1 January 2015: The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has launched its Social and Environmental Standards (SES) and accompanying Compliance Review and Stakeholder Response Mechanism. The Standards, with the Overarching Principles of human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment, and environmental sustainability, are mandatory for all UNDP’s projects and programmes, and are included in ‘UNDP’s Programming and Operations Policies and Procedures’ for programme and project management. The SES were adopted by UNDP in June 2014 and came into effect on 1 January 2015.

According to UNDP, the objectives of the SES are to: strengthen the social and environmental outcomes of programmes and projects; avoid adverse impacts to people and the environment; minimize, mitigate, and manage adverse impacts where avoidance is not possible; strengthen UNDP’s and partners’ capacities to manage social and environmental risks; and ensure full and effective stakeholder engagement, including through a mechanism to respond to complaints from project-affected people.

UNDP also established a project-level Social and Environmental Screening Procedure (SESP) to help ensure application of the Standards. The SESP is a requirement for all proposed projects with a budget of US$500,000 or more, and seeks to: integrate the SES Overarching Principles; identify potential social and environmental risks and their significance; determine the project’s risk category (Low, Moderate, High); and determine the level of social and environmental assessment and management required to address potential risks and impacts.

In addition, an accountability mechanism includes: a compliance review to respond to claims that UNDP is not in compliance with applicable environmental and social policies; and a Stakeholder Response Mechanism (SRM) to help project-affected stakeholders, UNDP’s partners (governments, NGOs, businesses) and others jointly address grievances or disputes related to the social and/or environmental impacts of UNDP-supported projects.

UNDP has established a Social and Environmental Compliance Unit (SECU) to investigate alleged non-compliance with UNDP’s SES and SESP from project-affected stakeholders, and to recommend measures to address findings of non-compliance. [UNDP’s Social and Environmental Standards Webpage] [Social and Environmental Screening Procedure] [Social and Environmental Compliance Review and Stakeholder Response Mechanism Webpage] [Programme and Operations Policies and Procedures]