this initiative will deliver concrete, actionable outputs to robustly reinforce our control environment.
Finally, on audit Advisory Committee, we appreciate and will continue to benefit from the committee's advice and governance, risk management, ethics, integrity, and oversight matters.
We welcome committees positive feedback on the unqualified audit opinion and key initiatives including leadership engagement with staff during the future focus Initiative.
Management remains committed to further strengthening enterprise risk management, usage of AI for programmatic, operational and oversight transformation, as well as succession planning.
Thank you very much, Mr.
President.
And with that, I hand it over back to you.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Quisar and Madam Siman for those presentations.
I now open up the floor to member states.
I give the floor to the Distinguished Delegate of Belgium.
Mr.
President, dear representatives of UNIC, I delivered a statement on behalf of Australia, Canada, Denmark, the European Union as a donor, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Lichtenstein, Luxemburg, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and my own country, Belgium.
We express our appreciation for the presentation of the annual report of the Office for Internal Audit and Investigations, the Management Response and the audit Advisory Committee Report.
It is ultimately these core functions of the organization that ensure that children are helped to the very best of our ability.
We welcome the conclusion that UNICEF's governance, risk management, and control framework remain adequate and that the number of total investigations closed in 2025 has increased significantly.
At the same time, the rate of country offices with major improvement needed or unsatisfactory opinions has increased to 40% of all reports issued.
We further note the sustained increase in workload faced by the office as UNICEF operates under funding constraints, organizational restructuring, and a shift towards leaner delivery models.
How do you assess the ability of independent functions to work effectively despite these developments? The report also highlights recurring cross cutting risks in key operational areas such as cash transfers, program monitoring, procurement and supply chain management.
Persistent challenges in documentation, partner oversight, last mile verification, procurement planning, and contract management have direct implications for program effectiveness and value for money.
Could you elaborate on the strategy and measures to address these risks and ensure consistent implementation? We call on UNICEF to prioritize the 22 agreed audit actions pending implementation for more than 18 months.
Risks related to fraud and misconduct, including sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment, remain structurally high while detection rates appear low.
Identified weaknesses include limited guidance available on conducting fraud assessments, incomplete fraud risk assessments, delayed escalation of suspected cases, and inconsistent application of anti fraud controls.
How do you assess the effectiveness of the current control model and the preventive support provided to country offices? The audit Advisory Committee flagged that the resolute second line compliance function is absent.
Could you elaborate on plans for the implementation of such a function? Considering there is high residual fraud risk in cash intensive program delivery, particularly under the harmonized approach to cash transfers, the AAEC recommended a global independent assessment of fraud risk and hacked effectiveness.
Is such an assessment planned and what other measures do you plan to address systemic weaknesses in insurance coverage? We further observed that the office operates with relatively limited and largely fixed resources while facing increasing oversight demands in a more complex risk landscape.
We thank UNICEF for protecting the OIAI budget during the organizational restructuring.
But although a substantial resource envelope is foreseen for 2026 2029, reductions in non staff resources could constrain flexibility.
How do you plan to align OIAI's capacity with UNICEF's scale and risk profile? In closing, we look forward to further information on the planned independent evaluation of the future focus initiative.
Could you elaborate on its scope and whether it will include a financial assessment? I thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Belgium.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of the United Kingdom and to be followed by the United States and then Sweden.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
We align ourselves with a group statement just delivered by the distinguished representative of Belgium and wanted to add a few more in our national capacity.
The UK welcomes the overall assurance provided by the Office of Internal Audit and Investigations that UNICEF's governance, risk management, and control processes remain broadly adequate to support delivery of its objectives.
We recognize progress in implementation of audit recommendations with around 75% of agreed actions completed in recent years.
At the same time, we note several areas where progress is needed.
Firstly, a relatively high proportion of recommendations remain high priority, around 36%.
What is being done to manage and minimize this? Secondly, 22 agreed actions remain outstanding beyond 18 months, including in key areas such as enterprise risk management.
Why has it taken so long to act and what plans are there to resolve these issues? Thirdly, audit findings continue to be found mainly in program management, cash transfers and procurement, accounting for approximately 61% of country office issues.
What are UNICEF's plans to monitor this in country offices and plans to mitigate? Note the significant increase in investigative activity with 1,837 cases managed and 945 cases closed in 2025, indicating both strong output and a growing demand on the function.
This is a welcome statistic.
In addition, we note reported financial losses of approximately $1.26, 1.26 million with around 155,000 recovered to date.
We welcome continued efforts to strengthen recovery and deterrence.
The UK also values the importance role of the Independent Audit Advisory Committee, including its advice on strengthening enterprise risk management.
Thank you.
I thank the United Kingdom, and I give the floor to the United States of America.
To the presenters.
The United States thanks OIAI for its report along with the Annual Insurance of Independence.
However, we are also deeply troubled by numerous findings in the report and its addenda and we support OIAI strategic priorities for 2026 through 2029 to address key risk trends.
At a time when we are asking UN organizations to ensure efficient and effective use of member state resources, these documents indicate serious and repeated procurement control gaps, lack of required office fraud assessments, insufficient last mile program verifications, and even nonexistent supporting documentation implementing partner accounting records.
We also take account of the audit Advisory Committee's opinion that UNICEF progress on enterprise risk management is not commensurate with the level of institutional readiness needed.
The particular weaknesses documented in 2025 with regard to poor implementing partner compliance with the funding authorization and certificate of expenditures utilization is unacceptable.
If UNICEF does not see full and transparent compliance with such insurance mechanisms from its implementing partners, it should not be in business with them.
Full stop.
We note that the UNICEF Implementing Partner Review Board came online in July of last year and was designed in large part to tackle to address these risks.
What actions has UNICEF taken so far against the problematic implementing partners encountered in audits? What changes to that process is needed to ensure Swift draw action? We draw attention in this regard to paragraph 30 of the AAC's report that provides useful recommendations for improving first and second line function accountability.
UNICEF personnel misconduct investigation reporting is even more shocking.
43 matters requiring disciplinary action raises questions about front end vetting and the effectiveness of UNICEF Enterprise Risk Management.
The loss of nearly 1.3 million from 47 different cases of financial misconduct, of which only 150 500,000 has been recovered is as baffling as it is unacceptable to us.
We expect to see full action on and accounting for these serious gaps in incidence and moreover, believe more must be done to ensure full oversight and accountability of UNICEF personnel, its vendors, and its implementing partners.
As we have said repeatedly, the United States will not hesitate to walk away from organizations that do not demonstrate value and accountability to the American taxpayer, and we expect measurable progress and efficiency and effectiveness, as well as adherence to accountability reporting mechanisms and requirements.
Thank you.
Thank you very much to the distinguished representative of the United States.
I now give the floor to Sweden.
Thank you very much, Mr.
President.
Sweden is aligned with the statement of Belgium.
We have a couple of additional remarks.
First, we say that we appreciate a new element in the report this year.
The consolidation of the findings from audit reports and investigation is very useful.
We would encourage further work on harmonizing the structure of the reports between the UN funds and programs in order to facilitate comparison.
Then we noted in the report that government partners are not required, unlike CSO partners, to undergo a prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse assessment, and that the absence of related contractual terms and conditions with such partners means that UNICEF has a limited ability to respond to allegation of sexual exploitation and abuse.
It's also stated that there are no contractual provisions with government partners related to fraud prevention and that this limits the OIAI ability to take action against this category of partners.
We would appreciate if UNICEF could explain the reason for this difference in treatment and thus the difference in regulations between CSO and government partners contracts apply in the same way in other UN funds and programs.
Are there any considerations with regard to changing UNICEF's approach on this matter? Thank you very much.
Thank you very much to the representative of Sweden.
I'll give the floor to the distinguished representative of the Netherlands.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
We align ourselves with the statement as delivered by Belgium and I would like to make the following remarks in my national capacity.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands appreciates OII's dedicated work to help UNICEF deliver outcomes for children, including the efforts to try to keep up with the growing caseload.
The increase in cases managed and closed in 2025 is commendable.
We would like to reemphasize that adequate, predictable, and sustainable staffing and financing of OIAI remains key.
