Technical Expert (National Consultant) on Regional Commitments and Policy Instrument on HIV

Project Title

UNAIDS Unified Budget, Results and Accountability Framework (UBRAF)-supported Joint UN Plans on AIDS

Background and rationale

An enabling policy environment ensures protection and recognition of human rights. Consequently, it facilitates access to HIV prevention, treatment, and care services, making it central to an effective HIV response1.

To understand how structural factors influence people’s risk of acquiring HIV and their access to services, monitoring laws, policies, and regulations is crucial. Such monitoring offers an assessment of how policy and legal barriers and gaps should be addressed, along with measure progress towards more enabling policy and legal environments. National programs on HIV should be guided by evidence-informed policies, and these should be based on programmatic gap analyses, accompanied by political mapping relevant to legal and policy reform.

Through the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) 2001 Declaration of Commitment, countries agreed to conduct periodic reviews of progress towards their commitments, with the involvement of civil society, develop monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and “by 2003, establish or strengthen effective monitoring systems… for the promotion and protection of human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS.”1. In 2002, UNAIDS, in collaboration with National AIDS Committees, civil society, academia, and other partners, developed a set of indicators, including the National Composite Policy Index (NCPI), to measure progress. The 2006, 2011 and 2016 Political Declarations on HIV/AIDS reaffirmed UNAIDS’ mandate to support monitoring and reporting on commitments.

The NCPI has been reported every two years since 2003. While keeping the same acronym, the tool’s name changed in 2012 from National Composite Policy Index to National Commitments and Policy Instrument. The NCPI is a component of the Global AIDS Response Progress Reporting (GARPR, previously UNGASS reporting).

The Instrument consists of two parts: Part A is completed by governments; and Part B by non-governmental respondents including civil society, the private sector, bilateral agencies, and United Nations organizations. There is deliberate duplication of some questions between the two parts for comparison, and to encourage and facilitate country-level dialogue.

UNAIDS recommends that the questionnaire be completed by conducting a desk review and interviews with knowledgeable persons, validating the data through workshops with representative stakeholders and, to the extent possible, generating consensus on responses. The government focal point for the reporting process submits the completed NCPI to UNAIDS.

Although the focus of the NCPI is on laws, policies and regulations, over time it has evolved to also capture information on programs and their perceived implementation so that this information can be triangulated with program indicator data to facilitate dialogue and change as needed.

UNDP is conducting a study in the National Capital Region (NCR) using the NCPI to make policy data available, promote accountability; support joint analysis of policy information with other relevant data to inform national HIV responses; and present recommendations for a more enabling legal and policy environments. NCR is the priority region since it is the region with the highest burden of HIV, with more than a third of the Philippines’ HIV epidemic, and it has the highest number of key affected populations. The data that will be captured from NCR will be included in the national data assessment. This project also intends to generate a reporting mechanism to be implemented in other regions in the future.

Institutional Arrangements

The Individual Consultant will work under the overall guidance of the Programme Team Leader and close coordination with the Programme Analyst and HIV Response Officer of the Institutions and Partnerships Programme Team.

1. UNDP shall provide comments and provide outputs within 7 working days upon receipt of output.
2. UNDP Philippines shall be entitled to intellectual property and other proprietary rights over all materials that have direct relation to the project.
3. Considering the COVID-19 pandemic and declaration of State of Public Health Emergency in the Philippines, all work of the Individual Consultant shall be done within the guidelines and protocols set by the local and national government.
4. Following IATF Quarantine Restrictions, this consultancy shall be performed remotely and will be a home-based assignment. Coordination/meetings shall be done through phone or online communication.
5. The Individual Consultant is expected to have his/her own equipment and workstation.

Duration of Work

The Individual Consultant will be engaged 70 working days from August to November 2021 unless revised in a mutually agreed-upon timetable. Changes in the duration of the contract will be implemented through the issuance of a contract amendment.

Duty Station

The assignment is home-based, and there are no expected travels for this assignment.

