National Consultant to Support the Implementation of the Country Portfolio Evaluation

Background and Objective of the Assignment:

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. 

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.

UN Women started its programming in Iraq in 2004 working with the government and civil society to design laws, policies, programmes and services needed for the empowerment of Iraqi women and girls. UN Women has an operational presence in Iraq at federal and regional levels with offices in Baghdad and Erbil. UN Women closely collaborates with the Government of Iraq to strengthen national strategies towards the fulfilment of gender equality across various thematic areas and works closely with the Women’s Affairs offices in the government, particularly the Directorate of Women’s Empowerment, and relevant government bodies involved in gender equality and women’s empowerment. UN Women also sits on the Constitutional Review Committee which permits UN Women to deliver on its normative mandate at the highest possible level.  

UN Women has developed strategic collaborations with the security and justice sector actors and gender-based violence service providers to enhance protection and accountability for gender-based crimes and the resilience of local communities. It works with civil society organizations, women’s organizations and activists, and international NGOs, including the Alliance 1325, 1325 Network and International no-governmental organizations. It also coordinates and promotes the UN system’s work in advancing gender equality, leveraging its coordination mandate by leading the UN Gender Task Force (GTF) and by providing technical support to inter-agency management, coordination and programme groups. It has developed strategic partnerships and collaborations on programmatic areas of intervention with other UN agencies and bodies such as UNAMI, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC and ILO.

The Strategic Note (SN) is the main planning tool for advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment through UN Women’s support to normative, coordination and operational work and is designed to align with the national development and gender equality and women’s empowerment priorities, United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) as well as UN Women’s Global Strategic Plan. Iraq Country Office Strategic Note covering the SN Cycle 2016-2020 and SN Cycle (2022-2024) comprises of following impact areas and outcomes:

SN cycle 2016-2020, Impact areas and Outcomes:

Impact Area I: Institutionalizing gender in governance, greater accountability for gender commitments and transformative financing

Outcome 5.1: Political consensus created to address GEWE financing gaps and to support accountability to women

Outcome 5.3: Supportive policy and financial legislations in place to ensure gender-responsive localization and effective monitoring of the SDGs

Impact Area II: Women, especially the poorest and most excluded, are economically empowered and benefit from development

Outcome 2.1: Women smallholder productivity and revenues in changing climate increased, and opportunities to move up the value chain promoted

Outcome 2.2: Increased women’s access to economic opportunities in various productive sectors of the economy

Impact Area III: Peace and security and humanitarian action are shaped by women’s leadership and participation

Outcome 4.1: Resilience, positive coping mechanisms and livelihoods opportunities improved for displaced women in temporary shelters/ host communities

Outcome 4.2: Policy frameworks enhanced and WPS commitments implemented to promote women’s participation in decision making, social cohesion and countering violent extremism

Strategic Note Cycle (2022-2024) Outcomes corresponding with the Iraq UNSDCF Outcomes:

SN Outcome 7.1: People in Iraq have strengthened capacity, enabling inclusive access to and engagement in economic activities. (UNSDCF Outcome 2.2)

SN Outcome 8.1: Strengthened and effective inclusive people-centered, gender-responsive and human-rights based policies and national systems contribute to gender equality, the promotion of protection, social protection, social cohesion and peaceful societies, with a focus on the most vulnerable populations including women, youth and minorities (UNSDCF Outcome 1.1)

SN Outcome 8.2: People in Iraq, particularly underserved marginalized and vulnerable populations, have equitable and sustainable access to quality gender- and age-responsive protection and social protection systems and services. (UNSDCF Outcome 1.2)

SN Outcome 8.3: People in Iraq participate in and benefit from effective mechanisms – at national, subnational and community levels – that prevent, mitigate and manage conflict, and contribute to social cohesion and peaceful coexistence, with particular focus on women and youth leadership in decision making, peacebuilding and reconciliation process. Outcome 1.3

The UN Women Evaluation Policy is the main guiding document that sets forth the principles and organizational framework for evaluation planning, conduct and follow-up in UN Women. These principles are aligned with the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms for Evaluation in the UN System, Standards for Evaluation in the UN System and Ethical Guidelines.

Country Portfolio Evaluation (CPE) is a systematic assessment of the contributions made by UN Women 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. It uses the Strategic Note as the main point of reference to assess the Country Office’s contributions, success, challenges as well as lessons in advancing gender equality. The purpose of the CPE is to identify UN Women’s comparative advantages in Iraq and support decision-making for the office strategy moving forward. The evaluation also seeks to provide information useful to the evaluation of the One UN Programme and insights on the strategic direction for UN Women Iraq within the context of the repositioning of the UN development system, as adopted by the General Assembly resolution 72/279 on 31 May 2018.

This CPE is a primarily a formative (forward-looking) evaluation to support the Country Office and national stakeholders’ strategic learning and decision-making for the next Strategic Note. The evaluation is expected to have a secondary summative (backwards looking) perspective, to support enhanced accountability for development effectiveness and learning from experience.

