Background

UN Women's mandate (GA resolution 64/289) is to lead, coordinate and promote accountability of the UN system to deliver on gender equality and the empowerment of women with the primary objective of enhancing country-level coherence, ensuring coordinated interventions and securing positive impacts on the lives of women and girls, including those living in rural areas.

The Country Office (CO) Strategic Note (SN) is the main planning tool for UN Women’s support to normative, coordination and operational work in the Republic of Kazakhstan. UN Women (previously as UNIFEM) has implemented catalytic initiatives on promoting women’s human, economic, political and social rights in Kazakhstan since 1999. Since 2001 UN Women performed its activities for 12 Commonwealth Independent States (CIS). In 2012 UN Women Multi country Office became operational for Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Since 2018 UN Women in the capacity of the Country office has started its work in Astana, Kazakhstan. This evaluation will consider the current Strategic Note covering the period 2016-2020. A new Strategic Note is due to be developed starting on January 2021.

The Strategic Note is grounded in the standards, principles and obligations of the Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Concluding Observations of the Commission on the Status of Women, SCR 1325, Sustainable? Development Goals, and Committee and Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Recommendations (2019), CEDAW Concluding Observations on the combined 5th periodic report.

Kazakhstan is a full-fledged actor of international law and a party to more than 60 multilateral universal human rights treaties, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and seven United Nations human rights conventions referred to as “international human rights instruments”.

Kazakhstan is a signatory to the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) (1998) and signed the Optional Protocol to CEDAW (2001). In line with these commitments Kazakhstan formulated policies and legal frameworks to achieve gender equality. Currently, Kazakhstan has started work towards ratification of the Istanbul convention and intensifies work on UNSR 1325, which will increase national efforts in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women in Kazakhstan.

The gender policy in the Republic of Kazakhstan is now evolving through the 2030 Concept of Gender and Family Policy in the Republic of Kazakhstan which takes over from the completed 2006-2016 Gender Equality Strategy. The National Women’s Machinery, Government and Civil Society work together on improving the legislation on bringing it to the international standards (CEDAW, Beijing DPfA, CRC etc.) In 2019 stakeholders started the process of revision and updating of the Law on prevention of Domestic Violence and Legislative acts on Sexual Violence. Furthermore, in 2019 the Government has developed the National Action Plan on integration of Gender Responsive Budgeting into the national planning and budgeting system for 2020-2025.

In 2015 Kazakhstan among other 193 member-states joined the Agenda for Sustainable Development until 2030 and committed to achieve Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The 2030 Agenda largely coincides with the priorities of the Strategy Kazakhstan-2050 and the 2025 Strategic Plan; 79.9% of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals have already been localised in the strategic documents and programmes of the national planning system. These strategic documents set the goal of becoming among 30 the most developed countries in the world and become a member of OECD.

Un Women Country Office of Kazakhstan inherited the Strategic Note of UN Women Multi-Country Office for 2016-2020. In 2018 Country Office undergone Mid-Term Review of the Strategic Note. The MTR was conducted in line with the 2015 PPGU guidance on CO MTR.? The MTR process included all personnel internal discussions on the Country Office’s vision, goals, approaches, triple mandate application in the country, and day to day work.

Prior to the internal meeting, a survey monkey was conducted among 425 partners across stakeholders from the government, civil society, UN agencies, IOs, and other partners.? The purpose of the survey was to identify partners’ understanding of UN Women mandate and work in the country, areas of cooperation and assessment of UN Women’s activity in the country.

The MTR process also included a half day stakeholder workshop, with participation of 21 (not counting UN Women) participants across stakeholder groups. ?The stakeholders meeting was highly appreciated by the partners who on numerous occasions during and after the event expressed their positive feedback to not only the conduct of the meeting, but also the substance of the discussions. The stakeholders meeting has been followed by a CSAG meeting to follow up more directly on the MTR, in addition to other CSAG agenda items, with our CSAG members.

The summary MTR report was prepared in August 2018 and submitted to HQ Programme Division, PPGU, ECARO, and CO personnel.?