We appreciate the flexibility of OII to provide additional advisory support in 2025 to respond to significant organizational changes.
We would also like to thank the audit Advisory Committee, the AAC, for their work and for the information shared.
The role of the AAC is very valuable for the organization and for us as executive board.
We have understood, if I'm not mistaken, that this is the last annual report that the OII Director, Steven Zimmerman, will present or has presented, I should say.
So we want to thank him for his leadership and his dedication over the past years to support UNICEF's work and his efforts to help our work as executive board and advise us.
We would also like to ask UNICEF to keep us informed about the recruitment of the new director and to also recommend the participation of the AAC in the recruitment.
We would like to ask three questions.
First, the AAC recommends an independent evaluation of the future focus initiative.
We want to ask the AAC, are you recommending for the evaluation to be done by a third party rather than the evaluation office, or are you referring to an evaluation by the evaluation office? Second, several regulatory policy documents are beyond their review date.
What are UNICEF's plans to prioritize these reviews to align policies with the new organizational reality? And my third and last question, the AEC recommends for OII to include culture assessments in the regular country office audits, especially considering the organizational changes UNICEF is going through, we think this could be a useful addition, although perhaps not an easy one.
Can OAI elaborate whether they are considering to do this? I thank you.
I thank the Distinguished Representative of Netherlands.
I now invite the Secretariat to respond.
Thank you, members for your questions, very pertinent questions.
I will try to answer some of them together, especially questions from Belgium and UK you're talking about the country office with major improvement needed categorization, increasing the recurring issues and as well as the audit findings in the themes that OI has highlighted.
So From management side, we are, of course, all the time focusing on these recommendations.
There are multiple ways that we are trying to handle these.
Firstly, of course, through the implementation of audit recommendations themselves, because when the audit recommendations are issued, we have full focus to make sure that they are timely implemented.
That actually helps us in implementing and correcting and rectifying issues that have been identified in these audits.
Then these audits are, of course, in different country offices.
We also draw from that the lessons learned and those are fed into our policy work.
If you have seen over the past He UNICEF has rolled out and updated a number of its critical internal policies, including the policy and delegation of authority, the regulatory framework, the fraud and anti fraud and corruption policy.
The policies are helping us now to really look at some of these issues in a coherent and broader manner.
The issue of the 22 longstanding recommendations is exactly the reason why this is taking a little bit of time.
Some of these recommendations are related to ERM enterprise risk management.
We want to make sure that we implement them in a comprehensive manner at a global level, and that is why we really appreciate OIIs understanding in extending the timelines for implementation.
On the risk remaining high, as I also mentioned in my presentation that we are about to issue fraud risk assessment guide to the country offices, which we feel is very, very essential.
It is in order to really address the frauds, the accurate assessment of fraud risk is very, very important because that enables us to really look at how and what mitigation measures we will be putting into place.
Um, on the reduced second line compliance functions, management is currently looking at an initiative across the organization, how we can increase our oversight for the first and second line of defense.
What are the minimum or what are the essential accountability and oversight responsibility at the country office leadership, at the regional office, and at the headquarters level.
We had very detailed discussions in our regional management team meetings.
We are also addressing that at the global level this week at the GMT meeting.
On the cash transfers, we are again, improving quite a bit.
We are ensuring that cash transfer, we have different methodologies.
We can, of course, do cash transfers to implementing partner based on reimbursement basis, or we can also directly make cash transfer to the beneficiary.
So that assessment is very important of the implementing partner capacity and to adopt the right approach and to address the concerns that have come out in the audit recommendations.
On the OII funding, as I mentioned in the presentation, we have tried to protect OII from any reduction.
In fact, in the last strategic plan, we had established a number of additional positions, as well as an investigation unit was established in OII which has actually helped very much to address this increase investigation workload, and we'll continue to work with OII to see what other needs are there, especially also on the non staff side.
On the future focus initiative, the EED mentioned yesterday, it was a very big initiative that we had undertaken.
We are constantly monitoring the implications on operational programmatic and risk management areas.
We are now going to be conducting an after action review and an evaluation is planned for next year.
Yeah.
I also want to reiterate that on the fraud side, US colleague also asked this question.
We are very much on top of the case, the 43 cases, 25 cases were already sorted out.
The recovery efforts are going on.
More than 75% of the specific fraud was internals and we're making recovery efforts through staff entitlements, where are legally possible and other measures and that work is going on and we fully understand your concern and will prioritize further recovery efforts.
On the face for implementing partner issues that you also raised.
So I We are actually Face forms currently are received manually, and there's a lot of thousands of Face form the country office receives and the oversight is a little bit challenging, but we are really right now digitizing.
We have a project that's going on.
It's called EFAce that will completely digitize this.
That means all the EFAce forms will link to the project documents to the work plans and the activities and therefore enable our teams to effectively monitor in a timely manner, not in a reactive measure.
So that is being taken care of at this point in time.
On the question from Sweden relating to PSC assessment of government counterparts, we work with the government counterparts, we have certain differences in the way we approach because for CSO partners, there's a whole selection process.
You have due diligence and you have a selection process, selection where you choose the most appropriate CSO partner, but with the government counterparts, slightly works differently because there is government ownership.
So we try to address the risk through capacity building, through information sharing, through training of the government counterparts and also including them in our own procedures and using the interagency mechanisms to ensure we have more cooperation and UNICEF values and procedures and requirements are being effectively implemented with the government partners and the system works very much similar to other UN agencies as well.
That's why an intelligency approach to manage these risks is very, very essential, and we're working on that.
So with that, look to.
Yes go ahead.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you, distinguished delegates for the very good questions.
Just to add to my colleague on the Implementing Partner Review Board, when we received the outcomes of that, we have suspended some partnerships based on those findings, and then any continuation is conditional on various factors on each specific case.
That has happened.
On PSEA, I would just like to add that UNICEF is also one of the leading agencies on the interagency group for the implementing partner protocols, and the focus in the next two years is going to be continued strengthening of interagency coordination.
A framework for capacity strengthening also for government as well as civil society.
We're taking that very seriously.
We also led the work on including clauses with government for national strengthening and so on and we continue that work.
This is a really important element, and I want to refer back to the statement by Nigeria this morning in terms of investing in national systems and capacities when it comes to PSEA and making sure that we have clear accountability and perpetrators are held to account.
This is a very important priority for UNICEF.
We will continue in that respect, working closely with governments to make sure that we can enhance the systems within governments as well.
On the comment with regards to the regulatory framework policies, as Naze mentioned, some of the policies we have updated, we have a backlog.
We have other policies that do need to be updated and we have a work plan over the next two years to update a series of policies that are absolutely priority, and so that work continues and we have that for the various areas of work, not just in terms of the financial rules and regulations, but also other areas like HR and so on.
Um, in terms of the end user monitoring and the weaknesses that have been identified in that respect, we're looking at different ways of using technology in addition to other measures to strengthen end user monitoring.
The team has worked extensively both within the organization, but also at an interagency level to look at digitization and what more we can do.
And we're using that beyond the end user monitoring as well.
So there is opportunity with the advancements in technology to strengthen some of our monitoring and our ways of verification and so on.
That is a work in progress.
Lastly, on strengthening oversight, as mentioned by our colleagues, over the last few months, um, We had requested the Office of Internal Audit Investigations to give us that analysis of what are the weak areas that you see consistently across offices.
That was what was shared with you in their report.
On that basis, we started an exercise a few months ago as Nze mentioned, to strengthen oversight of the first line and the second line.
That is something that we're focused on very extensively.
We had very dedicated discussions in our regional management team meetings, all six of them.
Very good ideas that have come out in terms of the responsibilities that must be exercised at the leadership level and thereafter at other levels where there are oversight responsibilities and what mechanisms we need to put in place and tools that can enable and support our leadership and teams to be able to do that.
There is room for simplification, for streamlining, for orientation, for change in behavior.
There's various streams of work.
As mentioned by Z, we're going to discuss that actually this Friday in the global management team.
We will also share this with our partner UN agencies as well because there is room there to also exchange and do some things together as well.
That is some of the ongoing work that is happening right now and it is a corporate priority that our executive director has clearly indicated we need to continue focusing on.
