This brief presents a summary of the results of the independent evaluation of UN Women’s Strengthening the Resilience of Syrian Women and Girls and Host Communities (“Madad”) programme and offers lessons and recommendations for future programming on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Thanks to the support of the European Union (EU), and the Government of Japan and other donors, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) implemented the ‘Strengthening the Resilience of Syrian Women and Girls and Host Communities in Iraq, Jordan and Turkey’ programme. Building on the programme implementation experience, UN Women set up a no-cost collaboration with FAO to conceptualize a gender-sensitive resilience index based on FAO’s Resilience Measurement Analysis (RIMA) Model (FAO, 2016). The analysis builds upon data collected through the Madad programme monitoring and sought to provide evidence around key resilience issues.

This brief provides an overview of the regional programme “Strengthening the Resilience of Syrian Women and Girls and Host Communities in Iraq, Jordan and Turkey”. The Programme is implemented by UN Women with the financial support of the European Union through the EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis.

UN Women, with financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and in partnership with the Inclusive Peace and Transition Initiative (IPTI) at the Graduate School Geneva, organized a three-day meeting entitled Mobilizing women in the MENA region: Roadmaps for peace in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The meeting was held in Beirut, Lebanon from 19 – 21 June 2018 and aimed to provide a space for women’s rights actors from conflict affected countries to engage in closed-door strategic planning around building momentum for inclusive peace.