Evaluation Consultant for a Corporate Evaluation on UN Women’s Support to Women’s Leadership in Peace Processes (Home-Based)

Evaluation Consultant for a Corporate evaluation on UN Women’s support to women’s leadership in peace processes (Home-Based)

Organization: UN Women

Location: Home-based

Application Deadline : 15-Aug-23 (Midnight New York, USA)

Type of Contract :  Individual Contract

Post Level : International Consultant

Languages Required :

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

These terms of reference guide the services sought by the UN Women Independent Evaluation Service (IES) for an Evaluator to develop and execute a scoped independent strategic evaluation of UN Women’s contributions and support to women’s leadership in peace processes at global, regional and country levels.

UN Women undertakes evaluations to enhance accountability, inform decision making, and contribute to learning. Corporate evaluations at UN Women are conducted by UN Women’s Independent Evaluation Service (IES), part of the Independent Evaluation and Audit Service (IEAS).   In line with the corporate evaluation plan for 2022, IES plans to conduct a corporate thematic evaluation of UN Women’s support to women’s leadership in peace processes.

Under strategic plan 2018-2021, UN Women’s work on women’s leadership in peace processes is part of the overall thematic area of women, peace and security and humanitarian action (outcome 5) and contributed specifically to more gender equality advocates influence peace and security processes (output 13).

Building on the prior strategic plan, UN Women’s current strategic plan 2022-2025 continues to recognize women, peace and security and humanitarian action and disaster risk reduction as one of the four impact area (impact area 4). Within this impact area, UN Women work with key partners to support more women mediators, negotiators and signatories influencing peace processes.  To support the implementation of the Strategic Plan, UN Women is developing Signature Initiatives (or Gender Equality Accelerators), that are flexible programming frameworks built on the experience of the Flagship Programme Initiatives. These include an initiative/accelerator focussed on women’s peace and security. UN Women is also a funding board member of the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund that includes a rapid response window on Women’s Participation in Peace Processes and Peace Agreements.

The purpose of the independent corporate evaluation is to contribute to strategic decision making, learning and accountability. With a scope of January 2018 to December 2023, the evaluation will be a summative assessment of results achieved during the previous strategic plan period, and an exploration of insights to support implementation of the current strategic plan. In order to complement the existing body of evidence and current reporting systems, this evaluation aims to harness insights on the impact, relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of UN Women’s support to women’s leadership in peace processes.

This corporate evaluation will be presented to the UN Women Executive Board in its First Session in 2025.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant reports directly to the evaluation team lead (Evaluation Specialist, IES) and will also engage with the Chief, IES and Director, Independent Evaluation and Audit Service (IEAS) to share and brainstorms ideas, exchange feedback and updates on progress.

Under the supervision of the evaluation team lead, and in close collaboration with other evaluation team members, the consultant will develop and execute a scoped independent strategic evaluation of UN Women’s contributions and support to women’s leadership in peace processes. The main objectives of the evaluation are to evaluate the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of UN Women’s contribution and support to women’s leadership in peace processes; and to make recommendations to strengthen UN Women’s work in this key area of work. 

To support the Consultant on this assignment, IES will make available a Research Consultant, for approximately four weeks of scoping and inception report development, six weeks of data collection and analysis and four weeks of report writing and presentation of preliminary findings, and three weeks for report finalization. These personnel will contribute to background research, data collection, data analysis, report drafting, and other tasks as required. The evaluation team lead will be responsible for assigning responsibilities to the Consultant and other team members.  

The evaluation must adhere to the revised UN Women evaluation policy, the IEAS charter, the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards for Evaluation, and it should apply and incorporate the criteria of UN Women’s Global Evaluation Reports Assessment and Analysis System (GERAAS) standards to the highest degree possible.

From the commencement of the contract, the consultant will be responsible for and support:

1. Drafting of an inception report (4 weeks) based on substantive inception interviews, literature review and desk review of key UN Women documents. The inception report will be reviewed and cleared by the Chief, IES and the Director, IEAS and then presented to an internal and external evaluation reference group for feedback. Relevant feedback will be incorporated into a final inception report.

Deliverable: Written draft inception report (not to exceed 35 pages plus Annexes 50 pages) containing the following minimum major sections: Introduction, Background on UN Women’s work on women, peace and security, Stakeholder mapping, Key emerging issues from the inception phase, analytical framework and evaluation matrix, evaluation approach and methodology, oversight and quality assurance, ethical standards, work plan, and annexes, including data collection tools.

Expected timeframe: September-October 2023

 

2. Data collection and initial discussions on emerging findings (6 weeks)

Deliverables: Qualitative transcripts, clean quantitative datasets, initial results PowerPoint presentation
Expected Timeframe: November 2023 to January 2024

 

3. Analysis and drafting of the evaluation report (4 weeks) reviewed and cleared by the Chief, IES and the Director, IEAS and then presented to an internal and external evaluation reference group for feedback.

Deliverable: Draft evaluation report (not to exceed 50 pages and Annexes 50 pages) containing the following minimum major sections: Executive Summary, Background, Evaluation Context, Description of Evaluand, Findings, Lessons Learned and Promising Practices, Conclusions, Recommendations, Annexes

Expected timeframe: January- February 2024

4. Finalization of an evaluation report (3 weeks) taking into account relevant comments of reference group and final review of Chief IES and Director, IEAS.

• : Final evaluation report, including all annexes and data

Expected timeframe: March 2024

Competencies 

• Demonstrated ability to conceive, lead and report on independent strategic gender-responsive evaluations in a UN or similar setting.
• Ability to identify good practices and areas for improvement, in particular root causes, in the areas of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability, and provide specific, feasible and helpful recommendations and solutions.
• Ability to produce timely, quality outputs.
• Ability to multi-task and work independently with little supervision.
• Strong interpersonal, negotiation, presentation and communication skills including ability to listen actively and responds effectively.
• Strong resourcefulness, logical thinking and report writing skills.
• Demonstrated ability to use Microsoft office and qualitative and quantitative data analysis software for evaluation.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Advanced university degree in Social Sciences, Evaluation, Gender Studies, International Development or related field, or a first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying work experience may be accepted in lieu of an advanced university degree.

Experience

• At least 10-12 years-experience in conducting independent strategic evaluations of organizational programmes and thematic areas using a wide range of approaches and methods including utilization focused, gender and human rights responsive, and mixed methods required.
• Demonstrated experience in evaluating interventions/thematic knowledge related to women, peace and security preferred.  
• Strong understanding and experience in the areas of gender equality and women’s empowerment, gender mainstreaming, gender analysis and the related mandates within UN Women, particularly in relation to women, peace and security interventions preferred.
• Strong knowledge and understanding of the UN system, UN reform processes, and UN programming at the country level preferred.
• Experience and knowledge on human rights issues, the human rights-based approach to programming and evaluation, human rights analysis, and related mandates within the UN system.
• Excellent analytical, facilitation and communications skills and the ability to engaged and negotiate amongst a wide range of stakeholders.

Languages

• Fluency in English is required.
• Working level knowledge of French, Spanish, Russian or Arabic languages is an asset.

Payment plan: 

A lump sum consultancy fee based on UN Women standard consultancy rates and the agreed days of effort will be paid in three tranches upon satisfactory certification of the following deliverables:

• First tranche to be paid upon completion and acceptance of the inception report (30%)
• Second tranche to be paid upon completion and acceptance of the draft report (50%)
• Third tranche to be paid upon completion and acceptance of the final report (20%)

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