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 focuses on strengthening women’s voice, agency, and leadership across sectors to advance women’s rights, provide space for women’s meaningful participation, and contribute to tangible differences in their lives. The UN Women Nepal’s Strategic Note (SN) for the period 2023-2027 lays out the agency’s unique role and comparative advantage in supporting national stakeholders in advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women in line with internationally agreed normative standards. The SN is aligned with and contributes to Nepal’s national priorities and commitments as described in the Nepal Constitution 2015 and the Fifteenth Periodic Plan, the needs of women’s organizations, and the UNSDCF with a commitment of leaving no one behind.

UN Women in collaboration with government, development partners, other UN agencies, and civil society organisations (CSOs), is supporting a coordinated response to strengthen the capacity of elected duty bearers on gender-responsive and inclusive governance (GRIG). There is a need for enhanced civic engagement and empowered citizens to ensure GRIG in addition to capacity enhancement of policymakers and duty bearers. Civic engagement is a way to improve the accountability of public institutions, duty bearers and service providers to their constituencies.[1] One of the approaches to ensure improved governance, increased development effectiveness through better service delivery, and empowerment is through social accountability. Thus, the social accountability strategies are perceived to enhance transparency and accountability through bottom-up approaches.

The Government of Nepal (GoN) has taken various measures including legal, institutional and policy to ensure government accountability. Nepal’s Constitution also guarantees various levels of citizen and civil society participation and establishes a number of institutions for public accountability and oversight.  Similarly, several legislations are already in place, such as the Good Governance Act, and Right to Information Act, as well as regulations and procedures[2] that reinforce the transparent and accountable governance. In order to hold duty bearers and service providers accountable for their behavior and performance in terms of providing services more effectively, citizens and civil CSOs can refer to range of mechanisms of social accountability. This facilitates communication between those who have rights and those who have obligations by informing the community's residents of the services to which they are entitled. Some of the social accountability initiatives include- a citizen’s charter, public expenditure tracking, citizen report cards, social audits and public hearings. Evidence suggests that social accountability provides an opportunity for increased interaction and dialogue between citizens and government units to improve the quality of services provided. This encourages citizens and duty bearers to get into constructive dialogues, increase trust, and mutual understanding of challenges and thus ensuring good governance. Additionally, this can be viewed as a powerful tool for establishing strong connections between individuals and governments as well as for empowering marginalized and excluded groups through their involvement in decision-making processes.

It is very important to strengthen the capacity of communities and especially of women’s groups to advocate for gender-responsive service delivery, focusing on the needs of excluded groups including women, excluded groups and people with disabilities. This could be ensured by creating platforms for community people through the effective use of social accountability approaches and tools such as citizen’s budget initiatives, women’s engagement in local governance processes, social audits and public hearings. Therefore, developing capacities and providing training to various constituencies including women’s groups is an integral part of implementing and institutionalizing social accountability.

UN Women realises the importance of civic engagement and institutionalizing social accountability to strengthen the transparency and accountability of governance. UN Women has envisaged dedicated prorgramme interventions to strengthen the capacity of citizens and women’s groups (demand-side) to be able to demand better service delivery and transparency in its SN (2023-2027).  For this purpose, UN Women Nepal Country Office (NCO) is seeking to engage a National Consultant to conduct a scoping study of the Social Accountability initiatives in Nepal and provide technical support in identifying entry points for UN Women in the field of gender-responsive Social Accountability.

Duties and Responsibilities

Responsibilities:

Under the overall supervision of the Programme Officer, and in close coordination with Programme teams and international experts, the National Consultant will provide technical support and strategic guidance to the development of UN Women’s programme interventions on implementing and institutionalizing social accountability. The detailed scope of work and responsibilities of the assignment are as follows:

• Undertake literature reviews of available literature on Social Accountability at the national, regional and global levels.
• Design and conduct a minimum of eight Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with relevant key stakeholders working on Social Accountability at the local and national levels. The interviewees should include relevant government representatives, I/NGOs, and CSOs including women’s rights organisations and networks at the national and sub-national levels. The consultant should provide a list of interviewees with UN Women.
• Develop a best practices document on gender-responsive Social Accountability. This will contribute to the knowledge building of UN Women Nepal on Social Accountability. The consultant is required to collate knowledge products on Social Accountability and share best practices and lessons learned from global, regional and national experiences.
• Design and deliver a learning session with NCO personnel on the importance of implementing social accountability initiatives to ensure gender-responsive governance.
• Draft report (7-10 pages) in line with the desk review and KIIs. The report should highlight the existing mechanisms and legislations that promote gender responsive social accountability, challenges and lesson learned from past initiatives, way forward and draft recommendation for NCO.
• Draft the final report on Social Accountability highlighting key recommendations with entry points for NCO to consider while developing interventions on gender-responsive Social Accountability. The report should also include a section on possible areas of resource mobilization on Social Accountability, including the list of potential donors.

