Background

UNDP Global Mission Statement:

UNDP helps countries to achieve sustainable development by eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, accelerating structural transformations for sustainable development and building resilience to crises and shock. The work of UNDP in 170 countries around the world is anchored in diverse and effective partnerships, which are vital to our two critical roles at country level: (a) as an integrator across policy, programmatic and organizational silos; and (b) as an operational backbone for the United Nations and other partners.

UNDP Afghanistan Mission Statement:

In Afghanistan, consistent with the 2018-2021 Strategic Plan, UNDP works for development and recovery choices that reduce vulnerability and contribute a development perspective to strengthen humanitarian and peace-building responses, in order to strengthen the continuum from relief to rehabilitation and development. Ultimately, UNDP works to create economic and social conditions that contribute to self-reliance, a political settlement, and community resilience.

Under the overall leadership of United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, as part of the Development Pillar, UNDP supports stabilization, state-building, promotion of human rights, governance and development priorities in Afghanistan. UNDP support, in partnership with the Government, the United Nations system, the donor community and other development stakeholders, has contributed to institutional development efforts leading to positive impact on the lives of Afghan citizens. Over the years UNDP support has spanned such milestone efforts as the adoption of the Constitution; Presidential, Parliamentary and Provincial Council elections; institutional development through capacity-building to the legislative, the judicial and executive arms of the state, and key ministries, Government agencies and commissions at the national and subnational levels. UNDP has played a key role in the management of the Law and Order Trust Fund, which supports the Government in

developing and maintaining the national police force and in efforts to stabilize the internal security environment. Major demobilization, disarmament and rehabilitation and area-based livelihoods and reconstruction programmes have taken place nationwide. UNDP programmes in Afghanistan have benefited from the very active support of donors. UNDP Afghanistan is committed to the highest standards of transparency and accountability.

Background on The Country Programme Document:

UNDP has been an important development partner for Afghanistan over decades and through monumental transformations. Most recently, UNDP has been a central actor in the political and developmental process since 2002 through its support to building institutions and capacities for a new Afghanistan.

Until recently, the prospect of the development process was initially understood to be one of post-crisis recovery where external resources would be increasingly led from military and security activities into recovery and development initiatives. Accordingly, the international community has injected billions of US Dollars into new institutions, training human resources and expanding social services across the country for almost two decades.

Afghanistan entered a new phase in 2014 with the peaceful transition from one elected President to another. Also, there was a perception that the security situation had improved to a point where Afghan military and police forces could assume the responsibility for the national security of Afghanistan, from NATO. The overall security situation has deteriorated over the past few years, as the Taliban have been able to influence and, to some extent, control ever larger parts of the country.

Today, the UN now recognizes that Afghanistan is not in a post-conflict situation (i.e. where sufficient stability exists to focus on institution-building and development-oriented activities) but a country undergoing a conflict that shows few signs of abating. Also, the prevailing understanding is that this situation will not improve unless there is a political agreement to cease armed conflict and bring relevant political actors to the table, within a political settlement process.

That is not to say that progress has not occurred, only that it continues to be challenged by the effects of the ongoing conflict, which also threatens the sustainability of the achievements. Notwithstanding the financial injection and transfer of knowledge the country is still no. 171 on the Human Development Index and tangible benefits for the average Afghan have been scarce.  According to the 2016-2017 Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey (ALCS), the proportion of population living below the national poverty line (SDG indicator 1.2.1) increased from 34 per cent in 2007-08 to 55 per cent in 2016-17, in urban as well as in rural areas. The ALCS also revealed that food insecurity has climbed from 30 per cent in 2011-2012 to 45 percent in 2016-2017. This situation has led to an unprecedented exodus of its people, where an estimated forty percent of Afghans would leave the country if given the opportunity.

In this conjuncture, creating a path towards hope for the average Afghan built on three elements: (i) investments in human development and institutional development

accompanied by contributions to (ii) an inclusive, just, and sustainable political settlement process; and (iii) social cohesion, community resilience, and leaving no one behind.

