Duration: 01 November – 30 November 2020

Background:

Oxfam in Thailand, Thailand Association of Social Workers, the Women Network Overcoming Violence and Muslimah Women’s Club in Narathiwas have been partnering to implement the EU-funded project, “Women Networks Increasing Accountability of Religious and Governmental Institutions to Reduce Domestic Violence in Deep South”, that has started from January 2018 to December 2020 (3 years).   The specific objective of the project is to establish an enabling environment for effective participation of women networks in the formulation and implementation of VAW reduction processes and in calling for policy accountability of governmental and religious institutions to cultural context in the Deep South.

Purpose of the Study:

To conduct final evaluation of the project in terms of its relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability.  The study will use qualitative methodology.  The findings and key lessons learned will be used by the project team to inform and engage with provincial and national policy and law makers during the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence in November 2020.

The Project’s Theory of Change:

Domestic violence in Deep South is widespread.  One fourth of Muslim married women in Pattani, a representative province, was physically attacked by her spouse or partner, and almost one fifth had forced sex, according to a 2011 reproductive health survey.   The country cannot achieve SDG 5.2 Elimination of all forms of violence against all women without being more sensitive to the specific culture and context in the deep south and increasing measures of prevention and protection that are relevant to women’s everyday life. 

The justice system that protects and prevents domestic violence against women in the deep south is different from the rest of the country.  The conflict situation has allowed the dual justice system to happen that the Islamic family law is applied in conjunction with state laws but the effectiveness is doubtful showing a large gap of collaboration, prejudices on women, and leaving women in the void of help and much poorer after divorce.

The obsolete male-dominated family law and the under-funded mechanisms set the limit of support to domestic violence victims.  A lot of women do not gain protection from more physical and sexual abuses from their drug-addicted husband, are denied of justice as the first wife, and do not receive fair share of marital property and zero allowance after divorce for herself and children.  Similarly, state officers such as policemen reflect the upbringing and, instead of reinforcing Thai law against wife beating, confirm the gender prejudices against the law, while other state officers are rote working.  Without policy leadership, the rote working continues and VAW remains a norm.  

The Project's theory of change is that if the local women who have access to influence duty bearers are empowered with gender knowledge, counseling skills and advocacy networking, they can at the minimum provide direct services to women victims of domestic violence and increasingly interact with the duty bearers with evidence to realize their gap of policy implementation, and if the duty bearers are shown with evidence and encouraged to work together across the culture, laws and entities, they can jointly develop new local model of integrated services and can convince provincial and national policy makers to allocate more budget and fix the justice system to be more relevant to the women’s needs.

Result 1: Women networks have strengthened gender and influencing capacity and confidence to engage with religious and governmental duty bearers and participate in VAW reduction processes.

Result 2: The Islamic Council in Narathiwas has increased awareness of women’s rights and Thai laws through engagements with the women networks and deliver better services for women facing domestic violence in Narathiwas.

Result 3: Multidisciplinary team, ICON and the women networks have jointly developed a new women’s protection process that applies both Thai and Islamic laws and deliver better services for all women facing domestic violence in Narathiwas.

Result 4: The women networks, the multi-disciplinary team and ICON have jointly advocated with provincial and governmental policy makers for adoption and replication of innovative VAW prevention and protection processes in other provinces in Deep South.

The Final Evaluation

The final evaluation will answer these questions, through a series of guiding questions listed below. 

Key question: To what extent has the project achieved results, and is relevant to the needs of stakeholders, effectively implemented, efficient in project management, and creating impact and sustainability?  

Sub-questions:

1. Relevance: To what extent is the project relevant to immediate and longer-term needs of women facing domestic violence?  To what extent is the project follow human rights and gender just approach?  To what extent is the project relevant to the needs of provincial Islamic councils, state agencies and Thai government’s commitment to SDG?

2. Effectiveness: To what extent has the project achieved results and outputs? Are there unintended results, and are those unintended results negative or positive to the goal?  What are best practices that are recommended for scaling up?  What are not going well, why did they not go well and what can be improved?

3. Efficiency: To what extent is the project management efficient in supporting the partners to fulfilling the implementation? To what extent is the project efficient in terms of value for money?

4. Impact and sustainability: To what extent does the project contribute to the replication of model from Narathiwat province to other provinces, and how sustainable the model is in terms of adaptability to the provincial context and gain support of resources from those provinces? To what extend does the project contribute to the changing perceptions of women’s rights in marriage, divorce and gender equality in the deep south provinces?  What policies and laws showing signs of improvement that are contributory from the project?

Methodology

The study will use in-depth interviews and focus groups* 

1. Desk review of the project documents i.e. proposal, baseline report, mid-term review report, annual reports, notes of advocacy meetings, gender training reports, women database analysis, project publications, print and social media.
2. Interviews with project alliance i.e. Yala women network; and community models in Pattani and Yala
3. FCG with Islamic leaders i.e. Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, Songkhla
4. FCG with Islamic studies, women’s rights study (Dr Amporn), human rights commissioner (Dr Suchat)
5. 2 FCGs with Health and Social Services units in Yala and Pattani; and Justice unit
6. FCG with 7 women beneficiaries (and write up 3 cases)  

*subject to discussion with external evaluater

Timeline

Application:

Individual or team, please send a letter of interest with some research ideas as well as CV of all team members with 2 names of referees by 8 November 2020 to HR (hr_thailand@oxfam.org.uk ).

Deliverables:

1. Field research plan and questions for approval by 5 November 2020.
2. Final report in English on 25 November 2020.
3. Final report in Thai by 30 November 2020.

Oxfam Team:

• Project manager                              Kasina Limsamarnphun VAW Project Advisor
• Programme Officer                          Fitra Jehwoh FJehwoh@oxfam.org.uk

Terms of payment

The proposed costs should include fee, travel costs, field interview and meeting costs, translation costs, report costs, VAT and other related taxes.  Please provide the breakdown of costs.  When approved, the costs will be considered as a lump sum.

Payments will be made into 3 installments as follows;

• 1^st payment: 50% after contract signing and invoice received
• 2^nd payment: 40% upon approval of English report
• Final payment: 10% upon submission of Thai reports

Qualifications and Criteria of selection

• Relevant postgraduate university degree and 5-10 year experiences in project evaluation or social research.
• Good knowledge of the project context, local culture and gender norms (violence against women and girls, domestic violence, gender justice, Muslim and conflict context, women empowerment, transparency and accountability of duty bearers).
• Ability to communicate effectively and independently in Thai and preferably in local Malayu language.
• Sensitivity to gender and to the participants’ rights and security.

• Time and resource management

General Terms and Conditions:

• Confidentiality of information:
  • All documents and data collected will be treated as strictly confidential and used solely to facilitate analysis. 
  • Consent should be collected prior to interview recording or photographs.
  • Interviewees will not be quoted in the reports without their permission.
• All soft and hard copy of the assignment will be treated as the property of Oxfam
• In any circumstances consultant shall have no opportunity to alter the timeline and planning of data collection and submission of first draft and final report. 
• The consultant/consulting organization must maintain the standard quality in data collection, processing and reporting.  And follow WHO guidelines to VAW research: World Health Organization (2001) Putting women first: Ethical and safety recommendations for research on domestic violence against women, Geneva: World Health Organisation, available at: http://www.who.int/gender/violence/womenfirtseng.pdf
• The consultant shall have the responsibility to rewrite the report, modification of sections until the satisfaction of quality required by Oxfam.
• In case of any deviation, Oxfam shall have the right to terminate the agreement at any point of the project.
• Consultant/consulting organization shall be bound to pay back the full money to Oxfam given as advance of payment in case of any deviation, dissatisfaction of quality and other point mentioned in the agreement.

• Oxfam GB will deduct withholding tax from the consultancy fees which will be in conformity with the prevailing government rates.
• Consultant should follow Oxfam’s code of conduct, policies (i.e. Safeguard policy, Child Protection Policy).

Annex 1: Outline of report

• Acknowledgements
• Glossary/Acronyms
• Introduction
• Executive Summary
• Methodology
• Scope and Limitation
• Findings as questions
• Update value of relevant indicators
• Conclusion and recommendations

Annexes