Terms of Reference
Duration: 1 August – 15 October 2020
Proposals are invited from individuals and organizations who meet the profile described below until 20 July 2020.
Background:
Oxfam in Thailand, Thailand Association of Social Workers, the Women Network Overcoming Violence and Muslimah Women’s Club in Narathiwat 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:
The purpose of the consultancy is to review the project’s performance of the women counselling service and advocacy at the Islamic Council Office of Narathiwat and its impact on women direct and indirect beneficiaries as well as policy of other state and Islamic duty bearers in the province. The review will make a comparison with the baseline collected in 2018, and make recommendations for the final stage of the project to influence duty bearers. This is a qualitative study.
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 women facing domestic violence. 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 of all duty bearers, 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 facing 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 cultures, 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.
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 Midterm Review
The midterm review will answer these questions, through a series of guiding questions listed below focusing on finding evidence to identify and verify the relevance, effectiveness and impact of the project, also updating the indicators in the Logical Framework.
Key questions: What are the improvements of services at the Islamic Council Office in Narathiwat (ICON) for women facing domestic violence as a result of the project’s investment in the last two years? How does the project’s collaboration with ICON impact the policy environment in Narathiwat towards achieving gender justice for women facing domestic violence?
Sub-questions:
1. What are the service improvements at ICON? Who conduct and collaborate in those services? Why do ICON cooperate more?
2. The VAW database at ICON is established under the project, what knowledge does it create to support advocacy and women’s service? How can the database be improved?
3. How effective are the services serving women to their needs? How is the collaborative model of ICON-MT working? What is still the gap and recommended actions?
4. What are the snowballing actions from the collaboration in ICON downward to communities and upward to policy environment improvement? How are community-based projects linking with the service in ICON? What benefits do the communities receive from engaging with the project?
5. How have the women volunteers changed gender perspectives in the past two years as a result of working and learning in the project? What are key activities that contribute most to the changed perspectives? What policy impact has it made as a result of changed perspectives?
6. How do the women volunteers and ICON influence policy makers and service providers i.e. multi-disciplinary units? What roles do Oxfam and Thailand Association of Social Workers play in supporting them?
Methodology
The midterm review is recommended to use qualitative methodology. Methods can include:
Timeline (01 Aug-2020 to 15 Oct-2020)
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Lead |
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Deadline of proposal submission |
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Interview and selection |
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Midterm review start date and end date |
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Desk review and submission of field research plan and questions as well as research ethical guidelines for approval |
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Field research |
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Draft report submission and presentation to Committee in Thai |
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Final report submission in Thai (40 pages not including annexes) – soft file and 15 hard copies Final report in English (25 pages not including annexes) – soft file and 5 hard copies |
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Application:
Please send a letter of interest with some research ideas, limitations of conducting research if any, questions, and quotation, as well as CV with 2 names of referees, and 2 samples of research papers or reports as lead writer by 19 July 2020 to Human Resource Department through hr_thailand@oxfam.org.uk
The proposed costs should include fee, travel costs, field interview and meeting costs, translation costs, report printing costs, VAT and other related taxes. Please provide the breakdown of costs. When approved, the costs will be considered as a lump sum.
Deliverables:
Oxfam Team:
Gender Project Advisor
Terms of payment
This is a lump sum agreement. Payments will be made into 3 installments as follows;
Qualifications and Criteria of selection
General Terms and Conditions:
Annex 1: Outline of report
Annexes
Contact : hr_thailand@oxfam.org.uk