Against this backdrop, the London Conference on Afghanistan in 2014 provided an opportunity for the Government of Afghanistan to set out its commitment to reform, looking ahead in particular to the “Transformation Decade” through to 2024 building on the agreements of the 2012 Tokyo Conference and the donor commitments towards the Decade within the framework of the Tokyo Mutual Accountability Framework (TMAF).  This was reconfirmed at the Second Senior Officials Meeting held in Kabul in September 2015 as the "Self-Reliance through Mutual Accountability Framework (SMAF)". Subsequently the Warsaw (security) and Brussels (development) conferences in 2016 provided the framework for future international support to Afghanistan. More recently, the 2018 Geneva Ministerial Conference on Afghanistan has assessed the country’s progress towards the goals set and the Geneva Mutual Accountability Framework (GMAF) has laid out a vision for the remaining five years of the ‘decade of transformation.’

Objective of the Assignment:

To complete the preparatory steps required for the articulation of a programme narrative for UNDP in Afghanistan, in light of changing context in Afghanistan. Below are some processes/analyses envisaged for this exercise, which will be conducted in close consultation of UNDP CO Programme units, project staff and regional offices as well as UNDP’s stakeholders.

• Systems-Mapping: As each individual’s view of the world is always partial, systems thinking is fundamentally about developing a framework for understanding interrelationships between artifacts, ideas and events based on multiple perspectives. Using the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an overarching framework, a series of systems thinking workshops will be held for key internal and external stakeholders (principally UNDP staff, other UN Agencies and Government), to understand the different perceptions of what UNDP's current role in Afghanistan is and how this might change in the future. This will allow a broad view of the overall ‘system of interest’ to be built up and mapped. To understand something of how this system works, an assessment will then be needed of the ideas, norms and explicit and implicit assumptions that are being made and what aspects of the issues revealed are possible to influence and in what sorts of timeframe. In essence then, a boundary mapping exercise will be carried out that looks at the context of UNDP as an organisation and the wider environment in which it sits. Ultimately, this will help to identify linkages, synergies, and leverage points in support of more purposeful interventions so that real progress can be made against some of the toughest development challenges.

Conflict Analysis: Political settlement and peace processes are by nature highly complex processes, so the potential impacts of conflict on UNDP programme delivery in each of its current focal areas[1], will need to be continuously assessed. The effectiveness of the

[1] UNDP’s current focus is helping Afghanistan build and share solutions to the challenges of Environment, Livelihoods, Gender, Rule of Law, Governance and Health.

• conflict sensitivity approach will also need to be monitored so that programme implementation does not exacerbate conflict in any way. For example, the assumption that peacebuilding, economic development and the expansion of state authority are necessarily mutually reinforcing needs to be carefully monitored as trade-offs often need to be made between these policy goals. Political settlements have also been fraught with trade-offs between inclusiveness and justice. To identify peace engines & conflict drivers, structural conditions, and triggers, a series of regional consultations will be conducted with key stakeholders so as to develop a better understanding of the nature of the power dynamics and political relationships that exist between key actors in the regions (particularly in borderland areas) and central government. Ultimately, the conflict analysis will help identity initial recommendations generated from these consultations will be helpful in guiding UNDP decisions on how and when to intervene in the complex mix of local social, economic and environmental factors at local level. At a practical level, for example, an understanding of issues such as inclusion/exclusion in decision-making process, how resources are best distributed, and what sorts of access different stakeholders are likely to have to services provided, etc. will be needed for decision-making.

• Thematic Briefing Papers: Using the understanding generated through the systems-mapping exercises and the regional conflict analysis workshops, the consultant will work with selected programme staff to document the explicit and implicit assumptions that they are making in their work and describe the constraints that they face. The aim will be to engage the staff in thinking more critically about how their work in connection with the work of other units, and to stimulate a discussion on the extent to which the current overall work programme of UNDP Afghanistan is ‘fit for purpose.’
• Scenario Planning: The systems-mapping, conflict analysis and thematic papers will serve as essential preparation for a scenario planning exercise which aims to find ways of monitoring change and proactively preparing for whatever future appears to be unfolding. The scenario planning process is designed to help participants break out of their habitual ways of thinking and learn how to monitor change as it unfolds so that UNDP can prepare as best it can for the future. Each of us has a different mental model of the present based upon our own unique experience. In imagining the future, we generally try to extrapolate from our experience of the past assuming a linear probability-based causal logic. In a scenario analysis the approach is opposite to this: the focus is on plausibility rather than possibility or predictability, and surfacing and deeply questioning assumptions and in doing so try to imagine different possible futures with a set of contrasting plausible scenarios. In other words, the goal is to reframe and reperceive the present using these scenarios as a way of looking ‘backwards’ from the future to the present in order to uncover early signals of change that might otherwise have gone un-noticed. The idea is to try to find a way to perceive these early signals which can then monitored in order to determine which of the possible imagined scenarios identified isactually unfolding in the present. This is a quite different approach to extrapolation from the past.

