Consultant for the Development of a tracking system on adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health and rights (AYSRHR)

VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT FOR INDIVIDUAL CONSULTANT

Official Job Title: Consultant

Duty Station: Lebanon UNFPA office

Hiring Office: UNFPA Lebanon

Grade: NOB

Vacancy Reference #: UNFPA/LBN/2023/002

Start-up date: May 2, 2023

TERMS OF REFERENCE

Development of a tracking system on adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health and rights (AYSRHR)

Purpose of consultancy:

UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. UNFPA works towards achieving the three transformative results: end preventable maternal deaths, end unmet need for family planning and end gender-based violence and harmful practices. UNFPA is the lead UN agency that expands the possibilities for women and young people to lead healthy sexual and reproductive lives. To read more about UNFPA, please go to: UNFPA about us

Within its context of work in Lebanon, and as part of its mandate, UNFPA works to promote universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and to include mitigation/response to Gender Based Violence (GBV) services including for youth and adolescent girls. To meet the SRHR needs of people, there is need to ensure applying an essential package of SRHR interventions with a life course approach, equity in access, quality care without discrimination and accountability across implementation.

UNFPA Lebanon CO initiated several interventions that promote SRHR and/or GBV prevention/response for young people and adolescent girls with the aim of enhancing their access to quality and timely age responsive services and information. Among these interventions are the following: a) development of the national youth policy and its action plan (in partnership with UNICEF and the Ministry of Youth and Sports) with particular focus on health and protection, b) piloting of youth friendly services at the primary care level (in partnership with UNICEF and Ministry of Public Health) which resulted in development of a model, c) adoption of a youth peer to peer approach for promoting SRH and GBV community outreach and awareness, d) empowering young people to contribute positively to the recovery of their communities affected by the Beirut port explosion while enhancing their life skills, etc.

In parallel, several actors in Lebanon are also offering services (including SRH and GBV prevention/response) to young and adolescent boys and girls within their scope of work yet there seems to be lack of a comprehensive picture on the coverage, size, holistic approach to reaching out adolescents and youth. In addition, there is inconsistent data about the impact of the interventions on youth, the magnitude of the challenges they face and barriers to seek services, their perceived and identified needs, as well as their level of vulnerability, etc.  More so, access by adolescent and youth to SRH services remains limited because of several barriers such as lack of information about the available services, confidence in the quality of services offered at the PHC level, poor communication and relationship with health care providers, socio-cultural barriers etc.  

Despite the many challenges highlighted earlier, few references and resources are available to provide a holistic baseline around AYSRHR situation as follows: a) piloting of youth friendly services in Lebanon (UNFPA, UNICEF, MOYS and MOSA, 2013-2016), b) assessment of adolescent and youth friendly services/policies in the Arab region (UNFPA and AUB, 2022), c) situation analysis of sexual rights in Lebanon (UNFPA, 2021),  d) National youth policy action plan (UNFPA, UNICEF, MOYS, 2022), e) access of adolescent girls to SRH/GBV in Lebanon (UNICEF and AUB, 2022), f) Lebanon National Health strategy 2030 vision (MOPH and WHO, 2023), g) the 2021 Report of the High-Level Commission on the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25 Follow-up (UNFPA), etc. 

Based on the above, it is quite obvious that there are many ongoing/pipeline interventions, strategies, action plans, frameworks, etc that revolve around AYSRHR however lacking an overarching comprehensive umbrella and that would require the development of a coherent tool/system to be able to generate/consolidate robust evidence around AYSRHR situation in the country while ensuring key adolescent and youth groups i.e. persons with disabilities, refugees, migrants, LGBTIQ, etc are all accounted for. 

The proposed consultancy aims to develop a sound and adapted-to-context tracking system that enables measuring progress on AYSRHR towards agreed upon targets through systematic, timely and quality collection of information and data related interventions at various levels namely in terms of policies/strategies, services, institutional/capacity development, outreach, participation, etc from all key actors.

