Background
Project Information:
The Combating Gender Based Violence in Bangladesh (CGBV) project recognizes that prevention of violence requires sustained and comprehensive action at individual, family, organizational and societal levels. The project will focus on primary prevention, stopping violence before it occurs, as it is a strategic approach to ending violence against women and girls. The project aims to generate knowledge and evidence to create evidence-based prevention interventions.
The project also builds on the knowledge, lessons learnt, experience and partnerships that UN Women in Bangladesh has gained by supporting small scale violence prevention projects since 2011. As part of the UN Trust Fund, a project titled, Safe School and Safe Community (SSSC) was implemented in 80 Higher Secondary schools of 4 districts on sexual harassment prevention from 2014-16. SSSC built the capacity of the schools to comply with the High Court Directive to prevent sexual harassment. UN Women is also working, since 2014, with 4 universities to prevent sexual harassment through student campaigns, building institutional capacities of universities & the University Grants Commission and advocacy, through its Building Capacity to Prevent Violence Against Women (BCPVAW) project.
Project Details:
Program Area: Ending Violence Against Women
Implementation period: April 2018-September 2022
Duration of the Project: 4.5 years
Funding Organization: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canada
Implementing partner: UN Women Bangladesh
Project Locations: Bogra, Patuakhali, Comilla
Violence against Women in Bangladesh:
Risk of violence and harassment in work or in public is a barrier to better opportunities for women and girls. Fear of violence is one of the reasons often cited by families, in rural Bangladesh, for removing girls from school and marrying them off while they are still children. The threat of harassment and resultant risk of ‘dishonor’ can prevent young women from attending tertiary education and keep women in low-value traditionally female occupations in or near the household.
There is no nationally representative study of violence against girls in the public sphere, but there are small scale studies that tell the story. Sexual harassment is a serious impediment to girls’ access to their way to school, college or social visits, and 45 percent of girls and 73 percent of their parents considered stopping education due to such harassment (Alam, Roy, and Ahmed 2009). A study by UN Women showed more than three quarters of female students of tertiary education institutes faced sexual harassment at least once (UN Women-HDRC, 2013).
Furthermore, domestic violence is very high in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics’ (BBS) Second National Survey of Violence Against Women found that 73 percent of ever-married women have experienced some form of violence from their spouses in their lifetime. More than one in four women reported experiencing sexual or physical violence in the past 12 months. Abusive relationships often have a socio-economic component, with household resources and financial decision making controlled by men. Socio-economic violence includes coercing women to turn over their earnings, denying them financial autonomy, withholding payment from them in a family business by relegating their productive work to ‘housewife duties’, or making them unfit to work through physical abuse.
The Combating Gender Based Violence in Bangladesh Project (CGBV):
The CGBV Project intends to create a holistic framework of integrated and mutually reinforcing interventions to address the underlying causes of violence against women and girls, improve their access to educational and economic opportunities, and promote their equal status in society.
CGBV will enhance the capacity of civil society to design, implement and sustain primary prevention of gendered violence, while also strengthening government mechanisms and strategies identified under Bangladesh’s 7th Five Year Plan and the National Women Development Policy. The project will generate evidence to build knowledge on prevention strategies. The CGVB will engage and capacitate local stakeholders and high-level leadership of key institutions such as local government, civil society organizations, women’s organizations, education institutions and workplaces.
More specifically, the programme aims at the following outcomes: i) strengthening national legal and policy framework to prevent violence against women; ii) promote favorable social norms, attitudes and behaviors to prevent violence against women; iii) policy and programming is increasingly informed by an expanded knowledge base on effective approaches to prevention of violence against women.
Under the Outcome ii) the key Outputs are:
Output 2.1: Women, men, girls and boys at community level are mobilized in favour of respectful relationships, gender equality and safe public spaces; and
Output 2.2: Innovative initiative developed and documented to create more gender equitable roles and relations inside the household.
UN Women is currently conducting a qualitative and quantitative research to further understand the types, drivers and patterns of violence against women in the implementation sites. This research will inform the design of a behavior change strategy and intervention that will have the main objective of transforming gender social norms for a more equitable household and society. The prevention methodology will have to be evidence-based and ensure it builds on existing successful strategies and methodologies without creating new one, but rather adapting what is already available.
The design of the behavior changes strategy is intended to be informed by a mapping and analysis of the current violence prevention interventions in Bangladesh. UN Women intends to conduct an in-depth analysis of the most successful prevention strategies and methodologies implemented in country to explore the possibility of building from existing interventions and find partners who have already work on behavior change.
