Every year on the sidelines of ADB’s Annual Meeting, the Independent Evaluation Department (IED) organizes its annual dialogue with civil society organizations, in recognition of their important role as stakeholders and partners in development. IED shared its mandate and discussed past and current evaluations. 

ADB’s Independent Evaluation Department (IED)’s annual dialogue with CSOs featured a presentation on the evaluation of ADB’s support for accelerating progress in gender equality (2016-2023) and a discussion of its mandate and rolling three-year (2026-2028) work program.   

IED Director General Emmanuel Jimenez explained the independent nature of IED, noting that it reports directly to the ADB Board of Governors. IED can evaluate any ADB activity and validate management’s self-assessment of the success of a project. ADB management outlines the actions it will take in response to IED recommendations, which also tracks implementation progress of management actions for five years. IED also conducts thematic evaluation, e.g. gender equality. In the IED team’s presentation on its evaluation of ADB’s gender equality program, participants noted that infrastructure projects, which has a large share of ADB financing, mostly involve men. ADB representatives responded that gender specific plans are part of all projects, and some infrastructure projects include quotas for women labor. Mr. Jimenez then announced that IED will evaluate ADB’s CSO engagement this year and invited CSOs to participate in this process. 

During the Q&A segment, CSO representatives suggested that as it evaluates ADB’s CSO engagement, IED should look into how ADB has addressed the issues of reprisals; implementation of the Environment and Social (ESF) Framework; civic space for stakeholder and citizen engagement in country partnership strategies; interactions with trade unions; and, CSO concerns in Mongolia with coal fired power plants. They also asked how CSOs can influence IED’s three-year work program. 

IED representatives responded that the evaluation of ADB-CSO engagement will cover project, country and institutional levels and context, thus allowing the evaluation to cover the suggested areas. While the IED work program for 2025 is already set, CSOs’ suggestions for the second and third year of the three-year rolling program are welcome and can inform IED’s discussions with the management and the Board. At this stage, evaluation of the ESF is not feasible as it will only be operational in January 2026.   

Watch the session: