IAEA Technical Assistance and Cooperation Committee
Agenda item 3: Evaluation of Technical Cooperation Activities in 2024
18 November 2024
Chair
Australia thanks the Director of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), Paul Manning, and the OIOS staff for their report.
The work of the OIOS is vital to the Agency’s functioning, and the regular evaluation of TC activities conducted by OIOS, such as in the report before us, is critical to the continued success of the TC Programme.
Chair
We will be brief in this statement, by focussing on three key points of the OIOS report which are of particular importance to us.
First, we note the approach used this year for the Regional Country-level evaluation and audit, which has provided more rigour by emphasising a regional and more strategic perspective, and welcome OIOS’ agile approach in looking for ways to improve its assessments. This compliments the transition to strategic, integrated and thematic programming we are seeing within the Regional Cooperative Agreement for Research, Development and Training Related to Nuclear Science and Technology for Asia and the Pacific – the RCA.
Second, we were pleased to see the focus on regional and interregional projects in this year’s report. We welcome the finding of OIOS that regional and interregional projects are indeed beneficial, and have filled a critical gap that is not covered by national TC projects.
As an active contributor to, and participant in, the RCA, we too have observed that regional TC projects have been particularly effective in advancing shared development outcomes.
We look forward to the Secretariat implementing recommendations on regional and interregional projects to further strengthen their outcomes.
Our third and final point relates to gender equality within the TC programme.
Chair,
Increased women’s participation and leadership benefits everyone. Gender equality and women’s empowerment will not be achieved unless they are actively promoted through policies and practices that are inclusive, equitable and representative of the diverse needs of all people. With this in mind, we were pleased to read that the report found there to be a broad awareness of the Agency’s focus on gender equality, and we were particularly pleased to read examples in the report of where programming had become more gender responsive. We also welcome the RCA’s move commitment to achieving 50% participation rates for women in all TC projects currently under design for the next cycle. Nevertheless, we recognise the finding by OIOS that progress towards gender equality in the TC programme remains relatively limited and that further improvement is needed to ensure project design, implementation and reporting is more gender responsive, in line with the IAEA’s Gender Equality Policy. We call on the Agency to address this as a matter of priority, to ensure gender equality and the meaningful participation and leadership of women in all aspects of the TC programme.
With these remarks, let me once again thank the Director and the whole OIOS team for their report, and reiterate Australia’s ongoing support for their crucial work. With these comments, we take note of document GOV/2024/59.
Thank you, Chair.