Key Deliverables:

• Bibliography of key knowledge products on social accountability initiatives, tools, training materials and practices in Nepal and South Asia. The consultant should include key findings from the literature review in the draft and final report.

• Develop a best practices document on Social Accountability (20-30 pages). This should be annexed to the final report.
• Design and deliver one learning session for UN Women personnel on Social Accountability concepts and tools.
• A draft report encompassing findings from desk review, KIIs and best practices.
• Final study report incorporating comments from UN Women and its technical experts. The final report should include the following sections (but are not limited to):

• Concept
• Importance
• Existing mechanisms and legislations that promote social accountability.
• Analysis of different social accountability tools and mechanisms applied in Nepal including projects which have been undertaken in Nepal.
• Provision of social accountability mechanisms in federal and local Bodies.
• Social Accountability tools that are best suited in the context of Nepal to enhance the capacities of citizens particularly focusing on women’s groups to articulate their needs and priorities to the service providers, and create greater demand for better public service delivery, municipal governance and public ?nancial management.
• Key findings from the literature review and KIIs including challenges and lessons learned.
• Possible areas of resource mobilization on Social Accountability, including a list of potential donors.
• Recommendations for NCO to inform its programming interventions through the lens of gender-responsive social accountability perspective.
• Annexes should include data collection tools and list of key informants.

Inputs:

• The consultant is expected to work remotely. UN Women can give access to the UN Women office for the printing of relevant documents during the assignment if required.
• It is the Consultant’s responsibility to arrange private insurance.
• It is mandatory for the consultant to participate in a UN security briefing and to follow UN security rules and guidance.
• The Consultant will be required to provide a Statement of Good Health, endorsed by a certified Medical Practitioner
• Selected candidates have to follow the UN Women policy and should submit documents request by Human Resource.

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

Required Skills and Experience

Required Qualifications, Experience and skills:

• Master’s degree in Social Science, Gender and Development Studies, Political Science, or any other related field of studies.
• A minimum of 10 years of experience in working with gender equality and women’s empowerment and inclusive governance. Experience of working in the area of civic engagement, social accountability mechanism and governance will be an added advantage.
• Previous experience working with different levels of government, civil society and development partners. Experience working with the UN system is a considerable asset.  
• Fluency in written and oral English is required.
• Ability to handle documents and the information contained therein with strictest confidentiality is a non-negotiable requirement.

Schedule of payments:

Payment will be made on the basis of quality of the work actually delivered upon certification of satisfactory performance by the supervisor. A work plan for the service delivery will be discussed and reconfirmed upon the signing of a contract. The contractor’s performance will be evaluated against such criteria as: timeliness, responsibility, initiative, communications, accuracy, and quality of the products delivered.

Timeline: 

40 days spread over 6 months (Note: Despite the six-month contract term, the consultant should submit the deliverables no later than three months after the contract is signed).

Evaluation and Selection Criteria

A two-stage procedure is utilized in evaluating the proposals, with evaluation of the technical proposal being completed prior to any price proposal being compared. Only the price proposal of the candidates who passed the minimum technical score of 70% of the obtainable score of 100 points in the technical qualification evaluation will be evaluated. If required, an interview will be conducted before making the final decision on selection of the consultant.

1. Technical qualification evaluation criteria:

The total number of points allocated for the technical qualification component is 100. The technical qualification of the individual is evaluated based on following technical qualification evaluation criteria:

• Master’s degree in Social Science, Gender and Development Studies, Political Science, or any other related field of studies. (10 points)
• A minimum of 10 years of professional experience in working in the areas of Governance and gender equality and women’s empowerment. (20 points)
• Proven expertise in the area of implementing Social Accountability related projects and inclusive governance (20 points)
• Previous experience working with different levels of government, civil society and development partners. (20 points)
• Experience working with the UN system is a considerable asset. (10 points)
• Writing sample (20 points)

Only the candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% of total points will be considered as technically qualified candidate.

1. Financial/Price Proposal evaluation:

The financial proposal of candidates who meet the technical assessment threshold will be evaluated. The financial assessment will count as 30% of the total points.  In this methodology, the maximum number of points assigned to the financial proposal is allocated to the lowest price proposal. All other price proposals receive points in inverse proportion.

A formula is as follows:

p = y (µ/z)

Where:

p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated

y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal

µ = price of the lowest priced proposal

z = price of the proposal being evaluated

Documents to be included when applying

Interested applicants should apply to this announcement through UNDP jobs site: https://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=111268

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications in one single PDF document:

• Expression of interest
• Completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded:  http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment
• At least one samples of original writing produced where the applicant is the author/co-author
• A separate page of financial proposal indicating per day (1 day = 8 hours) consultancy fees for the assignment period (40 working days)

The financial proposal shall specify the per day consultancy fee based on which the total contract value will be calculated. UN Women HR might request the candidate to share evidence of the per day consultancy fee of the previous assignment(s).

Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment, please combine all your documents into one single PDF document. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form and the written sample will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment.