Innovative online and in-person advocacy to influence local human rights change

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Terms of reference for a final evaluation of the project

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The applicants for the evaluation must provide:

1. A technical offer composed of a presentation of the methodological approach, a timetable for the execution of the evaluation and the references of the consultant(s) (detailed Curriculum/a)
2. A detailed financial offer (in euros, showing all the headings, unit costs, number of units, etc.)

Applications must be sent by e-mail to: erinauro@fidh.org no later than June 11th 2024

Include in the subject line: FIDH/application evaluation

Applications will be processed after the deadline for receipt of applications.

I Purpose of these terms of reference and objectives of the evaluation

In the framework of a programme that FIDH has undertaken between July 2021 and May 2024, FIDH intends to undertake an evaluation of its undertakings through the project, which results will be used to inform future programme planning with the member organisations and will also be shared with other FIDH teams to ensure learning is shared.

This evaluation will be carried out by an independent and qualified expert who will verify whether the programme’s activities have achieved the planned objectives in accordance with the stipulations of the contract that FIDH undertook with the programme’s principal supporter, Irish Aid.

The evaluation must allow, through the methodological tools proposed by the evaluation team, to :

• Analyse the coherence and relevance of the intervention strategy and the mechanism;
• Assess the quality and quantity of the project’s implementation: assessment of the results achieved in relation to the expected results and the means used;
• Assess the impact of the project;
• Analyse the sustainability of the actions and make recommendations in this respect

II Presentation of the organisation and the programme to evaluate :

1. FIDH :

Founded in 1922, the FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) brings together 188 organisations in 116 countries, which share actions and strategies to strengthen the respect of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. FIDH considers that the transformation of society must be led by national actors.

Its activities aim at empowering its member organisations and partners and increasing their influence at the local level. It acts at the national, regional and international levels to help them fight against human rights violations and consolidate democracy.

FIDH, in support of its member organisations and partners, intervenes to document the most serious crimes, to accompany victims before national, regional and international justice, and to advocate with political authorities and influential diplomats to ensure that judicial systems are sufficiently independent to provide effective remedies for victims.

FIDH deploys different types of actions that have proven to be effective: urgent reactions (public or confidential); international fact-finding missions; judicial observation and defence missions; political dialogue, advocacy, litigation, awareness raising campaigns. FIDH relies on a network of international volunteer experts, while promoting the exchange of experiences between defenders around the world to encourage the sharing of know-how. FIDH evaluates its activities to increase their effectiveness and to adjust its objectives if necessary.

2. Institutional organisation and functioning of the FIDH

The organisation and functioning of FIDH reflect its governance principles: at the base, the 188 member organisations. FIDH is thus based on three pillars:

• The Congress, which brings together the 188 member organisations of FIDH. It meets every three years and debates the thematic and geographical priorities of the FIDH and decides on the political orientations of the organisation.
• The International Board: It is composed of 22 voluntary members from FIDH member organisations and elected by the Congress, the President, the Treasurer, 15 Vice-Presidents and 5 Secretaries General. It sets the main strategic orientations and objectives, in the framework of the political orientations defined by the Congress. It approves the annual accounts of the FIDH. It meets three times a year and reports to the Congress.
• Headquartered in Paris, the International Secretariat is composed of a professional team, headed by a Director General. Its teams are organised by regions and thematic priorities. The International Secretariat has delegations to the UN in Geneva and to the European Union in Brussels, to the African Union in Nairobi, to the International Criminal Court in The Hague; a regional offices in Asia (Bangkok). It also has a communications department and administrative and financial department. In permanent contact with the field, it implements the decisions of the FIDH’s political bodies in collaboration with the member organisations, the mission officers and the members of the international and executive boards.

3. Summary of the project:

Context prior to the Project

Worldwide, attacks on civil society in general and the human rights movement in particular remain prevalent. In 2019, the United Nations tracked 357 killings and 30 enforced disappearances of human rights defenders (HRDs), journalists and trade unionists in 47 countries (Secretary-General’s report to the UN Economic and Social Council on progress towards the SDGs, July 2020). With the arrival of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, requests for material support from HRDs and civil society to the ProtectDefenders.EU mechanism – of which FIDH is a Consortium member – increased exponentially. The data collected by the mechanism shows that HRDs and civil society representatives are subject to a myriad of threats that impede their work, ranging from harassment and restrictions of movement to arbitrary detention, attempted murder, enforced disappearance and assassination (see https://www.protectdefenders.eu/en/stats.html).

