Beyond the award: How UN Human Rights is embedding youth leadership in evaluation
By Liza Al Bag
Strategic Planning, Programme Management, Evaluation and Change Service (SPECS)
UN Human Rights (OHCHR)
OHCHR's role in promoting youth participation in evaluation is not just about being recognised internationally. It is about creating opportunities for young people to participate in evaluation, contribute their perspectives, and influence decision-making. This blog explores how the UN Human Rights Office is embedding youth leadership in evaluation through institutional commitments, participation in the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) working groups, application of the Youth in Evaluation standards, and learning from youth-focused evaluations. It reflects on the value of intergenerational collaboration and demonstrates how meaningful youth engagement can strengthen evidence, accountability and human rights outcomes.
Young people are not only beneficiaries of development and human rights programmes, but they are rights holders, advocates, innovators and agents of change. Recognising this, the global Youth in Evaluation movement has called for more meaningful participation of young people in evaluation systems, processes and decision-making. For the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights), this is not merely an aspiration; it is becoming an integral part of how we approach evaluation and accountability.
Over the past few years, UN Human Rights has progressively strengthened its commitment to youth-inclusive evaluation. These efforts have been recognised through the Youth in Evaluation champion awards coordinated by EvalYouth Global Network and Eval4Action. In 2025, UN Human Rights received the Youth in Evaluation champion award, following earlier recognition as a Youth in Evaluation Emerging Super Champion. In 2026, UN Human Rights was once again recognised as a Youth in Evaluation champion, reflecting sustained progress in integrating youth voices into evaluation practice and applying the Youth in Evaluation standards.
While awards are encouraging, they represent something more important: a commitment to ensuring that evaluation is participatory, inclusive and responsive to the priorities and experiences of young people. As highlighted during the 2026 Youth in Evaluation Forum, meaningful youth engagement helps bridge intergenerational gaps in evaluation, strengthens accountability and contributes to more relevant and credible evidence for decision-making.
Building a youth-inclusive evaluation culture
UN Human Rights’ journey has been grounded in a simple principle: young people should have opportunities not only to participate in programmes, but also to influence how those programmes are assessed, learned from and improved.
Within Strategic Planning, Programme Management, Evaluation and Change Service (SPECS), the evaluation function has sought to create space for young and emerging evaluators to contribute meaningfully to evaluation processes and professional dialogue. This commitment extends beyond individual evaluations to broader institutional engagement with the Youth in Evaluation agenda. UN Human Rights has co-convened the UNEG Working Group on Young and Emerging Evaluators and the UNEG Working Group on Human Rights and Gender Equality, helping to connect youth participation with wider efforts to advance inclusive, rights-based and gender-responsive evaluation, and to make the principle of “Leave No One Behind” a reality.
The Youth in Evaluation standards have been instrumental in this journey. Through periodic self-assessments and reflection, UN Human Rights has been able to benchmark progress, identify gaps and strengthen efforts to make youth engagement more meaningful. The process has reinforced an important lesson: youth participation is not about representation alone. It is about creating genuine opportunities for young people to influence evaluation design, implementation, learning and dissemination.
Learning from evaluations of youth-focused programmes
Youth-inclusive evaluation is not only about who conducts evaluations; it is also about how evaluations capture the perspectives, priorities and lived experiences of young people.
A notable example comes from an evaluation that explored how youth perspectives were integrated into programme implementation and how principles such as gender equality, disability inclusion and the principle of “Leave No One Behind” were reflected throughout the project. In the evaluation of the UN Human Rights Youth and Human Rights Project, young stakeholders were invited to participate in the management and reference group, therefore being involved since the design of the evaluation. This, in addition to the identification of key stakeholders through mapping, the use of mixed methods, and the facilitation of their access, including the use of social media, was key to ensuring findings relevant to youth integration.
The experience demonstrated that evaluation is not simply a mechanism for accountability. It is also a tool for learning and adaptation of interventions in the area of youth. By systematically gathering evidence and reflecting on results, programme teams were able to identify lessons, strengthen future interventions and better understand what meaningful engagement with young people looks like in practice.
Youth inclusion as part of a broader inclusion agenda
At UN Human Rights, youth inclusion is closely linked to broader efforts to strengthen inclusion and accountability through evaluation. Recent evaluations and analytical work have contributed to organizational learning on disability inclusion, racial discrimination and the rights of marginalized groups. Together, these experiences reinforce the idea that evaluation can be a powerful instrument for ensuring that diverse voices are heard and reflected in decision-making processes.
The same principle applies to young people. When youth perspectives are systematically included in evaluation processes in all their diversity, organisations gain richer evidence, stronger accountability mechanisms and a deeper understanding of the realities faced by those they serve. In this sense, youth-inclusive evaluation is not a separate agenda; it is part of a broader commitment to participation, equality and human rights. This should be reflected in the integration of youth with different backgrounds, such as minorities, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and those from different geographic, racial or ethnic backgrounds.
The value of intergenerational collaboration
One of the defining features of the Youth in Evaluation movement is its emphasis on intergenerational partnership. Effective evaluation benefits from the combination of experience, technical expertise and fresh perspectives.
This was reflected during the 2026 Youth in Evaluation Forum, where UN Human Rights highlighted the importance of intergenerational participation in accountability processes. Youth engagement is not intended to replace existing expertise; rather, it enriches evaluation by bringing additional knowledge, perspectives and lived experience to the table.
Looking ahead
The Youth in Evaluation champion recognitions received by UN Human Rights in 2025 and 2026 are milestones rather than destinations. They reflect progress, but they also create an opportunity to continue learning and raising ambitions.
Looking ahead, UN Human Rights remains committed to promoting inclusive evaluation practices, supporting young and emerging evaluators, and ensuring that evidence generation reflects the voices and priorities of diverse groups of young people. These efforts align closely with UN Human Rights’ broader human rights mandate and with the principle that participation is both a means and an end of effective accountability.
As the global evaluation community continues to advance the Youth in Evaluation standards, one message stands out clearly: when young people are meaningfully engaged in evaluation, evidence becomes stronger, learning becomes richer and accountability becomes more inclusive. For UN Human Rights, youth in evaluation is not only about recognising the potential of future leaders, it is also about improving decisions, programmes and impact today.
Liza Al Bag is a young Kurdish professional from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and a United Nations Volunteer with the Strategic Planning, Programme Management, Evaluation and Change Service (SPECS) at UN Human Rights in Geneva. Her work supports evaluation and organizational learning.
The views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of her affiliated organisations.
Acknowledgement of the use of AI: AI tools were used solely to help bring the blog to the required length and to correct grammatical issues. The content, ideas, and narrative of the blog were authored by the human writer and were not generated by AI.
Disclaimer: The content of the blog is the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the views of Eval4Action co-leaders and partners.
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