We have good examples of where oversight works really well and we're using those to also inform our systems and our processes and so on.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
A few other additional comments.
First, let me say that I think I want to commend UNICEF management from where I sit for its commitment to transparency and for picking up the rocks to see what's underneath and looking at where the problems are.
This most recent exercise that Deputy Executive Director Suleiman just alluded to of going through and doing a synthesis report was done actually at the request of management as part of this government initiative.
But when you put all the pieces together, it does really cause us to see and look more carefully at where the issues arise.
But I believe that UNICEF is committed to looking at those issues, to being transparent, and then sharing it with you.
And then taking action.
I'm not sure that that's always the case across other organizations, but it's certainly the case here at UNICEF, and I've been very pleased to see if anything and emphasis on transparency increase over the course of my seven years here.
So I hope that will continue, and I have every expectation that it will.
But I also think it is an opportunity to engage with you not about only what's going wrong, but about how the organization is committed to actually looking ahead and identifying how they can be fixed.
And then you as the executive board holding myself, my office, but the rest of management hold our feet to the fire to make sure that we're taking those actions.
Um, so when you see an increase in low ratings of audit reports of country offices, that's not necessarily an indicator that the organization is not improving, but indeed that it continues to encourage and take an honest look at where the issues do exist and what we can do to do better.
A couple more specific points from questions that were raised.
There's a good number of questions around the ERM audit and what we're doing around risk management.
We are currently OII is currently doing a review of the implementation of the audit of risk management and the current status of the ERM policy, it continues to evolve.
I would be the first to say that we need to be more expeditious and more forceful in this area, but I do believe there's a commitment to continue to improve our risk management profile.
With respect to government partners, this is a question raised by a couple of folks.
This is a significant issue and it's a fundamental legal difference.
We have contractual arrangements with civil society government partners.
We do not have the same contractual arrangements with government partners.
It is a bit of a legal issue, but also a political issue that needs to be addressed.
And this is one that may require more input from you as the governing body and as the representatives of your capitals because it is not an easy one to resolve.
And it does manifest itself in every type of misconduct that we see, fraud and corruption, SEA and other issues.
So more work to be done on that, and I appreciate you raising that issue.
With respect to culture audits, we have already begun to include elements of culture in our country office audits.
Remember OI really has two groups of audits.
We have thematic audits where it would be a cross cutting theme like hacked or fraud, for example.
But the majority of our audits are country office audits that look at specific issues and we have started embedding culture as an element in each of those country office audits, but it is correct, it is not an easy thing to audit.
It is not an easy thing to survey, but I do believe that we're committed to trying to find a way to be more aggressive and dig a little deeper and identify how we do that.
In 2027, we've already begun preparations for our next audit work plan.
We're focused on how we can do a more in depth look at where the culture of the organization resides, particularly in light of the changes that we have gone through.
On fraud.
The anti fraud policy is, I think, just a year old, the new anti fraud policy.
It has not been fully implemented yet.
There's this position created by the anti fraud policy for an anti fraud officer that we're in discussions with OED on how to create that position and where to put it.
There's still more work to be done here, but we have made tremendous progress and the policy itself is an indicative of the improvement.
Two years ago, OII created a fraud task force or a special fraud unit within OII that I think is really upped our game and how we're looking at this issue, but there's always more to be done.
We don't get to the end of this.
It's not as if that a zero tolerance policy for fraud means we're going to get to a point where I or my successor is going to be able to represent that we have no fraud.
It's how can we mitigate that risk as effectively as possible to a point that's acceptable to me, to management, and to you as the governing body? And there certainly is more work to be done, but I do think improvements are underway.
The IPRB came into force in September.
It's still getting its footing.
We are working closely with the IPRB to try and get it off and running.
It is modeled off of the system used by the multilateral development banks, but a lighter version.
So I do think there is room to improve, but the commitment to take that forward is absolutely there.
Finally, on resources for OII, I am again thankful that our cut was not nearly as dramatic as across the rest of the organization, and I think that was done, I know, with a direct intervention by the executive director and underscored her commitment to ensuring that the work of OII continues and how important it is to the organization, and particularly in this time of change.
We are in discussions with with the senior management on our non post resources, which is the money we use for consultants and travel as well.
We have moved the majority of our staff to lower cost locations to try and save money as well.
But again, we will always work within the resources provided and if we do believe we get to a point where we're no longer able to provide the opinion that you require from us, we'll certainly raise that issue.
Lastly, let me just thank the Netherlands for your comments.
I appreciate that.
I didn't mean to make this about that, but it's been a pleasure serving in this position and one of the things I actually look forward to most is my annual interaction with the governing body here.
Thank you very much for all your support.
Thank you.
Any other observation? Well, let me thank once again to the Secretary for their observations.
Given that no other delegation has expressed wish to take the floor, we have concluded the annual report to the Executive Board of the Office of Iteral Audit Investigation 25, and the management response will be considered later on agenda item 19 under decisions for approval.
We will now move to the report of the Ethics Office of UNICEF for 2025 and the management response Item 12.
The report features in document E Stroke ICEFSOke 2026 Stroke 2021, and the management response of UNICEF is found in E Stroke ISEFSroke 26 slash 2022.
Both documents have been submitted to the executive board in accordance with the provisions of Decisions 2010 slash 18 and 2018 slash 11 and 2022 slash 14 of the executive board.
Mr.
Elsid Butuyan, Director of the Ethics Office, will introduce the annual report of the Ethics Office.
This will be followed by Mr.
Sathid Ali, who will present the management response.
I now give the floor to Mr.
Butoan to present his report.
Thank you, Mr.
President and distinguished delegates.
On behalf of the ethics team, I am pleased to present the report for 2025.
As an independent oversight office, we are grateful for the support of management and the executive board, and we especially value the continued interest in our independence and effectiveness.
As noted, 2025 has been an exceptionally challenging year for the entire organization, including for our own office.
Despite this, I am pleased to share that the ethics office has met and in many areas, performed beyond the target set for the year.
Indeed, in moments of deep organizational change, the RES landscape may broaden and deepen.
It is therefore of utmost importance that we in UNICEF center ethics in the forefront of what we do.
Next slide, please.
Operating under the principles of confidentiality, impartiality and independence, the ethics office promotes an ethical and values based organizational culture.
Though our theme is small, our mandate is quite wide ranging and broad.
Given the organizational changes, the ethics office continued the momentum of its strategic approach over the past years by one, deepening engagement while maintaining quality and service standards in challenging times.
The year on year increase in engagement with our office continued last year for the total number of services provided as shown in this slide.
Second, sharpening and tailoring the approach to outreach, training, and awareness raising by focusing on tailored content for smaller audiences, but deeper conversations.
Third, strengthening ethical leadership by engaging nearly 200 managers and supervisors through dedicated ethical leadership sessions.
Next, the launching of new themes and workstreams.
Previous slide, please.
The launching a new themes and workstreams.
We launched a new eLearning course on preventing and addressing sexual harassment and this was, in fact, led by our DED Hanano Lehman, who led it at the UN wide interagency system level, which received very positive feedback and is now also being used by other UN agencies.
In October, the office rolled out our global conversation on leaving our values in challenging times.
Next, amplifying force multipliers by enhancing support to our ethics and cultural champions or through ECCs by boosting the engagement with our almost 480 ECCs across 139 offices globally.
Last, the conflict of interest Financial Disclosure Program for this reporting year achieve 100% full compliance.
Next slide, please.
Now, this slide is a little bit busy, so let me just highlight the graph on the left, which is the most interesting part.
I think if there's one takeaway in our report in our presentation, it is this slide.
It shows the more than three fold increase in the advice sought from the ethics office over the past year.
As shown in the report already discussed in the report, this data point measures and demonstrate a couple of dimensions.
One, the level of staff awareness on where to go for guidance.
Second, the intensity of staff engagement with our office.
Third, the reach of our office, and last, the impact of our services.
This consistent increase, we believe is a healthy trajectory because it signifies our staff members trust in and comfort with surfacing risk early.
A couple of other salient observations on this data point.
