Jobs

THE UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (UNDP) IS HIRING FOR AN INTERNATIONAL EVALUATION EXPERT (CONSULTANT): Home-based with one mission to Afghanistan

admin October 30, 2022

5 minutes read

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is hiring for an International Evaluation Expert (Consultant). The job is home-based with one mission to Afghanistan

DEADLINE: 14 November 2022

Background and context

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Afghanistan Country Office’s Peace Pillar with financial contributions from the Royal Danish Embassy in Afghanistan commenced the Afghanistan Anti-Corruption, Transparency, Integrity and Openness (ACTION) Project on 07 August 2019 with the current end date on 31 December 2024 to allow more time to complete the planned activities.

ACTION project was a continued joint effort to support both institutional (supply) and civilian engagement (demand) sides to increase public trust in and transparency of Afghan security and justice institutions. On the government institutions’ side, under the overall guidance from the Afghanistan Attorney General’s Office (AGO), the project focused its support to the flagship initiative of the government to combat corruption, namely the Anti-Corruption Justice Center (ACJC) and newly established Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) by enhancing their logistical and technical capacity to address high-level corruption cases. On the demand side, the project is working with civil society organizations and media to improve public awareness on anti-corruption and how to hold service provider accountable for better service delivery. The project started with three outputs and in July 2021, two additional outputs were added as mentioned below:

Output 1: The Anti-Corruption Justice Center Improved Technical and Operational Capacities to Effectively Adjudicate Corruption Cases

Output 2: Non-State Actors and Community Groups, including women and youth, can better promote Transparency, Accountability and Integrity in the Security and Justice Sectors.

Output 3: COVID-19 response’s Transparency and Accountability is strengthened through citizen monitoring

New Output 4: The AGO has improved internal integrity, more efficient processes, and is better able to serve the public

New Output 5: The ACC is strengthened to provide more effective oversight of justice and security institutions for increased prevention of corruption and enhanced service provision.

The Royal Danish Embassy supported the initial three outputs, and the rest were funded by UNDP’s TRAC and other resources.

Under Output 1, ACTION project implemented the capacity building activities for ACJC by delivering 28 training modules identified through a comprehensive training needs assessment. During 2020 and 2021, 110 ACJC judges, prosecutors and technical staff including 15 females were trained. For enabling better working environment for ACJC, the ACTION project also provided resource support to the ACJC. The items of logistics and equipment support to ACJC have been delivered which included new office space, security cameras, kindergarten with equipment, printers, clinic items, sim cards for improved their efficiency and work productivity.

Under output 2, supporting the demand side (civic engagement) ACTION project successfully implemented 27 small grants projects (22 projects Denmark fund and 5 projects UNDP TRAC fund) to build trust between the Afghan community and the state through mobilizing local community on how to fight corruption, conducting community based monitoring of health facilities, social audit of service delivery, reporting corruption cases by media and establishing community based volunteer network to represent community in identifying and resolving corruption cases through active coordination with local and provincial authorities. Through these grants, communities have been mobilized and awareness have been generated on anti-corruption activities by providing information on access to information law. Under investitive journalism 22 local journalists were trained and they produced 55 investigative reports on different corruption cases.

Under Output 3, The project is working in 34 Provinces across 1500 (Primary Health Center) PHCs to monitor the health services through community members related to the support provided by government and other donors to address COVID-19. ACTION M&E COVID-19 app has been developed to create a dashboard by feeding all these data live collected through the partners.

No activity under output 4&5 have been initiated yet after the approval of the revised project document in August 2021.

Due to the recent political changes in the country (the government takeover by the Taliban) and because there are no government partners available anymore to support like the ACJC, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), as per the instructions by United Nations, the ACTION project will not continue work on activities under output 1, 4 and 5 which are relevant to the government institutions. Out of the above three outputs, the Royal Danish Embassy in Afghanistan supported output 1.

ACTION project will continue the activities under output 2 and output 3 on the demand side engaging with civil society organizations, media, academia, and the private sector.

The Anti-Corruption, Transparency, Integrity and Openness (ACTION) project has been implemented since July 2019. It was originally envisaged to end on 31 December 2020 but was extended through a project revision until December 2021. The project was subsequently revised and extended until 31 December 2024.

Basic Project information can also be included in table format as follows:

Duties and Responsibilities

The Purpose and Objectives of the Midterm Evaluation

The Midterm Evaluation (MTE) aims to inform UNDP Afghanistan and its partners of lessons learned, results achieved and areas for improvements. The MTR will draw out progress toward project deliverables, identify gaps in programming, and any course correction required for the future programming. Furthermore, the findings of MTR will inform the future designing of UDNP’s work. The MTR will be able to produce valuable lessons and experiences, providing useful findings to the other relevant projects and various initiatives organized by UNDP Afghanistan as well as Country Offices (COs) globally. Also, MTR will be able to produce a report on the achievements of the ACTION project plus success stories on the project, which will be published on UNDP website.

Responding to the Theory of Change (ToC) as described in the project document, the agreed results, and resources framework (RRF) and the approved workplans, the MTR should look at the relevance of the project, quality of the project design, effectiveness, and efficiency of the implementation to date, sustainability of the overall project results, impact of intervention made to date, and forward-looking directions for future. To meet these ends, MTR will serve to:

assess project performance and progress against the expected outputs, targets including indicators presented in the RRF and contribution to expected outcome.
review and document the success and draw out lessons for deepening impact
assess the effectiveness of the project’s engagement with UNDP ACTION project implementing partners including civil society organizations (CSOs).
identify challenges and the effectiveness of the strategic approaches that project adopted for addressing those challenges.
ascertain the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability of the project interventions.
outline recommendations, including potential realignments in scope and approach in line with the project’s desired outcome
provide forward looking recommendations to inform the future designing of UNDP’s work on Anti-corruption area.
report on the achievements of the ACTION project plus success stories on the project, which will be published on UNDP website.
highlight project’s overall accountability within the corporate framework, e.g., contribution to higher level results, such as Strategic Plan, CPD etc.