Vacancies

CONSULTANT VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT
Issued on: 20 December 2016

Link to full TOR: http://mirror.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/TOREvaluationASUDfinal161216.pdf

BACKGROUND
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-Habitat, is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities. It is the focal point for all urbanization and human settlement matters within the UN system. The agency is to support national and local governments in laying the foundation for sustainable urban development.
UN-Habitat envisions well-planned, well-governed, and efficient cities and other human settlements, with adequate housing, infrastructure, and universal access to employment and basic services such as water, energy and sanitation. To achieve these goals, derived from the Habitat Agenda of 1996, UN-Habitat has set itself a medium-term strategy approach for each successive six-year period; Medium-Term Strategic and Institutional Plan (MTSIP) 2008-2013 and strategic plan 2014-2019. The programme for Achieving Sustainable Urban Development (ASUD) linked to five strategic entry points of the MTSIP. The programme’s focus is also relevant to three strategic plan’s priority focus areas.
The overarching goal of the ASUD programme is to increase UN-Habitat’s capacity to effectively support member states in achieving sustainable urbanization. The support focuses on areas of planning, mobility, energy, governance and legislation, and economy and finance at the urban level. ASUD addresses the gaps and deficiencies in current urban planning processes and policies at the national and local levels to be able to effectively respond to the complex demands of rapid population and economic growth. It supports cities in developing strategic sustainable urban development plans and implementing demonstration projects, particularly planned city extensions. Planned city extension, as opposed to fringe development, represents an alternative to unplanned urban expansion characterized by sprawling, segregated, and poorly connected developments. ASUD also supports countries developing and implementing national urban policies that will promote more compact, socially inclusive, better integrated and connected cities that foster sustainable urban development and are resilient to climate change.
Nine projects were implemented by the ASUD programme during phase 1 in Colombia, Egypt, Mozambique, Philippines, and Rwanda.  
The duration of the programme’s phase 1 was planned initially for a period of 48 months starting June 2011 for an amount of USD8.9 million by the donor, Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has been supplemented with additional tranches and/or contributions to total of USD10.8million.
Justification / mandate of the evaluation
The 2015 evaluation of UN-Habitat by the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) recommended carrying out an evaluation of ASUD as part of improving evaluation coverage of its global initiatives and country programmes. This evaluation complies with UN-Habitat’s efforts to perform systematic and timely evaluations of its various programmes and to ensure that UN-Habitat evaluations provide full representation of its mandate and activities, including evaluation of global initiatives supporting the New Urban Agenda adopted at the Habitat III conference held in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016 and the implementation of the ‘three legged approach’ of urban legislation, planning and economy and part of the guiding principles of ASUD.
Purpose and objectives of the evaluation
UN-Habitat is undertaking this forward-looking evaluation of the ASUD projects in order to assess to what extent the overall support and technical assistance of UN-Habitat has been relevant, efficient and effective, and assess impact outlook and sustainability, and to inform the next phase of the ASUD programme.
The period of the evaluation will cover the start of the ASUD programme in July 2011 up to July 2016 and at time when the projects of phase 1 have completed.
Scope of the evaluation and methods
The evaluation will be conducted over a period of three months, from February to April 2017.
The evaluation shall be independent and carried out in line with the evaluation norms and standards of the United Nations system. A variety of methodologies will be applied to collect information during the evaluation. These include review of documents relevant to the ASUD projects, key informant interviews and consultations, including focus group discussions, and fields visits.

RESPONSIBILITIES
The evaluation will be conducted by an evaluation team of two International Consultants with one consultant as lead consultant and the second as supporting consultant. The lead consultant has overall responsibility for producing the deliverables according to the quality standards of UN-Habitat for evaluation reports.
Among the deliverables expected, there will be:

1. Inception Report with Evaluation Work plan;
2. Evaluation Reports Drafts;
3. Final Evaluation Report not exceeding 40 pages not including executive

summary and annexes.
Compliance with United Nations Evaluation Group standards and UN-Habitat evaluation report format is expected. Examples of evaluation reports are available from the website of the UN-Habitat Evaluation Unit: (http://www.unhabitat.org/evaluation).
Details of the evaluation are provided in the full Terms of Reference.

EDUCATION
Advanced academic degree in political sciences, social economy, governance, local public administration, or similar relevant fields.

WORK EXPERIENCE
Ten to 15 years of relevant programme management experience in results-based management working in working with projects/ programmes in the field of urban legislation and governance, planning and design, and finance and economy. Extensive evaluation experience. The consultant should have ability to present credible findings derived from evidence and putting conclusions and recommendations supported by the findings. The consultant should have specific knowledge and understanding of UN-Habitat and its mandate. Recent and relevant experience in working in developing countries is a requirement. It is envisaged that the consultants would have a useful mix of experience and familiarity with public administration in various parts of the world.

LANGUAGE SKILLS
Fluency as well as excellent writing skills in English is required. Knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese are desirable.

REMUNERATION
Payments will be based on deliverables over the consultancy period. There are set remuneration rates for consultancies. The rate is determined by functions performed and experience of the consultant. The fees will be paid upon satisfactory delivery of outputs as per agreement. Where applicable, travel costs of the consultant (airplane ticket economy class), transfers, and daily allowance as per the UN rate is payable in addition to the daily fee.

Deadline for applications:  13 January 2017