The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) was established in July 2010 with the goal of contributing to the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment[1]. UN Women has an integrated mandate focused on:

• Normative work: to support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and the General Assembly, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms, as well as the translation of these norms at country level
• Operational work: to help Member States to implement international standards and to forge effective partnerships with civil society; and
• Coordination work: entails work to promote the accountability of the United Nations system on gender equality and empowerment of women (GEEW), including regular monitoring of system-wide progress, as well as more broadly mobilizing and convening key stakeholders to ensure greater coherence and gender mainstreaming across the UN.

The UN Women Independent Evaluation Service (IES) evaluates the work of UN women to enhance organizational accountability, provide evidence-based information for decision-making and to contribute to learning on gender equality and the empowerment of women.  It is currently undertaking a regional thematic evaluation of UN Women contributions to Women, Peace and Security in Asia and the Pacific.  The first phase of the evaluation is expected to be initiated in October 2020 and completed by December 2020. The first phase will entail a portfolio analysis and development of the full Terms of Reference and an inception report for the evaluation approach. The second phase will entail the data collection and analysis and the third phase will entail drafting the synthesis report. Thematic evaluations is a systematic assessment of a thematic area of work. It analyses multiple programmes addressing a theme with a view to understanding the combined results in an area and better understanding the opportunities, challenges and gaps in programming and results.

UN Security Council resolution 1325, unanimously adopted in 2000, acknowledges the importance of the participation of women and the inclusion of gender perspectives in peace negotiations, humanitarian planning, peacekeeping operations, post conflict peacebuilding and governance. Since its adoption, a body of internationally agreed upon norms and standards that relate to women, peace and security (WPS) has emerged and been advocated by the United Nations for implementation by Member States.  UN Women recognizes that peace is only sustainable if women are fully included, and that peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men. Women bring different perspectives and capacities to conflict prevention, peace-making, peace keeping, peace building, recovery and reconstruction. In addition to women’s meaningful participation being critical to the stability and formation of inclusive governance and post-conflict reconstruction efforts, women’s engagement also strengthens gender justice through the reform of laws, judicial systems and political processes. UN Women’s role in the Asia Pacific region includes mainstreaming gender in peace and security operations at all times, raising awareness, supporting women’s capacity building on peace mediation and advocating for gender-sensitive policies and programmes. In addition, UN Women has been actively promoting women’s participation in conflict resolution dialogues and peace and security processes, and the integration of gender equality perspectives in all aspects of informal and formal peace building efforts across the region.  Specifically, the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific supports WPS through national led mechanisms and processes, for example:

• By supporting the capacity building of National Action Plans in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor Leste;
• Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Philippines, Indonesia and Myanmar;
• Rule of Law and Justice in Timor, Indonesia, and Cambodia;
• Protection and Peacekeeping training missions relating to the protection of civilians held in India, Bangladesh and China.
• Preventing violent extremism and social cohesion through women’s empowerment in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines
• Promoting women in law enforcement in Southeast Asia
• Preventing transnational crimes such as trafficking in Southeast Asia

The Regional Evaluation will act primarily as a formative (forward-looking) evaluation to support the RO and CO’s in the region strategic learning, and to support decision-making and positioning for the subsequent SN and inform the RO’s support to Country Offices, particularly within the context of COVID-19 pandemic and its ripple effects. Given that the current pandemic is restricting travel, this evaluation will primarily be conducted remotely, through the use of secondary data; however, remote interviews will be conducted and depending on travel restrictions within the selected case study countries, National consultants may be engaged for primary data collection in line with local UN guidance on COVID-19 precautions and safety measures for personnel (including consultants). Limitations of the evaluation will be clearly identified in the evaluation products.

