SYRIA – CONSULTANCY – PROVIDING HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE TO POPULATIONS AFFECTED BY THE SYRIAN CONFLICT

PROVIDING HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE TO POPULATIONS AFFECTED BY THE SYRIAN CONFLICT THROUGH WASH, SHELTER AND NFI INTERVENTIONS

CONTEXT

SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL (SI) is a humanitarian NGO which is committed to meeting the vital needs of populations faced with a major crisis of human or natural origin and to strengthening their resilience, particularly with regard to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, and food security

SI is an international non-profit, non-political and non-religious organization established in Afghanistan in 1980 and headquartered in Paris, France. SI is operational in 18 countries over the world, including in Syria.

As the crisis in Syria enters its ninth year, the significant need for humanitarian intervention continues, in terms of both emergency response and the rebuilding of critical infrastructure and service systems. In North West Syria particularly, military hostilities between Turkish, Syrian, Russian and rebel forces have intensified in Idlib governorate, especially since December 2019, causing a “humanitarian catastrophe” with needs growing exponentially. In North East Syria, the ‘Operation Peace Spring’ military operations in early October 2019 by the Turkish Armed Forces and allied non-state groups forced the displacement of over 200,000 people. In December, 70,000 people remain displaced across Aleppo, Raqqa and Hassakeh in an area between Tell Abyad and Tal Tam’r (known as the OPS area), adding to the already 91,000 IDPs in these governorates. At the same time, the ongoing depletion of basic goods, services and infrastructure throughout both NES and NWS have led to an overall degradation of the quality of life for many IDPs, host communities and residents. These parallel disasters, both new and ongoing, have seen 11.7 million Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance, 6.2 million Syrians remain internally displaced and 948,000 have been newly displaced since 1 December 2019. Displacement of this magnitude exacerbates significant protection risks, insecurities (physical, social and economic) and negative coping mechanisms, and only increases dependency on humanitarian support.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The response strategy of Solidarités International (SI) and sub-implementing partner Syria Relief (SR) seeks to address humanitarian problems in the sectors of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) and Shelter & Settlements. Activities are providing both an ongoing ‘package’ response in historic areas of implementation in six IDP sites in Azaz direct, as well as the capacity to provide rapid emergency response support in underserved areas in Azaz and Afrin districts, and potentially other areas – such as the Operation Peace Spring area – based on needs assessment and close consultation with DART.

The goal of the project is to improve living conditions for conflict-affected people in North Syria through an integrated response aimed to ensure timely and sustainable access to basic needs in WASH, Shelter and NFI sectors :

• To provide critical, timely and appropriate shelter assistance to conflict-affected populations in both protracted and new displacement conditions

• To provide essential and emergency WASH package to conflict-affected populations in both protracted and new displacement conditions

The project is twofold and include a regular response as well as emergency response capacity for four months as described below:

Regular response for IDPs in target locations

• Provide full WASH package in IDP sites to ensure water supply access and corresponding water quality monitoring, operational maintenance of sanitation facilities, Hygiene Promotion activities and solid waste management;
• Maintain a shelter/NFI response capacity in the IDPs camps to meet the basic and essential needs of new arrivals, provide top-up items for IDPs previously receiving a distribution, and respond to further needs, such as massive influx of newly displaced people or external shock; and
• Build a contingency capacity for winterization to anticipate the needs for critical seasonal needs in Azaz district, to provide an effective and timely response.

Emergency response capacity for four months

• Provide full emergency WASH package through rapid emergency response to target new, underserved locations and populations, including gap-filling activities. The full WASH package will be composed of water trucking, latrines installation and maintenance, hygiene promotion and the distribution of hygiene items through the most appropriate modality (in kind, cash or vouchers);
• Provide emergency shelter/NFI assistance to target new, underserved, hard-to-reach locations and populations, including gap-filling activities through the most appropriate modality (in kind, cash or vouchers); and
• Build tents contingency capacity to meet new needs caused by displacement (to be used only as a last resort), following Shelter Cluster guidelines whereby tents for families can still be provided to IDPs to replace damaged tents or to extend existing camps. SI will give priority to distributing existing tent stock from other Shelter partners, and tents will only be procured and distributed by SI in the case of emergency and last resort.

This emergency component will be implemented based on needs. As such, these activities will be conducted only in the case there are movements of IDPs. It is possible that these activities will not have been implemented yet when the evaluation starts.

PURPOSE OF THE EVALUATION

The purpose of this evaluation is threefold:

1. To evaluate the functionality of infrastructure and services (water supply, solid waste management and latrines) provided and identify potential measures to be taken to further enhance systems supporting continuous functionality; and

2. To evaluate SI’s diligence in determining if the modality of distributions (voucher, cash or in-kind) is the most appropriate for the context.

3. To evaluate the responsiveness to changes in context throughout the grant period, with a particular focus on the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic.

SI recognizes that many IDP households in our targeted areas are still heavily reliant on external assistance to meet their basic needs, even several years since their original displacement. In fact with recent devaluations in the SYP, there is evidence of an increasing prevalence of negative coping mechanisms within such populations. As such, developing sustainable solutions to meet these basic needs has not been achievable for the WASH cluster patterns working in NWS, and rather a focus on ensuring continued functionality of infrastructure and services is a more realistic approach. This evaluation will especially focus on the “soft structures” established to facilitate exit. This was indeed part of the recommendations of the evaluation carried out under SI’s previous Award AID-OFDA-A-17-00023, External Evaluation of Solidarités International’s Emergency WASH Programming in Azaz, Syria, Wash for Life, December 2018.

