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.
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 Womenโs contributions and support to ending violence against women.
UN Women undertakes evaluations to enhance accountability, inform decision making, and contribute to learning. Corporate evaluations at UN Women are conducted by UN Womenโs Independent Evaluation Service (IES), part of the Independent Evaluation and Audit Service (IEAS). In line with the corporate evaluation plan for 2024, IES plans to conduct a corporate thematic evaluation of UN Womenโs support to ending violence against women.
Under Strategic Plan 2018-2021,[1] UN Women identified the elimination of violence against women and girls as one of five corporate outcomes (outcome 4: All women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence) and centred its efforts on strengthening prevention and essential services for victims of gender-based violence, as well as fostering cities with safe and empowering public spaces for women and girls. It also developed two Flagship Programme Initiatives[2] dedicated to the elimination of violence against women around these two priorities.
UN Womenโs current Strategic Plan (2022-2025) takes a more cross-cutting approach, while continuing to emphasize violence against women and girls as one of four key thematic areas. Aligned with this priority, UN Women has developed a Gender Equality Accelerator on ending violence against women and girls to address the structural causes of gender-based violence and strengthen coordination and delivery of quality essential services across sectors. The accelerator provides a programmatic framework for leveraging UN Womenโs normative, operational and coordination mandates to foster new knowledge and innovation, evidence-based programming, policy advice, and system-wide accountability.
The purpose of this evaluation is to contribute to strategic decision making, learning and accountability. Taking into consideration the scope and timeframe of the previous strategic evaluation on ending violence against women[1], this evaluation aims to focus on UN Womenโs work on strengthening violence against women prevention and response in the context of dynamic global and regional trends. With a timeframe of January 2021- June 2024, the evaluation will examine UN Womenโs approach to adapting to recent changes in global and regional contexts. While including an assessment of strategies that supported achievement of results in the previous strategic plan period, the analysis will primarily focus on forward-looking aspects to inform implementation of the current strategic plan.
The scoping of this evaluation will include a broad geographic and programmatic mapping of UN Womenโs work and results in this area. The evaluation will consult internal stakeholders to identify a subset of critical themes/questions that the evaluation will focus on, with a view to providing useful insights to support implementation of the current Strategic Plan.
This corporate evaluation will be presented to the UN Women Executive Board in its Annual Session in 2025.
[1] Corporate evaluation of UN womenโs UN system Coordination and broader Convening role in Ending violence against women. UN Women. 2021. https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/Publications/2021/Evaluation-UN-WOMEN-UN-system-coordination-and-broader-convening-role-in-EVAW-en.pdf
[1] https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2017/8/un-women-strategic-plan-2018-2021
[2] https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/Library/Publications/2015/UN-Women-Flagship-Programmes-Booklet-en.pdf
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 support a scoped independent strategic evaluation of UN Womenโs contributions and support to ending violence against women. The main objectives of the evaluation are to evaluate the relevance, effectiveness, impact and sustainability of UN Womenโs contribution and support to ending violence against women; and to make recommendations to strengthen UN Womenโs work in this key area of work.
To support the Consultant on this assignment, IES will make available a Research Consultant, and IES Evaluation Analyst, for approximately two weeks of inception report development, four to five weeks of data collection and analysis, four to five 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 Womenโs 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:
Drafting of an inception report (2 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 Womenโs work on ending violence against women, 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: July โ August 2024
2. Data collection and initial discussions on emerging findings (4 weeks)
Deliverables: Qualitative transcripts, clean quantitative datasets, case studies, initial results PowerPoint presentation
Expected Timeframe: August- September 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: October- November 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 dataExpected timeframe: December 2024-February 2025
Key success factors:
Discuss emerging evaluation findings with key stakeholders in an independent but open, participatory, and transparent manner. Prepare a clear, concise inception report and final evaluation report that summarizes the results of the assignment.Identify, triangulate and report on insightful analysis that highlights key achievements of UN Women and key areas for improvement in the scoped area. The evaluation analysis should help to highlight what works and what does not for learning and accountability purposes.Develop specific, implementable, and impactful evaluation recommendations to help influence the performance and learning of UN Women in the scoped area (and beyond, if appropriate).Prepare adequate evaluation file papers to support the work done and conclusions reached (and provide copies of these to the evaluation team on conclusion). Address questions from quality assurance review conducted by supervisor, reference group.Maintain a positive and productive working relationship with the IES personnel assigned to the assignment as well as with key stakeholders.Raise and escalate issues of concern in prompt manner with the Chief, IES so that these may be resolved in a productive manner.Adhere to UN Women and IES ethical and data protection guidance and protocols.Deliverables
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:
Deliverables
Expected completion time (due day)
Inception Report (30%)
Aug 31 2024
Draft report (50%)
Dec 1 2024
Final report (20%)
Feb 28 2025
Consultantโs Workplace and Official Travel
This is a home-based consultancy.
As part of this assignment, there may be upto three data collection field visits.
Competencies
Core Values:
Respect for Diversity Integrity ProfessionalismCore 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 Womenโs Core Values and Competencies:
https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment/application-process#_Values
FUNCTIONAL 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 and Certification:
Advanced university degree in Social Sciences, Statistics, 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 7-10 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 ending violence against women preferred. Strong understanding and experience in the areas of gender equality and womenโs empowerment, gender mainstreaming, gender analysis and the related mandates within UN Women, particularly in relation to ending violence against women 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.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)