While the repression of civil society is a global trend, it takes different forms as a result of country-specific contexts. FIDH, on the basis of local information provided by its member organisations, identifies three main categories of country situation:

In dictatorial or oppressive regimes, civil society activity has been totally curtailed and civil society voices remain silenced. While democratic openings are difficult or impossible to predict, governments may still engage in economic opening of these countries, which provides the opportunities to use international leverage to improve country situations. Countries in this category include Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burundi, China, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

In countries like Algeria, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, India, Morocco, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Thailand, human rights organisations which have played an active role in developing their societies have increasingly been under attack or are on the verge of having their activities totally curtailed. In these contexts, international condemnation and qualification of human rights violations can create pressure – such as through conditioning of development aid – to roll back or slow the shrinking of civil society space.

Thirdly, in countries torn by violent and armed conflicts, the capacity of civil society is severely limited to play its essential role in promoting peace, justice, and effective, accountable and inclusive institutions. This is the case in the DRC, Myanmar, Mali, Palestine, Sudan, countries which are the focus of attention of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Lastly, even countries in transition like Colombia and Sudan are continuing to see attacks against civil society organisations who are needed to contribute to advancement towards implementation of the SDGs.

Project Approach and Rationale

In situations where dialogue between civil society and authorities is impossible or blocked because of deliberate attempts to silence independent critical voices, or where conflicts have been sparked and/or entrenched, FIDH’s experience demonstrates that improvements are achieved by combining action from inside the country with pressure and activation of relevant monitoring mechanisms from outside, using international levers of influence and monitoring mechanisms that have been developed within the United Nations (UN), in both political and quasi-judicial fields, that help characterise violations, call upon the countries concerned to remedy them and provide them with technical assistance. UN human rights protection mechanisms provide advice, cooperation, and qualification on the realisation of human rights at the global level.

Building on the conclusions of these fora, some States and groups of States include human rights in their political dialogue with third countries, and develop their foreign and development policies as levers for change. As such, the European Union (EU) has been developing an important number of policy instruments that are dedicated to the promotion of human rights and often tailored to follow up on the conclusions and recommendations of the UN human rights recommendations. Through its foreign policy (through public denunciations, sanctions or political dialogues) as the world’s first development donor, and increasingly as a leading trade and investment player, the EU’s human rights policy, when tuned appropriately, has proven to contribute to exercising significant leverage towards third states, and to legislative and policy changes.

Lastly, and as significant drivers of change in societies throughout the world, international financial institutions (IFIs) and multinational corporations are increasingly drawing attention to human rights in their spheres of intervention and are gradually engaging with global and local civil society organisations to measure the impact of their intervention, and in doing so, to open up civic space.

To measure evolutions on the ground and formulate relevant recommendations to the authorities concerned, EU and UN instruments and institutions as much as IFIs and economic actors rely upon or benefit from the information and the expertise of human rights NGOs (HRNGOs) and (HRDs). Yet, the interaction between HRNGOs and these political or economic actors is complicated as a result of the isolation of HRNGOs and HRDs in certain countries, or the absence of opportunities or appropriate methodology to interact with these stakeholders. In addition, in becoming efficient and pertinent, civil society participants to many UN human rights mechanisms have also been under attack by States. More recently and because of the Covid-19 crisis and the health measures that have been put in place in response to the pandemic, travel restrictions, full or partial border closures in the target countries of the project as well as in countries where advocacy activities are traditionally organised, are leading to a greater isolation of local HRDs and HRNGOs. Travel to international fora and institutions has been limited and/or institutional stakeholder meetings are being limited or held in smaller settings without or with restricted civil society participation. In this context, the combined work of FIDH with its advocacy delegations in Paris, Brussels and Geneva, building on the capacities of its member and partner organisations through bridging the gap between local civil society and regional and international mechanisms, facilitating access to interlocutors and undertaking joint advocacy meetings, has proven useful to guarantee that the human rights mechanisms or policies address genuine local human rights challenges. Indeed, since the beginning of the pandemic, FIDH has developed its capacity to continue advocacy activities in an online format.

Project Objectives

To mobilise Intergovernmental mechanisms and international levers of influence to influence target countries through:

Project Results Framework (see attached at end of document)

Project Countries :

Africa: Burundi, DRC, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, Zimbabwe

Asia: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam

Americas: Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela

Europe: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Uzbekistan

MENA: Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Yemen

III Methodology, timetable for the evaluation

This evaluation is contractual and was foreseen at the outset of the project. It concerns all the activities carried out within the framework of the programme. This evaluation should make it possible to highlight the major results of the programme while pointing out the strategic horizons.

