Background

The ongoing conflict has further impoverished the Yemeni population and increased their vulnerability. The economic impact of the crisis has been devastating for Yemen, aggravating an already deteriorating pre-conflict economic performance. Prior to the recent conflict, Yemen was already the poorest country in the Arab region suffering from weak human development outcomes compounded with a high population growth, repeated local conflicts, chronic food insecurity and uncertain political transition. With the violent armed conflict that started in 2015 economic indicators have plummeted further. The World Bank estimates that the poverty level has doubled nationally from an average of 34.1 to 62 per cent.[1] According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs latest estimates, over 21.1 million Yemenis (80 percent of the population) are in need of urgent assistance to meet basic needs such as food, water, and health care.

According to the Disaster Needs Assessment[2] (DNA) "preliminary findings indicate severe sector damage, affecting most severely livelihoods and social services". According to IPC report as of July 2017, at least 17 million of the populations are food insecure and 7 million people are severely food insecure. Malnutrition has increased by 57 percent since 2015 and now affects close to 3.3 million people, 462,000 of which are children under five.

The current conflict has had an adverse impact on women and girls, who were already vulnerable. Prior to the conflict women had limited access to political participation and representation, economic opportunities, educational opportunities, and access to healthcare. In addition, sexual violence and gender based violence have been perpetrated in great numbers, particularly child, early, and forced marriage. An estimated 52 % of IDPs are female (30 % women and 22 % girls), with approximately 30% of households in some areas.

Women and girls who were used to bear the burden of running the household, have become exposed to different forms of gender-based violence (GBV) and lack of income and economic opportunities, stretching further their vulnerability. As a result of the conflict, displaced women face additional burden including caring for the injured family members, dealing with the loss of the family breadwinners and challenges in accessing assistance and income generating opportunities. The number of women-headed households increased rapidly due to death and disability of men affected by the conflict including among the IDPs and returnees estimated at 30%. The prolonged absence of men joining the conflict also added additional responsibility on women including taking care of the household matters and protecting other household members from joining the armed groups.  Records on GBV showed an upward trend since March 2015, with 70% more incidents reported in September than March 2015. Competition over scarce natural resources such as water and firewood increase conflict especially between IDPs and hosting communities.

UNDP Yemen has been supporting the coping and resilience building mechanisms of the crisis affected communities in Yemen through livelihoods restoration to address food security and building the foundation for longer-term local economic revitalization, focusing on the most vulnerable community members. UNDP’s interventions target more than 2.0 million vulnerable groups and communities, the poor, displaced, youth and women groups in all 22 governorates in Yemen. Currently, UNDP Yemen has a programme portfolio of around USD 360 million focusing on livelihoods restoration and service delivery including the Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project (YECRP), Enhanced Rural Resilience in Yemen (ERRY), and Support to Social Protection for Community Resilience (SPCR).

Fully-recognizing that sustainable recovery, which addresses both humanitarian needs and longer-term development goals, necessitates engaging women as leaders and participants in recovery planning and implementation and recognizing women’s unique circumstances and needs. UNDP Yemen is committed to gender equality and advancing women’s rights using the current programmatic entry points under its portfolio as an opportunity to address some of the root causes of gender inequalities. The UNDP approach to gender mainstreaming is a dual one: UNDP supports the empowerment of women and girls through gender-specific targeted interventions and also addresses gender concerns in the developing, planning, implementing and evaluating of all policies and programmes.

UNDP has integrated a ‘gender marker’ into all projects in the financial management system as a monitoring tool for investment in gender equality, and to effectively track the efforts that the country offices are undertaking to improve gender equality and women’s empowerment programming. The result of this effort has prompted UNDP to actively push all COs to ensure their projects meet the condition of having gender equality as a significant objective (GEN2) for all offices, including for Yemen.

UNDP Yemen is engaging on a new interim Country Programme for 2019-2020. The Country Office also plans to apply for the UNDP Gender Equality Seal certification to deliver transformational gender equality results throughout all of its programmes 

UNDP Yemen will conduct a comprehensive Gender Portfolio Review of its portfolio of projects under the Economic Resilience and Recovery Programme pillar to take stock of the current level and nature of gender mainstreaming. The Gender Portfolio Review will take stock of current gender mainstreaming and responsiveness status under existing projects, identify opportunities and existing entry points to strengthen gender equality and women’s empowerment interventions and results, and overall establish a baseline against which to measure future mainstreaming efforts into programmes. While this will be based on current practices in gender mainstreaming, the exercise should be as forward-looking as possible and is expected to make strong and implementable recommendations on concrete actions to assist the Economic Resilience and Recovery Unit and the Country Office to deliver on its mandate for gender equality and women’s empowerment and enhance gender mainstreaming in proposed UNDP programme areas and key actions under the new country programme framework.

