Consultancy to Conduct Safety Audits at International Rescue Committee

The Overall Objective Of This Assignment Is To Assess The Gender-specific Impacts Of The Recent Flooding On The Safety And Security Of Vulnerable Groups, Particularly Women And Girls, The Elderly, Children And PWDs In Nairobi, Tana River And Mandera Counties, To Inform And Enhance Protection Response And Reduce The Risk Of Gender-based Violence Using The Human Rights Based Approach. The Specific Objectives Of The Consultancy Are

• Objective 1: Assess the effectiveness of existing safety and risk mitigation measures in place to protect vulnerable persons, especially women and girls, the elderly, children and PWDs from GBV and harmful practice in affected areas, identifying strengths, gaps, and weaknesses in current protection mechanisms and community support structures.
• Objective 2: Assess the prevalence and types of GBV incidents that have occurred as a result of the flooding by specific locations and contexts, and survivor profile (age, sex, ability).
• Objective 3: Assess the protection needs and risks besides GBV that have occurred because of the flooding by specific locations, contexts and vulnerable groups (age, sex, location and diversity) especially among the elderly, PWDs, children and other marginalized groups/individuals.
• Objective 4: Utilize the protection service mapping tool to evaluate the availability, accessibility, and quality of aftercare services, including GBV support, in flood-affected areas, identify barriers to adequate support, and assess community awareness and attitudes towards protection issues such as GBV, the needs of the elderly, PWDs, and children, and examine the impact of these factors on reporting and help-seeking behaviors.
• Objective 5: To recommend an action plan with short, medium, and long-term interventions and recommendations for local authorities, humanitarian organizations, and other stakeholders to improve the safety of vulnerable individuals and groups i.e girls, women, PWDs, children, elderly and ethnic minority or other marginalized group’s safety during climate change induced disasters such as floods.

Scope of Work
Required
In liaison with the Women Protection and Empowerment (WPE) Program Team, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) team, Protection and rule of Law team, guidance from UNFPA and input from partners, the consultant will be required to:

• Undertake a desk review related to county safety audits on gender-based violence and general protection situation in Nairobi, Tana River and Mandera counties.
• Conduct consultations with relevant stakeholders and use the recommendations to enrich the safety audits.
• Collect qualitative data from the community with inclusion of the vulnerable persons more so women and girls to assess their safety and security concerns, safe access to services and other concerns that put them at risk of GBV, exclusion and rights violations in the four counties.
• Develop, in consultation with IRC, a detailed data management plan, including: adoption of tools; recruitment and training of research assistants; pre-testing and review of tools; sampling methodology; implementation of data collection in the field; quality assurance; ethical considerations; data analysis, and reporting.
• Lead data collection in the counties including designing and leading key informant interviews and focus group discussions.
• Analyze data rigorously and robustly using appropriate qualitative analysis techniques.
• Conduct a validation exercise with stakeholders, including IRC.
• Submit the approved safety audits reports per county to IRC

Using a feminist and diversity inclusion approach, the safety audit assessment will gather information on the various needs, abilities, and coping mechanisms of men, women, boys, and girls.
Deliverables / Outputs

• An inception report defining the audit study approach, methodology, sampling criteria, and tools used for qualitative data collection. The sampling plan should be inclusive of all demographic groups and take age, sex, location and disability inclusion into account.
• A thorough and well-structured safety audit report not longer than 15 pages per county.
• Supplementary files, including photographs, original and cleaned datasets, and statistical output files.
• Presentations using PowerPoint and a fact sheet, abstract, or both will be utilized to share results with stakeholders.
• Present the report to relevant parties, such as the protection, GBV and SRH working groups, who will be asked to validate the findings and contribute.
• An executive copy with a summarized summary of findings in words of no longer than 15 pages, and in a PowerPoint presentation.
• 5.0 Date and Duration of Consultancy

The consultancy period shall be for 20 days. The Executive and county-specific audit reports must be submitted to IRC within 5 days after the validation exercise.
Minimum Qualifications
The ideal consultant should have: -

• A post-graduate degree in Gender and Development, social sciences or another relevant field.
• Over 5 years of experience conducting gender studies, protection monitoring, vulnerability assessments and or safety audits with evidence of publications or field reports on gender and gender-based violence, general protection, child protection issues with experience in women, children, and adolescents programming.
• The consultant must be able to demonstrate experience in conducting safety audits of a similar or related assignment.
• Experience in working collaboratively with government and other development partners.
• Experience working with marginalized and special groups.
• The ability to communicate in English, Kiswahili, and local languages as spoken in Tana River, or Mandera is an added advantage.

The Successful Candidate Will Be Required To

• Follow protection guidelines when engaging with all participants in the safety audit process.
• Adhere to the organization policy of different partners involved in the safety audit assessment.
• Adhere to human rights, Protection Principles, socio-ecological, systems strengthening and MHPSS approaches.
• Be guided by the spirit of collaboration, cooperation, partnerships, balance of power, and meaningful engagement of marginalized voices and women, girls, young people, and vulnerable, persons living with disability among others.