Project Evaluation Consultant (International)

Result of Service The consultant in close consultation with UN-Habitat team is responsible to make sure that the following tasks are fulfilled: 1. Review the projects documents and contract and evaluate projects’ outputs (planning documents/reports) 2. Organize interviews, consultations, and discussions with key Iraqi and other relevant stakeholders, UN-Habitat, other UN agencies, and civil society organizations, aiming to evaluate the capacities built and future needs. 3. Produce inception report, draft report for feedback and final evaluation report.

Work Location Home-Based

Expected duration 60 working days over a period of four (4) calendar months.

Duties and Responsibilities Organizational Setting: UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all. It is the focal point for all urbanization and human settlement matters within the UN system.

Background The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all. UN-Habitat has been active in Iraq since 1996 under the Oil for Food Programme. After 2003, UN-Habitat was largely engaged in early recovery efforts, particularly those supporting internally displaced persons through the provision of shelter and reconstruction solutions. After more than four years since the official declaration in December 2017 of the ‘end of war against ISIL’ by the Government of Iraq, approximately 1.2 million people are still internally displaced. Many of the IDPs are caught in protracted displacement, in which they are displaced for more than four years. While obstacles to return vary depending on the region, destruction and/or damage to former residences, the lack of employment and/or livelihood opportunities in location of origin, and the lack of housing, land and property rights documentation are among common obstacles that are reported. According to the housing damage assessment jointly conducted by UN-Habitat and Shelter Cluster Iraq, there were 4,570 severely damaged or destroyed houses in Sinjar. It is also to be noted that those in protracted displacement are often the most vulnerable, such as female-headed households. Urgent support is needed to facilitate voluntary, dignified and sustainable returns of vulnerable displaced persons through comprehensive support that provides adequate housing, improved community infrastructure, and employment/livelihood opportunities. In response to the above-mentioned UN-Habitat has implemented the projects titled “Support to Reconstruction and Peacebuilding of Liberated Cities in Iraq – Phase III” and “Emergency Support to Returnees in Iraq after the Outbreak of COVID-19” funded by the Government of Japan in Sinjar supporting peacebuilding through seamless transition from emergency recovery to reconstruction and development.

One of the key principles of the human security approach is the combination of protection (top-down) and empowerment (bottom-up) framework. The projects enhanced the human security of conflict-affected areas in Iraq by protecting vulnerable returnees and members of conflict-affected communities through provision of adequate and dignified housing, safe public space and adequate community infrastructure, and at the same time by empowering them through training them to engage in construction activities and thereby providing employment opportunities to support rebuilding their livelihoods in the aftermath of the conflict. The projects contributed to strengthen the humanitarian- development-peace nexus as it combined humanitarian assistance, which was to provide safe housing and employment opportunities to vulnerable returnees, and adequate public space and community infrastructure as well as vocational training, which enhanced self-reliance and dignity of returnees and thereby helped them become less dependent on humanitarian assistance through stronger social cohesion and improved livelihoods. The projects aimed to facilitate social stabilization in Iraq by rehabilitating houses, public spaces and/or infrastructure in conflict-affected areas and by constructing low-cost housing units to accommodate vulnerable returnees whose houses were destroyed. Furthermore, members of conflict-affected communities were targeted to be trained and recruited to engage in rehabilitation and construction activities, thus contributing to rebuild their livelihoods.

Reporting Line UN-Habitat Iraq Programme is recruiting a consultant (Project Evaluation) to support the project “Support to Reconstruction and Peacebuilding of Liberated Cities in Iraq – Phase III” and “Emergency Support to Returnees in Iraq after the Outbreak of COVID-19”.

The consultant will be home-based with required travels to Iraq and report to the Project Manager in UN-Habitat Iraq Programme and/or his/her designate.

Duties and responsibilities The consultant is responsible for conducting the following evaluation. The detailed work schedule including milestone are stated in Outputs/Work Assignment section.

The evaluation will be based on its assessments on the criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability, coherence/ complementarity, and community value added in line with standards and norms of evaluation in the United Nations system:

Relevance - To what extent were the projects relevant to requirements/needs of the beneficiaries (national and local governments)? - To what extent was the implementation strategy responsive to the Donor and UN-Habitat strategies? - To what extent were the projects’ intended outputs and outcome consistent with national and local policies and priorities, and the needs of target beneficiaries? - To what extent UN-Habitat’s comparative advantage in this area of work compared with other UN entities and key partners? - To what extent were the identification of key stakeholders and target groups (including gender analysis and analysis of vulnerable groups) and of institutional capacity issues relevant?

Effectiveness - To what extent were the projects’ intended results (outputs and outcome) achieved how did UN-Habitat contribute towards these achievements? - What types of products and services were provided to beneficiaries through these projects? What kind of positive changes to beneficiaries have resulted from products and services delivered? - To what extent have the projects proven to be successful in terms of ownership in relation to the local context and the needs of beneficiaries? To what extent and in what ways has ownership, or lack of it, impacted the effectiveness of the projects? - To what extent was cross cutting issues of gender, human rights, youth, climate change considered and integrated in the programme design and implementation of the projects? - To what extent did the assumptions and risk assessments at results level turn out to be inadequate or invalid, or unforeseen external factors intervened, and how flexible the projects’ management has been to ensure that the results would still achieve the intended purpose? - What was the effect of COVID-19 on the projects? - What was the effect of the security situations on the projects?

Efficiency - To what extent did resources and management structure of the projects support efficiency for projects implementation? - To what extent did the projects management and international and local partners have the capacity to design and implement the projects? - To what extent were the institutional arrangements of UN-Habitat adequate for the projects? What type of (administrative, financial, and managerial) obstacles did the projects face and to what extent has this affected the projects? - To what extent the projects demonstrated value for money, as well what was the quality of the monitoring performed during the implementation and measures taken to adapt as necessary? - To what extent did activities and outputs contribute to the expected accomplishments (outcomes) and objective of the projects? - To what extent was monitoring and reporting on the projects transparent and satisfied key stakeholders?

Impact - To what extent have the projects attained (or is expected to attain) development results to the targeted population, beneficiaries, participants, whether individuals, communities, institutions, etc.? More specifically, at impact level the ex-post evaluation will make an analysis of the following aspects: o Extent to which the objectives of the projects have been achieved as intended to the projects planned overall objective. o Whether the effects of the projects: - have been facilitated/constrained by external factors - have produced any unintended or unexpected impacts, and if so, how have these affected the overall impact - have been facilitated/constrained by project/programme management, by co-ordination arrangements, by the participation of relevant stakeholders - have contributed to economic and social development - have contributed to poverty reduction - have made a difference in terms of cross-cutting issues like gender equality, environment, good governance, human rights, conflict prevention etc. - were spread between economic growth, salaries and wages, foreign exchange, and budget.

Sustainability - To what extent was capacity developed to ensure sustainability of the efforts and benefits? - To what extent did the projects engage the participation of beneficiaries in design, implementation, monitoring, and reporting? - To what extent was the theme of the projects aligned with national/local development priorities and contributed to increased investments to accelerate the achievement of priorities? - To what extent will the projects be replicable or scaled up at national or local levels? - To what extent did the projects foster innovative partnerships with local institutions and authorities and other development partners?

Coherence/complementarity - Were the projects coherent and implemented in synergy within the donor's development programme? - Were the projects coherent or complement with partners’ policies and with other donors’ interventions?

Community value added: The extent to which the intervention adds benefits to what would have resulted from development partners' interventions in the same context. - Have the projects brought added value by involving UN-Habitat and partners? - What impact have this project made that would not have been possible without the intervention?

The consultant may expound on the evaluation questions, as necessary, to carry out the objectives of the evaluation.

Purpose and objectives of the evaluation

This end-term project evaluation of “Support to Reconstruction and Peacebuilding of Liberated Cities in Iraq –Phase III” and “Emergency Support to Returnees in Iraq after the Outbreak of COVID-19” is mentioned in the Projects Document (4.3. Evaluation) and in-line with UN-Habitat Evaluation Policy (2013) and the Revised UN-Habitat Evaluation Framework (2016) that mandate all projects over USD 1 million to have an evaluation conducted by external consultant.

The evaluation serves both accountability and learning purposes. It is intended to provide evidence on what was achieved by the project at objectives, expected accomplishment (outcomes) and output levels by assessing the achievements, challenges and opportunities of the project through measurement and analysis of all the phases of the project management cycle in relation to its results chain and the project’s logical framework. It is also intended to enhance learning by identifying constraints, lessons learned and recommendations that may be the basis of decision-making for future UN-Habitat programming and funding. The evaluation will assess to what extent the delivery of the project’s objectives and expected accomplishments were relevant, efficient, effective, sustainable, and achieved impact and coherence. The sharing of evaluation findings from this evaluation will inform UN-Habitat and international and local implementing partners and other stakeholders on what worked well and why or what did not work and reasons.

The key objectives of the evaluation are as follows:

1. To assess achievement of performance of the project in terms of achievement of results at objective, expected accomplishment (outcome) and output levels.; 2. To assess the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, impact and coherence of the project. 3. To assess project management modalities, appropriateness of partnerships, working arrangements, adequacy of resources and how these may have impacted on the effectiveness of the project. 4. Assess how cross-cutting issues such as gender equality, youth and human rights were integrated and impacted the project. 5. Identify lessons learned and make strategic, programmatic and management recommendations on what further needs to be done to effectively promote and develop sustainable planning Scope of the evaluation The evaluation will focus on the life cycle of the entire phases of the projects as started in April 2019, with emphasis on the period from 01 April 2019 – 31 March 2022 for “Support to Reconstruction and Peacebuilding of Liberated Cities in Iraq – Phase III” and as started in March 2021, with emphasis on the period from March 2021 to December 2022 for “Emergency Support to Returnees in Iraq after the Outbreak of COVID-19”. It will assess the planning, funding, implementation and, monitoring and reporting on the projects. It will assess achievements of outputs and expected accomplishments (outcomes), identify and analyze constraints, challenges and opportunities. Further, it will include assessment on how crossing cutting issues of gender equality, human rights, climate and youth have been integrated in the planning and implementation of the projects.

Stakeholder engagement It is expected that this evaluation will be participatory, involving key stakeholders, including the relevant government authorities and local communities. Stakeholders will be kept informed of the evaluation processes including design, information collection, and evaluation reporting and results dissemination to create a positive attitude for the evaluation and enhance its utilization. Relevant entities may participate through a questionnaire, interviews or focus group discussions. UN-Habitat will facilitate for the consultant the engagement with main stakeholders. Stakeholder analysis should be prepared by the external evaluation expert/consultant at the inception phase of the assignment. All data collected and analyzed should be gender disaggregated.

Evaluation methods The evaluation approach will be a results-based approach. Further, it shall be independent and carried out following the evaluation norms and standards of the United Nations System. Evaluation criteria will guide the evaluation process. The evaluation will be based on Theory of Change of the projects of “Support to Reconstruction and Peacebuilding of Liberated Cities in Iraq –Phase III” and “Emergency Support to Returnees in Iraq after the Outbreak of COVID-19” and will outline the results chain and pathways as well as assumptions. The consultant will reconstruct a Theory of Change on how the projects were supposed to work to achieve its intended results.

The main emphasis is placed on projects delivery (including partnership and collaboration), achievement of results, lessons learned including critical gaps and recommendations. Findings in the evaluation should be evidence based.

A variety of methodologies will be applied to collect information during the evaluation. These methodologies include the following elements:

• Review of documents relevant to the projects. Documents to be provided by the UN-Habitat country office, including projects documents, results-oriented monitoring review report, progress reports to donor, final deliverables, etc.
• Key informant interviews and consultations, including focus group discussions will be conducted with key stakeholders, including each of the implementing partners.
• Field visits, if deemed feasible with the COVID-19 crisis and the resources available to the evaluation, to assess selected activities of the projects and interview beneficiaries.

