Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

This consultancy will support the final evaluation of “The Project for the Implementation of Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Refugee Settlements and Host Communities (MUSHO)” implemented from September 2024 – February 2027. The project aimed to reach 11,000 direct and 43,100 indirect beneficiaries across 5 refugee hosting districts, Adjumani, Yumbe, Madi Okollo, Kyegegwa and Isingiro, in Uganda.

The evaluation will assess the achievement of the project’s goal which was ‘Enhancing women’s agency and resilience through comprehensive approaches to women, peace, and security in the humanitarian context in Uganda. The project Outcomes include:

• Refugee and host community women, girls, men, and boys have increased capacity to actively participate and contribute meaningfully to peacebuilding and conflict mitigation processes;
• Refugee women and youth including women peacebuilders and women human rights defenders’ access timely and quality social and protection services through strengthened protection, referral, and access to justice mechanisms;
• Women and youth have increased participation and benefit from gender responsive climate change mitigation and DRR systems and programs to overcome conflict and climate shocks;
• Income and economic opportunities for refugee and host community women and girls are scaled up to address economically induced conflicts in the humanitarian context, including violent extremism & radicalisation.

The project design was informed by the following Theory of Change.

IF refugee and host community women, men, and youth have increased capacity to actively participate and contribute meaningfully to peacebuilding and conflict mitigation process, 2) IF refugee women and youth including women peacebuilders and women human rights defenders, access timely and quality social and protection services through strengthened protection, referral and access to justice mechanism, 3) IF women and youth have increased participation and benefit in gender-responsive climate change mitigation and DRR systems and programs to overcome conflict and climate shocks, and 4) IF income and economic opportunities for refugee and host community women and girls are scaled up to address economically induced conflicts in the humanitarian context, including violent extremism and radicalization, THEN 5) women’s agency and resilience in peace, security and humanitarian contexts will be enhanced 6) BECAUSE women are key drivers of peace and security and including them in peace process leads to more lasting peace and stable societies.

The MUSHO project has been implemented through Responsible Parties: Women International Peace Centre (WIPC), Alight, Peace Winds Japan (PWJ) alongside other sub-partners such as Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), National Agricultural Research Institute (NaCRRI), Abi Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute (Abi ZARDI), National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE), CFAO Mobility Uganda (Toyota Uganda) and RICCI Every day.

Purpose of the evaluation:

The UN Women Evaluation Policy is the main guiding document that sets forth the principles and organizational framework for evaluation planning, conduct and follow-up in UN Women. These principles are aligned with the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards for Evaluation in the UN System . The key principles for gender-responsive evaluation at UN Women are: 1) National ownership and leadership; 2) UN system coordination and coherence with regard to gender equality and the empowerment of women; 3) Innovation; 4) Fair power relations and empowerment; 5) Participation and inclusion; 6) Independence and impartiality; 7) Transparency; 8) Quality and credibility; 9) Intentionality and use of evaluation; and 10) Ethics.

It is a priority for UN Women that this endline project evaluation will be gender-responsive and will actively support the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment, with emphasis on UN Women’s key areas central to increasing women’s participation in advancing the women peace and security agenda, women’s protection and safety, climate resilience and economic wellbeing in humanitarian action.

The primary intended users of this evaluation are:

• Staff in target Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies, District Local Government and CSOs;
• Target beneficiary communities/groups including grassroot women rights organizations;
• Staff of responsible partners;
• Sectoral leads in the participating UN-agencies and refugee response coordination;
• UN Agencies technical working groups;
• Development partners.

The primary intended uses of this evaluation are:

• Learning and improved decision-making to support the advancement of the NAP III WPS, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) and gender-responsive disaster risk reduction practices;
• Provide accountability for the development effectiveness of the project to the donor and other stakeholders;
• Inform capacity development and mobilization of national stakeholders to advance the WPS agenda, protection services, gender-responsiveness and empowerment of women, girls and youth in humanitarian action;
• Provide lessons learned and recommendations to inform future resource mobilization and project design.

Evaluation objectives, criteria and key questions:

The objectives of the evaluation are to:

• Assess the relevance of the project and its approach in line with local, national, and international priorities on WPS and its intervention in addressing the needs of refugee and host community women in alignment with GEWE;
• Assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the UN Women’s approach for achievement of results, as defined in the logical framework, including the Program Theory of Change;
• Analyze how the human rights approach and gender equality principles were integrated in the design and implementation of the project;
• Identify and validate lessons learned and good practices that support gender equality and human rights in relation to UN Women’s mandate;
• Assess the inter-connectedness and sustainability of UN Women’s initiatives on increasing leadership, protection and economic opportunities for refugee women and analyse possible weakness to improve next steps for scale-up programming;
• Provide actionable recommendations with respect to the HDP nexus.

The evaluation will seek to answer the following key evaluation questions aligned to the UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) evaluation criteria as well as standards based on Human Rights and Gender Equality.

• Support the final evaluation of “The Project for the Implementation of Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Refugee Settlements and Host Communities (MUSHO)”
• Assess the achievement of the project’s goal: ‘Enhancing women’s agency and resilience through comprehensive approaches to women, peace, and security in the humanitarian context in Uganda.
• Assess the relevance of the project and its approach in line with local, national, and international priorities on WPS and its intervention in addressing the needs of refugee and host community women in alignment with GEWE
• Assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the UN Women’s approach for achievement of results, as defined in the logical framework, including the Program Theory of Change
• Analyze how the human rights approach and gender equality principles were integrated in the design and implementation of the project
• Identify and validate lessons learned and good practices that support gender equality and human rights in relation to UN Women’s mandate
• Assess the inter-connectedness and sustainability of UN Women’s initiatives on increasing leadership, protection and economic opportunities for refugee women and analyse possible weakness to improve next steps for scale-up programming
• Provide actionable recommendations with respect to the HDP nexus

• Gender equality
• Human rights
• Project evaluation
• Peacebuilding
• Conflict mitigation
• Climate change adaptation
• Disaster risk reduction
• Economic development
• Humanitarian action
• UN Women Evaluation Policy
• UNEG Norms and Standards for Evaluation

• Experience in conducting end-of-project evaluations
• Knowledge of gender equality and women's empowerment principles
• Familiarity with the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda
• Understanding of humanitarian action and refugee contexts
• Experience with human rights-based approaches
• Familiarity with UN Women's work and evaluation policies
• Knowledge of climate change and disaster risk reduction