International Consultant (Team Leader) to Conduct Country Portfolio Evaluation (CPE) of UN Women Afghanistan

Contract

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Background

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) was established in July 2010 with the goal of contributing to the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowermen. 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, peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors. The work of UN Women is focused around its three-fold mandate:

• **Normative work****: to support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and the General Assembly, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms, as well as the translation of these norms at country level
• **Operational work****: to help Member States to implement international standards and to forge effective partnerships with civil society; and
• **Coordination work****: entails work to promote the accountability of the United Nations system on gender equality and empowerment of women (GEEW), including regular monitoring of system-wide progress, as well as more broadly mobilizing and convening key stakeholders to ensure greater coherence and gender mainstreaming across the UN.

UN Women Country Office (CO), has been operational in Afghanistan since 2002. For UN Women, the Country Office Strategic Note (SN) is the main planning tool for the agencies’ support to normative, coordination and operational work. The current UN Women SN cycle in Afghanistan is 2014 – 2021 (initially until 2018 and extended to 2021 to align with the One UN Framework, Afghanistan National Priority Development Framework (ANPDF) and the UN Women corporate Strategic Plan ) and being the last year of its implementation a new SN is due to be developed starting on 2022-2025.

UN Women Afghanistan (ACO) is primarily commissioning the CPE as a formative (forward-looking) evaluation to support the CO’s and national stakeholders’ strategic learning and decision-making in the design of the new Strategic Note (2022 - 2025). The evaluation is expected to have a secondary summative (backwards looking) perspective, to assess ACO contributions over the course of its current Strategic Note to support enhanced accountability for development effectiveness and learning from experience. The evaluation also seeks to provide insights on the strategic direction for ACO within the context of the repositioning of the UN development system, as adopted by the General Assembly resolution 72/279 on 31 May 2018.

Based in this context, UN Women Afghanistan Country Office (ACO) is seeking to hire one (1) International Evaluation Team Leader and one (1) national consultant to evaluate the SN 2014-2021. The consultants will work closely with ACO Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist and the UN Women Regional Evaluation Specialist for Asia and the Pacific with direct supervision by the ACO Deputy Country Representative.

Duties and Responsibilities

Working closely with the support of the national consultant, the Evaluation Team Leader (International) Consultant will be home-based with travels to Kabul and within Afghanistan, in compliance with the do no harm principle, safety protocols and measures recommended by the United Nations Department for Security Services, including those related to COVID-19 pandemic related health measures (e.g. requirements related to quarantining, social distancing, etc.). The Team Leader is expected to oversee the overall conduct of the evaluation process in liaison with the evaluation managers, work in collaboration with the national consultant and ensure the quality of all evaluation products. The payment will be made in three instalments of equal value made upon satisfactory receipt and approval of the following deliverables:

Key Deliverables

Details of expected key activities and deliverables

Target Due Dates and Estimated effort

1

Inception phase analysis

• Portfolio analysis based on desk review and scoping interviews with ACO personnel.
• Development of the evaluation methodology including evaluation data collection tools.
• Drafting and presentation of inception report PowerPoint presentation. (first quality reviewed by EMG, then presented to ERG)
• Drafting inception report, including creating data visualizations, tables and graphs and annexes.
• Finalizing inception report including annexes, ensuring all feedback from the EMG and ERG have been integrated and tracked for transparency.

29 April 2021

(17 working days)

2

Data Collection and Analysis for overall country portfolio evaluation and two case studies Preliminary findings

• Data collection and analysis of the whole portfolio including two case studies (methods for data collection to be outlined under deliverables 1, to include: interviews, focus group discussions, survey, etc.)
• Create data visualizations, tables and graphs as necessary.
• Drafting and presentation of the Preliminary Findings PowerPoint (first quality reviewed by EMG, then presented to ERG)

20 May 2021

( 21 working days)

3

Draft and Final Report and Brief

• Drafting of the synthesis evaluation report (first quality reviewed by EMG, then shared with ERG for feedback)

• Drafting final evaluation report including annexes, ensuring all feedback from the ERG and EMG has been integrated and tracked for transparency.

• Drafting final 2-page brief outlining the overview of the evaluation process, conclusions and recommendations.
• All products should be developed in accordance with UN Women branding guidelines for technical publication for evaluation.

30 June 2021

(12 working days)

All data collected by the consultant must be submitted to the evaluation co-managers in Word, PowerPoint or Excel formats and is the property of UN Women. Proper storage of data is essential for ensuring confidentiality and should be in line with UN Women Policy on data management and security. The evaluation report will also need to follow the United Nations Editorial Manual, which can be found here. The Evaluation Management Group including the Regional Evaluation Specialist will quality assure the evaluation report against UN Women Evaluation Report Quality Assurance criteria GERAAS (See Annex 1). All products submitted by the consultant are subject to quality review; the draft and final evaluation report will be shared with the evaluation reference group, and the evaluation management group for quality review. All data collected through the evaluation and information accessed is property of UN Women.

Competencies

• Proven knowledge about gender issues in Afghanistan and legislative mechanisms.
• Proven coordination and management skills, including the ability to set priorities, manage time effectively, and contribute to a team environment of respect, tolerance, diversity and mutual accountability;
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills;
• Must be a self-starter with excellent demonstrated teamwork skills;
• Strong and proven integrity and analytical skills;
• Excellent writing skills in English;
• Understanding of reporting requirements, expectations and working procedures;
• Commitment to upholding the organizational values and principles of UN Women Afghanistan;
• A proven ability to liaise with a myriad of stakeholders and partners, including government, civil society, international organizations and grassroots organizations;
• Essential computer skills – familiarity with Microsoft Word programs, internet, e-mail

Required Skills and Experience

The consultant is expected to be able to demonstrate evidence of the following experience and capabilities:

1. Master’s degree in a field of relevance for the evaluation (i.e. Social Sciences, Gender Equality, Evaluation, international affairs).
2. At least 7 years of work experience as an Evaluation Team Leader, preferably in the area of gender equality and empowerment of women.
3. Proven work experience in gender and development.
4. Experience contributing to gender-responsive evaluation or experience in gender analysis and human-rights based approaches.
5. Knowledge of the role of UN Women or the UN system and its programming, coordination, and normative roles at country level.
6. Experience working in a complex operating environment or conflict affected area is an asset.
7. Language proficiency in English is required.

Application procedure

Interested consultants can submit the following documents online

1. CV and UN Women P11 which can be downloaded from http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/about-us/jobs)
2. Letter of motivation with professional fee specifying a daily consultancy rate and a breakdown per deliverables listed above
3. 2 evaluation reports where the consultant was team leader (must be a sample where the applicant was directly responsible for writing and demonstrating analytical skills)
4. List of 3 professional references that can be contacted

Financial proposal: the financial proposal shall specify a lump sum amount breaking down the professional fee for each deliverable on daily basis. All the travels costs will be covered by UN Women according to UN Women’s rules and regulation and should not be included in the financial proposal.

All requested documents of the submission package (CV, Motivation Letter, P11, financial proposal and sample reports) should be combined in one document and uploaded when asked to upload the resume. Incomplete submission will not be considered.

Please use " National Consultant: UN Women Country Portfolio Evaluation (CPE) in Afghanistan” as the subject heading of your application.