Terms of Reference - Service provider assignment for a social peace and conflict analysis of the ENABLE and the project “Promoting decent jobs for Lebanese host communities and Syrian refugees”.

General context

Lebanon has been suffering from a severe financial and economic crisis with long-lasting effects on its economy and its people. At the root of the crisis is the breakdown of the financial system and the related severe devaluation of the Lebanese Pound, which since the start of the crisis in 2019 has lost over 90% of its value. Lebanon’s economy had been based on a strong currency that allowed the country to import up to 80% of its food items. With the drastic devaluation of the currency, prices of imported items have risen sharply, and households are now increasingly struggling to cover food needs. Small enterprises and farmers face difficulties paying for the mostly imported production inputs and are threatened in their existence.

Movement restrictions taken to curb the spread of Covid-19 have further exacerbated the situation and severely affected all sectors of the economy. A rapid survey conducted by the ILO and FAO to assess the impact of Covid-19 on enterprises and workers found that 51% of the 363 sampled small-scale enterprises had temporarily stopped operations, 84% of the 1,987 interviewed workers were laid off, while 94% saw their wages largely reduced.

The combined effects of the above-described crises have resulted in unprecedented levels of unemployment and pushed both the Lebanese population and the approximately 1.5 million Syrian refugees further into poverty. ESCWA estimates that the multi-dimensional poverty rate in Lebanon almost doubled from 42% in 2019 to 82% in 2021.

Preliminary data from the VaSyr 2021 indicates that the percentage of Syrian refugee households in extreme poverty jumped from 55% in 2019 to 82% in 2021.    

The shock of the devaluation and related crises have meant great hardship for the local population. However, it has also opened up an opportunity to transform the Lebanese economy into a more productive economy. The new opportunities could foster local employment and promoting employment in new markets. This process will improve capacity for employment activation for those remaining outside the labour market and in some promising sectors. These new opportunities could bring those who are unemployed or inactive beneficiaries of social protection or other external support into the effective labour supply.

Lebanon has been grappling with a series of crises that have had far-reaching impacts on various sectors, including agriculture. The convergence of the Syrian displaced crisis, economic turmoil, currency devaluation, and other factors has created a complex and difficult environment for many, including farmers.

In order to reduce the impact of this multifaced crisis, ILO is implementing projects under its flagship programme on Jobs for Peace and Resilience (JPR). The JPR was launched in 2016 to contribute to more peaceful and resilient societies through employment, decent work and social dialogue. The JPR translates into tangible action the guidance of ILO's Recommendation 205 on employment and decent work for peace and resilience by combining various ILO technical approaches that create jobs, reinforce skills and promote private sector and local economic development.

These projects aim also contribute to the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus and the improvement of social cohesion. While immediate and direct humanitarian assistance is urgently needed to help affected population groups survive the crises and sustain their livelihoods, developmental measures should in parallel also focus on supporting structural change. This should focus on promoting specific sectors, and value chains with potential for inclusive and climate-resilient growth to encourage decent job creation that will benefit both genders and communities (host communities and refugees), contribute to building framework conditions for peaceful and inclusive societies, and enhance resilience to climate change.

This should in particular focus on promoting specific sectors and value chains with potential for inclusive and climate-resilient growth to encourage decent job creation that will benefit both genders and communities (host communities and refugees), contribute to building framework conditions for peaceful and inclusive societies, and enhance resilience to climate change.

The present study will inform the actions of the following projects: ENABLE and SIDA.

The projects in a nutshell

The present analysis will take place within the frame of the resilience and employment current programs. In 2023, ILO has launched two new programs with the support of EU and the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida).

With funding from the European Union, ILO is implementing “Improving living conditions and resilience of refugees displaced by the Syrian crisis and vulnerable hosting communities in Lebanon” (ENABLE), partnering with Lebanese ministries, local authorities and in coordination with the ILO’s Employment Intensive Infrastructure Programme (EIIP). This project has been named “ENABLE” standing for Empowering Networks and Activation for Building Long-term Employment.

ENABLE aims to provide alternative and sustainable livelihoods and decent work access to selected vulnerable populations living in Lebanon, particularly unskilled and unemployed youth, women, and persons with disabilities. This is performed through employment-related services, skills training, short-term employment in local employment-intensive infrastructure programs, and enterprise and entrepreneurship development for self-employment in promising markets. The project aims at improving labour market outcomes and analysis, define appropriate processes and referral mechanisms, and ensure the delivery of job-oriented and market-relevant skills training, career guidance, support for entrepreneurs, and short-term job placements.

