CONSULTANCY: NATIONAL EVALUATION EXPERT - MULTI-COUNTRY PORTFOLIO EVALUATION (M-CPE) OF UN WOMEN SOUTH AFRICA MULTI-COUNTRY OFFICE (MCO) STRATEGIC NOTE (SN) 2017-2022)TERMS OF REFERENCE

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Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls the empowerment of women and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

UN Women South Africa Multi-Country Office (SAMCO) is based in Pretoria, South Africa and serves five countries: South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and ESwatini.

The Multi-Country Office (MCO) Strategic Note (SN) is the main planning tool for UN Women’s support to normative, coordination and operational work in the South Africa Multi-Country Office (Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa. This evaluation will review the Strategic Note covering the period January 2017 – December 2022. The Strategic Note is linked to the UN Women Global Strategic Plan 2018-21, national development plans, and country-level UNDAF 2018-22. The MCO Strategic Note supports and contributes towards the following UN Women 2022-25 Strategic Plan (SP) Impacts:

• All five countries are members of the Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC).
• The UNDAF includes five focus areas: (i) economic development and poverty reduction; (ii) environment, climate resilience and disaster risk management; (iii) social services; (iv) governance, rule of law and institutional capacity development; and (v) community stabilization. The UNDAF aims to support stronger government accountability and capacity to effectively and equitably deliver services, and in doing so contribute to overall progress towards the SDGs.

UN Women Strategic Plan Impacts

SOUTH AFRICA MULTI-COUNTRY OFFICE Target Impacts

Women’s Economic Empowerment

More women own, launch and/or better manage small and medium and large enterprises

Ending Violence Against Women & Girls

All women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence

The Strategic Note is grounded on standards, principles and obligations of the Convention to eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Concluding Observations of the Commission on the Status of Women, SCR 1325, Sustainable Development Goals, and the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. All five countries have ratified the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Declaration on Gender and Development. Additionally, the Strategic Note is aligned to key national policies, including the Botswana National Policy on Gender and Development, Eswatini Gender Policy, Lesotho Gender and Development Policy, the Namibia National Gender Policy and the South Africa National Development Plan. There is an opportunity for strengthening Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment through the President Ramaphosa of South Africa, also serving as Chair of the African Union, who declared in Jan 2020 his commitment to deliver on gender equality and women’s empowerment in Africa and through South Africa’s leadership of the Generation Equality Forum Action Coalition on Economic Justice.

Purpose (and use of the evaluation)

The UN Women Evaluation Policy, the UN Women Evaluation Strategy and the Evaluation Coverage Norms are the main guiding documents that set forth the principles and organizational framework for evaluation planning, conduct and follow-up in UN Women. These principles are aligned with the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards for Evaluation in the UN System and Ethical Guidelines.

The Multi-Country Portfolio Evaluation (M-CPE) is a systematic assessment and a means to validate the contributions made by UN Women to development results with respect to gender equality and women’s empowerment across the five countries covered by the MCO strategic note. It focuses on the portfolio of interventions carried out by the multi-Country Office to fulfil UN Women’s triple mandate and their overall success in advancing gender equality in the five countries. It is also an assessment of the MCO’s organizational effectiveness and efficiency in delivering the planned results. It uses the Strategic Note (including the DRF and OEEF) as the main point of reference and provides a comprehensive evidence-based picture of UN Women’s contributions to development results by moving away from project-level evaluations towards a more strategic country-level evaluation.

As a high-level strategic evaluation, the M-CPE is primarily intended to be a formative, forward-looking evaluation to support the MCO in implementing the new Strategic Note. It is also intended to support national stakeholders’ strategic learning and decision-making for programming, policy and advocacy work. The evaluation is expected to have a secondary summative (backward looking) perspective, to support accountability for development effectiveness.

The primary users of this evaluation are intended to be the UN Women South Africa Multi-Country Office and East and Southern Africa regional offices, who will use the evaluation findings to inform the design of the new Strategic note, and also to UN Women Senior Management Team, UN Women HQ staff and national partners, to demonstrate accountability for the development effectiveness of the existing Strategic Note.

Secondary users are expected to derive useful learning on effective and promising strategies and practices are:

• The UN Country Teams and other UN agencies in the five countries;
• Rights holders;
• Other stakeholders delivering similar evaluations in the five countries, including development partners/donors, civil society representatives and project partners.

The primary intended uses of this evaluation are:

• Learning on effective, promising and innovative strategies and practices, to support improved decision-making, including through the development of the next Strategic Note;
• Accountability for the development effectiveness of the existing Strategic Note in terms of UN Women’s contribution to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The evaluation will be utilization-focused, tailored to the needs of the organization through a participatory approach from the inception through to the development of recommendations, to ensure it is useful.