One, there's been a diversification in the types of staff seeking advice with an increase in requests coming from field offices, helping bridge the perceived gap between ethics at the center and ethics in the periphery.
We're very proud of this.
I remember when I came in to lead this function, the trend was the reverse.
We were hearing mostly from headquarters location and from international our international professional staff.
We've reversed that trend happily where we're hearing more from all categories of staff and more from field locations.
Second, this shift towards earlier reporting, thereby allowing for ethical risks to be addressed in a more timely manner.
There's also decline in anonymous requests, which reflects a growing level of trust in the ethics office's independence and confidentiality protocols.
There's also increase in word of mouth referrals, which indicates that staff who had positive experience engaging with our offices have encouraged their colleagues to similarly consult with us.
Lastly, we've seen an increase in engagement with various leaders and managers at all offices, therefore catching more systemic issues rather than individual cases.
Next slide, please.
These slides show you more granular data on our work.
We're happy to engage or answer questions during the Q&A on this data as well.
Next slide, please.
In 2025, the ethics and culture champions in UNICEF consisted of 480 champions in almost all UNICEF offices.
UNICEF takes great pride in our ethics champions.
You may have heard from UN agencies that they have recently started a similar initiative, which was inspired by our program.
As mentioned, the ethics Office led on the development and launch of a new eLearning course on preventing and addressing sexual harassment, which is a new work stream that we took on.
The financial disclosure program within UNICEF has been enhanced with the new electronic platform which we introduced in 2024, which helps streamline and make it more user friendly and which consequently has received positive feedback from filers.
This has been redesigned in such a way that we've also supplemented them by coming up with clear SOPs and very funky, animated health videos for any user of the platform.
Lastly, there are ongoing discussions of the UNICEF ethics Office supporting the ethics function of UN Women, which demonstrates increased coordination across the UN wider system.
This really is just one example of where we are leading collaboration across UN agencies.
I could easily point out to half a dozen initiative where we've led or inspired initiatives by other UN agencies.
When selecting the theme for 2025 for Ethics Month, we were mindful of the context we were operating in.
The theme living our values in challenging times, acknowledged the difficult situation of the FFI, and provided space to reflect, discuss, and recommit to UNICEF values.
Our ethics, culture led conversations with relevant scenarios or case studies were conducted in at least 60 offices globally.
We also hosted two global conversations with UNICEF staff counselors and a conversation with doctor Sandy Okoro, OBE, the Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, and former senior official at the World Bank, who gave an inspiring talk to our colleagues.
Next slide, please.
By way of closing remarks, and that's probably the last slide, the ethics officer will continue to monitor the needs of the staff post FFI, and we will provide enhanced support to offices that are significantly impacted by the restructuring.
As a final note, I thank our partners, including Mr.
Zimmerman from OAI, DPC, Global Staff Association.
There are too many to mention here, but also our small ethics team, they're actually in the back.
Sarkkdi Mara, Hina Chung, Sarah Hwang.
They are all too modest and assuming, but this may very well be the first and last time you'll hear their names in public.
But it is many thanks to them that we were able to deliver on Monday.
I look forward to your feedback and questions and thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Butouyan for those remarks.
I now invite Mr.
Ali to present the management response on behalf of the Division of People and Culture.
Senior President.
Mr.
President, distinguished members of the executive board, and other delegates.
On behalf of management, I'm pleased to respond to the 2025 report of the Ethics Office of UNICEF.
Management welcomes the report and extends its appreciation to the Ethics Office under the leadership of Mr.
Butuyan for its professionalism and commitment during a year marked but profound organizational change.
The ethics office continued to fulfill its mandate with independence, impartiality and integrity, demonstrating once again, its vital role in promoting an ethical value based culture across UNICEF.
Management congratulates the ethics office for maintaining quality and service standards, timeliness, and responsiveness despite increased demands.
The 2025 reporting period coincided with the implementation of the future Focus Initiative.
Within this challenging context, the ethics office delivered more than 2,500 services, marking a significant rise from previous year and underscoring its role as a trusted and accessible resource for personnel worldwide.
Management commends the ethics Office for its strong data driven approach, proactive risk identification, and continued focus on early intervention.
The increase to more than 1,100 requests for confidential ethics advice in 2025, along with the notable rise in workplace related consultations demonstrates the ethics office's effectiveness in helping staff to address concerns before they escalated into formal disputes.
Management also recognizes the ethics office achievement in strengthening ethical culture and competencies across UNICEF.
Through more than 100 trainings and outreach sessions, the office reached over 7,300 personnel worldwide, continuing its flagship introduction to ethics in UNICEF seminar and delivering high quality ethical leadership training to nearly 200 managers and supervisors.
Management supports the plan of the ethics office to deepen engagement on sexual harassment prevention and follow up on the successful launch of the new eLearning module.
Management extends its appreciation to the ethics office for its service during a period of significant organizational change, its guidance to staff and managers.
Navigating complex workplace and organization challenges has strengthened trust across the system.
The strengthened collaboration with the UNICEF Office of Internal Audit and Investigations on retaliation cases has further ensured organizational clarity, fairness, and accountability.
Management appreciates the ethics office for expanding its engagement with 480 ethics and culture champions in nearly 140 offices worldwide.
This included doubling of training and capacity building sessions for ethics and culture champions.
The ethics office also facilitated ethics month activities, including global conversations that were attended for more than 2000 staff members.
Management lost the ethics office work on making improvements to the conflict of interest and financial disclosure program, which had 100% compliance with filing and verification and resulted in significant savings through in house management of the program.
Management applauds the ethics Office for its active engagement in critical system wide platforms, including the Ethics Panel of the United Nations, the Ethics Network of Multilateral Organizations, and United Nations wide anti harassment initiatives.
The work of the ethics Office has strengthened the culture of accountability, transparency, and ethical stewardship of UNICEF, reinforcing trust among staff, partners, and communities that the organization serves.
Management also recognizes the ethics O's meaningful contributions to ethical risk management, safeguarding, and enterprise risk management.
Management welcomes the inclusive process through which the office is developing its new charter, reflecting extensive consultations, benchmarking, and alignment with best practices across the UN system.
Management acknowledges the significant financial constraints faced by all parts of the organization and has made efforts to protect the ethics Office budget for the period 2026 to 2029.
This ensures that the office is adequately staffed and funded, and we remain committed to reviewing the office's structural needs and resources while continuing towards sustainable and appropriate staffing levels consistent with the size of an operational complexity of the organization and in line with our funding availability.
In conclusion, management expresses its sincere appreciation to the UNICEF Ethics Office for its leadership, professionalism, and steadfast service in 2025.
The office's integrity, resilience, and dedication have been central to supporting staff and upholding UNICEF core values in an exceptionally challenging year.
I thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you, Mr.
Ali, for your observations.
Distinguished delegates, the floor is now open for you to take the floor.
I give the floor to the distinguished representative of the United Kingdom.
Thank you very much Chair.
The UK welcomes the continued work of the Ethics Office.
We note positively an increase in overall engagement, continued investment in outreach and training, and a rise in demand for support.
What do you think the driver for this has been? Greater trust or more issues? We also recognize the important contribution of the ethics and Culture Champions Network, which provides an important decentralized mechanism for promoting ethics awareness.
These efforts come at a time of significant organizational change.
In this context, maintaining a strong ethical culture is particularly critical.
The UK emphasizes the importance of ensuring that staff feel safe and confident to raise concerns.
Protections against retaliation are consistently applied and trusted.
Ethical leadership is visible and embedded across all levels of the organization.
We encourage UNICEF to continue strengthening its work to ensure that ethical standards are not only articulated but consistently experienced in practice across all offices.
And thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
I now give the floor to the United States.
Thank you, Chair.
The United States welcomes the 2025 report of the UNICEF Ethics Office.
We commend the Office for processing a record number of requests while navigating structural changes under the future Focus Initiative and welcomes management's commitment to protect the Office's budget through 2029.
While 100% compliance and financial disclosures is a baseline expectation, we appreciate that the process is managed in house to preserve core resources.
We welcome the launch of global training to further advance zero tolerance for sexual harassment and we also look forward to the new ethics charter.
