UNDP Jobs - 61926- International Consultant- Preparing a Training Mod

International Consultant- Preparing a Training Module on Judgment Writing for People’s Supreme Court in Lao PDR

Location :

Vientiane Capital, LAO PDR

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

Application Deadline :

18-Dec-15 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

10 Working Days Over 4 Months

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

10 Working Days Over 4 Months

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

In September 2009, the Legal Sector Master Plan was officially adopted by the Government of Lao PDR. The Master Plan lays out a framework for the country’s first broad-ranging legal reform in order to achieve its ultimate goal of establishing a rule of law state by 2020. It is a comprehensive and candid statement of the current needs of the legal system as well as a series of guiding principles for developing a rule of law state and action plan to achieve this goal. The Plan represents an effort at coordinated legal system development consistent with the guidance of the political report of the 9th Party Congress.

In order to support the implementation of the Master Plan, UNDP, together with other donors, launched a new project (“Support Project for Implementation of the Legal Sector Master Plan”) in January 2014. As the first attempt towards a programme-based approach in the legal sector of Lao PDR, the SPLSMP is expected to deliver the following 6 key outputs:

Enhanced capacity, procedures, and standards for legislative development and implementation in Lao PDR;
Improved capacity, structure, and arrangements further improved at legal and judicial institutions for more effective and responsive judicial process;
More systematic development of legal and judicial professionals enabled through the establishment of a unified judicial training institute;
Increased public understanding of legal rights and information, and increased participation in the legal system towards full realisation of their rights;
Lao PDR’s further integration into regional and international communities enabled through adoption, implementation, enforcement, monitoring, and reporting of international legal instruments;
Enhanced capacity of the Secretariat for more effective coordination in the legal sector and implementation of the LSMP.

This consultancy is related specifically to Output 2 of the SPLSMP. The project is seeking a consultant / firm to undertake this assignment.

Brief Background

The formal justice system is still at its infant stage in Lao PDR and with the first Constitution promulgated in 1991. Prior to which the society was largely regulated by party policies/resolutions as well as customary practices. In order to firm up the idea of establishing a society based on rule of law by 2020, the National Assembly adopted an ambitious 5-year plan in 2011 to promulgate and amendment 90 laws.

Lao PDR has a civil law system which is closely modelled on the Soviet/Chinese and French legal systems. The criminal justice system is inquisitorial with a legal profession of less than 200 lawyers in the whole country. Challenges existing within the justice system in Lao include, weak expertise on laws, legal concepts, judicial processes, limited legal drafting skills, lack of human resources and the lack of a robust case management system. The latter in particular has led to creating other complex legal issues such as the absence of systematic compilation of case laws.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of work

Under the SPLSMP, the People’s Supreme Court (PSC) among other things is currently focusing on building staff capacity including the capacity of senior personnel to better respond to increasing demands and needs in the justice sector in Lao PDR. Towards achieving this objective, (PSC) conducted a training needs assessment to identify capacity gaps of professional staff working across the country.

Several training requirements were identified during this assessment and it was decided to focus on skills relevant to judgment writing on a priority basis. The SPLSMP project has thus agreed with PSC to support the process of developing the required curricular and supporting the trainers at the PSC training center to roll out training on judgement writing to selected number of PSC officials.

To address this need the SPLSMP project, is seeking the services of the independent international consultant to develop a suitable curricular / training module to suit the requirements of PSC and support its trainers to rollout the training module on judgement writing . The duration and the modalities of the training will be decided by PSC in consultation with the project and the expert.

The consultant will be based at the LSMP secretariat and will work in close cooperation with PSC, Ministry of Justice and the Chief Technical Advisor and Legal Programme Specialist of the SPLSMP based at the LSMP Secretariat. The Consultant will report to the Head of UNDP Governance Unit for all related matters.

Expected Deliverables and Timeframe

The consultant will be expected to hold consultation with the relevant OSPP officials to identify the extent, style and the depth of the training module. S/He will also be expected to peruse all normative documents relevant and applicable to the module, be very conscious of the local requirements and tailor make the module to suit the local context using local case studies and example whenever necessary.

This county will be for a period of 10 working days spread over a period of two weeks.

The detailed deliverables are and time frame of the consultancy is outlines below:

Deliverable:

Day 1-2: Outline of the training module Conduct consultations with PSC and design the outline of the training module in line with the needs of PSC. The SPLSMP and PSC will reserve the right to approve the outline.

