Background

Over the past years, UN Women has provided support to national and local stakeholders in strengthening democratic governance and advancing women’s rights through initiatives aimed at mainstreaming gender in policy planning and budgeting.


In 2014, UN Women launched the 3-year regional project on Promoting Gender Responsive Policies in South East Europe and Republic of Moldova financed by Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and Swiss Agency Development and Cooperation. It is a direct follow up of the UN Women CSEE regional project “Promoting Gender Responsive Policies in South East Europe” (2011 -2013) that covered Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia. The final evaluation of this project recommended continuation of activities especially with regard to institutional capacity building and increased involvement of key budget actors at the required decision-making levels. UN Women will share more details about the project with the selected consultant.


The purpose of the consultancy is to prepare performance monitoring framework, methodology and guidance for progress data collection  in order to enhance accountability, inform decision-making and contribute to learning on the best ways to achieve women’s empowerment and gender equality through operational and normative work. As a member of the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG), UN WOMEN follows its norms and standards. UN WOMEN evaluations are gender equality and rights responsive.

Duties and Responsibilities

UN Women is seeking to recruit team of 5 consultants. The team will consist of Team Leader (Senior Consultant) and four national consultants, who will be supervised by the Team Leader, but based in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYR Macedonia and Republic of Moldova respectively. The key responsibility of the team members will be to collect data for the baseline and validate the PMF with the project staff and other stakeholders in their respective countries.
The Team Leader will be responsible for the overall delivery under the TOR. The team leader will have essential expertise in results based management in the context of international development; expertise in gender and gender responsive budgeting, expertise in leading teams in similar assignments, demonstrated track record in monitoring and evaluation; relevant regional expertise; ability to conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis; requisite skills in facilitation, and language proficiency in English.
The team members will have demonstrated expertise in applied research knowledge of gender issues and public administration. They will be fluent in English and the respective local language/s. All team members need to be familiar with human rights and gender responsive approach to evaluation.
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT
“Promoting Gender Responsive Policies in South East Europe, Phase II” regional project (2013 -2016) is funded by the Austrian Development Agency and the Swiss Agency Development and Cooperation. The project covers Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia and the Republic of Moldova.
The ultimate aim of the project is to contribute to the implementation of commitments towards achieving gender equality. To achieve this aim, three distinct outcomes were anticipated (the logical framework for the project provides more details):
 
Outcome 1: Sectoral programs and budgets at the central and local levels reflect better gender equality concerns.
 
Outcome 2: Strengthened oversight of central and local government programs, policies and budgets towards gender equality commitments.
 
Outcome 3: Exchange of knowledge and learning on GRB facilitates replication of good practices and lessons learned.
In order to achieve these outcomes, the project envisages the following outputs:
 
Output 1.1.: Increased capability and capacity of Ministries of Finance to institutionalize the integration of GRB.
Output 1.2.: Selected central and local programs (such as rural development, social protection and employment) and budgets are analyzed to respond to gender equality commitments.
Output 1.3.: Strengthened capacities and increased commitment of select number of local governments to make programs and budgets gender responsive.
 
Output 2.1.: Experts, academia and CSOs have strengthened capacities to analyze programs and budgets from gender perspective.
Output 2.2.: Members of parliament (MPs) and local councilors (LCs) have increased knowledge and capacities to assess the gender-responsiveness of the national and local programs and budget.
 
Output 3.1.: Networks of GRB experts and public officials are capacitated to respond to country and regional demand for GRB expertise.

DELIVERABLES
The National consultant shall be responsible for the following deliverables:
  • Inputs to the inception report submitted by the Team leader.
  • Collected and consolidated baseline data for Bosnia and Herzegovina  based on inputs from project staff
  • Inputs to the project performance monitoring framework (PMF) that reflects availability of data and feedback of UN Women project staff
  • Final report (invidual) summarising the results of the assignment and recommendations to UN Women.


All deliverables should be submitted to the Regional Project Manager. The reports should be written in English, in a succinct and user-friendly language.

Competencies

Values:
  • Demonstrates integrity and fairness by modeling UN values and ethical standards.
  • Demonstrates professional competence and is conscientious and efficient in meeting commitments, observing deadlines and achieving results.
  • Display cultural, gender, nationality, religion and age sensitivity and adaptability.
Competencies:
  • Excellent interpersonal, communication and interview skills
  • Excellent writing skills in English
  • Willingness to work as part of a team

Required Skills and Experience

Academic Qualifications:
  • Master’s degree in a relevant field (social sciences, e.g. sociology, political science, international relations, legal studies, public policy, international development, gender studies) field, PhD an advantage.
Experience:
  • At least 5 years of demonstrated experience in results based management of international development projects and programs
  • Demonstrated work experience on gender issues incl. gender responsive policies, public administration, familiarity with GRB is an asset
  • Track record of similar assignments (applied research studies, evaluations), ideally with a focus on gender/GRP
  • Demonstrated experience with applied research with data collection, analytical and presentation skills and demonstrated ability to structure information
  • Previous experience working /consulting for UN agencies

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:
  1. Financial proposal (for details see further below)
  2. UN P11 form (blank form can be downloaded from: http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment/)
    Please note: Both documents have to be uploaded in 1 file.
EVALUATION OF OFFERS
UN Women applies a fair and transparent selection process that takes into account both the technical qualification of potential consultants as well as the financial proposals submitted in support of consultant applications. Candidate applications will be evaluated using a cumulative analysis method taking into consideration the combination of applicant qualifications and a financial proposal. The contract will be awarded to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:
  • responsive/compliant/acceptable, and
  •  having received the highest score out of below defined technical, interview and financial criteria.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 30 points in the technical evaluation will be considered for an interview. Top 5 candidates (with highest number of points in the technical evaluation) will be interviewed. The maximum number of points assigned to the financial proposal will be allocated to the lowest price proposal among those candidates who have reached at least 30 points in the interview. All other price proposals receive points in inverse proportion.

Criteria:
Technical Evaluation – documents based (40%)
Out of which:
Evaluation related work experience/expertise – 20 percentage points
Gender Responsive Policies related work experience/expertise – 15 percentage points
Applied research, writing, international organizations experience/expertise – 5  percentage points
Technical evaluation – interview based (40%)
Out of which:
Evaluation related work experience/expertise – 20 percentage points
Gender Responsive Policies related work experience/expertise – 15 percentage points
Applied research, writing, international organizations experience/expertise – 5 percentage points
Financial Evaluation (20%)
Evaluation of submitted financial offers will be done based on the following formula: S = Fmin / F * 30
S - score received on financial evaluation;
Fmin - the lowest financial offer out of all the submitted offers qualified over the technical evaluation round;
F - financial offer under the consideration.