Recognizing that the document remains under development, we would like to know what changes or improvements the ethics Office is contemplating for it, as well as any new charter that seeks to address any particular gaps or deficiencies it has seen in UNICEF existing ethics framework.
Thank you.
Representative.
I thank the distinguished representative of the United States.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of the Netherlands.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
The ingdom of the Netherlands wants to thank the Ethics Office for the work they have delivered in the past year.
In this challenging year for UNICEF, the office has performed beyond targets.
We value the year on year increase in the number of ethics services requested, that staff seem to be seeking guidance earlier, that there is a decline in anonymous request and increased engagement from country level staff.
This shows that staff are better able to find the ethics office for support and advice.
We would like to reiterate the importance of the full independence of the ethics Office.
Adequate, predictable, and sustainable staffing and financing of the ethics Office remains key.
We therefore welcome that UNICEF has largely protected the ethics Office budget for the period 2026 to 2029.
We have two questions.
One, can you share further information on the status of the ethics charter? Two, can you elaborate on your role during the ongoing organizational change process? How do you foresee your role in this in the coming months? Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of the Netherlands.
I now invite the Secretariat to respond.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
President and the distinguished delegates for your interest and close reading of our report.
We really appreciate your thoughtful questions.
From the distinguished gentleman from the UK on the question relating to what drives the increase in numbers and you identified three.
I would say all of it plus one.
I think increased awareness and consciousness regarding where to go for what and when and what protection protocol supply when you go to the ethics office or other offices.
Second, increasing trust or reliance because we get a lot of repeat customers, if I may say it, which means to say that they've encouraged they were encouraging the previous interaction experience with our office or at least referred some of their colleagues to come to us as well.
And there's also, I think, more cases that come that are, I would say, rather of the moment or unique because of the FFI context.
Issues relating to dynamics within the office, issues relating to questions regarding their abolishment of the post, issues regarding to the ensuing recruitment or selection of staff for the abolished post and the like.
But also, I think there's also a shift where staff members are increasingly opting to go to more informal and early resolution avenues for the concerns which could potentially clog the more formal mechanisms, including investigations.
And we hope that we will continue at some point we will help address the issue of the pipeline for investigation cases as well, although we still see a lot of cases going to OAI.
The question from the US, thank you for the positive comments regarding the charter, it's in final stages, and I would like to actually commend the team from the OED, especially the regulatory experts within that team who've been looking at it closely and trying to align and update it with our structure.
Some of them are very new regulatory policies.
Let me take the occasion also to clarify a few things.
One is, when we were developing the charter, we were both intentional about the timeline because there was a sequencing issue.
At the time that we kick started the process, the UN Secretariat actually started reviewing the Secretary-General bulletin that governs the ethics functions across agencies.
So we wanted to wait for the outcome of that exercise.
Similarly, the wider network of ethics across multilateral organizations have come up with standards of practice which would also both enrich and help us in drafting the charter.
So as noted by the distinguished chair of the audit Advisory Committee, Mr.
Chambers, the charter is actually to reinforce the mandate and the working arrangement within the ethics office, but it's not absolutely necessary to have the chart to have an independently operating ethics office.
We do have that right now, and that's under the umbrella of the Secretary-General bulletin.
I think that also answers the other question from the distinguished delegate from the Netherlands.
Miss Rose Higgins, thank you again for your very thoughtful questions.
The other question that came from the distinguished delegates relate to the charter and the role that was played by the ethics office in the context of FFI.
We thought we had a value add to various offices undergoing significant challenges in the context of the FFI.
Particularly, we focused on helping our leaders and managers who were really struggling to navigate these unprecedented challenges within their various teams.
As mentioned, we did focus on helping roll out ethical leaderships, which also focus on a couple of skill set or thematic areas, how to help the leaders hold their teams together, how to conduct difficult conversations with empathy and transparency, how to navigate restructuring with fairness, and how to role model organizational values in the midst of change.
And we thought that was a really good role for the ethics office to play in the context of these changes.
Of course, we went out there as well and met with the staff and the staff groups who've been severely affected by these changes.
And we conducted active deep listening about their concerns and escalated to senior management, any issues that may require enhanced monitoring or, um, or intervention.
We did that also for a global Staff association, for example.
They've expressed concern regarding how staff representatives had been affected by the FFI as well.
We did that as well together with Mr.
Ali, actually, who did expeditious intervention and escalation of these matters.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you.
Okay.
And so I thank the Secretariat for those remarks.
If there are no requests for the floor, the annual report for 2025 of the management response shall be considered under agenda item 19 draft decisions.
Okay.
Distinguished delegates.
The next item on our agenda is agenda item 11, the annual report for 2025 on the evaluation function in UNICEF that features in document E, stroke, ISEF stroke 2026, stroke 17, and the UNICEF Management response, which features in document E, stroke, ICEF stroke 2026, stroke 18.
Robert McCo Mr.
Robert McCutch, Director for evaluation will present the report to be followed by Mr.
Ba Victor Newland, Interim Director for the Office of Strategy and Data of UNICEF Inocentter.
You will share the management response of UNICEF.
Mr.
McCouch, you have the floor.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Chair.
It's a pleasure as always to be presenting this report, which because 2025 marked the end of the previous quadraum aim to give your delegations a broader perspective on trends and developments over this four year period.
Next slide, please.
This first slide describes the function's evolution over this period in very broad brushes.
Embarking on the quadrannum in 2022 on the heels of the COVID 19 pandemic, a prolonged leadership gap, and the recent establishment of a decentralized level of the function, we first sought to restabilize and rebuild the function, then reposition it for greater positive impact through a variety of means that you see here, and then reinforce these gains.
To be clear, when I say we, I am not referring to the evaluation team alone.
Rather, everything we undertook was done in close partnership with colleagues all across UNICEF who understood the value of an evaluation function that is both robustly independent and deeply embedded within the organization and who sought to strengthen it with us.
This said, we are all aware of the extraordinary strain that 2025 brought to the organization.
Despite this, the function remained focused, managing to not only avoid backsliding on our key performance indicators, but rather also to continue making gains and informing the decisions that matter most for children.
This presentation describes this pattern of continuity and progress.
Next slide, please.
So here we zero in on our KPIs, which, as just mentioned, remained quite stable in 2025.
This was no small achievement in the current context.
I will not dwell on the minute details of each indicator.
Suffice it to say, however, that we are all well aware of our strengths and successes within the function, as well as those areas needing ongoing cultivation and improvement.
And importantly, we have put numerous measures in place to sustain our gains and address our challenges in the years ahead.
Next slide, please.
And now to what I would argue is an equally important story beyond the KPIs.
This is a story of deeper, more gradual, and more fundamental shifts to help ensure that evaluation is optimized to help UNICEF and its partners move the needle for children at the impact level and at scale.
Internally, our evaluations shaped countless decisions at all levels of the organization.
Your delegations are aware of just a small handful of these from previous sessions, evaluations of UNICEF's response to the COVID pandemic and of its clustered lead role in humanitarian action, evaluations of the organization's work on universal child benefits, child marriage, early childhood development, and child protection.
Evaluations of UNICEF approaches to advocacy, to social and behavioral change, and to gender, and of course, the evaluation of the strategic plan 2022, 2025, as well as advisory notes during the FFI process that we co developed together with our colleagues in OIAI.
In 2025, we completed a study of influential evaluations that provides many other examples beyond these of our evaluations positive impact on the organization's work.
Above all, the study underscores that critical and mutually reinforcing value of independence and collaboration throughout the evaluation process.
Our broader influence extended beyond UNICEF and continued to blossom as well.
Together with our partners, including many of your governments, we forged a global movement together of evidence based decision making and accountability for children at the systems level through our work in national evaluation capacity development, impact evaluation, and evaluation synthesis.
Next slide, please.
I will not dwell on these bottom line figures for the quadranum but merely point ahead to the next presentation under this agenda item in which your delegations will see and hear about one concrete example of how our various internal and external efforts came together in the form of a country led impact evaluation that is making a difference for children in Peru.
Next slide, please.
As we were moving into the current quadranium, we naturally harvested lessons gleaned from the prior four years and these directly informed the plan for global evaluations 2026 to 2029 that your delegations endorsed at the first regular session this past February.
