ToRs for the Recruitment of a Political Economy Analysis on Human Rights International Consultant

Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) Rwanda is seeking to hire, for a short term assignment, an individual international Political Economy Analysis consultant to support capacity development of human rights civil society organisations in Rwanda. This intervention falls under the implementation framework of the Civic Space Advancement Project (CSAP), financially supported by the Government of the Kingdom of Belgium. Running since December 2023, CSAP is a two year civil society-led collaborative initiative aiming, among others, to address the limited capacities of civil society organizations (CSOs) to optimally use the existing civic spaceand broaden it to enhance their resilience and meaningful citizen participation on human rights issues. It is led by NPA Rwanda with the Legal Aid Forum (LAF), the Health Development Initiative (HDI) and the Great Lakes Initiative for Human Rights and Development (GLIHD) as consortium partners.

1. Why a Political Economy Analysis training for CSOs?

While it continues to gain a lot of traction as a powerful approach and tool to inform development programming and change influencing work across the world, Political Economy Analyis (PEA) in Rwanda is also increasingly being embraced by the donor community to inform their development cooperation programming yet its potential benefits remain largely unknown to many civil society actors if not suboptimally leveraged for pre-positionning purposes. Pioneered back in 2009 by DFID among others, PEA has successfully been tested across contexts and is now believed, when properly done, to be a powerful tool that helps those actors who use it as a decision-making support approach and tool to understand the formal and informal Drivers of Change (DoC) in different societal contexts with a focus on the linkages (or lack thereof) between a country’s political framework and development results.

Perhaps the greatest power of PEA lies into the fact that ‘’Usually, we have a good idea about what needs to be done to achieve poverty reduction, but are much less clear about why it’s not happening. All too often, we attribute slow or no progress to lack of political will.It’s this ... lack of political will that DOC analysis unpacks...’’[1]. As an approach and a tool, PEA focusses on the formal and informal sides of power relationships and resource distribution amongst change agents and the factors, whether institutional or structural, affecting the lack of political will to make change happen. Put differently, it is more concerned about the existence of political will to effect change or lack of it. PEA is critical to make change seeking actors better understand why things have happened the way they did. This way, PEA can help civil society actors to effectively improve change influencing and related programming. Nonetheless, PEA is not a magic bullet to address all intractable societal problems[2].

While the above benefits make PEA a very interesting tool and approach to monitoring progress on complex change seeking processes such as the promotion, protection and fulfilment of human rights obligations by state actors, its application amongst CSOs in Rwanda remains very rare. This is a clear capacity gap that can handicap dialogue with the donor community supporting their work given that they are increasingly using this tool and approach to inform decision-making for aid effectiveness programming. Thus, in order to better equip Rwandan human rights CSOs to more adequately navigate the progressive yet complex human rigths landascape in the country, NPA is seeking to hire an individual international Political Economy Analysis on Human Rights consultant for a short term capacity development support.

2. Objectives

The overall objective of the short-term consultancy is to deliver, on basis of a pre-existing and successfully tested module, a Political Economy Analysis of Human Rights in Rwanda to a select Rwandan Civil Society organisations. More specifically, the consultant will:

1. Conduct a rapid CSOs’ capacity needs assessment on political economy analysis of human rights, with a focus on its awareness, benefits and application in their day to day work of shaping societal changes and advancing people’s rights;

2. Adapt, based on the findings from the rapid capacity needs assessment, a pre-existing training resource guide on PEA on human rights;

3. Recommend additional CSO self-help guide and tools on PEA application and in particular those relevant for human rights monitoring and reporting;

4. Conduct a four-day training of up to 40 CSOs’ leaders and content staff driving change influencing work on PEA applied to human rights.

3. Expected deliverables and timelines

The successful international consultant will be hired for a total of 19 days spread between the months of November until December 2024 as per the below timelines for key deliverables:

5. Eligibility criteria and Scoring weigthing

A quality-based selection method that prioritises the soundness of the technical offer received will be used based on the following evaluation of eligibility criteria and scoring weight (up to 70%).

The financial offer scoring carries a weight of 30%.

6.Reporting

The successful consultant will report to the Senior Policy and Strategy Advisor/Programme Manager at NPA with functional linkages with NPA Country Director and inputs from CSAP partner CSOs.

7. How to apply

Eligible consultants are invited to submit their technical offer not exceeding 5 pages, annexes exclusive, via the email address NpaRwandaProcurements@npaid.org with the mention “PEA of Human Rights Training” under the subject heading not later than the 8^th November 2024 at 11: 00p.m, Kigali local time.

Please note that the financial offer has to be submitted separately through the same email address. No hard copies will be accepted.

Only short-listed candidates will be invited by NPA for further steps of the offers evaluation.