Scope of Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

The Individual Consultant must send a financial proposal based on an all-inclusive lump-sum amount for the delivery of the outputs below. The total amount quoted shall include all cost components required to deliver the services identified above, including professional daily fees X number of person-days and any other applicable costs (e.g., software and online tool/platform subscriptions) to be incurred by the Individual Consultant in completing the assignment.

Medical/health insurance must be purchased by the Individual Consultant at his/her own expense, and upon award of contract, the Individual Consultant must be ready to submit proof of insurance valid during contract duration.

Payments will be made upon satisfactory completion of the deliverables by target due dates. Outputs will be certified by the Programme Analyst of Institutions and Partnerships prior to payments.

Scope of Work

To ensure successful implementation of the project, it is proposed that a Technical Expert on Regional Commitments and Policy Instrument on HIV be engaged as an Individual Contractor (IC) The scope of work includes:

1. Desk review of previous reports on the National Composite Policy Index/National Commitments and Policy Instrument in the Philippines and other relevant data on laws and policies related to women, LGBTQI and/or gender issues, People Deprived of Liberty, and People who use drugs;
2. Collection of legal and policy regional data for NCR from government authorities, civil society representatives, and other non-governmental partners involved in the HIV response using the 2019 NCPI questionnaire published by UNAIDS, with special sections on policies related to children, adolescents, women, and LGBTQI together with the Prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), child Antiretroviral Treatment (ARV) and Infant Early Diagnosis;
3. Development of a brief report on Commitments and Policies in the NCR including the summary and analysis of data collected using the National Commitments and Policy Instrument,    with    special    sections    on     policies     related     to children, adolescents, women, and LGBTQI; and
4. Development of actionable recommendations to enhance system for data collection and analysis of NCPI, with a clear reporting mechanism (e.g. accountable and involved institutions) on tracking and updating the commitments and policies on HIV.

The IC will work with the Programme Analyst and HIV Response Officer (UNDP Philippines Institutions and Partnerships   Team) with guidance from the Institutions and Partnerships Programme Team Leader, UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub HIV Health and Development Team, UNAIDS, and Philippine National AIDS Council.

Expected Output and Deliverables

The Individual Consultant is expected to accomplish the following:

Corporate competencies

• Must have strong leadership and project management skills
• Must have an extensive background and understanding of the Philippine DRR, recovery, and resilience policies, programmes, and activities
• Must be detail-oriented
• Has excellent analytic skills especially in understanding complex information to produce evidence-based comparisons and conclusions.
• Excellent written and spoken English is required.

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality, and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favoritism.

Functional and technical competencies

• Ability to work in a diverse and multi-cultural environment;
• Self-motivated and ability to work under pressure and to meet strict and competing deadlines;
• Displays analytical judgment and demonstrated ability to handle confidential and politically sensitive issues in a responsible and mature manner;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities

Offers will be evaluated based on the combined scoring method :

• Technical qualifications = 70%
• Financial Proposal = 30%

For the evaluation of the Technical Proposal, the selection of the successful consultant must be based on the following qualifications (with the appropriate obtainable points).

Only applications that will obtain a minimum of 50 out of 70 obtainable points will be qualified for the financial evaluation.

Recommended Presentation of Offer

Interested applicants must submit the following documents/information at https://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=100022 to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application only allows to upload of a maximum of one document.

1. Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
2. Personal CV or P11, indicating all past experiences from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate
3. At least two (2) relevant samples of written work
4. Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided. If an Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP. Medical/health insurance must be purchased by the individual at his/her own expense, and upon award of contract, the Individual Consultant must be ready to submit proof of insurance valid during contract duration.

Note: The above documents need to be scanned in one file and uploaded to the online application as one document.

Interested applicants to note that personal Medical/health insurance (to be purchased by the individual at his/her own expense) is mandatory for the issuance of contracts. Upon award of the contract, the consultant must be ready to submit proof of insurance valid during the contract duration.

The following templates / Annexes and IC General Terms & Conditions can be downloaded from http://gofile.me/6xdJm/bE9TCw8fU:

• General Terms and Conditions for Individual Contract
• Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability
• P-11 form

In view of the volume of applications, UNDP receives, only shortlisted offerors will be notified.