These are summarized once again here.
Next slide, please.
This slide articulates our five main priorities for 2026.
These have also been presented previously, so I will just highlight one of these of particular relevance for your delegations, the independent Assessment of evaluation in UNICEF that is currently underway and will be presented to the executive board on its request next year.
The assessment team is with us here in New York this week and in addition to warmly welcoming them, I would like to thank your delegations, as well as our UNICEF colleagues across the house for the ongoing engagement in this executive board requested exercise.
Next slide, please.
Mr.
President, distinguished delegates, I hope this report has given you a clear and candid account of where this function stands at the outset of the current quadranum.
As this is my final presentation, like my colleague, Steve, from OAI, to the executive board before concluding my tenure in August, I would like to take this moment to express my very sincere gratitude for your engagement and for your steadfast support for what we have been trying to accomplish.
It has truly been a privilege to serve in this role and an honor to work with you and countless colleagues all across UNICEF.
Thank you.
I thank Mr.
McCuch for that presentation.
I now invite Mr.
Nylon to present the management response.
President, distinguished members of the executive board, observers and colleagues.
It is my pleasure to present UNICEF's management response to the 2025 annual report on UNICEF's evaluation function.
Management welcomes the report's balanced assessment of progress during the final year of the strategic plan 2022 to 2025, delivered in a challenging and evolving environment.
Overall, the evaluation function has made important progress.
It has strengthened its coherence across global and country levels and reinforced its focus of relevance, credibility, independence, as well as usefulness.
It has also played a key role in informing the development of UNICEF strategic plan 2026 to 2029.
A major achievement has been the evaluation functions ability to adapt to resources constraints while continuing to deliver credible evidence, in particular, the introduction of the first fully costed evaluation work plan is an important step toward greater transparency and better alignment of resources with strategic priorities.
At the same time, management underscores the importance of prioritization.
With limited resources, efforts must focus on areas of greatest strategic value.
Impact evaluations should be expanded as they provide the strongest evidence on what works and can guide program design, scaling, and resource allocation.
UNICEF continues to value evaluations as a key learning opportunity to improve the delivery of results for children.
Strong collaboration between the evaluation office and program teams has helped ensure that findings are used in key areas such as health, WASH, innovation, human resources, and early childhood development.
This shows that well timed and relevant evaluations can directly support better programs and decision making.
The function has also improved its methods and tools.
Innovative approaches such as adaptive designs and remote data collection have allowed evaluation work to continue even in fragile and constrained contexts while maintaining quality.
There has also been progress in improving the inclusion of children's voices, making evaluations more relevant and grounded in lived experiences.
In terms of performance, there has been progress in coverage with more evaluations conducted in 2025, including more country program and multi sectoral evaluations.
However, it remains critical to ensure that quality and strategic relevance come before volume.
Evaluation quality has improved overall, but most evaluations meeting satisfactory standards and more achieving higher ratings.
Continued attention is needed at the design stage to ensure strong methodologies, adequate resources, and realistic timelines.
At the same time, some gaps remain.
There is a need to strengthen the consistent integration of gender equality, disability inclusion, and humanitarian considerations, including through better data, methods, and access to specialized expertise.
Management responses to evaluations has also improved, but timeliness remains uneven.
Going forward, greater emphasis will be placed on systematic tracking of evaluation use, follow up on recommendations and learning from recurring findings to ensure evaluations lead to concrete and sustained improvements.
On financing, while evaluation spending was stable during the quadrannum, it remains below the 1% benchmark, though we recognize notable progress in coding accuracy and portfolio management, which are improving transparency and compatibility across regions.
Sustained investment remains essential to ensure that evaluation continues to support learning, accountability, and better results for children.
Looking ahead, management endorses the evaluation functions, stated priorities, and emphasizes the critical need for the following in particular.
First, expanding impact and outcome level evaluations.
Second, strengthening quality rigor and practical usefulness of evaluations.
Third, increasing transparency and efficiency in planning and financing.
Fourth, reinforcing tracking of the systemic use of evaluations, the findings and the lessons learned.
And fifth, improving integration of gender, disability, and humanitarian dimensions.
Finally, management acknowledges the upcoming OECD DAC external assessment as also mentioned by my colleague, and it provides a really important opportunity to review progress and identify areas for further strengthening.
Management looks forward to using these insights to further enhance the evaluation functions, contribution, the results for children.
Thank you, President, and back to you.
I thank Mr.
Nand for those remarks.
Distinguished delegates.
We shall now take up the second evaluation item, and then we will open both items up for discussion.
The board will consider the summary of the impact evaluation of the early childhood cash transfer of the Juntas program on health services coverage and the prevalence of stunting and anemia in Peruz.
Document E stroke, ISF stroke 2046, stroke 19, is accompanied by the UNICEF summary of the response of the government of Peru to the impact evaluation report, document E, stroke ISEF Stroke 2026, stroke 20.
Mr.
Robert McCuch, Director of Evaluation, will present the UNICEF summary of the evaluation.
He will be followed by three virtual speakers.
Firstly, He Excellency, miss Lily Norcavasquez Davila, Minister of Development and Social Inclusion, Peru, and she will share the government response.
Miss Davila will be followed by Mr.
Javier Alvarez, the UNICEF representative in Peru.
He is accompanied by Merlin, a youth beneficiary of the program, Mr.
McCosh, you have the floor.
Thank you very much once again, Mr.
President.
I'm very pleased to be presenting this evaluation, which is the first impact evaluation to be presented to your delegations and as I understand it, the first impact evaluation to be presented to any UN governing body thus far.
Noted in the previous presentation, this evaluation is an excellent example that brings together and quite frankly brings to life numerous strands of our work.
The strides we've made externally in national evaluation capacity development as well as impact evaluation, and the strides we've made internally within UNICEF, coming together as we did across all three levels of the organization to support the government of Peru in identifying and filling a key evidence gap with independent and impartial, robust and credible analysis.
I'd like to thank the many colleagues across the organization who did come together to meet this challenge, including and especially our country representative in Peru, Mr.
Javier Alvarez and his team.
This was a country led evaluation requested by the government of Peru and supported by UNICEF.
In this vein, I would like to extend very special thanks to the Ministry of Development and social inclusion, represented today by Her Excellency, Madam Lili Norca Vasquez Davila and the Juntos program for championing this work and embarking on this journey with us.
We were deeply grateful for the opportunity to have worked together, Madam, and hope it has been as rewarding and enriching for you and your team as it has for us.
Next slide, please.
Choice to showcase this evaluation is intentional for another reason altogether.
It illustrates the potential power of this specific form of evaluation, impact evaluation, as a vital strategic tool for achieving focus, impact, and scale all at once, and in the face of increasingly constrained resources.
Every government and every humanitarian and development organization faces the same fundamental challenge, complex problems entailing seemingly infinite needs with consequential decisions on where to invest our finite resources to address these problems and needs, very often hinging on assumptions or beliefs about what might work.
Impact evaluation moves us beyond this guesswork and toward robust evidence of what actually works.
It not only tells us whether the intended outcomes have improved as a direct result of the program we've invested in, it also tells us to what degree it has worked, for whom it has and hasn't worked, and why, under what specific conditions and in what specific ways.
In many cases, it can also tell us the amount of benefit to children that we can expect for each unit of monetary investment.
At the end of the day, impact evaluation tells us what works and should be scaled up.
What, if anything, should be changed for even greater impact, and importantly, what should be discontinued because it does not work so that our resources can be redirected to more effective interventions.
This distinguished delegates is the Power of impact evaluation.
Next slide, please.
As your delegations will recall from our presentation on the early childhood development evaluation at your last session, the first 1,000 days of a child's life are critical for her physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development.
Health and nutrition provide the vital physiological foundation for early childhood development, and yet too often too many children, particularly those with multiple sources of vulnerability, are left behind.
My co presenters are the actual experts on the Juntos program that aims to bridge these gaps.
I will just focus on the aim of the evaluation.
The evaluation sought to determine whether one key aspect of the Juntos program, that is a cash transfer to caregivers that is conditional upon bringing their children to facilities for vital health and nutritional support worked in incentivizing them to do so.
