Request for Expressions of Interest for Evaluation Services to undertake an Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation in Eastern DRC

Summary: The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is seeking expressions of interest for the provision of services to undertake an Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation (IAHE) of the collective response in Eastern DRC. IAHEs play a vital role in enhancing accountability, supporting evidence-based decision-making, and promoting strategic and operational learning within the humanitarian system. The deadline is September 23, 2024.

Tender description: This is a Request for Expression of Interest for a solicitation process that will follow and not the actual solicitation. Exact requirements will be in the solicitation document which will be shared with the parties expressing their interest. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is seeking to establish a contract for the provision of services to undertake an Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluation (IAHE) of the collective response in Eastern DRC. IAHEs play a vital role in enhancing accountability, supporting evidence-based decision-making and promoting strategic and operational learning within the humanitarian system. Their objective is to assess the results of the collective response to enhance principled humanitarian action by IASC member organizations in order to address the needs of the affected people. IAHEs examine the response, systems and processes, and identify critical facilitating and inhibiting factors that impact the achievement of intended results. They are essential to IASC’s commitment to coherent and unified coordination, people-centered and accountable collective humanitarian action. IAHEs are not an in-depth evaluation of any one sector or of the performance of a specific organization. The purpose of the evaluation of the collective response in DRC is two-fold. First, it will enable learning for the humanitarian system. The IAHE will provide valuable lessons for future IASC Scale-Up Activations generally and for humanitarian responses in similar contexts marked by armed conflict, violence, insecurity, displacement, as well as epidemics, food insecurity and malnutrition, and protection challenges. Second, it will ensure accountability of the IASC organizations towards affected people, humanitarian actors and partners, and donors. The IAHE is an integral element of the Humanitarian Program Cycle, assessing to which extent the collective humanitarian response has met the needs of the people affected in Eastern DRC. The IAHE will assess the extent to which the IASC member agencies’ collective response actions were relevant and coherent, the extent to which results were achieved, with an emphasis on results for the most vulnerable people, and the extent to which the response was well coordinated. It will identify good practices, opportunities and lessons learnt that will illustrate how collective response mechanisms have been or might be strengthened to contribute to a relevant, coherent, and effective response. The successful vendor is expected to partner or sub-contract a Congolese firm or a group of individuals to collect data for the evaluation.

CRITERIA: a. Experience of delivering large, high-quality evaluations of humanitarian action.

Pass: The bidder has conducted at least 5 evaluations of humanitarian action.

b. Evidence to assemble a team of French-speaking evaluators with experience conducting such evaluations.

Pass: The bidder has in the past conducted evaluations of humanitarian action in a French-speaking environment with evaluators who speak French OR the bidder has an adequate system in place to recruit such a team (i.e maintains a roster with members with the required language skills or has employees with the required language skills).

c. Knowledge of DRC.

Pass: the bidder has conducted work in DRC in the past AND the bidder has experience working with Congolese research/data collection forms OR has an adequate system in place to recruit such a team (quality assurance, administrative structure).

Important to note: Suppliers who only express their interest through UNGM, without providing submission letter with all supporting documents to [email protected] will not be taken into consideration.

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More details about this project can be found here.