The Sida is funding a project aimed at ‘Promoting Decent Jobs for Lebanese host communities and Syrian refugees’ implemented by the ILO. The project will focus on the agriculture and agri-food sector as a key sector for the livelihoods of both Lebanese and Syrian vulnerable population groups and in particular women of both communities and aim to develop specific agricultural and agri-food value chains with the potential for decent job creation that will benefit both groups.

The project will make use of the ILO’s Approach to Inclusive Market Systems (AIMS) to safeguard jobs and livelihoods of vulnerable Lebanese and Syrian communities threatened by the crises and encourage decent job creation for both groups in sectors with potential. To that end, the project will use the market systems development approach to address key sectoral constraints to decent job creation sustainably, in combination with more direct interventions to strengthen capacities of vulnerable Lebanese and Syrian communities and safeguard decent work conditions.

The project seeks to achieve four key outcomes with interlinked components:

1. Enhanced Productivity and Working Conditions in the Horticulture Sector: The project supports farmers in adopting modern greenhouses and sustainable farming practices, improving productivity, crop quality, and working conditions for both Lebanese and Syrian workers.
2. Upgraded Market Opportunities for Farmers and Agri-Businesses: By identifying and capitalizing on local and international market opportunities, the project helps farmers and agri-businesses in selected sectors to access upgraded markets, fostering inclusive growth.
3. Adoption of Solar Energy Systems for Sustainable Electricity Generation: To counter the energy crisis, the project promotes solar energy systems for farmers, reducing costs, ensuring stable electricity supply, and leading to environmental benefits.
4. Capacity Building for Efficient Resource Management: The project empowers farmers and small agri-businesses with essential business management skills, enhancing their ability to plan, calculate profits, and make informed decisions.

The ILO in the HDPN

Guided by the Recommendation No 205 (2017) Employment and Decent work for peace and resilience, the ILO is committed to working across all three parts of the HDP Nexus. It is recognized that achieving development outcomes and reducing humanitarian need is dependent on being able to prevent violent conflict and building peace. The Decent Work Agenda is an essential element, where employment, decent working conditions and social dialogue can contribute to peace and resilience. In collaboration with member States, tripartite constituents, international and national partners, and with the direct involvement of local populations and stakeholders, a two-fold approach to crisis response can allow for an immediate response centred on decent jobs and livelihoods, which simultaneously contributes to stimulate and assist long-term socio-economic development in an inclusive and rights-based manner. By doing so, decent work and social justice are promoted as key drivers of resilience and peace, addressing the underlying factors of fragility that made the society and economy particularly vulnerable to external shocks in the first place.

The ILO's approach to conflict analysis (PCA)

In the framework of the HDPN, the ILO, in partnership with Interpeace, has developed a document entitled "Peace and Conflict Analysis (PCA), Guidance for ILO Programming in Contexts of Fragility and Conflict.” The overall objective of a PCA is to ensure that ILO programs or projects are designed to make an identified contribution to peace, to avoid doing harm, and to prevent program failure due to superficial knowledge of the context. Specifically, PCAs help to:

• Deepen understanding of the dynamics of peace and conflict and their interactions with decent work issues in the context in which it operates.
• Articulate how ILO initiatives can deliberately contribute to peace and avoid exacerbating conflict.

ILO’s PCA guide provides guidance for the design of ILO initiatives, and world of work initiatives of other organizations, in countries affected by fragility and conflict. It explains how to use a PCA to ensure that programs and projects are conflict-sensitive and contribute to peace in a focused and explicit way. It is intended for managers and staff in ILO country offices or consultants who commission or conduct PCAs and design or adapt programs in fragile contexts, for ILO constituents and partners, and for ILO colleagues who support country teams.

Conducting a PCA is important because initiatives based on a good understanding of peace and conflict dynamics are more likely to achieve their decent work and employment objectives and contribute to peacebuilding. On the other hand, programs that are not well-informed will have difficulty making a concrete contribution to peace or decent work, and may fail and aggravate or create tensions.

