Republic of Moldova

A team of consultants (1 international and 1 national) for final evaluation of Women in Politics/WiP Programme/UN Women

Vacancy Number: Pr16/01350

Location:	Chisinau, Moldova
Application Deadline:	22 Jul 2016, 23:59 (GMT+2:00)
Type of Contract:	Individual Contract
Starting date:	15 Aug 2016
Reference to the project:	UN Women
Expected Duration of Assignment:	August-October 2016
Supporting Documents: Terms of Reference Procurement Notice Personal History Form (P11) UN Women UN Women Conditions of Service Consultants

Background

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. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

Gender equality is an integrating dimension of all UNDP areas of work in poverty reduction, democratic governance, crisis prevention and recovery, environment and sustainable development.  UNDP’s human development paradigm envisages a society in which both men and women can pursue their full potentials without being constrained by the prevailing gender norms and stereotypes. 

UNDP Gender Equality Strategy 2014-2017 “The Future We Want: Rights and Empowerment” is aligned with the vision of UNDP Strategic Plan 2014-2017, and contributes to the eradication of poverty and to reduction of gender inequality by empowering women and promoting and protecting their rights. The UNDP Gender Equality Strategy is grounded in the premise that sustainable human development will not be achieved unless women and girls are able to realize their rights. By advancing gender equality and empowering women as leaders and actors in the development processes that shape their lives, UNDP envisages a more inclusive, sustainable and resilient world.” Output 4.4 of the UNDP Gender Equality Strategy has an objective to put in place measures to increase women’s participation in decision making. In line with this, UNDP support advocacy, policy and legal reforms to accelerate the equal participation of women, including young women and marginalized groups, in decision making across all branches of the state. This includes promoting women’s participation as voters and candidates in electoral processes; supporting women’s representation in governance institutions, including constitutional committees, parliaments, public administrations and the judiciary.

UN Women is operational in Moldova since 2010 on the basis of former UNIFEM projects, which were laid and active in the country from 2007. It extended continuous support to the Government of Moldova, to key stakeholders from national and local levels, through various programmes and activities aimed at creating an enabling environment for gender equality, recognized as a prerequisite for sustainable development with a strong and active policy on gender equality.

In 2014, UN Women jointly with UNDP and in partnership with two non-governmental organizations the East Europe Foundation (EEF) and the Centre for Participatory Development (CPD) started a new programme “Enhancing Women’s Political Representation through improved capacity and enhanced support in Moldova” (short title: Women in Politics/WiP Programme). The programme aims at ensuring an increased participation of women in politics and in the decision-making process by creating an environment conducive to their meaningful participation, and providing support to capacity development of women before, during and after the elections at the central and local levels. It also seeks to promote increased public awareness of women’s contribution to political leadership. The programme supports the realization of women’s rights and commitments undertaken by the Government of Moldova. The Programme duration is 2014-2016 and the total budget is $2,934,979. Financial support for the implementation of the Programme is provided by the Government of Sweden.

With the overall aim to ensure effective and timely external evaluation of the programme, UN Women jointly with UNDP plans to hire an Evaluation team (individuals - one international and one local).  The team will bear full responsibility for providing adequate evaluation of the WiP programme in efficient and timely manner.

The Evaluation shall take into account and should also refer to the guiding documents for evaluation at UN Women, including the Evaluation Policy, Evaluation Chapter of the POM, the GERAAS evaluation report quality checklist, the United Nations System-wide Action Plan Evaluation Performance Indicator (UN-SWAP EPI) and the Evaluation Handbook as well as UNDP Handbook on Monitoring and Evaluation for Results. These documents serve as the frame of reference for the Evaluation Manager and the evaluation consultant(s) for ensuring compliance with the various requirements and assuring the quality of the evaluation report.

Scope of work

Purpose (and use of the evaluation)

The overall purpose of the end-of-programme evaluation is to assess programmatic progress (and challenges) at the outcome level, with measurement of the achievement (and non-achievement) of programme outputs, including identification of factors that affected the implementation. Gaps and lessons learnt will be assessed and also recommendations to be provided and best practice that focus on key components (e. how we could support women in decision making through other interventions) to guide future programming by UN Women, UNDP and their donors.

The end-of-programme evaluation will be carried out by an independent, external evaluation team.  It is mandatory and is guided by UN Women’s Evaluation Policy (http://www.unwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/UNW-2012-12-UN-Women-Evaluation-Policy.pdf

This final evaluation will be commissioned by the UN Women Country Office, in partnership with UNDP Country Office, as a summative program evaluation to support the COs and national stakeholders’ strategic learning and decision-making for the next planning process with the focus on the assessment of outcome level results and capturing the lessons learned from the implementation of the program. The evaluation is expected to have a summative (backwards looking) perspective, to support enhanced accountability for development effectiveness and learning from experience.