Accountability and responsibilities The projects are above US1 Million USD respectively, and according to the UN-Habitat Revised Evaluation Framework, 2015 and the new Administrative Instruction (AI), August 2021, that emphasize that those involved in projects design and implementation should not manage the interventions the implement, the evaluation was supposed to be managed as centralized evaluation. However, due to existing evaluation capacity of the Independent Evaluation Unit, it has been agreed that the evaluation will be managed a decentralized evaluation by the UN-Habitat country office in Iraq and the Independent Evaluation Unit will fully support the evaluation. A suitable consultant to conduct the evaluation and will be selected involving the Independent Evaluation Unit, and all the evaluation products will have an endorsement of the Independent Evaluation Unit, having supported the evaluation on quality assuring of the evaluation products including the ToR, Inception report and draft evaluation report.

The evaluation will be conducted by One consultant. The consultant is responsible for meeting professional and ethical standards in planning and conducting the evaluation and producing the expected deliverables.

The projects to be evaluated are as follows:

Project: “Support to Reconstruction and Peacebuilding of Liberated Cities in Iraq – Phase III”

Objectives of the project: The objective of the project is to support peacebuilding in Iraq through seamless transition from emergency recovery to reconstruction and development in key liberated cities.

Specific objective(s) 1) Living conditions in the targeted communities/neighborhoods are improved through rehabilitation of public spaces/infrastructure. 2) Vulnerable returnees are accommodated in low-cost housing unit site(s) 3) Self-reliance of the returnees in the targeted communities is enhanced through vocational training and increased employment opportunities.

Main activities - Conduct rapid needs assessment to select the target project location, identify damaged or destructed houses to be reconstructed based on the assessment and community consultation, and reconstruct the targeted houses. - Conduct rapid needs assessment to select the target facility, identify schools to be rehabilitated based on the assessment and community consultation and rehabilitate the facilities. - Conduct market assessment and community consultation to identify needs for vocational training conduct vocational training targeting unemployed men and women.

Project: “Emergency Support to Returnees in Iraq after the Outbreak of COVID-19”

Objectives of the project The overall objective of the project is to support peacebuilding in Iraq through seamless transition from emergency recovery to reconstruction and development in key liberated cities while preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Specific objective(s) 1) Improve the living conditions and COVID-19 response in the targeted communities through rehabilitation or reconstruction of housing units and improve access to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. 2) Enhance livelihoods and self-reliance of young men and women in conflict-affected areas.

Main activities - Conduct rapid needs assessment to select the target project location, identify damaged or destructed houses to be rehabilitated or reconstructed based on the assessment and community consultation, and rehabilitate or reconstruct the targeted houses. - Conduct rapid needs assessment to select the target facility, identify water, sanitation and hygiene facilities to be rehabilitated based on the assessment and community consultation and rehabilitate water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. - Conduct awareness-raising activities on COVID-19 prevention measures based on the findings of the assessment. - Conduct market assessment and community consultation to identify needs for vocational training and cash-for-work and design and conduct vocational training targeting unemployed men and women. - Employ the graduates of the vocational training through cash-for-work modality and monitor employment record.

Qualifications/special skills Academic Qualifications: - Advanced (master’s) degree in Urban and Regional Planning, Development Studies, Local Governance, Urban Geography, Public Administration, Peace and conflict studies or any other field relevant to the assignment is required.

Experience: - Extensive evaluation experience is required. The consultant should have ability to present credible findings derived from evidence and putting conclusions and recommendations supported by the findings. - A minimum of seven years’ professional practical experience in results-based management working with projects/ programmes in the relevant field is required. - Experience in conducting evaluations for large, and complex projects in post-conflict settings is desirable. - Very good knowledge of international experience and best practices regarding institutional change management and human resource development, planning, sustainable urban development, and local governance is desirable. - Understanding of and experience with demand-driven processes and methodologies of capacity building required is desirable. - Excellent report writing skills (supported by similar sample of evaluation reports) is required. - Good understanding of planning, development and governance and the associated responsibilities at municipal level is desirable. - Familiarity with and loyalty to the goals of the United Nations, UN-Habitat’s mandate is desirable. - Familiarity with the contexts of Iraq, particularly in the area of Sinjar/Western Ninewa, Ninewa Governorate is desirable. - Knowledge of municipal legal, spatial and economic drivers is desirable.

Language: - Excellent proficiency in spoken and written English is required. Knowledge of Arabic and the local languages used in the projects locations are desirable.

No Fee THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.