The PCA guidance note complements the 2019 ILO Handbook "How to Design, Monitor, and Evaluate Peacebuilding Outcomes in Jobs for Peace and Resilience Programs" by providing additional details on how to integrate conflict analysis into program design.

Objectives of the assignment

The immediate objectives are:

1. To undertake a rapid analysis of peace and conflict dynamics related to the outcomes of the Sida-funded project. The analysis will be focused on identifying entry points to promote gender transformative and conflict-sensitive approaches, peacebuilding and social cohesion through the pillars of ILO’s Decent Work Agenda in the framework of the HDPN. The analysis will feed into ILO’s design and implementation of the projects in Lebanon and possibly into strategies for other HDPN partners and initiatives. The methodology used will be adapted from ILO’s ILO PCA Guidance.
2. To support the integration and implementation of the PCA recommendations for each outcome of the Sida-funded project into the programming through accompaniment support from the service provider.

Specific deliverables of the assignment

The final deliverable of the partnership will be:  

1. A conflict and peaceful coexistence analysis for each component of the projects, composed of 3 elements:

1. 1. The Analysis: The rapid gender responsive/transformative analysis of conflict dynamics related to the world of work focusing on each component of the following sectors of the projects:

• • • Horticulture Sector: The project will support farmers in improving productivity, crop quality, reducing costs such as over spraying of pesticides, and working conditions for both Lebanese and Syrian workers in the horticulture sector. This will be done based on former value chain analyses formerly done by the ILO in the horticulture sector.
    • Selected subsector (To be defined): The project is currently conducting a sector selection of value chains with potential for upgrading market opportunities for farmers and agri-business. The project is using ILO’s Checklist for Conflict-sensitive and peace responsive Value Chain and Inclusive Market System strategy. The aim of this component is to identify and capitalize on local and international market opportunities, to help farmers and agri-businesses in selected sectors to access upgraded markets, fostering inclusive growth.
    • Solar Energy Systems for Agriculture: To counter the energy crisis, the project promotes solar energy systems for farmers, reducing costs, ensuring stable electricity supply, and leading to environmental benefits.
    • Agroprocessing sector: ILO has been working on the sector to promote capacities to support local processing The projects will assess upskilling and reskilling needs in the agro- processing industry in order to support access to markets.
    • Construction sector: ILO EIIP in Lebanon has provided thousands short term job opportunities in the sector. Project have been trying to support social cohesion through its intervention.
    • Tourism sector: tourism market is fundamentally a labour intensive and diverse sector, with high potential for benefiting poor and disadvantaged people. ILO has implemented construction projects including refugees and host community member into promote ecotourism. The project Enable project is working on onsite trainings including both communities, sectors in Lebanon. Careful planning of human resources, is needed to ensure that tourism can not only fulfil its employment creation potential and has a sufficient supply of suitably skilled labour to meet future gaps.

The service provider will conduct a targeted analysis for components of the Enable and Sida project, based on the desk review of existing conflict analysis, secondary data collection and primary data collection in the selected sectors. The analysis will include a snapshot of the main conflict and peace patterns and trends, drawing out and summarizing the conflict and peace drivers most relevant to the components of the project, using the PCA guidance as guidance.

1. 1. Key recommendations for each of the project’s sectors for conflict-sensitive and peace-responsive strategies focusing on:

- Opportunities for building peace through the project’s components, and suggest modifications to the proposed theory of change showing how the ILO can exploit these.

- Conflict sensitivity risks, and how to minimize or mitigate them: on the basis of these findings, identify specific opportunities for contributing to sustaining peace as well as potential risks for unintended consequences (Do No Harm) and develop specific recommendations for maximizing the positive impact of the project on social cohesion and peace;

- Specific entry points for how the project strategy can be made more conflict sensitive and make a more deliberate contribution to social cohesion and peace;

1. 1. Annexes including the list of existing conflict analysis (desk Review), key informants, etc.

Methodology of the assignment

The assignment will be conducted by the service provider and under the direction and supervision of the ILO Beirut office with relevant technical departments involved in Beirut and Geneva as well (including Enterprise Specialists and AP/CRISIS). The service provider will collaborate with local partners and/or consultants who will be able to conduct primary data analysis and produce the report.

The service provider is expected to undertake the following tasks:

Introduction and consultation workshop with the ILO to introduce the assignment and get suggestions and feedback on the approach. The meeting will also serve for the service provider to get a briefing on each of the project’s component, and to suggest how PCA elements can be integrated into ongoing activities under each component, such as ensuring the integration of questions and methodologies into the value chain analysis for component 2.