Duties and Responsibilities

To achieve the objectives of this assignment, the consultant needs to facilitate a highly participatory process that leads to a Scenario Planning report that provides a basis for assessing how the current programme of work of the Country Office might need to be adjusted in future to contribute more effectively to the overall goal of supporting the political settlement process in Afghanistan. The specific deliverables, schedule of payments and estimated completion date of each delivery for this assignment are as follows:

Deliverable (1): Inception Report (5 Working Days, 5%)

• An inception report that outlines the consultant’s understanding of the assignment, preliminary observations, identifies key issues and challenges, risks and assumptions, and provides an initial work plan for the assignment

Deliverable (2): Systems-Mapping Report (31 Working days, 20%)

• This report will describe different perspectives on UNDP's purpose and role in Afghanistan and from these partial views construct a description of the wider system of which UNDP Country Office is a part.

Deliverable (3): Conflict Analysis Report (35 Working days, 20%)

• A conflict analysis specialist will be employed to conduct four regional consultations and based on the results, the conflict analysis report will describe the most significant factors likely to influence the design and impact of future UNDP programming interventions. It will also include a roadmap for mainstreaming conflict sensitivity and conflict analysis into the design and implementation of all UNDP programs.

Deliverable (4): Four Thematic Briefing Papers (31 Working days, 20%)

Individual interviews will be conducted with selected staff from the programme units of the UNDP Country Office. The aim is to generate prompted narrative descriptions of staff perceptions of the role of each unit and their specific experiences of constraints and assumptions. The staff will then be engaged in developing a systems map for each unit’s area of work, and then all the ideas that have been surfaced will be organised and presented back to the staff in each units The next step will be to organise a participatory process designed to develop four Thematic Briefing Papers, one for each unit. Each briefing paper will describe the national context of the work, the vision of the unit and how the programme of work contributes towards this vision, what current and future challenges, dilemmas and pitfalls the units face in working towards this vision, how the area of work evolved over the last decade and how might the context change in the next five years, more specifically a description of how the work may contribute to the political settlement and peace processes in Afghanistan, and lastly an assessment of how the work of the unit integrates with the work being done in other units in the Country Programme

• (conflicts, synergies and opportunities for joint implementation, etc.). The idea in drafting these papers is to surface the assumptions that are being made and present these explicitly in a list at the end of each paper.

Deliverable (5): Scenario Planning Report (25 Working days, 20%)

• Based on the thematic briefing papers, representatives from each programme unit will participate in a scenario planning process that will frame and organize UNDP’s future work in Afghanistan. The scenario planning report will then include a description of a set of contrasting plausible scenarios and point to potential early signals of change that can be used to monitor developments and help adjust UNDP programming accordingly.

Deliverable (6): Final Report (5 Working Days, 15%)

• Submission and acceptance of final technical report together with a presentation on the main findings including a roadmap for the development of a new Country Programme Document.

Payment Modality: 

Payments under the contract shall be delivery based and be made on receipt of the specific milestone reports indicated above and including a timesheet according to UNDP procurement formats for individual contractors. These shall be as indicated in the table above and shall be made upon approval by the Senior Deputy Country Representative. The draft of the assessment and recommendations will be reviewed by the Country Programme Office and the four units involved. Upon receipt of final comments, the consultant shall finalize the report for formal acceptance by UNDP at which point the final payment shall be released.

Institutional Arrangements:

The international consultant will work under the overall supervision of the Senior Deputy Country Representative (Programmes) and under the direct supervision of the Chief, Strategy, Planning and Results unit. The consultant shall work in close collaboration with the staff of all Country Office Units and will liaise with relevant external stakeholders at national and regional levels as applicable (government, UN Agencies, UNAMA, Civil Society Organisations, etc).

The Country Office will provide office space, internet, logistical and other support service including transport and security applicable to UNDP international personnel. The consultant however is expected to bring his/her own laptop and mobile phone and meet local communications costs. Costs to arrange meetings, workshops, travel costs to and DSA during field visits (if any), etc. shall be covered by the Country Office.

Duration of the Work

The performance under the contract shall take place over total contract duration of 6 months with maximum 129 working days excluding joining and repatriation travel days. The target date

for the start of work will be around 4th February 2019 depending on the availability of the appropriate consultant.

Duty Station

The duty station for the contractor is Kabul, Afghanistan for the entire duration of the contract. There may be missions to the regions for the consultation workshops When in Country, the Contractor will be required to report regularly and be present at the UNDP Country Office (UNOCA) during the working hours, security conditions permitting. The contractor will follow the working hours and weekends as applicable to UNDP project staff. The contractor’s movement for meetings and consultations shall be coordinated by UNDP Country Office. The contractor is at all times required to observe UNDP security rules and regulations.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favouritism;

Functional Competencies:

• Knowledge Management and Learning:
• In-depth practical knowledge of inter-disciplinary development issues;
• Seeks and applies knowledge, information, and best practices from within and outside of UNDP.

Development and Operational Effectiveness:

• Ability to lead strategic planning, change processes, results-based management and reporting;
• Ability to lead formulation, oversight of implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development projects;
• Ability to apply development theory to the specific country context to identify creative, practical approaches to overcome challenging situations.

Management and Leadership:

• Builds strong relationships with clients, focuses on impact and result for the client and responds positively to feedback;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
• Ability to lead effectively, mentoring as well as conflict resolution skills;
• Demonstrates strong oral and written communication skills;
• Remains calm, in control and good humoured even under pressure;
• Proven networking, team-building, organizational and communication skills

Required Skills and Experience

Academic Qualifications:

• Master’s degree from a recognized university in any of the following areas or related field: Organisational Change, Governance, Public Health, Law, Public / Business Administration, or International Development.

Years of experience:

• At least 10 years of relevant experience in international development, in a governmental, multilateral or civil society organization in a multi-cultural setting; working with national, regional and international entities;

• At least two years of experience working with organisational change in the security sector;

• Demonstrated experience in serving in an advisory role with involvement of multiple and diverse stakeholders;

• Previous experience of working with the UN;

• Past experience working in Afghanistan and/or conflict affected countries highly desirable.

Language:

• Excellent written and oral English skills is a necessary requirement;

• Competence in Dari and/or Pashtu is an asset.

The contractor shall submit a price proposal as below:

• Daily Fee – The contractor shall propose a daily fee which should be inclusive of his professional fee, visa fee, local communication cost and insurance (inclusive of medical health and evacuation). The number of working days for which the daily fee shall be payable under the contract is Working days;

• Travel Expenses – the contractor shall also indicate the cost of round-trip airfares, terminals, etc.

The total professional fee, shall be converted into a lumpsum contract and payments under the contract shall be made on submission and acceptance of deliverables under the contract in accordance with the abovementioned schedule of payments.

EVALUATION METHOD AND CRITERIA:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Cumulative analysis

The award of the contract shall 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 49 points (70% of the total technical points) would be considered for the Financial Evaluation

Technical Criteria 70 points

• Technical Proposal (30 marks)

  • Technical Approach & Methodology (20 marks) – The Applicant should explain the understanding of the objectives of the assignment, approach to the services, methodology for carrying out the activities and obtaining the expected output, and the degree of detail of such output. The Applicant should also explain the methodologies proposed to adopt and highlight the compatibility of those methodologies with the proposed approach.

  • Work Plan (10 marks) – The Applicant should propose the main activities of the assignment, their content and duration, phasing and interrelations, milestones (including interim approvals by the Client), and delivery dates. The proposed work plan should be consistent with the technical approach and methodology, showing understanding of the TOR and ability to translate them into a feasible working plan.

Qualification and Experience (40 marks) [evaluation of CV]

• General Qualification (15 marks)
• Experience relevant to the assignment (25 marks)

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals:

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

• Duly accomplished Confirmation of Interest and Submission of Financial Proposal Template using the template provided by UNDP (Annex II); indicating all experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references.

• Personal CV

Technical proposal:

• Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment;

• A methodology, on how they will approach and complete the assignment and work plan as indicated above