Scope of work:

(Description of services, activities, or outputs)

The consultant will work closely with UNFPA to carry out the following tasks:

1. Prepare an action plan with a timeline of activities to be carried out under this consultancy
2. Hold inception meeting with UNFPA to ensure clarity on the TORs and expected outcome and results and submit inception report
3. Conduct desk review for relevant documents and studies mentioned earlier under Purpose of Consultancy
4. Propose a conceptual framework for AYSRHR which variables are aligned with international legal instruments (i.e CEDAW, UPR, CRC, etc)
5. Conduct KII/focus group discussion with key actors involved in AYSRHR policy/ services/ information namely Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Social Affairs, Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Youth and Sports, National Commission for Lebanese Women, National Commission for Human Rights, OHCHR, WHO, UNICEF, UN Habitat, civil society actors (i.e. INGOs/NGOs, academia ( 6-8) and youth groups (3) to have a consensus on the conceptual framework component and variables including their linkages with the SDG indicators
6. Based on (1), (2), (3), (4) and (5) above, develop tracking system that determines the set of outcomes to be adopted for measuring progress towards realizing AYSRHR. The tracking system should also determine type of information to be collected,  frequency/periodicity of data collection, means of verification, needed capacities and forecasted challenges in data collection 
7. Conduct a meeting with key informants to present the proposed tracking system and ensure embedding their feedback in the final system 
8. Present a final and analytical report synthesizing the results of this consultancy based on a template to be provided by UNFPA  
9. Present the findings in a technical meeting as advised by UNFPA

Duration working schedule:

30 working days (From May 2  to June 26, 2023)

Place where services are to be delivered:

Lebanon

Delivery dates and how work will be delivered (e.g. electronic, hard copy etc.):

Delivery Date: June 26, 2023.

All deliverables will be submitted electronically in English

Monitoring and progress control, including reporting requirements, periodicity format and deadline:

The consultant will deliver the tasks based on milestones and deliverables agreed upon and reflected in the contract terms. These deliverables include reporting requirements as well as a timeline. 

Supervisory arrangements:

The consultant will work under the overall guidance of the Head of office and in close collaboration with the UNFPA team (Humanitarian coordinator, SRH programme Specialist, the M&E analyst)

Expected travel:

NA

Required expertise, qualifications and competencies, including language requirements:

The Consultant should fulfil the following requirements:

Education: Master’s degree in Law, public health, gender studies, social sciences, or other relevant specialty.

Experience:

• At least 5 years of extensive experiences in conducting assessment, research, program evaluation including in both the humanitarian and/or development sectors.
• Extensive experience and knowledge in the fields of human rights
• knowledge of health/SRH and protection/GBV is essential
• Knowledge of the Lebanese health system is an asset
• Working with international organizations/ UN agencies/ donors is an asset.
• Excellent analytical skills
• Excellent Arabic and English spoken and written skills

Inputs / services to be provided by UNFPA or implementing partner (e.g support services, office space, equipment), if applicable:

• Relevant documents
• Continuous guidance
• Review of documents

Other relevant information or special conditions, if any:

N/A

Signature of Requesting Officer in Hiring Office: Maguy Ghanem

Date: April 18, 2023

Application process and deadline

Interested candidates may apply online by providing: 

• Most updated CV
• Updated P11 (click here)
• Cover letter mentioning the relevance of past/current experience with the requirements of the consultancy
• Mention in the email subject the post title and number

The above documents must be sent to [email protected]  by no later than April 28th 2023. Candidates who fail to submit the required documents above will not be considered for review. UNFPA Lebanon will only be responsible to respond to those applicants submitting the required documents above and in which there is further interest. ONLY individual consultants, not companies, are eligible to apply.

Candidates assessed by the panel and considered to be eligible for the appointment but who are not selected for this vacant post may be offered an assignment to another position at the same/lower grade provided that they meet the minimum qualifications required.