Consultant / Consultancy Team-Implementing Cash Assistance Tender, Lebanon - 24723692

Procurement Summary

Country : Lebanon

Summary : Consultant / Consultancy Team-Implementing Cash Assistance

Deadline : 09 Jul 2018

Other Information

Notice Type : Tender

TOT Ref.No.: 24723692

Document Ref. No. :

Competition : ICB

Financier : United Nations Secretariat

Purchaser Ownership : -

Tender Value : Refer Document

Purchaser's Detail

Purchaser : UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES
Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock St.Jnah, UNHCR S&K building, BEIRUT P.O. Box 11-7332, Riad El Solh, Beirut Tel: +961 1 849 201 Fax: +961 1 849 211
Lebanon
Email :lebbe@unhcr.org

Tender Details

Tenders are invited for Consultant / Consultancy Team-Implementing Cash Assistance.

There are close to one million Syrian refugees registered with UNHCR in Lebanon, which continues to be the highest refugee-hosting country per capita in the world. With no approved camps in the country, refugees are living in more than 1, 700 locations across the country. The Syrian refugee response is led by the Government and local actors, supported by the international community.

As the designated lead agency in the refugee response, UNHCR has established a sector-based structure in Beirut and in the field. The structure brings together over 100 UN agencies, national and international NGO partners in identifying and agreeing on the strategic priorities to address the needs of Syrian refugees and other affected populations. The Lebanon national response falls under the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP), whereby UNHCR guides the refugee response and UNDP facilitates the resilience and stabilization component.

The UNHCR operational response in Lebanon is one of the largest for the organization. Media and donor attention and the frequency of influential high-profile visitors are high. The Office has some are located in Beirut, Zahle, Tripoli, Tyre, and Qobayat.

Cash Based Interventions (CBIs) were identified as a corporate priority in 2013, and UNHCR-s Policy on Cash-Based Interventions (10/2016) commits to scaling up and broadening its CBIs by 2020. UNHCR is committed to ensuring that all CBIs are assessed, designed, implemented and monitored in a way that minimizes protection risks and enhances protection benefits, and to ensure that protection is mainstreamed in CBI programming.

UNHCR has been implementing cash assistance in Lebanon for a wide range of purposes, including protection, basic needs, education, shelter, health and livelihoods. The research explored the direct and indirect impact on SGBV prevention, mitigation and response of the following three cash components: Protection Cash Assistance Programme (PCAP), Multi-purpose Cash Assistance Programme (MCAP), and Emergency Cash Assistance (ECA). Among them, PCAP and ECA are specifically meant to address a protection incident or vulnerabilities, while MCAP aims to enable socio-economically vulnerable families to meet their most basic needs, pursuing the delivery of minimum safety nets, this is, creating a safe and enabling environment through Cash-Based interventions that mirrors social protection systems aiming at ensuring a smooth transition later on. Protection incident is an event where an individual has experienced harm, violence, abuse, exploitation, severe form of discrimination or is at high risk of the aforementioned. A more detailed description of the different cash modalities can be found below:

· MCAP (Multi-purpose Cash Programme): Meant to specifically address the socio-economic vulnerability of the refugee population, and it is targeted to households living in extreme poverty to enable them to meet their basic needs;

· ECA (Emergency Cash Assistance): A one-off assistance intended to address an urgent need arising from exposure to a protection incident;

· PCAP (Protection Cash Assistance): Meant to address the needs arising from a protection incident or situation that could not be addressed with a one-time cash injection only, more specifically to bridge a period of extreme hardship, transition out of a protection concern, and support people due to their vulnerable profiles.

Building on the findings of Phase I of the consultancy, focused on an initial assessment of the contribution of MCAP to mitigating the risk of being exposed to SGBV; and the impact of PCAP and ECA in enhancing access to response services and protection outcomes, this consultancy aims at zooming into specific aspects in the impact of cash based assistance on SGBV prevention and response. This relates, first, to potential quantitative correlations between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the different cash modalities having similar vulnerabilities (included continued vs. discontinued cases), to be done through the identification of risk profiles and the analysis of socio-demographic and other characteristics of cash recipients within and across databases.