An evaluation team is now being established to design and conduct this evaluation.  The Independent Evaluation Service’s (IES) Regional Evaluation Specialist (RES) for Asia and the Pacific will be the Team Leader and manager for the evaluation. The consultant will support the conduct and management of the evaluation in collaboration with the Team Leader and in consultation with the UN Women RO, CO’s and stakeholders involved. The consultant will support the scoping of the evaluation through a portfolio analysis as input to the evaluation Terms of Reference; the inception phase will include stakeholder consultations, human rights based stakeholder analysis, evaluability assessment, reconstruction of the theory of change, and evaluation matrix – details outlined below; the data collection and analysis phase will entail supporting the identified methods of data collection and utilizing NVIVO software to analyse, supporting document content analysis, and triangulation of data collection to ensure reliability and validity; the final stage is supporting drafting the synthesis report and annexes.  After the scope is defined, additional team members will be recruited, such as a thematic expert and National consultants. Given that this evaluation is being led by the Independent Evaluation Service (IES), all consultants contracted will report to the Regional Evaluation Specialist, who reports to IES; and UN Women oversight of the evaluation process and quality assurance criteria as outlined in GERAAS will be followed. It is a priority for UN Women that the evaluations will be gender-responsive and will actively support the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment. It will adhere to UN Women’s Evaluation Policy and UNEG Norms and Standards[2] and Ethical Guidelines[3].

The Evaluation Analyst Consultant is an integral member of the team and is expected to support the evaluation management and conduct. The work of the consultant will be home-based and will thus need to connect with the team during Asia and the Pacific working hours via online platforms.  Payment will be made in four instalments of equal value made upon satisfactory receipt and approval of the following deliverables:

All data collected by the evaluation consultant must be submitted to the evaluation manager in Word, PowerPoint or Excel formats and is the property of UN Women.  Proper storage of data is essential for ensuring confidentiality and should be in line with UN Women Policy on data management and security. The evaluation report will also need to follow the United Nations Editorial Manual, which can be found here. The Evaluation Manager (Regional Evaluation Specialist) and Independent Evaluation and Audit Service Senior Managers, and peer reviewers will quality assure the evaluation report against UN Women Evaluation Report Quality Assurance criteria GERAAS (See Annex 1). All products submitted by the consultant are subject to quality review; the draft and final evaluation report will be shared with the evaluation reference group, and the evaluation management group for quality review. All data collected through the evaluation and information accessed is property of UN Women.

UN Women has developed a UN Women Evaluation Consultants Agreement Form for evaluators that must be signed as part of the contracting process, which is based on the UNEG Ethical Guidelines and Code of Conduct. These documents will be annexed to the contract. The evaluation’s value added is its impartial and systematic assessment of the programme or intervention. As with the other stages of the evaluation, involvement of stakeholders should not interfere with the impartiality of the evaluation. Additionally, if the evaluator(s) identify issues of wrongdoing, fraud or other unethical conduct, UN Women procedures must be followed and confidentiality be maintained.

The Evaluation Consultant will be responsible for key analytical and data visualization tasks in support of the evaluation and will be involved in skype interviews, data analysis and report drafting. The Evaluation Consultant is expected to be able to demonstrate evidence of the following experience and capabilities:

1. Minimum education: Masters degree in a field of relevance for the evaluation (i.e. Social Sciences, Evaluation, international affairs).
2. Experience in the thematic area of Women Peace and Security through research or programme implementation highly desirable.
3. At least 3 years of work experience in research, evaluation, reporting and/or monitoring area that required strong organizational skills.
4. Knowledge of and experience in applying qualitative and quantitative research or evaluation methods (knowledge of NVIVO is an added asset) and producing data visualization an asset.
5. Experience in contributing to gender-responsive evaluation or experience in gender analysis and human-rights based approaches an asset.
6. Excellent ability to communicate with stakeholders.
7. Demonstrated ability to synthesize data and write clearly and concisely in English is required.
8. Added asset is knowledge of the role of UN Women and its programming, coordination and normative roles at the regional and/or country level.
9. Language proficiency in English.
10. Country or regional experience in Asia and the Pacific is desirable.

5. Application procedure

Interested consultants can submit the following documents to hr.bangkok@unwomen.org :

1. CV and UN Women P11
2. Letter of motivation
3. Financial proposal specifying a daily consultancy rate, a breakdown per deliverable
4. 2 writing samples (must be a sample where the applicant was directly responsible for writing and demonstrating analytical skills) 
5. List of 3 professional references that can be contacted

Deadline for Application: 06 October 2020