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National Gender expert to undertake a Country Programme Evaluation (CPE) of UN Women Moldova Country Office (CO) Strategic Note (SN) 2018-2022.

Vacancy Number: Pr21/02283

Location:	Chisinau, Moldova
Application Deadline:	16 Aug 2021, 23:00 (GMT+2:00)
Application Extended deadline:	25 Aug 2021, 23:00 (GMT+2:00)
Application Extended deadline:	31 Aug 2021, 23:59 (GMT+2:00)
Starting date:	23 Aug 2021
Reference to the project:	UN Women
Expected Duration of Assignment:
Supporting Documents: Annex II ToR ANNEX ToR National Gender expert Personal History Form (P11) UN Women UN Women Conditions of Service Consultants

Background

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.

The Country Office (CO) Strategic Note (SN) is the main planning tool for UN Women’s support to normative, coordination and operational work in the Republic of Moldova (Moldova). UN Women (previously as UNIFEM) has implemented catalytic initiatives on promoting women’s human, economic, political and social rights in Moldova since 2007 and has evolved from being a project-based to a Country Office with full delegated authority as of 2015. Currently, UN Women Moldova Country Office is  implementing its second  Strategic Note (SN) for 2018-2022, which is aligned with the Republic of Moldova-United Nations Partnership Framework for Sustainable Development 2018-2022 and the Global Strategic Plan of UN Women. This evaluation will assess the current Strategic Note covering the period 2018-2022 and will inform UN Women Moldova CO new Strategic Note, due to be approved by the end of 2022.

The current Moldova CO Strategic Note is grounded and aligned with  the National Strategy on Gender Equality for 2017-2021, and draft National Strategy on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence 2017-2021. It is also based on the latest recommendations by international human rights treaty bodies: CEDAW (2013 Concluding Observations), UPR recommendations (2016), UN Human Rights Committee (under International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (2016 Recommendations), Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disability (2017 Concluding Observations).   The SN 2018-2022 aims at advancing progress under the following three Impact Areas (IA): IA1: More women from diverse groups fully participate and lead in governance processes and institutions, IA2: Women have income security, decent work and economic autonomy, IA3: Public authorities, institutions and communities prevent violence against women and girls and deliver quality essential services.

Scope of work

Evaluation in UN Women is guided by the normative agreements described below to be gender-responsive and utilizes the entity’s strategic plan as a starting point for identifying the expected outcomes and impacts of its work and for measuring progress towards the achievement of results. The UN Women Evaluation Policy, UN Women Evaluation Strategy 2018-2021  are the main guiding documents that set 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, 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. The UN Women portfolio responds to the Entity triple mandate, which include normative, operation and coordination work. The CPE focuses on their individual and combined success in advancing gender equality in Moldova. It uses the Strategic Note as the main point of reference.

It is a priority for UN Women that the CPE will be gender-responsive and will actively support the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment. The key principles for gender-responsive evaluation at UN Women are: 1) National ownership and leadership; 2) UN system coordination and coherence with regard to gender equality and the empowerment of women; 3) Innovation; 4) Fair power relations and empowerment; 5) Participation and inclusion; 6) Independence and impartiality; 7) Transparency; 8) Quality and credibility; 9) Intentionality and use of evaluation; and 10) Ethics.

This CPE is being commissioned by the UN Women Independent Evaluation Service in close collaboration with UN Women Moldova Country Office as a primarily formative (forward-looking) evaluation to support the Country Office and national stakeholders’ strategic learning and decision-making for the next Strategic Note, due to be developed in 2022. The evaluation is expected to have a secondary summative (backwards looking) perspective, to support enhanced accountability for development effectiveness and learning from experience.

The primary intended users of this evaluation are:

• UN Women Moldova CO, Regional ECA Office, and UN Women HQ
• Target groups, their households and community members, programme/project partners
• National government institutions
• Civil society representatives
• Donors and development partners
• UN Country Team and GTG

Primary intended uses of this evaluation are:

1. Learning and improved decision-making to support the development of the next Moldova CO’s Strategic Note 2023-2027;
2. Accountability for the development effectiveness of the CO Strategic Note 2018-2022 in terms of UN Women’s contribution to gender equality and women’s empowerment;
3. Capacity development and mobilization of national stakeholders to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women.

The evaluation has the following specific objectives:

1. Assess the relevance of UN Women contribution to the intervention at national levels and alignment with international agreements and conventions on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
2. Assess effectiveness and organizational efficiency in progressing towards the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment results as defined in the Strategic Note.
3. Support the UN Women CO to improve its strategic positioning to better support the achievement of sustained gender equality and women’s empowerment.
4. Analyze how human rights approach and gender equality principles are integrated in the design and implementation of the Strategic Note.
5. Identify and validate lessons learned, good practices and examples of innovation that supports gender equality and human rights.
6. Provide insights into the extent to which the UN Women CO has realized synergies between its three mandates (normative, coordination and operations).
7. Provide actionable recommendations with respect to the development of the next UN Women CO Strategic Note.