All activities included in the logical framework of the program will be considered for evaluation. Political participation (national and local) for women is the main Goal of the progamme. 

The evaluation is expected to consider the main cultural, religious, social and economic differences when   analysing the contributions of the UN partners.

Use of Evaluation: The information, findings and recommendations generated by the evaluation will be used by the women association and Civil society advisory group on gender equality as well as by UN Women, UNDP, SIDA and by the implementing partners (responsible parties) to inform and strengthen policy, program and advocacy interventions in future programming around women’s empowerment in the context of political women participation at the decision making level. Specifically, the findings and analysis will be used to:

• Contribute to building the evidence base on effective empowerment approaches and strategies for addressing gender inequality and human rights in the context of the increased participation of women in politics and in the decision-making;
• Facilitate a process of strategic reflection and learning for UN Women, UNDP, SIDA, other UN and development partners, national and local policymakers as well as civil society partners on effective programming towards gender equality in politics and decision-making, which will be used for development of future related programme interventions;
• Strengthen UN Women’s advisory and policy support to COs, UN Country Teams and national partners.

Evaluation Objectives

The evaluation will primarily address the criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and potential for sustainability. Where discernible changes have occurred as a result of programme interventions, the evaluation should document evidence of this impact where it exists.  The illustrative questions below examine the main, planned areas of programmatic achievement as described in the Project Document and Global Performance Monitoring Framework. Questions are organized around each evaluation criteria. It is expected that the evaluation team will refine the overall analytical framework of the evaluation during the Inception Phase:

The specific evaluation objectives are:

1. To assess the relevance of the Programme in regard to consistency, ownership and congruency, technical adequacy, and complementarity of programme with other initiatives;
2. To determine the effectiveness of the programme in achievement of results, highlighting reasons for achievement and non-achievement of results and factors contributing/hindering achievement of the results;
3. To assess the sustainability of the programme including the participation of partners in planning and implementation of interventions, as well as assessing the measures taken to ensure that activities initiated by the programme will be completed and continued on cessation of donor support;
4. To provide the best practices/recommendations that may be used in the future programming. The evaluation including its recommendations will be used as a resource by UN Women as knowledge base on good practices and to inform future programming and direction.

As part of the evaluation, a reconstructed Theory of Change will be developed that will help structure the debate on the possible pathways for contributing to long-term changes. The evaluation will also be used by the donors to assess and decide on longer-term support to UN Women, UNDP and partners. It is expected that the evaluation would be conducted during August-October 2016.

For detailed information, time frame and expected deliverables, please refer to Annex 1- Terms of Reference.

Requirements for experience

UN Women/UNDP are seeking to appoint a team of qualified individuals to undertake the evaluation. The team is expected to consist of 2 evaluators: an international Team Leader and a local evaluation expert.

The International Consultant will be assisted by a National Consultant in fulfilling the assignment. The members of the evaluation team must not have been associated with the project’s formulation, implementation or monitoring. The International Consultant will undertake one field visits to Moldova (7 working days). The National Consultant will provide substantive feedback and support to the International Consultant in the construction of the evaluation report and in conducting field missions to Moldova (including field visits). Otherwise, the evaluation will be fully independent and the evaluation team will retain enough flexibility to determine the best approach in collecting and analyzing data for the Outcome evaluation.

The International and National Consultants must possess the following qualifications:

International Consultant:

• At least a master’s degree in sociology, international development, gender/women studies or related areas
• At least 7 years of practical experience in conducting evaluations of strategies, policies and programmes;
• Experience and knowledge on gender equality and women’s empowerment, gender mainstreaming, gender analysis;
• Country or regional experience in ECA region
• Excellent analytical, facilitation and communications skills and ability to negotiate amongst a wide range of stakeholders;
• Knowledge of human rights issues, the human rights based approach to programming, human rights analysis and related mandates within the UN system will be considered an asset.
• Proficiency in English; fluency in written and spoken Romanian and/or Russian will be considered an asset

National Consultant:

• University degree in sociology, international development, law, or other related areas;
• Minimum 5 years of professional experience/technical knowledge in monitoring and evaluation methodologies;
• Process management skills, including facilitation and communication skills with stakeholders;
• Fluent in English and Romanian both written and spoken. Knowledge of Russian is an advantage;
• 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.

Note: UN Women and UNDP Moldova is committed to workforce diversity. Women, persons with disabilities, Roma and other ethnic or religious minorities, persons living with HIV, as well as refugees and other non-citizens legally entitled to work in the Republic of Moldova, are particularly encouraged to apply.

Documents to be included

Interested candidates must submit via online submission system 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 consultative research 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.

Financial proposal

The financial proposal shall be structured around the specific tasks and key deliverables described in the Terms of Reference. Interested individual consultants must specify a daily fee. Payments are made to the Individual Consultant based on the number of days worked.

 

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