International Organization for Migration
1. Evaluation context: The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is the UN Migration Agency and is committed to the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits migrants and society. Migrant Protection and Assistance (MPA) is one of the key pillars of IOM’s Migration Management work across the globe as many migrants especially those with irregular status remain highly vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and other forms of violence. The issue of irregular migration of Unaccompanied and Separated Children (UASC) arriving in Egypt has increased significantly in the past few years, putting pressure on national actors to minimize the vulnerabilities of migrants that could render the UASC at the risk of trafficking and exploitation. The Government of Egypt (GoE) recognizes the protection needs of UASC, as it has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and promulgated the Egyptian Child Law 12/1996 (amended through Law 126/2008) to guarantee the rights of the child as per the CRC and other ratified covenants1. IOM works closely with the GoE to make sure relevant national actors have the knowledge, resources, and technical expertise to implement and operationalize guiding mechanisms that can address the diverse needs of vulnerable populations. In particular, IOM works with the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) and other national actors to improve the protection environment for UASC in Egypt to meet international standards and best practices. The NCCM identified key gaps regarding child protection in Egypt, in coordination with the National Coordinating Committee on Preventing and Combatting Illegal Migration and Trafficking in Persons (NCCPIM&TIP), as while services exist for UASC in Egypt, coordination amongst child protection actors needs strengthening, and the national system must be addressed and upgraded to standardize the access to these services. 1 Other covenants include Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, and Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, among others. As the highest national authority mandated in child protection, NCCM leads the interagency taskforce between IOM, UNHCR, and UNICEF aimed at enhancing the portfolio of protection for migrant children on the move. With the above in mind, NCCM requested IOM’s support in drafting a document that will standardize the referral mechanism (hereinafter “Pathway”), for UASC protection services in line with the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in the process of consolidation. NCCM further requested support with enhancing the capacity of the respective technical staff (Helpline technical staff and operators to operationalize the Pathway). To support NCCM address the protection needs of UASC arriving in Egypt, IOM designed the “Improving the Protection Environment for Unaccompanied and Separated Children in Egypt” project, to contribute to improving the protection environment for UASC, in line with international standards and best practices in child protection and address the existing gaps in child protection amid a persistent trend of irregular child migration to Egypt. The project supported the development and finalization of the Pathway for the protection of UASC arriving in Egypt, the organization of a series of workshops, including all relevant national stakeholders, and drafted and finalized the Pathway. Following the project’s completion, IOM envisaged the design and production of all pertaining materials and presentation tools for dissemination among relevant stakeholders. Finally, IOM planned a series of training on the Pathway for all NCCM Child Helpline staff and other practitioners engaged in the protection of vulnerable children. IOM ensured a gender-sensitive approach by selecting male and female trainers and trainees, advocating for gender mainstreaming, and reinforcing the importance of collecting data disaggregated by sex and age. In line with International Migration Law, in particular the CRC, IOM commits to fundamental principles in its work with migrant children such as non-discrimination, the best interest of the child, full development, family unity, non-refoulment, and full confidentiality. Based on these principles and its global mandate of assistance to vulnerable migrants, IOM implements a broad range of assistance and projects, which directly and indirectly address the needs and interests of children and youth worldwide and which fall within the pillars of data and research, policy and advocacy, assistance and protection, capacity building, prevention, and crisis response: 2. Evaluation purpose and Objective: This summative evaluation is expected to determine the extent to which the project has achieved its objective and results, by assessing progress against relevant indicators, with the aim to ascertain the sustainability of the project’s benefits. The evaluation is being conducted for use by the donors, so that they can assess the relevance of the intervention, its value for money as well as the effectiveness and efficiency under the funded activity components. Furthermore, the evaluation is being conducted for use by IOM project management so that they can improve the design and implementation of the ongoing or future set of activities, projects, or programmes. Finally, the evaluation is being conducted for the use by the project team, so that they can document lessons learned and best practices from a completed set of activities, as the evaluation will also have a forward look, and will incorporate a formative nature, as its findings are also expected to inform donors’ decisions on whether to fund the follow-up phases based on opportunities and gaps identified by the current evaluation. 3. Evaluation Scope: The scope of the evaluation will consider all project objectives, outcomes, outputs, and activities from project activation on 1 December 2016 until the project’s completion on 31 December 2021. Results achievement and their impact will be assessed by IOM management with the next phase of the project in mind. The geographic scope of the evaluation will include the greater Cairo area, Egypt, which is the main residence of the targeted groups. However, some of the project activities were conducted in governorates outside Cairo, such as Alexandria and Aswan, and these governorates will be included in the scope of evaluation as well. 4. Evaluation Criteria The evaluation will analyse the project’s performance and efforts using the OECD/DAC criteria of relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability. The evaluation will identify lessons learned and best practices, as well as proposed recommendations for improvements for future projects. 