The evaluation must allow, through the methodological tools proposed by the expert / the evaluation team and following the evaluation criteria of the OECD DAC which are « relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability » to achieve the following objectives

1. Analyse the coherence and relevance of the intervention strategy and the mechanism. Evaluative questions that the evaluation will seek to answer include

• To what extent did the coherence of the activities and the methodology chosen for the intervention contribute to the achievement of the programme’s results?
• This evaluation should have a several case studies with specific focus on the programme’s strategic and innovative engagement with mechanisms, in alignment with the global objective of the programme, and assess the pertinence and effectiveness of certain advocacy asks and mechanisms that were priority throughout the programme, notably :

1) the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar,

2) the UN database of all business enterprises involved in the Israeli settlements

3) the investigative mechanism and the re-mandating of the Special Rapporteur on Belarus and

4) the creation of the FFM on Sudan adopted by the UN Human Rights Council.

• How do beneficiaries and programme partners assess the relevance and effectiveness of the aforementioned mechanisms in addressing human rights violations within their respective contexts?
• How did they take ownership of the activities and approaches chosen in the intervention?
• Which strategic choices have proven to be appropriate to the context and objectives of the programme and which should be made differently for the continuation of the programme?
• Has the programme’s steering system been able to adapt to the changing context?

2. Evaluate qualitatively and quantitatively the implementation of the project: assessment of the results achieved in relation to the results anticipated and the means used. Evaluative questions that the evaluation will seek to answer include

• Have the results of the programme been achieved in relation to the results set out in the logical framework?
• What results have exceeded those initially anticipated and why? What lessons can be learned from this analysis ?
• Which operational and strategic choices contributed most significantly to the achievement of the programme results?
• What is the assessment of the activities and results achieved in relation to the human and financial resources used?

3. Assess the impact of the project. Evaluative questions that the evaluation will seek to answer include :

• Assessment of the programme in view of the objectives and issues to which the programme sought to respond, with a specific case studies regarding the aforementioned priority strategies/methodology.
• Assessment of the programme in relation to the intended impact on beneficiaries and target groups.

4. Analyse the sustainability of the actions and make recommendations in this regard. Evaluative questions that the evaluation will seek to answer include

• What sustainability measures have been implemented and how do local partners, target groups and beneficiaries assess them?
• To what extent has the project management system (partnership, steering committee, consultations) contributed to the ownership and sustainability of the programme?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the programme to capitalise on in order to continue activities in the field?
• If relevant, how can the strengths of the engagement with the mechanisms analysed in the case studies be leveraged to ensure the long-term impact of the project?

Proposed methodology for the evaluation process

The evaluation will be based on :

• a document review :
• documents related to the programme (project, activity reports, etc.)
• public documents produced throughout the project (press releases, video, guide, reports, analysis note)
• Methodology documents produced in the framework of the project

Information and interviews collected from :

• the team in Brussels, Geneva and Paris in charge of the implementation of this programme and the supervision
• the project beneficiaries throughout the world
• other international experts, diplomats (when possible) and relevant stakeholders with whom the project interacted with.

Following an initial consultation with the team in charge of the programme, the evaluator will produce a scoping note which will include the evaluation methodology, the list of people to be interviewed and the field mission(s) to be planned.

Based on this note, the evaluator will then conduct individual and group interviews, mostly online, and where possible in Geneva and Brussels.

An initial report will be submitted to the team in charge of the programme and to the FIDH management on the basis of a provisional report. The final report will then be produced, taking into account any comments made during the feedback.

IV Practical arrangements, deliverables, contracts, selection procedure

Profile of the candidates

The evaluation will be carried out by a consultant or a team of consultants who should have the following qualities

• Proven experience in evaluation of civil society actor strengthening programmes
• Knowledge and experience on the functionning of UN institutions, international human rights protection mechanisms and EU human rights policies.
• Very good knowledge of the current situation of local human rights civil society is an asset.
• Competence on the challenges of strengthening civil societies in the South
• Ability to explore multi-stakeholder programmes
• Knowledge of French and Spanish are a strong asset

For obvious reasons of independence and externality of the evaluation exercise, persons who are members or employees of organisations that are members of the programme and consultants in relation to the programme cannot apply for this call.

Evaluation budget :

The budget for the evaluation will not exceed EUR 10 000 including VAT (including direct costs and contingencies).

Terms and conditions:

• Consultancy contract
• Payment in two instalments: a first instalment upon signature of the contract and a second instalment upon delivery of the final report

Expected deliverables

• Deliverable 1. At the beginning of the assignment: a methodological offer (8 p. maximum)
• Deliverable 2. A draft evaluation report
• Deliverable 3. A final evaluation report (60 p maximum)

Suggested calendar

The evaluation could take place as early as June 2024, for an initial report to be submitted a month later.

V Evaluation procedure

The tenders will be evaluated technically according to the following grid.

Points of the technical offer	scale
Methodological proposal	10 points
Suitability of the team of consultants for the service	10 points
Suitability of the financial offer for the service	10 points