If so, what, if any, outcomes these behavioral shifts actually led to for children and at what unit cost? Next slide, please.
The impact evaluation shows that a monthly transfer of just $14 led to measurable gains for children ages zero to one.
These are summarized here.
However, these gains were not distributed equally among participants.
Children living under conditions of higher vulnerability, such as lower maternal education levels or residence in areas of relatively high poverty benefited less than others.
Next slide, please.
The evaluation finds clear evidence that the cash transfer is associated with improved access to health services for young children in Peru.
It also points to uneven effects, identifying which groups benefited most and which did not.
Next slide, please.
By extension, our recommendations point clearly toward the benefit of bringing this element of the Juntos program to scale and what to do to make it even more impactful, including for those who might otherwise be left behind.
I will not go over these recommendations one by one as Her Excellency will speak to these in her own remarks.
Next slide, please.
Mr.
President, distinguished delegates, I hope this example has provided you a useful and concrete picture of what impact evaluation is, how it works, and why it is such a potentially powerful tool, particularly in these times of increasing needs and increasing resource constraints.
I would like to once again thank the many UNICEF colleagues who joined forces to support the government of Peru and reiterate our collective thanks to Her Excellency, Marin Davila and the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion for their leadership and collaboration.
Thank you.
Thank you again, Mr.
Mccouch.
I now give the floor to Her Excellency Madame Vasquez Davila to present the response of the government of Peru to the evaluation.
Your Excellency, we were not able to hear you.
If you just give us a minute, we'll try to adjust the setting.
Just to.
Hello.
This is the UN technician.
Can you speak now, please? Thank you.
Hello.
Hello.
Can you hear us? Yes.
Yes, we can hear you.
Distinguished Secretary of the UNICEF board, Mr.
Andrés Franco, distinguished members of this executive board, representatives of member states colleagues and strategic partners.
Please receive the greetings of the government of Peru and the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion.
It is an honor to be participating in this annual session of the UNICEF Executive Board.
We are pleased to share an experience that reaffirms a fundamental conviction, which is that public policies can transform lives when they are built upon evidence, innovation, and a human commitment.
In Peru, we firmly believe that the fight against poverty cannot be limited to addressing immediate deprivations or deficiencies.
It must focus on protecting and strengthening human capital from the very beginning of life.
In this regard, UNICEF's support has been pivotal.
This evaluation has helped us consolidate the early childhood transfer.
In 2023, it was incorporated into results based budgeting and recognized as the most efficient public management strategy of the government of Peru.
One year later, early childhood transfer found in the results of this evaluation a solid confirmation of its value and impact.
Ensuring its continuity in financing for the benefit of the country's most vulnerable families.
Today, we can say with satisfaction that in 2026, Peru is going to be allocating 61.9 $16.5 million to guarantee the continuity of this strategic policy, thereby ensuring sustained effort, increasing resources by nearly 15% since 2023.
Secondly, we have also strengthened the Juntas Programs household support model through digital non nominal tracking tools, information interoperability and alert management and service delivery.
Today, we have mechanisms for timely monitoring and response for girls, boys, and pregnant women enrolled in the program through home visits, telephone guidance and educational interventions.
This model has been especially important in preventing childhood anemia, one of the main public health challenges in Peru.
The results are encouraging.
In between 2023 and today, more than 22,000 girls and boys in Juntas who were diagnosed with anemia have since recovered.
Lastly, this experience has driven a new generation of public innovations aimed at continuous learning.
Ministry in coordination with the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Juntas Program is implementing an urban pilot of the early childhood transfer.
This was designed from the outset to ensure rigorous evaluation processes.
This intervention incorporates behavioral economics tools with personalized messages to promote healthy practices as well as differentiated monetary incentives adapted to the urban context in order to strengthen health and nutrition for families and children.
We are now seeking to find ways to improve it, to ensure cash transfers can be part of the regular Juntas program.
We believe that innovating in social policy doesn't just mean using technology.
It means listening better, understanding better, and offering a better response to the needs of the most vulnerable.
I thank you.
Thank you, Madam Vasquez Davila, for those remarks.
I will now give the floor to Mr.
Alvarez, UNICEF representative in Peru to take the floor.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Minister, distinguished members of the Executive Board.
On behalf of UNICEF Peru, I would like to thank you all for this opportunity to participate in this annual session and to reflect very briefly on what this experience represents for the future of our work in the country.
The impact evaluation of the early childhood cash transfers the indicated is an excellent example of our cooperation with the country.
In addition to generating evidence of the program that has produced tangible results for children, this has actually strengthened our role as a strategic ally and partner for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public spending aimed at boys, girls, and adolescents.
It's important to highlight that the evaluation that was carried out has led to new demands for technical assistance by our government counterparts.
So much so that the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Ministry of Social Inclusion have together requested the technical support of UNICEF in order to generate new evidence that will allow them to take decisions about the broadening and expansion of a number of different interventions aimed at children.
For example, UNICEF has participated in the implementation of mobile messaging pilots of the TPI in the urban setting.
19,000 households, including children under one year of age and pregnant women have benefited.
This will be assessed by the Ministry of Economy and Finance and we hope that this will lead to further improvements.
Next slide, please.
The Ministry for Development and Social Inclusion is already carrying out the impact assessment of the cash transfer program of Juntos in secondary education TAS.
The outcome of this, which included some 25,000 children, will help us design this new intervention and increase its impact in preventing levels of school dropout and improving other work.
We will continue to provide our technical assistance to the government of Peru so that we can increase investment in children, strengthen the national evaluation systems, and promote more integrated programs that incorporate nutrition, healthcare and education.
In Peru's experience, we have shown that when evidence is not just generated but actually used and applied, this can lead to significant improvements in public policy for children.
UNICEF in Peru will maintain its commitment to make progress on this item in close collaboration with the government together with all other stakeholders.
Thank you very much, President.
Thank you very much, Tavares, for those remarks.
I now will give the floor to Merlin, a young person who is joining us virtually today to share a few remarks with us.
Merlin, you have the floor.
Distinguished members of the executive board, distinguished guests.
Hay Pa, that means hello in Cuetua.
That is the language in my country, Peru.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my experience.
More than my experience, this is an example of evidence of how children and adolescents who live in rural areas in the furthest flung parts of the country can actually get a head start.
My family is part of the Juntas program.
It's an initiative of the Ministry of Development and social inclusion that is focused on supporting households experiencing poverty in Peru.
In this case, they helped both myself and my brother Hansel.
Well, I've received support at three main stages of my life in my early childhood during primary education and also in secondary school.
In my early childhood, the Hunter's coordinators supported my parents so that they could take me to the medical center in my community and so I could attend the height and weight checks.
In elementary school, they advised my mother and father as to how to support me so that I would do well in school and get good grades and they also supported us financially.
Then lastly, in secondary school, We received recommendations about different opportunities to help us grow better and receive a better education and progress.
And it was thanks to all of this support that I was able to attend a high performance school of Ayacucho and later, I was able to attend the National University of Engineering in Lima.
It's very rare for someone like me from my region, an area that is associated with violence and drug trafficking should be able to go and study in the capital.
This is thanks to the support that I have received and thanks to this, I was able to develop a number of skills cognitively and socially.
In addition, I am able to learn more and to develop more.
I would ask all of the governments of the world, especially Latin America and the future governments of my country, Peru, to support such social programs and initiatives so that they can really improve the lives of the children and family who live in very remote areas sometimes where it takes two days to get from these rural areas into the capital and they really need to support these families and these young children, they should hear their voices, the people from these communities because these people know the realities and the problems that exist in these zones.
I remember how my mother would teach the older people in our community so that they could pass some of the basic accreditations.
Really, this is a problem and it's down to us.
We as young people are going to have to address all of these problems and resolve them.
And so we should always bear in mind that the development of a country depends on the development of children and childhood.
Long live Peru.
I thank you.
Thank you very much, Melen for sharing that message and that extremely positive and encouraging message with us.
So before we adjourn, right, we open up the floor and we give the floor to Germany.
Mr.