Day 3- 5: Training module proper including supporting material, including but not limited to case studies, role plays and simulations The training modules has to be prepared using participatory methods and SPLSMP and PSC will reserve the right to approve training module.

Day 6: Training plan, Develop pre and post- test and come up with a monitoring ( short term ) and evaluation ( long term ) scheme to assess the impact of the training and Work with PSC trainers to come with a suitable and practical training plan and the evaluation tools.

Day 7-9: Conduct a training to Pilot test the training module targeting selected PSC officials from the VTE province Co train with PSC officials to pilot test the training module and gather any feedback from the training.

Day 10: Fine tune training module and submit final version ( printable ) to SPLSMP project SPLSMP and PSC will reserve the right to approve training module.

Please note that number days indicated above do not include weekends and public holidays.

Payment Terms and Schedule:

Except for the travel-related expense which can be reimbursed upon arrival in the country, the payment will be made in lump sum once all the deliverables described above are completed and finalized. Thus, this factor should be taken into account when developing a financial proposal.

Competencies

Functional competencies:

Shares knowledge and experience;
Plan and prioritizes work activities to meet organizational goals;
Builds and sustains relationships with key constituents (international/external/bilateral/ multilateral/public/private/civil society);
Conceptualizes and analyzes problems to identify key issues, underlying problems, and how they relate;
Demonstrates excellent and effective written and oral communication skills;
Demonstrate respect to knowledge and culture and religion in a multidisciplinary working environment;
Applies the required depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise to meet job demands;
Uses information technology effectively as a tools and resource;
Demonstrated flexibility and adaptability in taking on this type of consultancy;

Corporate Competencies:

Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
Fulfills all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Required Skills and Experience

Degree of expertise and qualification:

Education:

At least a Bachelor’s degree in Law or any other related fields.

Years of experience:

Technical Qualifications: Serving as an experienced judge (former or current) for at least 10 years.
Including at least 4 years of experience in designing training curricular and conducting training.

Languages:

Fluency in spoken and written English including excelling drafting skills, particularly in being able to write documents (such as reports) concisely and in simple-to-understand English that is easy to translate into another language

Requirements for submission of proposals:

All interested and qualified candidates should apply on-line using the following links:

UNDP Lao PDR Country Office website at http://www.la.undp.org/content/lao_pdr/en/home/operations/jobs/

Or UNDP Jobs at http://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_jobs.cfm

In order to make submission please read the attached relevant documents:

TOR (Annex I)
Individual Contract & General Terms and Conditions (Annex II);
Offeror's Letter to UNDP confirming interest and availability (Annex III)

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals:

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

Technical and Financial Proposal as per Annex III “Offeror's letter to UNDP confirming interest and availability”

Explaining why you are the most suitable for the work;
Providing a brief methodology on how you will approach and conduct the work including the work schedule for the delivery of outputs/deliverable;
CV including past experience in similar project and contact reference of at least 3 references for whom you have rendered preferably the similar services;

Note:

The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount (including the monthly breakdown), and payment terms around specific and measurable (qualitative and quantitative) deliverables (i.e. whether payments fall in installments or upon completion of the entire contract). Payments are based upon monthly outputs, i.e. upon delivery of the services specified in the TOR. In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of financial proposals, the financial proposal will include a breakdown of this lump sum amount (including travel, per diems, and number of anticipated working days). All envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. UNDP accept travel costs not exceeding of an economy class air ticket.

Please kindly refer to the Terms of Reference Annex I for detailed information on:

Project’s background;
Scope of work and Responsibilities;
Deliverables;
Requirements for Experience and Qualifications.

Evaluation of Proposals:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on cumulative analysis and in line with the following evaluation criteria:

Cumulative analysis: The award of the contract will be made to a consultant who 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:

Technical Criteria weight; [0.7].

*Financial Criteria weight; [0.3].

Only a consultant obtaining a minimum of 50 points in the technical rating would be considered for the financial evaluation.

Note:

Any request for clarification must be sent in writing to the following e-mail: kazuo.fukuda@undp.org and CC phadthakone.sophavilay@undp.org

UNDP Lao PDR will respond in writing by standard electronic mail and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all consultants.

The copies of the response will be also placed on our web-site at: http://www.la.undp.org/content/lao_pdr/en/home/operations/jobs/ and linked to the current Procurement Notice.

All interested candidates are encouraged to visit the above web-site for updates.

Please note that only short-listed candidates will be notified.

Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

For more detailed information about UNDP Lao PDR please visit our website at http://www.la.undp.org/lao_pdr/en/home.html.