Desk Research: desk research on the dynamics of peace and conflict in Lebanon, with a focus on each of the project’s component; the synthesis of the desk review will be included in the main report, in particular the analysis in relation to decent work. An annex will list all the existing conflict analyses.

Field Research: at least 20 individual and key informant interviews (KIIs) with relevant stakeholders at national and regional levels who are familiar with the drivers of peaceful coexistence and conflict in the intervention areas, in order to validate findings and fill knowledge gaps from the desk research. Interviewees may include humanitarian, development and social stabilization organizations, CSOs, and NGOs. Where possible, interviews will also be conducted with host communities, ordinary citizens, IDPs, representatives of refugee and host communities, paying particular attention to the gender identity of interviewees. Interviews with ILO’s constituents (social partners and government) might be organized and conducted directly by the ILO with the potential support of the service provider.

While face-to-face interviews are preferable, the safety of researchers and interviewees must be a priority. If possible, the field research might engage with focus group discussions with groups of IDPs, youth, women and host communities.

*In conducting field research with and for vulnerable groups, it will be essential to demonstrate an awareness of power imbalances and dynamics related to gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, status, socio-economic background, and other factors, and to take proactive steps to ensure that the voices and perspectives of excluded groups are accurately represented and that the research does not create opportunities for further conflict.

Finalize the PCA taking into account the observations and recommendations that emerged from it.

Ongoing Support: The IP, in coordination with the ILO, will support the integration and implementation of the PCA recommendations into the project design. This may include advice on the project’s (re)design; logical framework and indicator development). The IP might also facilitate a workshop for the (re)design of the logical framework as well as the theory of change. Further needs (e.g. trainings; implementation partnership; etc.) for longer-term accompaniment may be identified during the implementation of the analysis and presentation of the findings and may be subject to further discussions and follow-on implementation agreements.

The tentative timeframe is as follows:

Activity 1. Preparations and secondary research

Number of working days: 7

Timeframe: 30 November 2023 to 11 December 2023

Associated tasks:

• Meeting with ILO to discuss assignment
• Review of available literature, and project documents
• Preparation of workplan and logistical arrangements

Activity 2. Field research

Number of working days: 14

Timeframe: 11 to 30 December 2023

Associated tasks:

• Conduct at least 20 KIIs and interviews with Lebanese host communities and Syrian refugees in the selected sectors for each of the project’s components

Activity 3. Drafting of the report and validation

Number of working days: 15

Timeframe: 30 December 2023 to 20 January 2024

Associated tasks:

• Meeting with ILO to discuss results of the analysis and recommendations
• Participation and strategic organization of the validation workshop with key stakeholders
• Finalization of report

Payment schedule:

1. First payment covering 20% of the full payment, tentatively to be due upon satisfactory delivery and project approval on the following deliverable expected to be submitted by mid December 2023
   • Deliverable 1: Work plan of the assignment  
2. Second and final payment covering 80% of the full payment, tentatively to be due upon satisfactory delivery and project approval on the following deliverable expected to be submitted by end of January 2024:
   • Deliverable 2: A consolidated report of the PCA for each component of the Sida and Enable project.

Focal Point at ILO:

The Service Provider will coordinate with Federico Barroeta, the Chief Technical Advisor and with Luana Ayala, the Project Technical Officer, Maha Khatta, The Resilience and Crisis specialists, Badra Alawa, the Enterprise Specialist in ILO Beirut Office and with relevant technical departments involved in the ILO Headquarters, in particular AP/CRISIS (Nieves Thomet, Nexus specialist) and the AIMS team.

Required qualification and application

To apply for this assignment, the service provide or implementing partner and the consultants appointed to the exercise shall possess the following qualifications. Please note that individual consultant application will not be accepted:

• Extensive experience conducting gender responsive social peace and conflict related analysis research and adaptive programming including field research in Lebanon.
• Experience in working on social peace issues at the community level and to support UN partners in developing conflict-sensitive policies and programming.
• Knowledge of the ILO and/or the world of work, employment policies employment and social protection policies and programmes, particularly in forced displacement contexts.
• Excellent knowledge of the socio-economic context in Lebanon
• Fluency in Arabic and English.
• Good report writing skills.