Terms of Reference (TOR) for Short-term Expert Mission
Rapid Assessment on the Relevance of Social Accountability (SA) Results for Regional and National Level Advocacy and Lobbying Work with Child Focused Sector Officials and Elected Councils
1. Introduction and Rationale
Ethiopia has ratified the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1991. Since then, the government has encouraging activities geared towards ensuring the protection and promotion of the rights and welfare of children. The Convention was domesticated through a national legislation (Proclamation No 10/1992). In addition, other conventions such as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ratification proclamation No283/ 2002) and ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor were ratified by the government. Various policies and strategic frameworks of Ethiopia is highly committed to build open, transparent and participatory governance that respects the rights of citizens. For instance, the significances of all citizens’ participation in the country’s socio- economic development are captured in the country’s current development policy and strategy document, i.e. The Growth and Transformation Plan II (GTP II) (2015/16-2019/20). In particular, the good governance component of the GTPII articulates the need of improving the quality of public participation by making the public consultative forums and dialogues well organized, well planned, predictable, transparent, effective and accountable.
The country has also introduced a series of institutional and policy reforms with significant public sector capacity building to enhance government responsiveness to citizens including children. For instance, the 1994 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) implemented in 1995, grants rights and freedoms to citizens and makes government accountable to the people (Article 12). The rights of women and children are also protected through Article 35 and 36 of the FDRE constitution respectively. In addition, the Ethiopian Government has been implementing citizens charter as part of the Good Governance package. It specifies the services government institutions deliver, the conditions clients need to meet in order to obtain these services, the expected quality of services delivered, and the complaint handling mechanisms.
The government is also implementing the PBS-III[1] program which has a nationwide scope and facilitates citizen’s engagement with local public service providers regarding their access to basic public services in five basic sectors. PBS-III is expected to reinforce all citizens’ participation in monitoring the performance of basic service delivery at the woreda and kebele levels through stronger linkages of financial transparency and accountability (FTA) and SA[2]. Scaling up and formalizing citizens’ participation in budgetary processes and monitoring of basic social service delivery performance is a key feature of PBS III. The engagement of all stakeholders including government and citizens will promote sustainability and also increase the impact of social accountability outcomes on service delivery.
From the foregoing, one could observe that there are global and national policy and program opportunities for children, parents, local communities, and civil society organizations to hold local service providers and government offices accountable for their decisions and actions. But, there are still gaps that undermine the realization of survival, development, protection and participation rights of children. There are several factors for this. Among others, the daunting challenge is weak evidence based public policy advocacy (budgetary, policy and legislative change) by Civil Society Organizations and other development actors. This has been deeply affecting the roles of children, communities and civil society organizations in mobilizing demanding accountability for the realization of children’s rights at different levels.
An enhanced focus on social accountability is particularly opportune in making available and providing reliable evidences for children, their communities and civil society organizations to conduct regional and national level advocacy with child focused sector officials, elected councils and other relevant stakeholders including the private sectors. In this regard, available literatures on the roles SA intervention[3] in Ethiopia recommend as the intervention has been generating reliable inputs and evidences for public policy advocacy at different levels. But, this need be tailored in the line with the anticipated results of the advocacy initiatives.
With due understanding of the above, Save the Children’s Child Rights Governance (CRG) Program has planned to conduct a rapid assessment on the relevance of social accountability (SA) results to initiate evidence based regional and national level advocacy and lobby with child focused sector officials and elected councils.
This ToR is therefore prepared to guide the selection and engagement of a local short-term expert (STE) to assist CRG of Save the Children in conducting the rapid assessment on the possibilities and potentials Ethiopia Social Accountability Program (ESAP) for conducting evidence based advocacy among key actors. The findings of the assessment will be a linking point to strengthen Save the Children’s collaboration with upcoming Ethiopian Social Accountability Program III.
2. Objective
The general objective of the rapid assessment to identify the potential and prospective SA intervention to initiate evidence base advocacy with child focused sector officials and elected councils. The assessment also aims to identify possible areas of Save the Children's' CRG integration with the upcoming ESAP3 interventions based on the findings of the assessment. To this effect, the short-term consultant shall accomplish the following key tasks:
v Conduct desk reviews of the sampled ESAP2-social accountability implementing Partners' (SAIPs) documented good practices on the successes, challenges and recommendations.
v Conduct assessment on lessons of selected 10 SAIPs in Addis Ababa.
v Map key national institutions that can potentially be targeted as allies to engage in national and regional level advocacy on social accountability.
v Prepare and present key findings to Save the Children.
v Prepare and submit draft reports of the assessment to Save the Children for input and final report (incorporating inputs of CRG team).
3. Deliverables: the followings deliverables are expected from the short term expert consultancy.
· An inception report outlining the literature and desk review of the SAIPs' documented good practices, assessment questions, sampled SAIPs and work-plan of the discussion with SAIPs;
· A draft final assessment report, which will be sent to the Save the children for review and feedback;
· A presentation of the compilation on the successes, challenges and recommendations of SAIPs in using SA results for advocacy; and
· A final report incorporating feedback from Save the children CRG team
4. Methodology
The short-term expert is expected to develop a concise methodology for undertaking this assessment. The proposed methodology should clearly articulate the assessment design, tools, data collection procedure, data analysis, and work plan to carry out the assignment.
1. Qualification and Location
5.1. Qualifications and skills:
· Minimum of Master’s degree or equivalent in social science, development studies, governance or related fields
· Solid reporting and communication skills
· Fluency in English (written and spoken), Amharic and sign language would be an asset
5.2. Professional experience:
· Minimum of five years of relevant professional experiences with social accountability programming.
· Knowledge and familiarity with institutions and structures responsible and promoting child rights in Ethiopia
· Good experiences and understanding policy advocacy.
· Experience on the development of child focused social accountability guidelines
· Well acquainted empirical experiences on integrating social accountability tools with child right governance.
· Recent involvement in studies or evaluations of social accountability intervention.
The assignment will be implemented in Addis Ababa.
2. Period
The assessment will cover a maximum period of 40 days starting from the date of the contract signature.
3. Evaluation Criteria
The proposals examined based on the following scoring criteria; it is a level D consultancy service.
Component | 100% |
Technical Proposal | 60% |
| 10% |
| 5% |
| 5% |
| 5% |
| 35% |
Financial Proposal | 40% |
Total | 100% |
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