The Independent Evaluation and Audit Service is primarily conducting the Country Portfolio Evaluation (CPE) + audit for Pakistan to assess the contributions of UN Women in advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in Pakistan over the course of its Strategic Note 2018-2022, to support enhanced accountability for development effectiveness and learning from experience. The IEAS is combining the audit with the CPE to streamline the evaluation and audit processes in the same country, increase the usefulness and impact of these important exercises, and very importantly, to reduce the burden on the office.

The purpose of the Country Portfolio Evaluation for Pakistan is to provide an independent and systematic assessment of the contributions made by UN Women Pakistan Country Office to development results with respect to gender equality at the country level to feed into learning on what strategies work well and what needs strengthening.  A secondary purpose is to identify UN Women’s comparative advantages in Pakistan and support decision-making for the office strategy moving forward.   Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this evaluation will take steps to capture how UN Women is responding and analyse how UN Women can best support efforts in the country moving forward.   Under the present circumstances of the ongoing pandemic, this evaluation will primarily be conducted remotely (i.e. interviews using virtual platforms); travel restrictions will be monitored and local UN guidance on COVID-19 precautions and safety measures for personnel (including consultants) will be adhered to. Limitations of the evaluation will be clearly identified in the evaluation products.

The Internal Audit Service (IAS) provides the Executive Director with independent and objective assurance and advisory services designed to add value and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of UN Women’s work. IAS’ primary objective of the comprehensive country office audit is to assess whether UN Women Country Office’s governance, risk management and internal controls are effective to meet the Country Office’s strategic and organizational objectives. 

The Director of the Independent Evaluation and Audit Service oversees all activities, while the Chief of Independent Evaluation Service is responsible for the evaluation related activities; and Chief of Internal Audit is responsible for audit related activities; all three will review the key products of the CPE+A. The Regional Evaluation Specialist of the Independent Evaluation Service and Audit Specialist of the Internal Audit Service will manage the coordination and day-to-day management, and serve as the co-team leaders, leading methodological approach, collection of data, analysis and writing; as Co-Team Leaders, they are also responsible for overseeing the work of the team members, managing the contracts and assuring quality of the work.  The evaluation team members will include an evaluation consultant responsible for key analytical tasks, systematization of information and contribution to analysis and report and presentation preparation.  The national evaluator will support the data collection in country and provide key contextual information. The audit team will be composed by one Audit Specialist, who will join the data collection in country. The teams will collaborate throughout the process. 

All evaluation processes at UN Women establish mechanisms to ensure high quality evaluation processes and products as outlined in the UN Women Evaluation Policy and Handbook (Annex 1). The Evaluation Report will follow the standard outline as established in the UN Women Country Portfolio Evaluation Guidance and should also follow the United Nations Editorial Manual (See Annex 2). The UN Women Evaluation Report Quality Assurance (GERAAS) criteria will be used to assure quality (See Annex 3). All products are subject to quality assurance review by the peer reviewer, the ERG, and the evaluation management group. All audit processes follow the IIA including quality assurance processes established within IAS.

All data collected by the National 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. All products submitted by the consultant are subject to quality review. The Evaluation Team Leaders will quality assure the evaluation report against UN Women Evaluation Report Quality Assurance standards (See Annex 3). All data collected through the evaluation is property of UN Women.

UN Women has developed a UN Women National 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 (See Annex 4) . 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.

UN Women is seeking to appoint one national evaluation consultant for the Country Portfolio Evaluation and Audit for Pakistan. The national evaluation consultant will be responsible for ensuring that contextual information on Pakistan has been well understood and articulated, using adequate tools, methodological design, following ethical principles on engagement with stakeholders. The national consultant is expected to be able to demonstrate evidence of the following experience and capabilities:

1. Master’s degree in a field of relevance for the evaluation (i.e. Social Sciences, Evaluation, international affairs). A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
2. At least 5 years of work experience in Pakistan in a research, evaluation, audit, reporting and/or monitoring area that required strong organizational skills.
3. Proven work experience in data collection including interviews and/or focus group discussions.
4. Experience in contributing to gender-responsive evaluation or experience in gender analysis and human-rights based approaches an asset.
5. Added asset experience working with the UN system or other international development agencies and knowledge of UN Women programming, coordination, and normative roles at the regional and/or country level.
6. Language proficiency in English and Urdu required.
7. Pakistani national candidates only.

5. Application procedure

Interested consultants can submit the following documents to hr.bangkok@unwomen.org and copy suwanna.sangsuwan@unwomen.org:

1. CV and UN Women P11
2. Letter of motivation with professional fee (daily or lump sum) based on the deliverables listed above
3. Writing sample
4. List of 3 professional references that can be contacted

Deadline for Application: 11 May 2021