President, distinguished members of the executive board, I deliver this statement on behalf of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, the EU as a donor, France, Georgia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, the Kingdom of Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and my own country, Germany.
We thank the evaluation Office for the comprehensive annual report and commend the evaluation function for its high quality and dedicated work during a period of significant organizational change and financial constraints.
The evaluation function continues to serve as a critical pillar for accountability, evidence based decision making and institutional learning within UNICEF.
We are particularly encouraged by the findings of the study of influential evaluations, which demonstrate how evaluation evidence has informed institutional reforms, program design, national policies, and the development of the new strategic plan 2026 to 2029.
This underlines the strategic value of evaluation as a driver of organizational change and continuous improvement.
We further welcome the efforts to strengthen the evaluation system, including the completion of the first UNICEF evaluation handbook and the introduction of more risk based and strategic planning approaches.
We particularly commend UNICEF's continued investment in national evaluation capacity development.
Supporting governments and national institutions to generate and use evaluation evidence is critical for strengthening national ownership and ensuring that evidence informs policies and programs for children well beyond UNICEF's own interventions.
Furthermore, we welcome the progress on increased collaboration among UN agencies and encourage its continuation to maximize the impact of various evaluation efforts across the system.
At the same time, we note that these accomplishments were achieved under considerable resource pressure resulting from the future Focus Initiative and the 2025 program budget review decisions, thereby creating additional risks and disruptions.
We reiterate the importance of maintaining an independent and adequately resourced evaluation function.
This is essential for the function to fulfill its mandate and provide credible evidence, particularly during periods of major organizational reform.
We therefore call on UNICEF management to further strengthen the enabling environment for evaluation.
In this regard, we support the planned independent external midterm assessment of evaluation, which presents an opportunity for an objective assessment of the current challenges.
In this context, we also note uneven progress in the integration of gender equality and disability across the evaluation portfolio.
To address equitable change for all children, we encourage UNICEF to adopt a more systemic approach supported by strengthened data, clearer methodological guidance, and access to dedicated expertise.
We would appreciate further information on concrete measures and timelines to improve performance standards on gender equality and disability inclusion.
We would welcome an update on the planned evaluation of organizational transformation.
We would be interested to hear more about the timeline, scope, and approach for assessing change management initiatives, including the future Focus Initiative.
We would also appreciate further clarification on how this evaluation will complement and differ from the internal after action review.
Before concluding, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to the outgoing Director of evaluation for his leadership and dedication over the past years.
Significant progress in the maturity, strategic relevance, and institutional standing of the evaluation function has been made under his stewardship.
Through his unwavering commitment to independence, credibility, and professional excellence, he has played a pivotal role in strengthening the evaluation function and ensuring that it remains a trusted source of objective evidence and analysis for both US of management and the executive board.
We thank him for his outstanding service and wish him every success in his future endeavors.
We also wish to emphasize that safeguarding the independence of the evaluation function remains particularly important during leadership transitions.
In this regard, we expect the process for appointing the next director of evaluation to be acted with the highest degree of transparency and in full accordance with the provision of the revised evaluation policy.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguct representative of Germany.
I now invite the Secretariat to deliver a response to the comments.
Thank you very much, once again, Mr.
President and to the distinguished delegate of Germany and the other distinguished delegations on whose behalf you've read your statement.
I understand that because of various issues, we're running a little bit behind schedule.
I'm the only thing standing between everyone and lunch.
I will leave out all adjectives and adverbs and focus on nouns and verbs in response to the points raised.
I also acknowledge, in bringing up the future Focus Initiative evaluation, this bridges back to, um, to previous colleagues presentations, particularly my colleague Steve from OIAI.
I'll try to cover those that we weren't able to answer in that session.
Maybe I'll start with the obvious, the one that keeps coming up in our various presentations, our evaluation of the future focus Initiative.
To be very clear, this was not an evaluation that the AAC requested or recommended.
This was something that came out of our own internal process of identifying the highest priority, highest criticality evaluations to be conducted in this quadraum.
As I've presented in previous sessions, we improve both the independent risk based analysis that goes into the process of identifying those evaluations and we improve the consultation process.
What came out of that strengthened planning process was not an evaluation of the FFI per se, but rather of organizational transformation more broadly.
Why? Put simply, UNICEF, like most organizations, has been doing change management for ever, and in an increasingly complex operating environment, it will certainly continue to do so.
However, we've never evaluated how we do that.
Therefore, the scope of our evaluation is indeed broader than FFI.
But to be very clear, FFI is one really vital element of what we're going to be looking at.
It is going to be done.
I think you asked for clarification on timelines as well.
We've already begun preliminary scoping of this exercise and just to really underscore, I see my colleague, Philippe, the director of Change Management is here, We have been working at absolute lockstep to ensure that both of these exercises are being developed in tandem with each other, both substantively in terms of their scope, their focus, the complementarity of the analyses.
But to answer your question pointedly, the difference between the two exercises is that that internal exercise is not independent, it's a very valuable internal learning focused review that looks at what we have and have not been able to accomplish as an organization to date based on that non independent perspective.
Independent evaluation is just that.
It's independent and it will be able to look much more broadly and in a much more, let's say, richly data driven way as all of our evaluations aim to do beyond just internal conversations and internal data analyses.
They are complimentary to each other, but quite distinct in that sense.
I know the distinguished delegate from Belgium raised a question in a previous session around whether we would look at the cost analysis.
Yes, with one big caveat, and that is not to be crashed, but the expression that we often hear is, well, garbage in, garbage out.
It's not that data or garbage at all.
But the extent that we can do a robust cost analysis, a robust cost effectiveness analysis is going to hinge on how high quality the data are at that point.
But we do absolutely absolutely look at the cost dimensions of efficiency when we do these.
Um So timeline.
We will begin that evaluation that looks at FFI as a major component in the fourth quarter of this year, the early part of the fourth quarter, with a view to completing it and informing the midterm review of the strategic plan in time.
So it will be completed by the end of the second quarter of 2027.
I hope I've answered your question adequately, but if not, I can come back to it.
When it comes to the integration of gender into our evaluations, this is one of those pain points that is just very stubborn has been very stubborn to address.
We know where it's happening across the function.
We know exactly which regions, which country offices, which portfolios are stronger than others.
We know where in the evaluation cycle it's happening.
It's not happening at the design stage, it's happening at the data collection and analysis stage.
We also know where the solutions lie.
The solutions lie in strengthen quality control.
That is one example that you highlighted, was the handbook.
This is our first ever UNICEF evaluation handbook.
We have greatly strengthened the attention to gender in that.
The challenge there becomes to socialize that guidance.
We have conducted webinars to date.
The guidance on gender integration is already strong.
It does not need to be reinvented.
It needs to be socialized across a very decentralized function that again, takes time to really build consistency within.
The solutions are those improve quality control.
We have the handbook.
We are planning more webinars in this year and next year.
Um, and the other part of it is quality assurance.
And there I have to admit full disclosure because 2025 was such an outlier of a year.
We as a function, simply, like the rest of the organization, we're so focused on adapting and trying to avoid backsliding on our existing KPIs.
That is something that needs greater attention moving forward, is that quality assurance by our regional evaluation advisors, by our portfolio managers here in the evaluation office.
We know what needs to be done.
That's what will be the focus.
I honestly, because the timeline for when we can start to see the needle move on that will rest with my successor.
I hope you don't mind my lobbying that into the future.
Any other? Thank you very much, Director.
I thank the Secretariat for those remarks.
I see no request for the floor.
And so the 2025 report and the management response will be considered later on under decisions for adoption, and we have thus concluded this item.
Ding Distinguished delegates, before we adjourn, I would like to give the floor to the Secretary of the executive with Andrés Franco who would like to make an announcement.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Just to remind delegations that the informal consultations on draft decisions being considered for adoption will be held in this conference room starting at 1:15 until 245 this afternoon.
And in the afternoon, we will also be here in this room from 5:00 to 6:00 P.M.
Okay.
If we need to go after 6:00 P.M.
Just a reminder that we do have the Mary Pate conference room on the 13th floor of the Unicef house.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Secretary.
The meeting is adjourned.