Background

Background and Justification

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace, and security. In Nepal, UN Women focuses on strengthening women’s voice, agency and leadership across sectors to advance women’s rights and provide space for women’s meaningful participation in socio-economic-political processes.  Under the framework of the current UN Women Nepal Country Office (NCO) Strategic Note 2018-2022, UN Women in Nepal continues its work to strengthen women’s leadership and participation in national and local level decision-making processes and empower women economically by supporting women from the most vulnerable and excluded groups.

With the continuing spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries around the world are facing an extraordinary challenge wherein a health-related humanitarian crisis has evolved simultaneously. International Monetary Fund (IMF)[1] has announced that the recovery in 2021 is only partial as the level of economic activity is projected to remain below the level IMF had projected for 2021 before the virus hit. The cumulative loss to global GDP over 2020 and 2021 from the pandemic crisis could be around 9 trillion dollars, greater than the economies of Japan and Germany, combined. This is a truly global crisis as no country is spared. Countries reliant on tourism, travel, hospitality, and entertainment for their growth are experiencing particularly large disruptions. Emerging market and developing economies face additional challenges with unprecedented reversals in capital flows as global risk appetite wanes, and currency pressures, while coping with weaker health systems, and more limited fiscal space to provide support. Moreover, several economies entered this crisis in a vulnerable state with sluggish growth and high debt levels.

Since women are over-represented in health and social sector services, they are like to be hit hardest by the economic downturn. This includes but is not limited to self-employed, domestic and care workers, female-headed households, home-based workers, women migrant workers. Further, the lockdown and enforced mobility restrictions have put women at greater risk of gender-based violence, especially domestic and intimate partner violence. Women’s unpaid and care burden has increased, including taking care of children, elderly, and family members who are sick. In addition, women, especially those from marginalized communities – such as single women, women living with HIV, women with disabilities, women whose work is relegated to the margins and often invisibilized such as sex workers and women without identity documents – as well as those who are gender non-conforming are facing more barriers in accessing safety nets and other public services in the community.

Recognizing the ongoing effort to save lives needs to be accompanied by efforts to save livelihood. UN women recognized that recovery and well-being in the face of a crisis such as this requires a collective, rights-based response that prioritizes the needs of those made most vulnerable in a crisis. Considering this, UN Women Nepal Country Office (NCO) has adopted a developmental lens to respond to the current humanitarian crisis across its programming areas. In taking a development approach to a health and humanitarian crisis, UN Women focuses its efforts on the immediate needs of the most marginalized women; at the same time that we anticipate the longer-term effects that will play out in the lives of women – in terms of socio-economic hardships, and also the gender inequalities that will persist to compound these hardships.

In acknowledging the complexities that mark women’s lives, and in recognizing that the current crisis is likely to exacerbate existing fault-lines – create more vulnerabilities, intensify exclusions, and push those in the margins, further behind – UN Women Nepal has adopted a comprehensive rights-based approach to support women from the excluded groups, to compliment ongoing efforts of the Government of Nepal on the distribution of relief packages. Informed by the key principles of ILO’s Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202) –the comprehensive package is rights-based, includes a diversity of methods and approaches, ensure the protection of rights and dignity of beneficiaries, non-discrimination, gender equality and are aimed to be responsive to special needs.

The comprehensive relief package includes cash transfers and in-kind support for women from excluded groups. The package aims to improve access to food, clean energy, essential supplies, information, healthcare, and financial and digital services in line with ongoing COVID 19 recovery efforts.  UN Women is implementing the comprehensive relief package in four provinces: 2[2], 3[3], 5[4] and 7[5]. As of 2020 a total of 3589, women and representatives of exclude groups have received a combination of cash and in-kind support.  The cash transfer component is being implemented in partnership with the World Food Programme and UNDP. The CSO partner is responsible for finalizing the beneficiary list in consultation with the local government. As per reports submitted by partner agencies, this initiative has contributed towards addressing basic needs in terms of food, cash, and information and communication support, and enabled project participants to think and explore options, raise issues to authorities, and regain the confidence to live productively amid the crisis.