This will be followed by a second stage, which will articulate around the implementation of a survey among representative samples of comparison groups taking into account the risk profiling stage above, and a qualitative analysis of cross-cutting issues with regards to the outcome and impact of using and designing cash-based assistance within a holistic package of services aiming at ensuring protection. This relates especially to the quality of services provided to survivors and accessed through cash; limitations in communication and awareness regarding the protection-related purpose of cash among stakeholders and parties involved, and how this impacts their leeway to plan and overcome challenges; the potential tailoring of each modality as per circumstantial factors affecting the individual beyond SGBV, and the exploration of potential exit strategies for SGBV-related concerns in each of the cash modalities in point.

Overarching research question:

What are the various risk profiles and demographic characteristics of the recipients of different cash assistance modalities in UNHCR Lebanon and what are the protection outcomes of each of the modalities, including cases where some of them are received simultaneously?

Overall scope:

The research will explore all components of UNHCR Lebanon-s cash interventions contribution to SGBV prevention, mitigation and response. The consultant will shed light on the following areas of research:

o PCAP: comparative outcome between non-PCAP, graduated PCAP and discontinued PCAP cases as per the mitigation of consequences of an SGBV incident, risk or ongoing violation. The research will look into the added-value and linkages between cash assistance and the different stages of case management and response services;

o MCAP: comparative outcome between UNHCR MCAP and non-MCAP beneficiaries facing similar risk to SGBV, as per the mitigation of contributing factors (limited resources, stress, frustration, inability to provide for families) to intimate partner violence and negative comping mechanisms - i.e. child/early marriage, survival sex, child labour;

o ECA: outcome on risk mitigation for survivors facing immediate danger.

Overlap in modalities will be considered.

Methodology

The research will target:

1. PCAP beneficiaries (on-going vs. discontinued)

2. MCAP beneficiaries only (on-going, discontinued and not receiving (PoCs who never received))

3. Beneficiaries who received MCAP and PCAP to assess profiles of beneficiaries per cash modality;

4. ECA beneficiaries

Nationalities targeted among beneficiaries will be decided at a later stage and will reflect distribution on the ground.

Within this framework, the consultant will undertake rigorous research (mixed quantitative/qualitative methods) to explore the following key questions: The methodological techniques proposed should capture the different protection concerns in each of the datasets.

The consultancy is expected to follow a sequence around two phases:

· Phase I (weeks 1 - 5 as per the timeframe below): Phase I will focus on data exploration to identify risk profiles and socio-demographic and other characteristics of recipients across databases, as well as other relevant data to refine the methodological note and lead to a defined research protocol focusing on protection outcomes (quantitative). This phase also includes a desk review on cash related protection and SGBV outcomes, the findings from phase 1 and the development of an elaborate, contextualized theory of change (ToC) with regards to cash modalities, other interventions and assistance, environment variables and contributing factors in relation to protection and SGBV outcomes.

· Phase II (weeks 6 - 20 as per the timeframe below): Preparation, implementation, analysis and documentation of a survey among representative samples of persons of concern (quantitative); production of relevant qualitative research tools for individual interviews/FGDs/KIIs and analysis of results (qualitative).

A list of preliminary guiding questions for each of the Phases above can be found as follows:

Phase I

· Inter-modality comparative analysis:

o What is the profile of the survivors receiving only MCAP, only PCAP and only ECA? (age, sex, nationality, region, type of incident, etc.)

o And what is the profile and proportion of survivors receiving both MCAP and PCAP? Is there any impact on the length of PCAP or in protection incidents flagged if MCAP is also being provided and vice-versa?

o What is the profile of those receiving ECA and then referred to PCAP, in comparison with those who receive PCAP directly?

· Intra-modality comparative analysis:

o What is the proportion of cases receiving MCAP and not receiving MCAP which have though similar profiles, vulnerabilities (in terms of protection concerns and identity categories)? Are there new/reemerged protection concerns flagged as a result of the discontinuation?

o What is the proportion of survivors not receiving PCAP compared to the proportion of those receiving PCAP? Are there any protection concerns flagged as a result of the discontinuation/graduation? For which profiles has PCAP effectively contributed to mitigating or overcoming specific consequences of SGBV? Out of these, how many are resorting to negative coping mechanisms once PCAP ends (as a result of the discontinuation)?

o Do socio-demographic or other key variables of SGBV survivors or persons with similar risk profiles play a significant role in differentiating groups at risk?

Phase II

· Quantitative (su

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