Objectives of the assignment:

The M-CPE has seven objectives:

1. Assess the relevance of UN Women contribution to the intervention at national levels and alignment with international agreements and conventions on gender equality and women’s empowerment;
2. Assess effectiveness, organizational efficiency and coherence in progressing towards the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment results as defined in the Strategic Note;
3. Enable the UN Women MCO to improve its strategic positioning to better support the achievement of sustained gender equality and women’s empowerment;
4. Analyse how human rights approach and gender equality principles are integrated in the design and implementation of the Strategic Note;
5. Identify and validate lessons learned, good practices and examples of innovation that can be scaled up and replicated to support gender equality and human rights;
6. Provide insights into the extent to which the UN Women has realized synergies between its three mandates (normative, UN system coordination and operations);
7. Provide actionable recommendations with respect to the development of the next Strategic Note.

Scope of Work:

Drawing on the evaluability assessment (see section vi), the intended scope of the M-CPE, the availability of secondary data and anticipated limitations, the evaluation team are expected to establish the boundaries for the evaluation, especially in terms of which stakeholders and relationships will be included or excluded from the evaluation. These will need to be discussed in the Inception Workshop.

The timing of this Multi-Country Portfolio Evaluation is intended to assess the effectiveness and lessons learned from January 2017 to December 2022 Strategic Note. The evaluation will also draw on findings from the recent Internal Audit Service (IAS) in order to leverage existing evidence, analysis and avoid duplication. All activities included in the Strategic Note will be considered, including normative, coordination and operational work in all thematic areas prioritized in the Strategic Note. The scope of M-CPE also covers regional or global program activities in the country. Joint programs and programming are within the scope of this evaluation. Where joint programs are included in the analysis, the evaluation will consider both the specific contribution of UN Women, and the additional benefits and costs from working through a joint modality. M-CPEs focusses on outcome level results. Accordingly, they are not expected to:

• Collect output monitoring data (however, ensuring this is available should be part of the evaluability assessment).
• Analyse the achievement of impacts as defined by UNEG;
• Focus on evaluating UN Women’s corporate management or systems outside of the country context, such as regional architecture (although they may make observations in this area, particularly in terms of how corporate systems enable or hinder, and where there is a clear implication for the design and implementation of the MCO strategic note).

Duties and Responsibilities

The duties and responsibilities include:

1. Support the team lead to design the Evaluation methodology including evaluation data collection tools;
2. Support the team lead to facilitate the inception workshop and drafting the inception report;
3. Under the supervision of the team lead, collect virtual/in-situ field visits for data collection;
4. Coordinate and communicate with evaluation stakeholders, including for exit briefs and evaluation preliminary findings validation meetings etc.;
5. Contribute towards the draft and final evaluation report.

Deliverables:

• Inception Report;
• Data Collection;
• Pre-liminary report (Draft);
• Final Report;
• Power Point Presentation slides;
• Presentation of all reports to the SAMCO team.

Deliverables

Allocated Percentage

Inception Workshop

10%

Portfolio analysis and draft Inception Report

Validation of draft Inception Report by the Peer reviewer, IEAS leadership and Evaluation Reference Group (ERG)

10%

Final Inception report addressing comments from the Peer reviewer, IEAS leadership and Evaluation Reference Group (ERG)

Data collection

40%

Data analysis, presentation of preliminary findings and draft report

10%

Draft report reviews by the Peer reviewer, IEAS leadership and Evaluation Reference Group (ERG)

20%

Final Report addressing the comments of the Peer reviewer, IEAS leadership and Evaluation Reference Group (ERG)

Presentation of the final report

10%

Brief summarizing the findings of the report

Competencies

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity;
• Integrity;
• Professionalism;

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
• Accountability;
• Creative Problem Solving;
• Effective Communication;
• Inclusive Collaboration;
• Stakeholder Engagement;
• Leading by Example.

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf

Functional Competencies:

• Business Analysis;
• Data Management;
• Operational Excellence;
• Support, Guidance and Advice;
• Technical Acumen.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A Master’s degree related to any of the social sciences, political science, international relations, economics, gender studies and monitoring and evaluation;
• Certification in a Monitoring & Evaluation will be an added advantage.

Experience:

1. At least 7 years practical experience in designing and conducting gender-responsive evaluations of development strategies, policies and programs;
2. Extensive knowledge of, and experience in applying, qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods;
3. Experience conducting consultative research, data collection and preparing project reports;
4. Experience working with international organizations (successful experience in working Experience in Monitoring and Evaluation, documentation and reporting with UN agencies is an asset);
5. Experience in Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment thematic expertise will be considered a strong asset;
6. Experience in high level data analysis skills and demonstrable experience using data analysis tools including but not limited to SPSS, NVivo, Tableau, Qgis.

Language Requirements:

• Excellent verbal and written English;
• Knowledge of the other UN official working language is an asset.

Note:

Please note that applications without a completed and signed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

UN Women Personal History form (P-11) can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, colour, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application. At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, colour, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)

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Added 9 months ago - Updated 9 months ago - Source: jobs.undp.org