[1] Country Engagement Note for the Republic of Yemen for the Period FY17-FY18, The International Development Association, International Finance Corporation and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, The World Bank Group, June 2016, P. 6

[2] Yemen – Disaster Needs Assessment, April 2016, EU, World Bank, UNDP, Islamic Bank for Development

Duties and Responsibilities

Duties & Responsibilities:

UNDP Yemen is seeking an international consultant who will be the Team Lead to set up the team to carry out the Gender Programme Portfolio Review. It is expected that:

• UNDP Yemen ERR Programme Team will provide the overall strategic guidance and decision-making for the exercise to the Team Lead, in consultation with CO senior management;
• The international consultant (Team Lead) to provide overall leadership, strategic framing of the exercise, including development of the methodology, relevant and necessary tools, and provide guidance and oversight for data collection. S/he will supervise the necessary team of national experts to carry out the data collection at field level.  S/he will lead the overall analysis and produce the consolidated reports, with the findings and recommendations, and will lead the consultations with UNDP Yemen ERR Programme Team. S/he will report to the UNDP Yemen ERR Programme Team;
• The national consultant(s) will carry out the necessary field level data collection and analysis, under the leadership of the international Team Lead;

Expected outputs and Deliverables:

Institutional Arrangement: The consultant will report to the ERRU Team Leader and the Gender Focal Point.

Time and Method of payment:

· Payment shall be provided upon satisfactory completion of the deliverables outlined in the table above. Payment requests submitted by the Consultant must be certified by the supervisor(s) 

· Payments are to be made within 30 days from receipt of invoice.

· For each payment a certification of payment needs to be signed and approved by the direct supervisor attached to it explaining the accomplishment of the tasks.

Competencies

Competencies:

Functional Skills:

• Demonstrated ability of analytical and drafting work;
• Familiarity with computers and word processing (WORD, EXCEL, Power Point)
• Fluency in English language;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Ability to work under pressure and to meet deadlines;
• Demonstrates excellent oral and written communication skills;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
• Self-reliant and able to work as a part of a multi-cultural team in a stressful environment.

Core Competencies:

• Demonstrating/safeguarding ethics and integrity 
• Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment
• Self-development, initiative-taking
• Acting as a team player and facilitating team work
• Facilitating and encouraging open communication in the team, communicating effectively
• Learning and sharing knowledge and encourage the learning of others. Promoting learning and knowledge management/sharing is the responsibility of each staff member.
• Informed and transparent decision making.

Professionalism:

· Shows pride in work and in achievements; is conscientious and efficient in meeting commitments; observing deadlines and achieving results; is motivated by professional rather than personal concerns; Shows persistence when faced with difficult problems or challenges; Remains calm in stressful situations.

 Communication:

· Speaks and writes clearly and effectively; Listens to others, correctly interprets messages from others and responds appropriately; Asks questions to clarify, and exhibits interest in having two-way communication; Tailors language, tone, style and format to match the audience; Demonstrates openness in sharing information and keeping people informed. 

Required Skills and Experience

Desired Qualifications 

1. An advanced Degree in Social Sciences or related fields with some experience in Monitoring and Evaluation; Education background on Gender/Women’s studies is an added advantage,
2. A minimum experience of 7 years of work proven experience at national or international level in gender programming, or gender research and analysis, training, gender advocacy and communication, women economic empowerment, livelihoods, and capacity building, monitoring and evaluation aspects in crisis settings
3. Extensive experience in recovery and women economic empowerment projects in crisis setting is assets
4. A good experience and knowledge of UN/UNDP Gender Equality and Women Empowerment policies and strategies and related working documents and processes
5. Good computer skills in word, excel and PowerPoint programmes
6. Good facilitation, training, analytical, comprehension and writing skills

Excellent command of English; Arabic will be of added value                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Recommended Presentation of Offer:

Documents to be included when submitting the Proposal: Interested individual consultants required to submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications and interest.

1. Technical Proposal: (which will include the following):

• Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
• UN P11 Form (“CV Form”) – Annex OR Personal CV including past experience in similar projects and at least 3 references.  

• A brief Methodology on how the candidate will approach and conduct the work. (The expert is asked in his/her offer submission in the methodologies section to bring the description of the above-mentioned points.

Note: The candidate can submit all the above documents in one Microsoft word document file or PDF file to avoid further technical problem they may face during the submission. If you have any further clarification you can reach us via samira.alfarah@undp.org OR waleed.alkadri@undp.org

B- Financial proposal:

The applicants requested to submit lump-sum and the Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided (please see attached breakdown template).

Evaluation Criteria:

The award will be based on the Combined Scoring method 70% technical evaluation and 30% financial evaluation (highest ranked candidate).

Technical proposal 70%

Financial evaluation: 30 %: 

To be computed as a ratio of the Proposal’s offer to the lowest price among the proposals received by UNDP.

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 suggested 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

The candidate obtaining the overall highest score after adding the score of the technical proposal and the financial proposal should be selected for the award.