SIGAR 15-24 Audit Report: Afghan Women: Comprehensive Assessments Needed to Determine and Measure DOD, State, and USAID Progress

government has made improving the lives of Afghan women and girls a priority since 2001. This commitment is reflected in the U.S. Embassy Kabul Gender Strategy, funding designated for Afghan women, and programming to support this vulnerable group. Despite reported improvements in conditions for Afghan women, U.S. agencies, the Congress, nongovernmental organizations, and members of Afghan civil society have expressed concerns that Afghan women still face challenges and that gains made since 2001 may be difficult to sustain. The Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of State (State), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) reported gains and improvements in the status of Afghan women in fiscal years 2011 through 2013. However, SIGAR found that there was no comprehensive assessment available to confirm that these gains were the direct result of specific U.S. efforts. The agencies monitor and evaluate most of their individual efforts at the program or project-level, but none of the agencies has compiled this information into an agency-level assessment of the impact these efforts have had on the lives of Afghan women. Together, DOD, State, and USAID reported spending at least $64.8 million on 652 projects, programs, and initiatives to support Afghan women in fiscal years 2011 through 2013. However, the full extent of the agencies' efforts to support Afghan women was unclear. For example, State and USAID reported spending an additional $850.5 million on 17 projects, but could not identify the specific amount of funds within these projects that directly supported Afghan women. This lack of accountability is primarily due to the fact that none of the three agencies has effective mechanisms for tracking the funding associated with these projects. The agency responsibility for projects and programs to benefit Afghan women was fragmented. Multiple DOD commands and State bureaus and offices were responsible for implementing, tracking, and reporting on the departments' efforts relating to Afghan women. As a result, no single DOD or State office was able to readily identify the full extent of their department's efforts to support Afghan women. USAID officials told us that although gender equality and female empowerment policy goals are integrated into all of their programs, it was not possible to track funding by gender in the agency's financial management system, and its implementing partners did not separate funding by gender. SIGAR recommends that the Secretaries of Defense and State and the USAID Administrator take action, and report back to SIGAR within 90 days, to develop and implement agency-wide mechanisms to track the number and funding—both obligated and disbursed—of projects, programs, and initiatives that, either wholly or in part, support Afghan women. The agencies should also use existing program-level monitoring and evaluation data and reports to conduct an agency-wide assessment of each agency's efforts to support Afghan women, which can be used as benchmarks for future programming and assessments. Additionally, the agencies should develop a plan and timeframes for assessing each agency's efforts to support Afghan women on an ongoing basis that account for the changing operational environment in Afghanistan, and implement the plan going forward. Since SIGAR's 2010 report on U.S. funding directed at supporting Afghan women, DOD, State, and USAID have taken steps to improve coordination of their efforts in this area. The Interagency Gender Working Group and the Afghanistan Gender Task Force—both established in late 2010—are the primary mechanisms for the U.S. agencies to exchange information and coordinate efforts within Afghanistan. The three agencies also coordinate their efforts with coalition partners, Afghan ministries, and international and nongovernmental organizations in Afghanistan, although the mechanisms for doing so varied in method and frequency. Officials from all three agencies reported that although the number of projects, programs, and initiatives specifically intended to benefit Afghan women will be consolidated after 2014, their efforts to support Afghan women will continue and, in some cases, the funding for these efforts will increase.