Due to the shift from MCO to CO from 2017 to 2018, the CO revised its 2016-2020 SN, for the period 2018-2020 to reflect Kazakhstan only, as this is the focus for the 3 years 2018-2020.

The Strategic Note is furthermore aligned with the UN Women Global Strategic Plan 2016-2020 and Partnership Framework for Development for Kazakhstan for 2016-2020, contributing to the following Impact Areas of UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2018-2021:

• Impact Area 1: Women lead participate in and benefit equally from government systems.
• Impact Area 2: Women have income security, decent work and economic autonomy.
• Impact Area 3: All women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence.

The UN Country Team provides assistance to Kazakhstan according to seven UNPFD (2016-2020) priorities: (1) human development; (2) energy; (3) ‘green’ growth; (4) urban/regional development and decentralization; (5) knowledge economy; (6) global and regional integration; and (7) institutions, with particular attention to women and youth, as well as to vulnerable groups. Support to implement international and national GEWE commitments and gender mainstreaming are considered cross-cutting throughout all three pillars.

Duties and Responsibilities

UN Women are seeking to appoint two qualified individuals to undertake the evaluation.

The evaluation team consists of two evaluators: an International Team Leader and a National Team Member, to be recruited by the UN Women Country Office Kazakhstan based on the TOR.

The estimated number of person-days required for the evaluation is 26 days for the national evaluator with breakdown as follows:

Local Evaluation Expert

•Initial data collection and preparation of inception report: 6 days;

•In country data collection: 5 days;

•Support to data analysis: 5 days;

•Preparation of draft report: 2 days;

•Inputs to final report: 2 days.

An interpreter/translator will be used from the existing LTA agreement on such services for the inception consultations, data collection during the field mission and translation of final report, as needed.

Detailed information on expected deliverables and responsibilities can be found in the Terms of Reference

Competencies

Core Values and Competencies

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity;
• Integrity;
• Professionalism.

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
• Accountability;
• Effective Communication;
• Inclusive Collaboration.

To learn more about UN Women values and competencies, please follow the link https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/about%20us/employment/un-women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf?la=en&vs=637

Application process

Qualified and interested candidates can view the vacancy and apply online at https://jobs.undp.org/. The system will only accept one document. The interested candidates must submit the following documents/ information to demonstrate their qualification:

•Letter of Intent with justification of being the most suitable for the work, vision and working approach, specifically indicating experience of carrying out evaluations and in producing out analytical reports, etc.;

•Duly filled Personal History Form (P11) and/or CV, including records on past experience in similar projects/assignments and specific outputs obtained.

• Financial proposal (in USD) - specifying an all-inclusive daily fee, and the lump sum for the envisaged number of working days. The financial offer should include all costs related to completion of the task under the current Terms of Reference. In general, travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket shall not be accept. The consultant will be provided with the necessary administrative and logistical support to enable them deliver on the expected outputs

Payment will be done as follows: 30 % of total payment upon approval of inception report; 30 % upon delivery of draft evaluation report; and 40% upon approval of final evaluation report.

Kindly note, that the system will only allow one attachment, hence all supporting document e.g. P11, CV must be scanned as one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

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.

Detailed information on DELIVERABLES, TIMELINES AND APPLICATION PROCESS could be found in the  Terms of Reference

Required Skills and Experience

The National Consultant must possess the following qualifications:

Education:

• University degree in sociology, international development, social sciences, or another related area

Experience:

• Minimum 5 years of professional experience on relevant development GEWE related issues, including substantive support to several evaluation processes
• Technical knowledge in monitoring and evaluation
• Experience of gender analysis and human rights based approaches
• Process management skills, including facilitation and communication skills with stakeholders
• Data analysis skills

Language:

• Fluent in English, Russian and Kazakhstan both written and spoken

Both Consultants should have proven commitment to the core values of the United Nations, in particular respecting differences of culture, gender, religion, ethnicity, nationality, language, age, HIV status, disability, and sexual orientation, or other.