As a result of this work, and once the behavior change intervention will be designed and implemented, UN Women plans to develop a study on lessons learned from prevention strategies in Bangladesh.
To achieve this, UN Women is seeking an international consultant to conduct an analysis of the Ending Violence against Women Prevention Programmes in Bangladesh and design a Prevention Programme Strategy.
Duties and Responsibilities
Scope of Work:
Under the overall guidance and supervision of the Programme Specialist - Ending Violence Against Women (EVAW), the International Consultant will undertake the following tasks:
- To map and analyse Violence Against Women (VAW) prevention programmes and interventions and key actors working in Bangladesh, with focus on the implementation sites;
- To design and conduct research (primary and secondary data gathering) on effective VAW prevention programmes and practices, as well as on existing mechanisms and community assets for prevention of violence in Bangladesh;
- To design and conduct programme design workshops and strategy planning sessions to develop a strategy implementation plan for UN Women’s CGBV Project 2018-2022.
Scope of work:
- Conduct document review of existing mapping and situation analysis on EVAW programmes;
- Consult with UNW management and key partners on data gaps to prioritise the research and develop research questions;
- Informed by the document’s review, design methodology including key data sets, research plan, and data gathering and analysis tools;
- If deemed necessary, to conduct a survey or FGDs as part of primary data gathering, train local research focal points on primary data gathering approaches (ex: national staff, community leaders, enumerators, NGO leaders with existing partnerships with UNW) on ethical standards, using/administering tools, conducting FGDs, and on data input;
- Test data gathering tools;
- Conduct primary and secondary data gathering (and/or oversee local researchers to conduct the primary data gathering) and write analysis report;
- Present key findings and validate among partners and stakeholders;
- Conduct programme design workshops with multisectoral stakeholders to develop an evidence-based programme;
- Write Prevention Programme Strategy and Implementation Plan;
- Conduct strategy planning sessions with selected implementing partners (i.e., UNW’s selected/potential partners) and draft the objectives and key actions to be included in the partnership agreements;
Duration of Work:
40 days spread between February and April with 1 mission of 20 work days between February and March.
Supervision and performance evaluation:
The consultant will be directly supervised by UN Women Programme Specialist, Ending Violence Against Women (EVAW).
Expected deliverables:
- Submit an inception report with detailed methodology of assignment by 6 February 2019;
- Submit Research Protocol, methodology and tools by 13 February 2019;
- Conduct research (including trainings if necessary) by 25 February–9 March (estimated dates);
- Submit analysis report by 14 March;
- Validate analysis report and conduct programme design workshop by 18–23 March(estimated dates);
- Submit Prevention Programme Strategy and Implementation plan by 5th April 2019.
Fund transfer modality:
Respective deliverables and documents will be reviewed by UN Women before processing any payment.
Payment schedule is as followings:
- 40% upon completion of Deliverable 1-4;
- 60% upon completion of Deliverables 5-6.
Reporting Obligations:
• Submission of research methodology;
• Submission of prevention programme mapping and analysis report;
• Submission of prevention programme strategy and implementation plan.
Competencies
Core Competencies:
• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UN Women
• 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
Education:
- Master’s degree in social sciences, public policy/administration, governance, gender studies or similar;
Experiences
- Proven of experience in developing participatory research methodologies for policy programming related to violence against women;
- Experience in planning and facilitating high- level consultations, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with a variety of stakeholders, including Government counterpart;
- Experience in drafting EVAW related programme policies and strategies, especially on behavior change and social norms;
- Proven experience to collect, analyze and interpret qualitative and quantitative data;
- Previous professional experience with development agencies and the United Nations would be considered an asset.
Language
- Fluency in English;
Submission of application:
Interested Individual Consultants will submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications.
To be included as part of the proposal:
- A brief expression of interest: a brief narrative presenting your suitability for this assignment;
- UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from: http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment
- Sample work;
- Financial proposal with lump sum rate for the whole assignment. Please include 20 days UN DSA (Dhaka, Bangladesh) rate and cost of air ticket (most economy and direct) under your lump sum rate.For more information on the DSA rate please communicate with umma.ahmed@unwomen.org. Before travel Security Certificate BSAFE should be complated: EN: https://agora.unicef.org/course/info.php?id=17891
Payments
Payments for this consultancy will be based on the achievement of deliverables and certification that each has been satisfactorily completed.
Please use ‘International Consultant for EVAW Programme design” as the subject heading of your application.
All applications must include (as an attachment) the CV and the financial proposal. Applications without financial proposal will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment. “Personal History Form - P 11” can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employme