5. Evaluation Questions: Below are the key evaluation questions that the evaluation is expected to answer. The consultant(s) may develop additional evaluation questions during the inception phase, as deemed necessary, and in line with the evaluation purpose in order to collect qualitative and quantitative data needed to meet the expected quality standard of the evaluation report. i. Relevance – To what extent has the project responded to the needs of various priority beneficiary groups and stakeholders, including the most vulnerable population (e.g., migrants, displaced persons, disabled population, women, and children)? – Has the project adequately responded to local and national priorities? – To what extent is the project consistent with IOM priorities and mandate? ii. Effectiveness – To what extent was the project implementation effective? Were all project results achieved as originally planned and in a timely manner? If not, why? – Which of the project strategies were more effective and which were least effective in producing planned short and long-term results and why? – What could have been done differently (in terms of design and implementation approaches) to make sure that the project is more effective in reaching short and long-term results? – What (if any) lessons can be drawn from the project? – What was the quality of results according to project stakeholders and various priority beneficiary groups and stakeholders, including the most vulnerable populations (e.g., migrants, displaced persons, disabled population, women, and children)? – In terms of project visibility, what materials and presentation tools for dissemination among relevant stakeholders were used, if any? If yes, was the awareness on the project raised among relevant stakeholders? iii. Efficiency – To what extent were project implementation strategies the most cost-efficient, if at all? – Were all activities implemented in a timely manner? – Would activities have been successfully implemented with fewer resources without compromising the quality of project outputs and outcomes? – Could more affordable alternative implementation strategies/packages have reached or overreached the project results? iv. Impact – What impact (positive and/or negative, intended, or unintended) did the project have on its’ beneficiaries and relevant stakeholders, including the most vulnerable population (e.g., migrants, displaced persons, disabled population, women, and children)? – What observed changes in attitudes, capacities, institutions, etc. can be linked to the broader framework of the project’s intervention? – What project strategies, if any, were effective in triggering the observed medium and long-term results (outcomes)? v. Sustainability – What outputs, outcomes, and benefits brought about by the project are likely to live on or continue after the project has ended? – What actions are recommended in terms of project design and implementation to strengthen the sustainability of future interventions? – What potential exists for the continuation, replication, or scaling up of the project’s results by national partners (i.e. has the capacity building been conducted and skills increased for the practitioners engaged in the protection of vulnerable children? – Whether the implemented activities improved project visibility and sustainability of project benefits or not. vi. Cross-cutting issues – To what extent has the project addressed cross-cutting issues such as age, gender, diversity, human rights-based approach, accountability to affected populations, and the environment? 6. Evaluation Methodology The consultant(s) will be responsible for further defining the evaluation methodology during the inception phase. It is expected that a mixed methods approach will be utilized to obtain diverse data required to reach an objective assessment of whether the project achieved what was set out to do and draw useful recommendations and conclusions. Therefore, it is expected that a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection will be used including document review, key informant interviews, surveys, and other data collection methods as necessary to satisfactorily respond to the above set of evaluation questions. IOM will share relevant background documents and project records as needed with the consultant(s). These will include, amongst others, progress, training and other reports, institutional documents, meeting minutes as well as other relevant information, such as capacity building and visibility products produced during the project implementation. 7. Ethics, Norms, and Standards for Evaluation IOM abides by IOM Data Protection Principles as well as the Norms and Standards of the UNEG and expects all stakeholders to be familiar with the Ethical guidelines for evaluation of UNEG. The consultant is expected to be familiar with the UNEG code of conduct for evaluation in the UN System as well. UNEG documents are available under IOM Evaluation Webpage www.iom.int/evaluation. The UNEG Norms and Standards will also be a key component of the quality management system. 8. Evaluation Deliverables and Work Plan The consultant(s) is(are) expected to provide the following deliverables: • Brief inception report (not more than 5 pages excluding annexes) comprising evaluation approach, evaluation questions, methodology, data collection tools as well as a final work plan that will be developed in close consultation with IOM Egypt project management team in coordination with Regional M&E Officer. • Draft and final evaluation reports (of not more than 45 pages excluding annexes), presented to the management team for input. • The final evaluation report that incorporates comments and feedback from IOM Egypt management team and Regional M&E Officer. The final report submitted to IOM must be in English and include (i) Executive summary; (ii) Project background; (iii) Evaluation background and methodologies; (iv) Project performance; (v) Achievements against expected outcomes/results, (vi) Sustainability of the achievements and overall strategy; (vii) Good practices and lessons learned of the project; (viii) Summary of conclusion and recommendations. The content of the report should be clear, and all evaluation conclusions must be substantiated and backed by evidence. The report should bring new perspectives to the subject evaluated and include the comparison of the baseline data collected at the outset of the project and the impact/changes made after the implementation. Where there is no baseline, the evaluation methods are expected to include retrospective questions to reconstruct the baseline condition as a reference for measuring achievement • Evaluation brief and draft management response (templates provided by IOM): the evaluation is also expected to submit a two-pager evaluation brief and management response in English. The brief should provide a succinct summary of the evaluation, the key findings, lessons learned, and recommendations.
9. Education, Experience, and/or skills required: •