Whilst recommendations for alternative modalities will be beyond the scope of this ToR, SI would like to ensure the argument for in-kind distributions of hygiene items is still relevant and justified, taking into account the various factors that must be included in this decision. These include: IDP access to markets, IDP priority needs, impact on IDPs needs, impact on markets, durability and reactivity of markets and their supply chains, coordination with other humanitarian actors, acceptance from local authorities and camp management.

SI try to remain flexible and adaptive to changing needs in such dynamic settings, but the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic globally, and recently specifically in Idleb, has highlighted the particular importance of this. SI has followed guidance provided by external coordination bodies as well as developed internal adaptations to procedures, but SI would like to evaluate whether action on the ground translated into timely, cost effective, and impactful adaptations to responses.

The protracted nature of the crisis coupled with ongoing violence and volatility has often led to implementation challenges regarding access and direct management, exit strategy that are viable and assured, and flexible enough to adapt to changing needs of vulnerable populations. SI hopes that the outcome of this evaluation will help shape future strategies and programming for NWS, including potential future projects with USAID-OFDA, and could also influence its approach in NES as well. The results from this evaluation will influence future SI programming, and highlight new decision making tools or systems that may need to be developed.

Findings and recommendations should take into account contextual constraints and the challenges of implementation to ensure that they can suggest realistic area of improvement and a pragmatic way forward for future programming. Consequently, the evaluation should systematically investigate barriers for activities being assessed as well as potential hindrances for the implementation of recommendations included in the evaluation report.

ABOUT THE EVALUATION

Evaluation type: ex-post performance evaluations

Evaluation questions:

Functionality:

• To what extent was the infrastructure useable throughout and at the end of the project?

• To what extent were the provided services functional throughout the project?

• What systems were in place to ensure functionality and how durable were they? Were they completely reliant on SI support or to what degree were IDPs involved?

• If there were prolonged periods of non-functionality, what were the reasons for this?

• Is SI taking into account beneficiaries’ feedback to improve functionality and use of the infrastructures provided

Decision making around distribution modality:

• Was there a rigorous process in deciding upon in-kind distributions for hygiene and shelter items, and is there up-to- date documentation to support that decision?

• Was there a rigorous process in deciding upon the cash modality for winterization support, and is there up-to- date documentation to support that decision?

• Is SI reviewing the factors that led to this decision to see if this modality is still relevant? Are there any mitigations measures in place to limit risks linked to the chosen modality?

Responsiveness to changes in context:

• Is SI able to adjust programming in a timely manner to tackle and adjust to new events (Covid-19, new mass displacements, changes in security)?

• Were the new activities and adaptations to programming around Covid-19 relevant and impactful for IDPs in NWS?

• Are there any recommendations to make SI more responsive to sudden changes in context?

• To what extent does the emergency component of the project help SI respond in a timely manner to new displacements ?

Evaluation methods:

Project documentation:

• Proposal of intervention,

• Project monitoring documents,

• Baseline survey (database and report),

• Post Distribution Monitoring (databases and reports),

• Technical framework and tools,

• Activity internal reports, including pictures.

Data collections:

Quantitative data will be collected by SI throughout the project as part of planned monitoring activities. As such, the consultant will mainly use qualitative methodology as described below:

• Key Informant interviews,

• Focus Group discussions with beneficiaries and other project’s contributors if relevant,

• Observation in the field.

Evaluation timeline:

It is expected that the evaluation will be performed at the end of the project. Its overall duration will be of a maximum of 5 weeks, and the report delivered at least 3 weeks before the submission of the final project report.

Proposed indicative schedule for the mission: starting early February 202. The final detailed schedule will be proposed by the consultant.

Deliverables:

Writing of a report in English including:

Before starting data collection

• 1 inception report (3-5 pages max) outlining planned methodology, key stakeholders to interview, secondary data to review, plan of tools required, etc.

After data collection

• 1 executive summary (1-2 pages max)
• 1 narrative report (max 20 pages, not including annexes)
• 1 table with the principle conclusions and recommendations (separate short, medium and long term) and the lessons learned.
• Technical appendices : Containing the technical details of the evaluations as well as the terms of reference, the questionnaire models, check list and canvas interviews, potential tables or graphs, references and other sources, people and institutions contacted

Please note that both inception and final reports are subject to SI’s approval before they are considered as final deliverables. Time for SI’s review should be included in the evaluation’s timetable.

EVALUATOR PROFIL

The evaluators team will combine the following criteria:

• A solid and diversified experience in monitoring and evaluation of humanitarian assistance activities, including WASH intervention and shelter/NFI distributions is required,

• Technical background on WASH, with some IPC experience an advantage

• Strong knowledge of NWS context, especially in terms of security and culture is an advantage,

• Experience on managing project remotely

• Full working knowledge of English and excellent report writing,

• Full working knowledge of Arabic

• A proven record of experience in conducting similar evaluations.