The Independent Evaluation and Audit Service (IEAS) is combining the audit with the CPE (CPE+A) to streamline the evaluation and audit processes in Iraq, increase the usefulness and impact of these important exercises, and to reduce the burden on the office. The CPE+A will assess the contributions of UN Women in advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in Iraq over the course of its two Strategic Note cycles covering the period 2016-2020 and 2022-2024.

The primary intended users of this CPE+A are the Iraq Country Office personnel and the UN Women Regional Office for Arab States. The secondary intended users are the Government of Iraq; development partners, such as UN agencies and bilateral/ multilateral agencies; and civil society. UN Resident Coordinator (RC)/Resident Coordinator’s Office (RCO) in Iraq would also benefit from understanding the value added and contribution of UN Women towards achieving the Gender Equality and Women’s empowerment results outlined in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) covering the period 2015 to 2019 and United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) covering the period 2020 – 2024.

The intended uses of CPE + audit are the following:

1. Evidence to inform the planning and design of the forthcoming Strategic Plan as well as the Iraq UNSDCF;
2. Accountability for UN Women’s interventions in terms of providing technical support to the Government of Iraq, UN Entities and other players to achieve results related to gender equality and women’s empowerment; and
3. Lessons learned and good practices for national, regional and other stakeholders working on gender equality and women’s empowerment

The evaluation will apply Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development/Development Assistance Committee (OECD/DAC) evaluation criteria (relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, coherence and sustainability) and a Gender Equality criterion. The evaluation will draw on the audit findings related to organizational efficiency.

 The evaluation has the following objectives: 

1. Analyse how gender equality principles are integrated in the design and implementation of UN Women’s work in Iraq and contribute to sustainability of efforts.  
2. Assess effectiveness and organizational efficiency in progressing towards the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women results.  
3. Assess the relevance and coherence of UN Women programme vis-a-vis the national commitments and UN system, the added value of UN Women, and identify contributions to Iraq United Nations Development Assistance Framework UNDAF (2015 to 2019) and United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (2020 – 2024) gender equality and women's empowerment outcomes. 
4. Provide lessons learned and actionable recommendations to support UN Women strategic positioning moving forward.   

The internal audit has the following objectives:

The audit will follow the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (IIA) in conducting this review.   To assess the effectiveness of governance arrangements, risk management and control processes relating to the following areas:

1. Strategic priorities planning and implementation including processes related to advocacy and communications, coordination, work planning and resource mobilization, field programme implementation and monitoring, and programme, project and partners management.
2. Governance and risk management in relation to the office structure and resources, roles, responsibilities, authority, risk-focused decision making, control environment, and knowledge management from prior oversight reports;
3. Operation processes related to procurement, human resources, finance, accounting, budget, asset management, safety and security, information systems, and travel.  

This CPE+A will answer the key questions below.  During the inception phase after consultation with the Management and Reference groups the evaluation and audit team will review the questions to ensure they reflect the priorities of key stakeholders and elaborate the sub-questions in the evaluation matrix: 

1. To what extent have UN Women’s contributions across its integrated mandate advanced gender equality and the empowerment of women in Iraq, including through the UN system and Government of Iraq? [effectiveness] 
2. Is UN Women’s thematic focus and strategy for implementation the most relevant and coherent for advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in Iraq considering its added value vis-à-vis other actors and coordination with actors including for its response to crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic? [relevance and coherence] 
3. Has the portfolio been designed and implemented according to the Leave No One Behind principles, including disability perspective and principles of national ownership and sustainability of programming efforts? [gender equality, and sustainability] 
4. Does UN Women Iraq have appropriate governance, capacity and capability to ensure good use of resources (personnel, funding, and assets) to deliver results? [organisational efficiency and governance]
5. Does UN Women Iraq identify key risks and opportunities in a timely manner in its project management and operations, have effective controls and proactively mitigate those risks [organizational effectiveness, efficiency, risk and compliance management]?  

CPE Design: The CPE will be gender-responsive meaning that both the process and analysis will be inclusive, participatory, ensure fair power relations, transparent and apply the key principles of a human rights-based approach; and they analyse the underlying structural barriers and sociocultural norms that impede the realization of women’s rights. It will also be utilization-focused, which means that it will be tailored to the needs of the organization through a participatory approach from the inception through to the development of recommendations, which will facilitate production of a useful evaluation.

The evaluation will be employing a non-experimental, theory-based9 design, apply a feminist approach and use gender-analytical frameworks to examine issues of power and to understand and evaluate whether and how UN Women has contributed or led to gender transformative changes.

It will apply a mixed-method research approach, using qualitative as well as quantitative methods and use triangulation to validate the various sources of information. It is expected to apply a purposive sampling to ensure a diverse range of perspectives is considered.

