Consultant to review of humanitarian response in Asia and the Pacific Region

Purpose of the Consultancy

Asia and the Pacific is the most disaster prone region in the world, affected by frequent and cyclical natural disasters and also complex emergencies due to conflicts and long-standing protracted crises. Interrelated global trends such as demographic change, migration and the climate crisis have led to increased humanitarian need exacerbated by poverty, fragility and vulnerability. The size, number and magnitude of humanitarian emergencies across the region have grown dramatically and the number of people affected by crises has almost doubled over the past decade- and are expected to continue rising.

The UNFPA Strategic Plan (2022-2025) reflects our commitment to further accelerate our work across the humanitarian development peace nexus. This requires operational capacities to sustain life saving support for affected populations from preparedness to disaster response and recovery, and greater financial and human resource investments to deliver these critical services, particularly in large-scale disasters. With the large number of emergencies experienced across the region, UNFPA in the Asia Pacific region has long been at the forefront of UNFPA’s humanitarian work, and continues to play an important role in supporting Governments to ensure that sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender-based violence needs are prioritized and supported in humanitarian action. UNFPA supports the delivery of essential lifesaving sexual and reproductive health services, gender based violence risk mitigation and response including mental health and psychosocial support, and plays a leadership role in SRH and GBV interagency coordination.

In Afghanistan, UNFPA continues to stay and deliver within a complex operating environment. Taliban takeover of Afghanistan on 16 August 2021 have led to rapid deterioration of an already dire humanitarian situation in Afghanistan; the freezing of government assets and the suspending of the implementation of development frameworks by international actors; and collapse of the public system and the economy. Particularly, the situation of human rights in Afghanistan continues to worsen under the rule of the de facto authority of the Taliban with increasing systematic restrictions and discrimination targeting women and girls. Pregnant women have been facing challenges in continued access to quality pre and post-natal care as well as skilled birth attendant services; Afghanistan has one of the world’s highest Maternal Mortality Ratios (MMR). The 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan for Afghanistan appeals for USD 4.44 billion and aims to reach 22.1 million people in need of life-saving humanitarian support.

Since the mass forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh in August 2017, the UNFPA Bangladesh Country Office has been scaling up its programmes to address the critical life saving needs of over 926,561 Rohingya refugees who are residing in 33 camps in Cox’s Bazar District and on Bhasan Char island. Despite considerable infrastructure improvements within the camps, strengthened coordination, response and monitoring mechanisms, living conditions in the camps remain congested with large numbers of people remaining vulnerable to natural disasters including floods, cyclones, and drought. Despite the protracted nature of the Rohingya situation in Bangladesh which is entering its 5th year, the SRHR and GBV needs of the affected communities remain high. Furthermore the needs of adolescent youth are becoming more apparent as over the last two years schools were closed due to COVID-19 (considered one of the longest school closures experienced even at global level), temporarily shutting down learning facilities and places for youth learning. Cyclical natural disasters that increase risks of gender-based violence and exacerbate poverty, which can often lead to child marriage for adolescent girls, are having a compounding effect on the adolescent youth population in both the camps and the host communities. The learnings from these experiences point to the importance of considering compound impacts that a protracted humanitarian crisis in a disaster-fragile region incurs not only for the refugees but also for the wider communities in the Cox’s Bazar district.

The volatile situation in Myanmar following the military coup on 1 February 2021 has resulted in increased displacement both within the country and across borders. The number of IDPs has increased to 521,100 as of March 2022. Nearly half the population (46 per cent) is estimated to be living in poverty in 2022. Administrative requirements for humanitarian partners in Myanmar continue to limit humanitarian access and the flow of both financial support to partners as well as commodities to affected populations. While funding levels to support the Humanitarian Response Plan remain significantly low and a number of clusters are reporting major resource gaps, UNFPA in Myanmar has pivoted their nexus programming and resources to support national partners to ensure the continuity of SRHR services and GBV multisectoral response mechanisms, including provision of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Services.

The Philippines is located on the “Pacific Ring of Fire” making it susceptible to many types of natural disasters such as typhoons, earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and fires. An average of 20-25 major storms hit the Philippines every year. In December 2021, Super Typhoon Odette made nine distinct landfalls, leaving the lives of 16 million people, including 4,136,672 Women of Reproductive Age and 265,200 pregnant women in severely affected locations. Most recently, a tropical Storm Agaton hit the Visayas and Caraga regions on 10 April 2022 which resulted in 212 deceased, 132 missing, and 570 injuries. The UNFPA Country Office has responded to government requests for assistance in addressing the urgent SRHR and GBV response needs of affected women and girls, including through provision of Cash and Voucher Assistance for those at risk of GBV and for women and girls in need of reproductive health care services.

