Eoghan Molloy is an Evaluation Officer in the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE).
Prior to joining IFAD, he worked as an evaluation specialist with FAO Office of Evaluation. In addition to supporting thematic and strategic evaluations at the corporate level, Eoghan has participated in several evaluations of large country programmes and has managed numerous evaluations of development projects in Africa and Asia. He has previously worked with the Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, contributing to the production of the African Economic Outlook annual report, and with the green growth capacity development team of United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok.
He holds a joint Master’s degree in Development Practice from Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, and a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Law from University College Dublin, Ireland.
Eoghan Tomás Molloy
Evaluation Specialist Asian Development BankDear Eval Forward members,
Thank you for your engagement over the past few weeks on the topic of addressing disability inclusion through our evaluations.
The various inputs from Eval Forward members have highlighted some important considerations for ensuring the true representation of the views and perspectives of persons with disabilities, as well as the challenges inherent in ensuring our evaluations become more inclusive.
We will close this discussion topic for now, but rest assured that efforts are underway within the UN system and through the UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) to develop on best practice guidance and streamline reporting against the 2019 UN Disability Inclusion Strategy. In this regard, the evaluation offices of UN system entities will need to develop more concrete guidance for evaluators to ensure persons with disabilities are included in evaluations. Your inputs over the past few weeks have helped to highlight some key points that will need to be considered.
I expect there to be some interesting developments on the topic of disability inclusion in evaluation as we move forward. Watch this space!
Kind regards,
Eoghan
Eoghan Tomás Molloy
Evaluation Specialist Asian Development BankDear Eval Forward members,
Thank you for the very useful insights and examples that have so far been provided in response to my earlier email regarding disability inclusion in evaluations relating to agriculture and rural development.
We have had some very interesting inputs, such as the capturing of individual responses from persons with disabilities through the household survey conducted for the Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation of the Drought Response in Ethiopia 2015 – 2018, as shared by Amleset Haile. Other contributions, such as that from Bassirou Diagne, raised the point that the inclusion of persons with disabilities could be captured under analyses relating to ‘vulnerable groups’. However, underscoring the complexity of the topic, Mohammad Lardi shared the example of a UNFPA multi-country study on young persons with disabilities, which gave a thorough analysis of the intersecting vulnerabilities and marginalities faced by persons with disabilities (e.g. HIV status, gender, distance from urban areas, poverty, age, etc.) and made the important point that every disability is different and that it is somewhat artificial to “lump everyone under the same heading”
As Pamela White has noted, people might tend to have different and subjective understandings of what ‘disability’ entails, and therefore they might not so readily self-identify as having a disability, for a host of reasons. Similarly, Lal Manavado pointed out that persons with disabilities who live in rural areas are perhaps even more likely to be excluded or misrepresented, and extra care and consideration is therefore needed to ensure that evaluations truly capture the views of persons with disabilities living in rural areas.
From that point of view, I am curious as to how the IAHE in Ethiopia, or indeed other evaluations have identified persons with disabilities in their sampling, and what is the accepted best practise for doing so.
Thank again to those of you who have provided links to external guidance (e.g. the Washington Group on Disability Statistics). If there is similar guidance that could be of use, please feel free to share with the Eval Forward network.
And do please continue to share any other interesting examples of how persons with disabilities have been included through your evaluations.
Looking forward to continuing this discussion.
Kind regards,
Eoghan