Evaluation Consultant for “Building a Comprehensive Criminal Justice Response to Hate Crime” project

Background:

The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) is seeking an experienced consultant (hereafter ‘evaluator’) to undertake an objective and independent evaluation of the implementation of the “Building a Comprehensive Criminal Justice Response to Hate Crime” project (CJR). The evaluation will take place between February 2018 and February 2019 (end of project).

ODIHR is the principal institution of the OSCE responsible for the human dimension of security. It is active throughout the OSCE area in the fields of election observation, democratic development, human rights, tolerance and non-discrimination, and rule of law.

Countering hate crime forms a part of ODIHR’s core activities. ODIHR has developed a number of programmes assisting participating States (pSs) and civil society groups to address this phenomenon, including programmes on reporting and publishing data on hate crime in the OSCE region, capacity building for law enforcement personnel, prosecutors and civil society groups.

In February 2017 ODIHR launched a two-year project “Building a Comprehensive Criminal Justice Response to Hate Crime” to help improve the skills of and collaboration among criminal justice professionals within each of four OSCE countries – Bulgaria, Greece, Italy and Poland – and to improve their co-operation with civil society, to contribute to the building of a comprehensive criminal justice response to hate crime in each of these countries.

In Bulgaria the project focuses on the development of joint training programmes for police and prosecutors, allowing them to identify and overcome differences in their respective understandings of hate crimes and in their approaches to processing hate crime cases. In Greece, work focuses on the development of a national, cross-governmental protocol on activities and policies to be implemented by relevant authorities to address hate crime, and on improving the common police-prosecutor database of hate crimes, to help co-ordinate institutional responses to such crimes in the country. The focus in Italy is on training police officers, prosecutors, judges, lawyers and civil society groups working with hate crime victims on a regional level in Lombardy as well as analyzing data on hate crimes collected by the court of Milan. The project also designs an innovative methodology for mapping hate crimes by conducting a victimization survey in Poland, focusing on small communities, to extract data on “invisible” hate crime.

The outcomes and lessons drawn from these activities will be presented and discussed at national workshops that will be organized throughout 2018. These events will contribute to the development of toolkits, including training packages, methodologies and guidelines on the topic of hate crime. The final products will be presented and shared among practitioners and policymakers at a large-scale conference in November 2018.

The project “Building a Comprehensive Criminal Justice Response to Hate Crime” is co-financed by the European Commission under the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (JUST/2015/RRAC/AG/TRAI/9025) and the United States of America.

Objective and methodology:

The objectives of the consultancy are:

• to assess the performance of the project, its results and map them against evaluation criteria (backward-looking dimension)
• to identify good practices and lessons learnt that can inform the development of follow-up programmes and projects in the same thematic area (forward-looking dimension)

The consultancy will include mid-term assessment, findings of which will be incorporated into the planning of the final year of the project. The evaluation will cover all project activities undertaken between February 2017 (the launch of the Project), and until February 2019 (end of project). The evaluation will also consider how the project design, implementation and delivery took into account needs of women and men and how it impacted them. ODIHR also seeks input on how to better gender mainstream the project activities going forward.

The evaluation will be based on the 5 Development Assistance Criteria (DAC) as laid out in the DAC Principles for evaluation of Development Assistance (relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability) and two additional ODIHR criteria of added value and coherence. The evaluation will include special consideration of the political objectives of the OSCE, the intergovernmental nature of the Organization, the political and administrative context in which ODIHR operates. The focus of the evaluation will be on the project beneficiaries, i.e. groups or entities with which ODIHR has interacted under the auspices of the project implementation directly or indirectly and whom it can be anticipated that the project implementation has been able to influence. The evaluation will also focus on the tangible tools that have been produced by the project.

Tasks and Deliverables:

The evaluator should submit the following deliverables:

· Detailed evaluation plan,

· Mid-term assessment with recommendations which could be incorporated into the planning of the final year of the project,

· Evaluation report with the following:

• Executive summary that provides a clear, concise presentation of the evaluation’s main conclusions, key recommendations and salient issues identified;

• Description of the methodology used;

• Responses to the evaluation questions (observations, findings, conclusions and recommendations);

• Analysis of lessons learned and good practices.

Tentative workflow and timeline:

· Scoping visit to Warsaw (2 days) - first half of March 2018

· Evaluation design (2-3 days) - first half of March 2018

· Desk phase (3 days) - first half of March 2018

· Field phase, data and analysis collection phase (9 days)

· Data analysis and report writing phase (7 days)

· Report presentation visit and finalization (3 days) - January 2019

Necessary Qualifications, Experience and Skills:

· Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in law, political science, international relations or other relevant disciplines. A combination of relevant academic qualifications and extensive experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree;

· Over 10 years of experience of designing and conducting evaluations, in particular of projects implemented at the international level;

· Thematic knowledge of the tolerance and non-discrimination field;

· Experience in gender mainstreaming projects and programmes.

· Professional knowledge of English.

· Experience with the OSCE would be an advantage.

Period of Assignment and Remuneration:

The assignment is for up to 27 working days between February 2018 and January 2019.

Remuneration will depend on the selected consultant’s qualifications and experience and will be in accordance with OSCE established rates. Payment will be made upon receipt of a mid-term and final evaluation report.

Travel expenses will be covered by ODIHR according to OSCE travel policy.

If you wish to apply for this position, please use the OSCE's online application link found under https://jobs.osce.org.

Please note that only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.

The OSCE is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages qualified female and male candidates from all national, religious, ethnic and social backgrounds to apply to become a part of the Organization.

The OSCE retains the discretion to re-advertise the vacancy, cancel the recruitment, offer a consultancy at a different level or with modified terms of reference or for a different duration.