These four large scale humanitarian responses in the Asia Pacific region in recent years have required timely and efficient actions by the UNFPA Country Offices, with technical, programmatic and operational support from the Asia Pacific Regional Office and various Headquarter Business Units. The Fast Track Procedures were activated in all humanitarian responses to enable more flexibility in applying corporate policies and procedures to expedite Human Resource recruitments, procurement of supplies and financial management of resources. All of the involved UNFPA units also increased donor and stakeholder engagements as part of resource mobilization, communications and advocacy efforts, which were critical given the various political sensitivities within the respective country contexts that UNFPA had to navigate in order to ensure timely provision of services to the most affected communities.

Thus, APRO is commissioning an independent review of UNFPA’s humanitarian response in these four countries, focusing on operational efficiency with the following purpose and specific objectives:

1. To provide an independent, external and objective review of the internal operational processes in four large-scale UNFPA country office humanitarian responses across the Asia Pacific region, and to provide recommendations that can inform UNFPA’s future humanitarian work in the Asia Pacific region and beyond
2. The specific objectives of the review are:
   • To assess operational bottlenecks (including security, human resources, procurement, supply chain, infrastructure, partnerships, financial management, infrastructure, information management, resource mobilization and partner engagement, and internal and external communications) and suggest recommendations, including country-specific recommendations, to address them.
   • To improve UNFPA’s operational procedures for efficiency and agility in humanitarian contexts
   • To draw good practices, opportunities and lessons learned from operationalizing the four humanitarian responses and propose recommendations for UNFPA’s future humanitarian programming in the region and beyond.

Scope of Work

The consultant is expected to work remotely to conduct the review focusing on:

Scope: The review will cover all operational aspects of humanitarian programming in the above-mentioned four countries in the region during a period of 2020-2022.

Preliminary review questions:

1. Do UNFPA’s current operational policies, procedures and practices prepare country offices for an efficient response to a rapidly evolving landscape of crisis in politically challenging contexts? How can UNFPA adapt its operational policies, procedures and practices to ensure it can respond to future humanitarian contexts and needs efficiently?
2. To what extent UNFPA preparedness and response actions were relevant and coherent to address the humanitarian needs? To what extent was UNFPA’s humanitarian response in the four countries planned and implemented to be adapted to evolving needs, priorities and complexities in the countries? To what extent did support from APRO and HQ Business Units (in terms of overall direction, programme management, technical support, human resources, procurement, operational support, donor engagement, fund management, and communications) facilitated more efficient, agile and adequately funded responses in countries?
3. How well has UNFPA’s response in the four countries shifted from development to humanitarian at the onset of acute crises, and from humanitarian to medium- and long-term development programmes in both protracted crises and natural disasters? What are some of the issues from programme and operations perspective that country offices had to grapple with when responding to protracted crisis – especially in relation to country programme and also human resources? What are some of the lessons learned by country offices that have undergone/undergoing such experience, Bangladesh, Myanmar for example?
4. To what extent was UNFPA’s technical capacity adequate to respond to humanitarian crises in the four countries? To what extent did APRO’s technical assistance complement any technical capacity gaps in these countries?

The main audience of the review will be UNFPA COs, APRO and relevant HQ business units.

The review will be conducted through a participatory approach, engaging COs, APRO, HQ units engaged in supporting humanitarian programming, and implementing partners and using a mixed-method methodology – qualitative (document review and key informant interviews) and quantitative methods (operations data and other secondary data).

UNEG/UNFPA evaluation norms and standards are expected to be followed at all phases of the evaluation: UNEG Norms and Standards for Evaluation, Ethical Guidelines for Evaluation, Code of Conduct for Evaluation in the UN System, UNFPA Evaluation Handbook.

Working schedule:

July- August 2022: Inception/design phase (requires 7 workdays)

Expected deliverables

• Desk review of available documents, drafting of the inception report with a review matrix and data collection tools
• Participate in discussions with the UNFPA team and take notes of suggestions and comments
• Finalization of the inception report

August- September 2022: Data collection phase (requires 18 workdays)

Expected deliverables

• Conduct key informant interviews with UNFPA and other stakeholders
• Process collected data
• Present preliminary findings in a validation meeting with UNFPA APRO and Country Offices

September-October 2022: Data analysis and report writing (requires 10 workdays)

Expected deliverables

• Analyze collected data
• Submit a draft review report including findings, preliminary conclusions and recommendations
• Present the draft report main findings, conclusions and recommendations in a dissemination meeting to the Review Reference Group (RRG)

October- November 2022: Final review report (requires 5 workdays)

Expected deliverables

• Submit the final review report incorporating feedback from the Review Reference Group (RRG)
• Develop an accompanying Powerpoint presentation for dissemination meetings

The consultancy will primarily be home-based, with consideration for one field mission to Afghanistan (4 days) contingent upon COVID-19 and security related travel restrictions being lifted. Travel costs will be paid separately and in line with UNFPA’s travel policy. All other key informant interviews and meetings will be conducted virtually.

All work will be submitted electronically as it is produced, with revisions made based on feedback prior to final acceptance. Expected deliverables include:

• Inception report including a stakeholder map, the overall review framework (including KII tool) and the data collection tools
• Presentation at the debriefing meeting for APRO and COs on the main preliminary findings
• Draft review report including a presentation to the RRG on main findings, preliminary conclusions and recommendations
• Final review report accompanied by a Powerpoint presentation for dissemination meetings

All deliverables will be written in English and submitted in electronic format.

Monitoring and Progress Control

The consultant will work closely with the Regional Humanitarian Advisor, Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor, the Country Office senior management team from the four countries being reviewed, and other APRO staff as needed. Frequent discussions will be held to note progress throughout the duration of the contract and a tracking sheet will be used to note progress against TOR deliverables and deadlines. The acceptance of services at the end of each completed deliverable will be certified through a Timesheet and Certification of Payment to be countersigned by both parties (IC and UNFPA).

Supervisory arrangements

1. The responsibility for the management of the review will be with the UNFPA APRO Regional Humanitarian Advisor. The UNFPA APRO Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor will provide quality assurance and ensure the independence of the evaluation, in line with UNEG Norms and Standards and Ethical Guidelines
2. A review reference group (RRG) will be formed to provide feedback on the draft terms of reference of the review; provide feedback and comments on the inception report; provide comments and substantive feedback from a technical perspective on the draft and final reports; act as the interface between the consultant and key stakeholders and informants, to facilitate access to informants and documentation; participate in review meetings with the review team as required; play a key role in learning and knowledge sharing from the review results, contributing to disseminating the results of the evaluation as well as to the completion and follow-up of the management response.

Required expertise, qualifications and competencies, including language requirements

Education:

• Minimum of Masters degree in Public Health, Social Sciences, Political Sciences, Gender Studies, Programme Management or other relevant disciplines, with specialised training in evaluation.

Knowledge and experience:

• At least 10 years of evaluation experience, including humanitarian evaluation experience
• Demonstrated competence in evaluation of similar types of programmes, particularly in developing countries and humanitarian contexts
• Extensive evaluation experience of humanitarian policies, strategies and programmes and of complex conflict situations, internal displacement, refugee programmes and transition settings
• Experience with and institutional knowledge of humanitarian UN architecture, interagency mechanisms such as CERF funding and interagency clusters, and the IASC
• Good understanding of UNFPA mandate
• Good understanding of UNFPA policies and processes will be an advantage
• Technical expertise in i) sexual and reproductive health and rights ii) gender equality iii) gender based violence prevention and response and iv) emergency preparedness and response
• Excellent analytical skills, process management skills, data management and facilitation
• Excellent communication skills (written, spoken) in English
• Good communication skills (written, spoken) in languages spoken in the countries covered is desirable
• Demonstrated ability to work harmoniously with persons of different backgrounds in a multicultural environment
• Experience working with government implementing partners

Core Competencies:

• Integrity, commitment, cultural sensitivity and valuing diversity
• Developing people, coaching and mentoring
• Building and managing relationships
• Personal leadership and effectiveness

Functional Competencies:

• Business acumen
• Implementing management systems
• Innovation and marketing of new approaches
• Client orientation
• Organizational awareness
• Strategic alignment of human resource practices
• Promoting organizational change and development
• Impact and influence
• Job knowledge/technical expertise