The annual report on evaluation for 2015 assesses the progress made by the Independent Evaluation Office of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), programme and policy units at UNDP headquarters, UNDP country offices and the evaluation units of the associated funds and programmes in fulfilling the evaluation function outlined in the UNDP evaluation policy. The report also presents key findings and lessons learned from independent evaluations conducted by the Independent Evaluation Of...

Today, collective action on challenges ranging from climate change mitigation to peace and security is frustratingly slow or stymied altogether. Lack of trust and polarization--both associated with insecurity--exacerbate the gridlock. Shared, interlinked global challenges, like the pandemic and its recovery, are outpacing our willingness and our institutions’ capacities to respond to them. Why, despite all our riches and technologies, are we so stuck? How do we get unstuck? Is it possible ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has broken into a dizzying gallop. While AI feats grab headlines, they privilege technology in a make-believe vacuum, obscuring what really matters: people’s choices. The choices that people have and can realize, within ever expanding freedoms, are essential to human development, whose goal is for people to live lives they value and have reason to value. A world with AI is flush with choices the exercise of which is both a matter of human development and a mean...