More information regarding the assignment and specifications can be found in the Annex uploaded.

III. Evaluation scope and approach

The evaluation will apply four OECD/DAC evaluation criteria (relevance, coherence, effectiveness -including normative, and coordination mandates of UN Women-, efficiency, and sustainability) and Human Rights and Gender Equality as an additional criterion. Please check in the full ToR the key evaluation questions and sub-questions, at the link provided in the Annex.

The period covered by the evaluation will be 2018-2021 and the plans for 2022. The CPE will focus on all activities undertaken by the CO under the Strategic Note, including general support to normative policy and UN coordination. Programmatic work will be considered in relation to the thematic areas established by the UN Women Strategic Plan 2018-2021.

As big share of activities takes place around the country at districts level, the evaluators might be expected to visit several sites during the field mission in Moldova, in case epidemiological situation will allow internal movements and onsite data collection.

Joint programs and initiatives are within the scope of this evaluation. Where joint programmes are included in the analysis, the evaluation will consider both the specific contribution of UN Women, and the additional benefits and costs from working through a joint modality.

The evaluation team is expected to undertake a rapid evaluability assessment in the inception phase of the evaluation. This should include the following:

1. An assessment of the relevance, appropriateness and coherence of the implicit or explicit theory of change, strengthening or reconstructing it where necessary through a stakeholder workshop;
2. An assessment of the quality of performance indicators in the DRF and OEEF, and the accessibility and adequacy of relevant documents and secondary data;
3. A review of the conduciveness of the context for the evaluation;
4. Ensuring familiarity with accountability and management structures for the evaluation.
5. Expected deliverables

This section describes the type of products (reports, briefs or other) that are expected from the evaluation, who will use them and how they will be used.

1. Evaluation team composition, skills and experiences

The evaluation process will be led by UN Women Independent Evaluation Service and the management structure for this evaluation will include:

1. ECA Regional Evaluation Specialist (RES), who is a member of the UN Women Independent Evaluation Office, will be the evaluation team lead and the task manager for this evaluation.
2. Evaluation Management Group for administrative support and accountability will include: Country Representative, M&E Focal Point; ECA RES (who will lead the group);
3. External Evaluation Reference Group to foster stakeholders’ ownership and participatory approach; CSOs, state partners; development partners (including donors); representative of the UNCT.
4. Internal Evaluation Reference Group integrated by all UN Women Moldova CO personnel and key RO staff, including Planning and Coordination Specialist, to foster ownership of the process and use of its results by the CO’s personnel.

The UN Women ECA Regional Evaluation Specialist that will act as the team lead, will be supported by two external independent consultants, including an International Evaluation Expert and an additional National Gender Expert, to be recruited by the UN Women Moldova CO based on this TOR. In addition, a Research Assistant will support the inception phase of the evaluation process.

The estimated number of person-days required for the evaluation is 34 days for the national gender expert  with breakdown as follows:

An interpreter/translator will be used from the existing LTA agreement on such services for the inception consultations, data collection during the field mission and translation of final report, as needed.

Requirements for experience

Education:

• Master’s degree in sociology, international development, social sciences, or another related area

Experience:

• Minimum 5 years of professional experience on relevant development GEWE related issues, including substantive support to several evaluation processes
• Experience in monitoring and evaluation
• Experience of gender analysis and human rights-based approaches
• Previous experience in similar assignments with UN agencies and other international organizations.

Language:

• Fluent in English, Romanian written and spoken. Knowledge of Russian will be an asset.

Consultant should have 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.  This is an independent evaluation process and hence, in order to avoid any potential conflict of interest, none of the members of the evaluation team can have had any previous direct involvement in the implementation of UN Women’s Moldova CO SN. 

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

To learn more about UN Women values and competencies, please follow the link https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/about%20us/employment/un-women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf?la=en&vs=637

Functional Competencies:

• Demonstrates professional competence and is conscientious and efficient in meeting
• commitments, observing deadlines and achieving results.
• Process management skills, including facilitation and communication skills;
• Excellent analytical, facilitation and communications skills and ability to interact with a wide
• range of stakeholders;
• Data analysis skills;
• Excellent analytical thinking and research, writing, reporting and presentation skills;
• Strong inter-personal, team working skills;
• Ability to work and adapt to a dynamic working environment;

Documents to be included

• Letter of Intent with justification of being the most suitable for the work, vision and working approach, specifically indicating experience of carrying out evaluations and in producing out analytical reports, (provide links to previous evaluations and 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. (Blank form can be downloaded from: (https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment ).
• Financial proposal (in MDL for the national consultant) - 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 by providing two financial proposals with the options 1) with travel mission to Moldova and 2) remote data collection In case of travel to Moldova will not be possible. The travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket shall not be accepted. The evaluation team will be provided with the necessary administrative and logistical support to enable them deliver on the expected outputs.