CPE+A scope: The CPE+A will focus on UN Women Iraq Country Office’s two Strategic Note cycles covering the period 2016-2020 and 2022-2024. The CPE+A will feed into the planning process for the next strategic note and the forthcoming United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework. The entire programme of work and UN Women’s integrated mandate will be assessed, including its contributions in the operational, coordination and normative spheres.  The geographic scope will include all locations where UN Women has worked. The possibility of in-person data collection will be considered.

Management and quality assurance: 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. 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.  The UN Women Evaluation Report Quality Assurance (GERAAS) criteria will be used to assure quality. 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.

This CPE+A will have the following structures :

1. Oversight: 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.
2. Co-Team Leaders: Regional Evaluation Specialist for the Arab States region and Audit Specialist of the Internal Audit Service will serve as the co-team leaders, leading methodological approach, collection of data, analysis and writing. The Regional Evaluation specialist will be overseeing the work of the evaluation consultants, managing the contracts and assuring quality of the work.
3. Evaluation + audit team: evaluation team members will include an international evaluation consultant responsible for key analytical tasks, systematization of information and contribution to analysis and report and presentation preparation; a national evaluator to 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.
4. CPE+A Management Group for administrative support and accountability: Country Representative and/or Deputy Representative, Assigned CPE+A Focal Point, and the Co-Team Leaders.
5. CPE+A Reference Group for substantive technical support: National government partners, Civil Society representatives, Development partners/donors, UNCT representatives.
6. Peer Review for methodological guidance and feedback: 1 IES staff will be engaged as peer reviewers of the CPE+A.

Ethical code of conduct: 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 UNEG guidelines note the importance of ethical conduct for the following reasons:

1. Responsible use of power: All those engaged in evaluation processes are responsible for upholding the proper conduct of the evaluation;
2. Ensuring credibility: With a fair, impartial and complete assessment, stakeholders are more likely to have faith in the results of an evaluation and to take note of the recommendations;
3. Responsible use of resources: Ethical conduct in evaluation increases the chances of acceptance by the parties to the evaluation and therefore the likelihood that the investment in the evaluation will result in improved outcomes.

The evaluators are expected to provide a detailed plan on how the following principles will be ensured throughout the evaluation (see UNEG Ethical Guidance for descriptions): 1) Respect for dignity and diversity; 2) Right to self-determination; 3) Fair representation; 4) Compliance with codes for vulnerable groups (e.g., ethics of research involving young children or vulnerable groups); 5) Redress; 6) Confidentiality; and 7) Avoidance of harm.

Specific safeguards must be put in place to protect the safety (both physical and psychological) of both respondents and those collecting the data.? These should include:

1. A plan is in place to protect the rights of the respondent, including privacy and confidentiality;
2. The interviewer or data collector is trained in collecting sensitive information, and if the topic of the evaluation is focused on violence against women, they should have previous experience in this area;
3. Data collection tools are designed in a way that are culturally appropriate and do not create distress for respondents;
4. The interviewer or data collector is able to provide information on how individuals in situations of risk can seek support.

The National Evaluator will be expected to support the evaluation Team Leader and the international evaluation consultant and carry out the following responsibilities: 

• Provide country contextual advice and support to the evaluation team leader for designing and delivering contextually relevant and sensitive Country Portfolio Evaluation;
• Support inception phase through initial desk review, analysis of available reference material and in-depth stakeholder analysis based on agreed criteria;
• Liase with the country stakeholders and assist in the country data collection by conducting interviews and focused group discussions as advised by the team leader;
• Attend and support the preparation of all meetings and presentations;
• Support the analysis of the evidence for the report and support the drafting of various sections of the country evaluation report.

Core Values

• Respect for Diversity;
• Integrity;
• Professionalism.

Core Competencies

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
• Accountability;
• Creative Problem Solving;
• Effective Communication;
• Inclusive Collaboration;
• Stakeholder Engagement;
• Leading by Example.

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf

Functional Competencies

• Ability to think, analyze and articulate strategically on programme development and results-based management
• Ability to facilitate meetings with different levels of stakeholders
• Excellent drafting and writing skills to produce and present concise and analytical discussion papers.
• Knowledge in results-based programming in support of gender and human rights

Education: 

• Master’s degree or equivalent in sociology, international development, Social sciences, gender studies or other related areas is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• At least 7 years of professional experience of working on Gender equality and women’s empowerment related issues; including minimum 5 years' experience of conducting evaluations;
• Experience of gender analysis and human rights-based approaches;
• Technical knowledge in monitoring and evaluation, results-based management;
• Previous experience of working with UN agencies and UN system is an asset;
• Knowledge of the role of UN Women and its programming, coordination and normative roles is an asset;
• Data collection and analysis skills;
• Evaluation report writing skills; 
• Process management skills, including facilitation and communication skills with stakeholders.

Language: Fluency in English and Arabic, both written and spoken, is required.

How to Apply:

• Personal CV or P11 (P11 can be downloaded from: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-P11-Personal-History-Form.doc )
• A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page)
• Managers may ask (ad hoc) for any other materials relevant to pre-assessing the relevance of their experience, such as reports, presentations, publications, campaigns, or other materials.