Background

UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, operational since January 2011, works towards accelerating the United Nations’ goals on gender equality and the empowerment of women. UN Women supports innovative and catalytic programmes, advocacy, and technical assistance related to women’s human rights in countries throughout the world as part of the overall UN development cooperation system.

The purpose of these terms of reference is to recruit an independent consultant in the field of gender-based violence in Egypt to conduct a physical assessment and assessment of services provided for women victim of violence through available shelters, identify gaps and challenges, conduct interviews with workers; staff and women within these facilities. The consultant is expected to submit field reports; comparative study exercises with international shelters and assessment report.

Scope of the Assignment: the researcher will work under the overall guidance of the Violence Against Women program manager and will aim to support the Violence Against Women Unit on their project EVAW (Ending Violence Against Women: Towards an integrated Approach).

Duties and Responsibilities

Summary of key functions:

  • Conduct physical assessment visits to existing women's shelters in Egypt;
  • Evaluate the physical and hygiene state of the shelters including the bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchen, recreation facilities;
  • Identify the available assets at the shelters;
  • Identify available and lacking services;
  • Undertake a comparison between available shelters in Egypt;
  • Define the gaps and means to address these challenges;
  • Assess the shelter workers’ job mission and performance;
  • Identify the procedures of admission and rejection of women and accompanying children into the shelters;
  • Identify the type of support offered and its strengths and weakness;
  • Identify means of dealing with injured women, and the kind of treatment and evaluation of the treatment procedure provided if any;
  • Report on the victims/ Statistics of victims;
  • Identify barriers to providing the services;
  • Identify legal assistance offered to the victims, if any;
  • Define the minimum required funds to maintain a shelter;
  • Perform a comparison and a desk review of the Egyptian shelters and international shelters;
  • Assess the rehabilitation process, if provided to the victims;
  • Compare the regulations of shelters in Egypt and abroad.
Deliverables:

  • Evidence-based research of existing and available shelters in Egypt is conducted through physical assessment visits to those shelters to evaluate the physical and hygiene state including bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchen and comparing between available shelters in Egypt;
  • Report on the available and lacking assets and services at the shelters is submitted;
  • The procedure of admission or rejection for women with their children are identified;
  • Existing gaps, challenges and suggested methods to overcome these challenges are identified;
  • Main partners, services provided, lacking services, status of workers, available data on beneficiaries are identified;
  • A comparative desk review of the Egyptian shelters and international shelters including regulations and services provided is conducted;
  • An assessment of rehabilitation process for victims of gender-based violence is prepared;
  • Necessary report on the required funding and the analysis of the budget processes is conducted;
  • Report on substantive inputs provided by shelters is submitted;
  • Statistics on the prevalence, consequences and cost of woman’s abuse are determined;
  • Statistics on the number of women using shelters, remaining and those who leaves it and its consequences are determined;
  • An assessment for the effectiveness of the communication and knowledge translation and exchange activities is submitted;
  • An action plan on necessary interventions to enhance the effectiveness and capacity of shelters in Egypt is designed.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:
  • Demonstrates integrity by modeling values and ethical standards of UN;
  • Advocates and promotes the vision, mission and strategic goals of UN Women;
  • Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
  • Treats all people equally without favoritism.
Functional Competencies:

Knowledge and Expertise in Women’s Rights and Gender Equality:

  • Strong skills in drafting, writing and editing;
  • In-depth knowledge of women’s rights issues;
  • Communicates sensitively and effectively across different constituencies.
Management and Leadership:
  • Demonstrates excellent judgment; particularly with regard to being able to prioritize according to importance and urgency;
  • Highly organized; with particular ability in devising systems to ensure follow up;
  • Enjoys multi-tasking and managing several projects at one time;
  • Focuses on impact and result;
  • Ability to work as a positive and valued member of task teams, and demonstrates conflict resolution skills;
  • Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive constructive attitude;
  • Builds strong relationships with clients and external actors;
  • Responds positively to critical feedback and differing points of view;
  • Displays high level of discretion.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • Masters degree in the field of human rights, political science, gender studies, development, education or relevant fields.
Experience:
  • A minimum of 5 years of professional experience in the field of qualitative assessment, NGO development, field research, and gender based violence is required;
  • Capacity to conduct interviews, reporting, comparative analysis and projections is required;
  • Previous experience in human rights projects, field research and gender-based violence preferred;
  • Previous experience in intervention sites of the project is required.
Languages:

  • Fluency (written and verbal) in English and Arabic required.
Evaluation Criteria:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Cumulative analysis:

When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract should be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

  • Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
  • Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.
Technical Criteria weight: 70%
Financial Criteria weight: 30%

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 9 points in the technical evaluation would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

Criteria Weight Technical: 70%:
  • Criteria:   At least three years of relevant experience in process documentation (Weight: 30%. Maximum obtainable Points: 30);
  • Criteria: Relevant education in social science, including gender, law, political science ,etc. (Weight 5%; maximum obtainable points 5);
  • Criteria: Excellent written and spoken English and Arabic. (Weight 5%; maximum obtainable points 5).
Financial: Lowest financial proposal: 30%.

Contract will be awarded to the technically qualified consultant who obtains the highest combines score (financial and technical). The points for the Financial Proposal will be allocated as per the following formula:

(Lowest Bid Offered*)/ (Bid of the Consultant) x 30

"Lowest Bid Offered" refers to the lowest price offered by Offer or scoring at least 49 points in technical evaluation.

Applications:

Interested Individual Consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

Proposal:

To be included as part of the proposal:
  • A cover letter with a brief presentation of your consultancy explaining your suitability for the work;
  • A brief methodology on how you will approach and conduct the work (limit to under 1500 words);
  • UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment; and
  • Personal CV.

Financial proposal:

  • Proposed daily fee.