Narratives of project participants indicate that the package has enabled women and most vulnerable people to quickly bounce back from shock and take self-directed steps to resilience and recovery, helping ensure that the COVID-19 response leaves no one behind. The engagement of feminist organizations and vulnerable groups in the delivery and buy-in from local governments have been considered as the key factor to ensure that no one is left behind in the responses to the pandemic.

UN Women proposes a review of the comprehensive relief package to assess the achievement made in meeting the stated objective with special emphasis on the extent to which the programme reached the right holders who are most in need. The review will examine the relevance of the comprehensive relief package design and implementation approach in line with the actual needs of the women and excluded groups. It will also provide recommendations for risk mitigation,  identify corrective actions to strengthen implementation and document lessons learned.

For this purpose, UN Women Nepal is seeking the services of a gender and monitoring expert to carry out a review of the comprehensive relief package. The consultant will work with concerned programme staff, partners, local government and other stakeholders to develop the report.

As of the first quarter of 2021, the pilot phase has been completed with cash and in-kind support provided to 600 female-headed households. The distribution of in-kind support in the second phase has only been completed by two partners; and the cash transfer has been initiated in Dhanusha, Sarlahai and Kaillali.

Purpose and Objective of the assignment

The main objective of the assignment is to facilitate a review of the implementation of the comprehensive relief package distribution. The findings will be used for programmatic decisions, organizational learnings, risk mitigation and generation of knowledge on what works and doesn’t to advance gender equality during the humanitarian response programme.

The main users of the review  are UN Women staff in Nepal

The objective of the review is to:

1. Assess the extent to which the UN Women has been able to adopt a holistic approach to address women’s diverse needs including:
   1. Address women’s practical needs as the crisis evolved – in terms of provision of food and non-food items
   2. Address specific gender-based vulnerabilities/barriers such as gender-based violence, unpaid and care work, and lack of access to information, services and resources
   3. Strengthen women’s networks for political engagement and advocacy to challenge deep-seated gender discriminatory norms and harmful practices
2. Assess the effectiveness and efficacy of the distribution modality adopted – through an NGO partner for the in-kind component; and through a sister UN Agency for the cash component
3. Analyse how human rights-based approach and gender equality principles are integrated into selection of beneficiaries in line with the principle of leaving no one behind and to reach out to those who are most in need.
4. Identify lessons learned, good practices and innovations, risk mitigation measures in the design and implementation of the comprehensive package.
5. Provide recommendations to UN Women on how the comprehensive package can be replicated /scaled up as part of the COVID 19 response and recovery efforts, with a specific focus on strengthening ownership of the government

Methodology

This will be a real-real time review of the implementation. It will be a transparent participatory process involving relevant UN Women stakeholders. The review will be based on gender and human rights principles and the methodology will employ mixed methods (Quantitative and Qualitative) and use innovative approaches to capture results and ensure that perspectives of most excluded groups of women are represented in the review. The data collection method will include both primary (interview, focus group discussion (FGD) and representative sample survey) and secondary data (document review). A detailed inception report, a stakeholder analysis will be prepared post desk review to elaborate on the methodology. Stratified random sample[6] will be used to interview a minimum of 100 right holders. The duty bearers will be selected based on purposive sampling in consultation with UN Women.  

[1] https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imf-and-covid19
 

[2] Districts includes Sarlahai, Dhanusha, Siraha and Saptari

[3] Districts includes Makwanpur and Chitwan

[4] District includes Rupandehi, Banke

[5] Districts includes Kailali and Bajura

[6] Sample will consider 95 per cent confidence level and 10 per cent margin of error.

Duties and Responsibilities

Deliverables, timeframe and payment schedule

Under the overall guidance of the Programme Analyst overseeing the Monitoring and Reporting portfolio, the consultant will plan, coordinate and facilitate the Review process and submit a high-quality report with concrete recommendations on the next steps.

The timeline of the assignment is 40 days spread over three months starting from April 2021. UN Women reserves the right to ensure the quality of product submitted by the consultant and will request revision until the product meets the quality standards as expressed by the NCO. 

Note: UN Women will bear the cost of the consultation and validation workshops. Considering the COVID-19 related restrictions online validation can be facilitated with the provision of a translator.

Payment for this consultancy will be based on the achievement of each deliverable and certification that each has been satisfactorily completed. Payment will not be based on the number of days worked but on the completion of each stated deliverable within the indicated timeframes.

Travel and Accommodation expenses

UN Women will bear the full cost of travel and accommodations for official missions as per the UN Women standard guidelines.

Competencies

Core Values and Guiding Principles

• Integrity: Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
• Professionalism: Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.
• Cultural sensitivity and valuing diversity: Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrate an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.

Functional Competencies

• Ethics and Values: Demonstrate and safeguard ethics and integrity.
• Organizational Awareness: Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.
• Development and Innovation: Take charge of self-development and take initiative.
• Work in teams: Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multiethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
• Communicating and Information Sharing: Facilitate and encourage open communication and strive for effective communication.
• Self-management and Emotional Intelligence: Stay composed and positive even in difficult moments, handle tense situations with diplomacy and tact, and have a consistent behavior towards others.
• Conflict Management: Surface conflicts and address them proactively acknowledging different feelings and views and directing energy towards a mutually acceptable solution.
• Continuous Learning and Knowledge Sharing: Encourage learning and sharing of knowledge.
• Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making: Demonstrate informed and transparent decision making.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Master’s Degree in international development studies, gender/women’s studies, economics, political science, related social sciences, or related discipline.

Experience

• Minimum 7 years of relevant work experience on issues related to project design, monitoring and reporting, specifically on feminist and/ or gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation in the humanitarian context.
• Proven expertise in the area of gender equality, the empowerment of women and humanitarian response.
• Experience in working with government, donors or the UN previously is an asset.
• Proven track record in policy analysis, development and humanitarian work in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Language skills

• Excellent command of written and oral English and Nepali.

Evaluation and Selection Criteria

A two-stage procedure is utilized in evaluating the proposals, with evaluation of the technical proposal being completed prior to any price proposal being compared. Only the price proposal of the candidates who passed the minimum technical score of 70% of the obtainable score of 100 points in the technical qualification evaluation will be evaluated.

Technical qualification evaluation criteria:

The total number of points allocated for the technical qualification component is 100. The technical qualification of the individual is evaluated based on following technical qualification evaluation criteria:

• Required degree and qualification (10 points);
• Experience relevant to the assignment (30 points);
  • Relevant years of experience on issues related to project design, monitoring and reporting (10 points)
  • Working knowledge and experience in the area of gender equality and the empowerment of women applying RBM approach (10 points);
  • Work experience in policy analysis, development work in the area of gender equality and women’s empowerment (10 points).
• Detailed expression of interest elaborating the methodology of comprehensive monitoring (40 points)
• Written sample (20 points).

Only the candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% of total points will be considered as technically qualified candidate.

2)    Financial/Price Proposal evaluation:

The financial proposal of candidates who meet the technical assessment threshold will be evaluated. The financial assessment will count as 30% of the total points.  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 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

How to Apply?

Interested applicants should apply to this announcement through UNDP jobs site: jobs.undp.org

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

Expression of interest with brief elaboration of methodology and data collection tools.

Completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) of all the team members which can be downloaded:  http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment

A sample of original writing produced within the last twelve months where the applicant is the lead author;

The financial proposal shall specify a lump sum amount breaking down the professional fee for each deliverable and travel related cost. The financial proposal must be submitted in a separate page using the following template.

Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment, please combine all your documents into one single PDF document. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form and the written sample will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment.