Consultant – EVALUATIVE RESEARCH

[Diyala,Sulaymaniyah,Baghdad,Erbil,Iraq ]

Evaluative Research on LHL Commitments and COVID-19 on Women’ rights and Women-led organizations in Iraq

1.   PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND

The purpose of this project is to understand how well Oxfam has upheld its LHL commitments and principles in our COVID-19 response, with women’s rights organizations[1] at the core of the study. Our intention is to focus on three countries: Colombia, Iraq, and Kenya. This project unites both research and evaluation, to allow us to both situate the Oxfam experience in the broader context of the humanitarian response to COVID-19, as well as provide primary data that speaks to the lived reality of women’s rights organizations, exacerbated by the pandemic, responding to the needs created by the pandemic. We will also include local and national humanitarian actors in the analysis, to see what differences in experiences between these groups exist (or not).

 

Since last decade, Oxfam has been calling for the transformation of the global humanitarian system to shift the power balance to local and national humanitarian actors,[2] as well as deep changes in the values, culture, and language of the aid system (Cairn 2012). Oxfam is a signatory to both the Charter4Change and the Grand Bargain, both of which lay out specific targets to which Oxfam has agreed to hold itself accountable.[3] In addition, Oxfam has led and/or been a key part of a number of projects that have sought to demonstrate and advocate for LHL.[4] LHL is defined as when “local humanitarian actors (whether civil society, government, or both) lead humanitarian action, ensuring that it is fast and appropriate and meets the needs of the affected population” (Kergoat et al, 2020, 4). While LHL and localization are often used interchangeably, this project intentionally sees LHL as different from localization, as the latter has been critiqued for disempowering local actors, in that it emphasizes partnership with as opposed to the leadership of local actors (Wall and Hedlund 2016; Jayasinghe et al, 2020).  

 

Building from these formal and informal commitments, in 2019 OUS identified several principles that should underpin LHL (see the Annex for the full list). These principles address formal LHL commitments and Oxfam’s principles of partnership but also seek to move beyond these to include aspects not covered, such as influencing and gender justice. The LHL principles are divided into six main buckets: (1) partnerships, (2) capacity sharing, (3) funding, (4) public engagement, (5) influencing, and (6) gender justice.

 

Related to the sixth bucket of gender justice, we are focusing specifically on the experiences of women’s rights organizations[5] for the following reasons: women’s rights organizations are often sidelined from the global humanitarian system, which has the result of denying them opportunities to influence decision-making and access to resources.[6] Yet they are often first responders in humanitarian crises and have been during COVID-19. Indeed, with the intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic, support to women’s rights organizations – as well as gender issues – are among the first to get cut.[7] While these issues may not seem unique to humanitarian action, it still represents a problem within the sector.

 

In addition, if organizations like Oxfam are not pursuing their commitments in relation to women’s rights organizations, then that is a deep gap considering Oxfam’s aspiration to be a gender just organization, guided by our feminist principles. We therefore seek to avoid furthering that marginalization by centering women’s rights organizations in our analysis.

2.   AUDIENCE AND USE

The primary audience for this research is Oxfam as well as the local actors from the country providing additional evidence to support LHL endeavors. We anticipate the findings will also be useful for other actors in the humanitarian sector as well as donors and, ideally, policy makers and influencers.

 

Participatory inception and validation virtual workshops with key stakeholders in the country will be organized to assess and validate terms of reference and then the research findings as well as to co-create specific recommendations, asks and actions targeting different actors (international organizations, governments, donors, etc.). The inception workshop will ask participants if they have already gathered data and conducted research on related or similar questions. We will not assume that this project is the first attempt to understand the reality of WROs and/or WLOs in Iraq (and will be dealt with also in the literature review component of the project).

3.   RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

• Examine how local actors, particularly women rights organizations and/or women-led organizations, have been responding to the pandemic, and what challenges they have faced. Their response may also include moments where they are not responding directly but have been involved strategically in shaping up responses, policies, and more.
• Highlight aspects of power – decision making, funding, information – by assessing and comparing relationships between women’s rights organizations and/or women-led organizations and other local actors with international actors[8] in the COVID-19 response.  
• Assess the extent and identify examples in which Oxfam and similar organizations have upheld its LHL formal and informal commitments during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in Iraq.
• Assess the quantity and quality of Oxfam support to local actors, particularly women’s rights organizations and/or women-led organizations, and/or networks in Iraq during the COVID-19 response. We will also examine what support has been effective or ineffective scaling up during the COVID-19 response.

Understand the process through which we were able to uphold the LHL commitments/or underlying factors that hindered the progress, considering pre-conditions, enabling environment, internal and external factors, changes to funding mechanisms, etc.

 

[1] Oxfam does not have a confederation-wide definition for women’s rights organization. For the purposes of this ToR, we adopt AWID’s definition (K. Miller and R. Jones 2019, 14): “We define women’s rights organizations as crucial actors supporting, building and contributing to feminist movements, an organized set of constituents pursuing a core political agenda of protection, promotion and fulfilment of women’s human rights through collective action [including]:

• Work from feminist and/or women’s rights perspectives
• Are led by the people they serve
• Have the promotion of women’s, girls’, trans and or intersex people’s human rights as their primary mission, and not just as the focus of part of their programs;
• Push for structural change;
• Work on issues that are marginalized and/or contested.”

[2] Local and national humanitarian actors include both civil society and governmental organizations.

[3] See https://charter4change.org/ for more information on the Charter 4 Change commitments and https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/grand-bargain for information on the Grand Bargain commitments.

[4] See https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/turning-humanitarian-system-its-head and https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/power-local-action-oxfam-learning-compendium-local-humanitarian-leadership/ for examples.

[5] In some contexts, focusing on women’s rights organizations may be too limiting. Preliminary conversations with country colleagues recommended we also include women-led organizations in the research. We will do so and will be careful to clarify the differences between women’s rights organizations and women-led organizations (noting that it is possible for a women-led organization to be a women’s rights organization, but that not all women-led organizations are women’s rights organizations).

[6] https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/women-leading-locally-exploring-womens-leadership-humanitarian-action/

[7] https://actionaid.org/sites/default/files/publications/WLO-Covid19-Joint%20Policy%20Brief.pdf

[8] International actors are a broad term and can include NGOs, local affiliates of international NGOs, UN agencies, networks, forums, and other spaces.

 

1.   FRAMEWORK AND APPROACH

We intend for this research to use a feminist approach and focus on several main points coming from feminist scholarship on methodology:

 

• Recognition that gender norms are shaped by unequal and patriarchal power relations that can promote discrimination against women: Hence this research’s focus on women’s rights and/or women-led
• An intersectional approach is needed to recognize people’s multiple identities and interrelated forms of discrimination: Incorporating an intersectional approach in our work will involve making sure that we are aware of different identity groups (such as indigenous women’s groups, or LGBTQIA+ organizations) and make efforts to include them in our analysis or acknowledge their absence.
• Acknowledgement that the research process can itself be imbued with unequal power dynamics: This emphasis on power is especially critical to be aware of and unpack in research on LHL, considering LHL’s focus on shifting power and correcting inequalities in the humanitarian system, and the role of power dynamics between local and international actors. We also need to be aware of the role of researcher/evaluator as an act of power in how analyses are constructed, and decisions made. We will attempt to avoid unequal power dynamics by fostering a country-led, feminist, participatory approach to this research, co-created with key stakeholders throughout all the stages of the research process. We will also ensure that this project includes a budget for interpretation and translation, to lessen any language barriers.
• Research should be used to promote social change and lead to advances in gender equality:
  1. Through this research we hope to signal what needs to change to better incorporate LHL principles in the humanitarian system, and especially for Oxfam. We will co-create the evaluative research project with the consultant (who can include local researchers, WROs, WLOs, among others). We will work closely with them, provide support as need be, and adapt the project iteratively based on country context.
  2. We will also recognize and amplify the role of WROs and WLOs.

 

Uniting a feminist lens with evaluative research entails ensuring our methods incorporate the four main points described above and centers the experiences of women and other often marginalized groups.

2.   GENDER

This project centers the experiences and testimonies from women’s rights and/or women-led organizations, as we intend to understand how well we did on our LHL commitments through their experiences first, before we broaden it out to include other actors involved in COVID-19 response. We intend for this research to be gender transformative, in that we aim to have our findings lead to sustained change through action – in how we engage with partners, the level of funding to women’s rights and/or women-led organizations, for example – and will build an evidence base to inform long-term practical changes in the patriarchal structures embedded in the humanitarian system.

 

We should note that this research will incorporate space to understand why women rights and/or women-led organizations may choose not to prioritize humanitarian response. This may be because they do not want to sacrifice their work on long-term strategic gender programming (such as women’s participation in governance, economic justice, social norms work, etc.), and will be important to recognize during this project.  We would like to ensure that we support locally led research and advocacy, while reducing pressures on women rights and/or women-led organizations to take on issues proposed by external organizations like Oxfam, which can divert them from their real interests. An interest in this research is to also see not only how Oxfam be better in applying LHL in humanitarian responses, but also more broadly how we can ensure we use humanitarian crises to advance gender justice and not set them back.

3.   RESEARCH METHODS

*Note: Research methods may include tools that already exist in the country (and guided by the Localization Performance Measurement Framework), which may be adapted for this research project.

This research intends to conduct a comparative case study analysis that will analyze and synthesize the similarities, differences, and patterns across multiple cases. We will use a mixed-method case study methodology, to be defined in conversations with colleagues.

 RESEARCH PRODUCTS

The project will consist of the following products:

• Case study from Iraq.

• Research report based on findings from the research in Iraq.

• Spinoff documents from the research report (such as policy briefs, country specific short versions, etc.) – optional.

• Validation exercise with Iraq stakeholders to discuss the findings and develop recommendations; possibly develop reports from the workshops.

• Infographics
• Overall dissemination strategy that includes a plan for learning and use

RESPONSIBILITIES

Consultant:

• Conduct the research as per the above guidelines and schedule.
• Conduct regular (minimum monthly) progress update meeting with Oxfam to share the updates and discuss challenges if any.
• Consultant will cover their own transport, accommodation, communications and meals if needed during the course of research.

Oxfam:

• Provide initial list of WROs and/or WLOs, and INGOs working with WROs/WLOs.
• Monitor the consultancy regularly and provide support, inputs, advise to the consultant as necessary.
• Translation of tools and final report will be coordinated and paid by Oxfam.

 

 PAYMENT PROCEDURE

The consultant will be paid agreed rate, upon satisfactory completion of the assignment including submission of tools and reports. The payment of the awarded contract will be made in USD, and will be made in different instalments, upon the completion of the key assignment milestones as below:

• 40 %, upon approval of the inception report
• 40 % will be made upon the submission of draft research report including a case study.
• 20 % will be paid upon submission of final report and case study.

 

Evaluative Research on LHL Commitments and COVID-19 on Women’ rights and Women-led organizations in Iraq

1.   PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND

The purpose of this project is to understand how well Oxfam has upheld its LHL commitments and principles in our COVID-19 response, with women’s rights organizations[1] at the core of the study. Our intention is to focus on three countries: Colombia, Iraq, and Kenya. This project unites both research and evaluation, to allow us to both situate the Oxfam experience in the broader context of the humanitarian response to COVID-19, as well as provide primary data that speaks to the lived reality of women’s rights organizations, exacerbated by the pandemic, responding to the needs created by the pandemic. We will also include local and national humanitarian actors in the analysis, to see what differences in experiences between these groups exist (or not).

 

Since last decade, Oxfam has been calling for the transformation of the global humanitarian system to shift the power balance to local and national humanitarian actors,[2] as well as deep changes in the values, culture, and language of the aid system (Cairn 2012). Oxfam is a signatory to both the Charter4Change and the Grand Bargain, both of which lay out specific targets to which Oxfam has agreed to hold itself accountable.[3] In addition, Oxfam has led and/or been a key part of a number of projects that have sought to demonstrate and advocate for LHL.[4] LHL is defined as when “local humanitarian actors (whether civil society, government, or both) lead humanitarian action, ensuring that it is fast and appropriate and meets the needs of the affected population” (Kergoat et al, 2020, 4). While LHL and localization are often used interchangeably, this project intentionally sees LHL as different from localization, as the latter has been critiqued for disempowering local actors, in that it emphasizes partnership with as opposed to the leadership of local actors (Wall and Hedlund 2016; Jayasinghe et al, 2020).  

 

Building from these formal and informal commitments, in 2019 OUS identified several principles that should underpin LHL (see the Annex for the full list). These principles address formal LHL commitments and Oxfam’s principles of partnership but also seek to move beyond these to include aspects not covered, such as influencing and gender justice. The LHL principles are divided into six main buckets: (1) partnerships, (2) capacity sharing, (3) funding, (4) public engagement, (5) influencing, and (6) gender justice.

 

Related to the sixth bucket of gender justice, we are focusing specifically on the experiences of women’s rights organizations[5] for the following reasons: women’s rights organizations are often sidelined from the global humanitarian system, which has the result of denying them opportunities to influence decision-making and access to resources.[6] Yet they are often first responders in humanitarian crises and have been during COVID-19. Indeed, with the intensity of the COVID-19 pandemic, support to women’s rights organizations – as well as gender issues – are among the first to get cut.[7] While these issues may not seem unique to humanitarian action, it still represents a problem within the sector.

 

In addition, if organizations like Oxfam are not pursuing their commitments in relation to women’s rights organizations, then that is a deep gap considering Oxfam’s aspiration to be a gender just organization, guided by our feminist principles. We therefore seek to avoid furthering that marginalization by centering women’s rights organizations in our analysis.

2.   AUDIENCE AND USE

The primary audience for this research is Oxfam as well as the local actors from the country providing additional evidence to support LHL endeavors. We anticipate the findings will also be useful for other actors in the humanitarian sector as well as donors and, ideally, policy makers and influencers.

 

Participatory inception and validation virtual workshops with key stakeholders in the country will be organized to assess and validate terms of reference and then the research findings as well as to co-create specific recommendations, asks and actions targeting different actors (international organizations, governments, donors, etc.). The inception workshop will ask participants if they have already gathered data and conducted research on related or similar questions. We will not assume that this project is the first attempt to understand the reality of WROs and/or WLOs in Iraq (and will be dealt with also in the literature review component of the project).

3.   RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

• Examine how local actors, particularly women rights organizations and/or women-led organizations, have been responding to the pandemic, and what challenges they have faced. Their response may also include moments where they are not responding directly but have been involved strategically in shaping up responses, policies, and more.
• Highlight aspects of power – decision making, funding, information – by assessing and comparing relationships between women’s rights organizations and/or women-led organizations and other local actors with international actors[8] in the COVID-19 response.  
• Assess the extent and identify examples in which Oxfam and similar organizations have upheld its LHL formal and informal commitments during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in Iraq.
• Assess the quantity and quality of Oxfam support to local actors, particularly women’s rights organizations and/or women-led organizations, and/or networks in Iraq during the COVID-19 response. We will also examine what support has been effective or ineffective scaling up during the COVID-19 response.

Understand the process through which we were able to uphold the LHL commitments/or underlying factors that hindered the progress, considering pre-conditions, enabling environment, internal and external factors, changes to funding mechanisms, etc.

 

[1] Oxfam does not have a confederation-wide definition for women’s rights organization. For the purposes of this ToR, we adopt AWID’s definition (K. Miller and R. Jones 2019, 14): “We define women’s rights organizations as crucial actors supporting, building and contributing to feminist movements, an organized set of constituents pursuing a core political agenda of protection, promotion and fulfilment of women’s human rights through collective action [including]:

• Work from feminist and/or women’s rights perspectives
• Are led by the people they serve
• Have the promotion of women’s, girls’, trans and or intersex people’s human rights as their primary mission, and not just as the focus of part of their programs;
• Push for structural change;
• Work on issues that are marginalized and/or contested.”

[2] Local and national humanitarian actors include both civil society and governmental organizations.

[3] See https://charter4change.org/ for more information on the Charter 4 Change commitments and https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/grand-bargain for information on the Grand Bargain commitments.

[4] See https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/turning-humanitarian-system-its-head and https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/power-local-action-oxfam-learning-compendium-local-humanitarian-leadership/ for examples.

[5] In some contexts, focusing on women’s rights organizations may be too limiting. Preliminary conversations with country colleagues recommended we also include women-led organizations in the research. We will do so and will be careful to clarify the differences between women’s rights organizations and women-led organizations (noting that it is possible for a women-led organization to be a women’s rights organization, but that not all women-led organizations are women’s rights organizations).

[6] https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/women-leading-locally-exploring-womens-leadership-humanitarian-action/

[7] https://actionaid.org/sites/default/files/publications/WLO-Covid19-Joint%20Policy%20Brief.pdf

[8] International actors are a broad term and can include NGOs, local affiliates of international NGOs, UN agencies, networks, forums, and other spaces.

 

1.   FRAMEWORK AND APPROACH

We intend for this research to use a feminist approach and focus on several main points coming from feminist scholarship on methodology:

 

• Recognition that gender norms are shaped by unequal and patriarchal power relations that can promote discrimination against women: Hence this research’s focus on women’s rights and/or women-led
• An intersectional approach is needed to recognize people’s multiple identities and interrelated forms of discrimination: Incorporating an intersectional approach in our work will involve making sure that we are aware of different identity groups (such as indigenous women’s groups, or LGBTQIA+ organizations) and make efforts to include them in our analysis or acknowledge their absence.
• Acknowledgement that the research process can itself be imbued with unequal power dynamics: This emphasis on power is especially critical to be aware of and unpack in research on LHL, considering LHL’s focus on shifting power and correcting inequalities in the humanitarian system, and the role of power dynamics between local and international actors. We also need to be aware of the role of researcher/evaluator as an act of power in how analyses are constructed, and decisions made. We will attempt to avoid unequal power dynamics by fostering a country-led, feminist, participatory approach to this research, co-created with key stakeholders throughout all the stages of the research process. We will also ensure that this project includes a budget for interpretation and translation, to lessen any language barriers.
• Research should be used to promote social change and lead to advances in gender equality:
  1. Through this research we hope to signal what needs to change to better incorporate LHL principles in the humanitarian system, and especially for Oxfam. We will co-create the evaluative research project with the consultant (who can include local researchers, WROs, WLOs, among others). We will work closely with them, provide support as need be, and adapt the project iteratively based on country context.
  2. We will also recognize and amplify the role of WROs and WLOs.

 

Uniting a feminist lens with evaluative research entails ensuring our methods incorporate the four main points described above and centers the experiences of women and other often marginalized groups.

2.   GENDER

This project centers the experiences and testimonies from women’s rights and/or women-led organizations, as we intend to understand how well we did on our LHL commitments through their experiences first, before we broaden it out to include other actors involved in COVID-19 response. We intend for this research to be gender transformative, in that we aim to have our findings lead to sustained change through action – in how we engage with partners, the level of funding to women’s rights and/or women-led organizations, for example – and will build an evidence base to inform long-term practical changes in the patriarchal structures embedded in the humanitarian system.

 

We should note that this research will incorporate space to understand why women rights and/or women-led organizations may choose not to prioritize humanitarian response. This may be because they do not want to sacrifice their work on long-term strategic gender programming (such as women’s participation in governance, economic justice, social norms work, etc.), and will be important to recognize during this project.  We would like to ensure that we support locally led research and advocacy, while reducing pressures on women rights and/or women-led organizations to take on issues proposed by external organizations like Oxfam, which can divert them from their real interests. An interest in this research is to also see not only how Oxfam be better in applying LHL in humanitarian responses, but also more broadly how we can ensure we use humanitarian crises to advance gender justice and not set them back.

3.   RESEARCH METHODS

*Note: Research methods may include tools that already exist in the country (and guided by the Localization Performance Measurement Framework), which may be adapted for this research project.

This research intends to conduct a comparative case study analysis that will analyze and synthesize the similarities, differences, and patterns across multiple cases. We will use a mixed-method case study methodology, to be defined in conversations with colleagues.

 RESEARCH PRODUCTS

The project will consist of the following products:

• Case study from Iraq.

• Research report based on findings from the research in Iraq.

• Spinoff documents from the research report (such as policy briefs, country specific short versions, etc.) – optional.

• Validation exercise with Iraq stakeholders to discuss the findings and develop recommendations; possibly develop reports from the workshops.

• Infographics
• Overall dissemination strategy that includes a plan for learning and use

RESPONSIBILITIES

Consultant:

• Conduct the research as per the above guidelines and schedule.
• Conduct regular (minimum monthly) progress update meeting with Oxfam to share the updates and discuss challenges if any.
• Consultant will cover their own transport, accommodation, communications and meals if needed during the course of research.

Oxfam:

• Provide initial list of WROs and/or WLOs, and INGOs working with WROs/WLOs.
• Monitor the consultancy regularly and provide support, inputs, advise to the consultant as necessary.
• Translation of tools and final report will be coordinated and paid by Oxfam.

 

 PAYMENT PROCEDURE

The consultant will be paid agreed rate, upon satisfactory completion of the assignment including submission of tools and reports. The payment of the awarded contract will be made in USD, and will be made in different instalments, upon the completion of the key assignment milestones as below:

• 40 %, upon approval of the inception report
• 40 % will be made upon the submission of draft research report including a case study.
• 20 % will be paid upon submission of final report and case study.

 

ELIGIBILITY AND QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS

 

The major criteria to evaluate the consultancy competing for the assignment will include the following: 

• Legally registered as a trust, NGO, private company or training institute. Qualified individual consultants are also encouraged to apply.
• Proven experience in conducting research, assessments and evaluations.
• Proven experience of working with women’s organizations and on the subject of local humanitarian leadership and localisation of aid.
• Presence in the area of operations or willing to move easily to area of operation for the period of assignment or be able to mobilize local staff for the purpose of the assignment.

 

 

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

1. Technical proposal may include:
   1. approach and broad methodologies
   2. use of technology
   3. working in covid-safe and covid-appropriate manner
   4. includes the service provider profile
   5. CVs of the team members
   6. assignment workplan/schedule.
   7. Previous work experience details (copies of assignment reports if shareable)

 

2. Financial proposal may include:
   1. Indicating the cost of the consultancy.

 

DEADLINE AND PLACE OF SUBMISSION

Interested and qualified applicants with the required expertise to conduct the above exercise should submit their application “Technical and Financial Proposals” via email provided in the consultancy advertisement ([email protected] ). Please mention “Proposal for LHL Evaluative Research on WROs in Iraq”.

 

TOR Link: https://jobs.oxfam.org.uk/vacancy/15742/description