Consultancy: Protection Analysis OPT

Consultancy: Protection Analysis oPt
Occupied Palestinian Territory

Looking for a great way to contribute to Oxfam programs? Then help our Humanitarian Resilience Team to better integrate protection in our programs

Terms of Reference

Background

The key driving factors of the conflict in the OPT are impunity, military occupation and control over land and resources by Israel. These are linked to each other - military occupation feeds into control over land and resources and is further strengthened by impunity which in turns entrenches the occupation. These factors contribute to humanitarian needs across the OPT, where the greatest needs are created by regular cycles of violence (in particular in Gaza) and the ongoing denial of rights and lack of protection, in particular in Area C and East Jerusalem, where people are subject to discrimination, violence, destruction of homes and assets and denial of access to key resources.
It is important to note that, in the context of occupation, the responsibility of the Occupying Power towards the civilian population extends beyond the delivery of traditionally understood basic services, but includes the obligation to ensure and restore public life. This obligation translates into the duty of good governance, including ensuring that the local population living under occupation has the opportunity to exercise their rights to life, adequate housing, family life, private property, education, health, and all other human rights. Given the failure of the occupying power to meet these obligations, traditional humanitarian assistance and protection models are too narrow; the relief assistance which the aid community, including Oxfam, is needed to provide is far broader, and includes a range of protection and resilience activities aiming at achieving human rights objectives.
Based on an accurate context and conflict analysis, the overall strategic goal for Oxfam in OPTI is that By the end of 2019, more poor, vulnerable, and marginalized Palestinian women and men are protected and advance their rights to greater and more gendered equitable control over their lives and resources in accordance with International Law. Three programmatic areas with three key change objectives have been defined to contribute towards the strategic goal: Economic justice, Gender Justice and Saving Lives-now and in the future with influencing strategy and conflict sensitivity embedded in all Oxfam´s work.
In oPt, Saving Lives now and in the future (SL) is a programmatic area that specifically address Palestinian needs and rights in permanent crises, and the fight against impunity. The strategic objective is that by 2019, more Palestinian women and men live with dignity and free from violence.
The intermediate outcomes that would contribute to this strategic objective are:

-Palestinian authorities and actors improve resources and capacity to respond effectively to humanitarian needs.
-The humanitarian community (not creating aid dependency) is putting in place appropriate gender and conflict sensitive response to address the protracted nature of this conflict with focus on Gaza, Area C and East Jerusalem.
-Effective and concrete political and economic measures are applied and lead to concrete repercussions for Israel for violations of IHL and IHRL.
-The active participation of men and women and increased decision-making roles of women in humanitarian, peace building and national reconciliation processes in line with women, peace and security resolutions is ensured.
-Clear, participatory and shared strategies enabling better engagement from Palestinian authorities and civil society on the OPT, especially Area C of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza are put in place to address womens practical needs and strategic interests.
Programmatic approaches are supported by the OPTI Influencing Strategy (OPTIIS) strategic objectives related to strengthen the commitment of the international community to take tangible steps to challenge the Israeli government permit and planning regime and policies and forced displacement of Palestinians in Area Cand to publically challenge the Israeli separation policy, investing more sustainable models for sustainable and economic development programs connecting Gaza with the West Bank.

Protection in Oxfam
Oxfam is seen as an influential and professional protection actor within the humanitarian community and has heavily influenced the development of protection standards, training and approaches. The strategic combination of community-based fieldwork and international advocacy is widely regarded as the Oxfam´s greatest strength in protection.
Oxfam uses a risk-reduction approach to protection, taking actions that prevent and respond to immediate protection vulnerabilities and threats, building on community and partner capacity, as well as longer-term work to build a protective environment. Oxfam aims to reduce threats simultaneously by holding the relevant authorities to account for protection and to reduce people´s vulnerability whilst increasing their capacity and resilience to protection threats.
The approaches for implementation are:

Oxfam will ensure that all humanitarian programs are safe programs that avoid inadvertently doing harm and are conflict sensitive;
Oxfam will integrate protection activities into humanitarian programs where protection threats exist and Oxfam is best placed to respond;
Oxfam exceptionally develops projects and programs that have protection objectives and are of sufficient scale and scope to be considered stand-alone.

Nowadays Oxfam affiliates in OPTI are implementing different projects related to EFSL, WASH, GBV. We aim at enriching all interventions with a systematic protection approach in order to ensure that programs are effectively mitigating risks faced by communities and building resilience.

 Purpose of this consultancy

Oxfam program approaches distinguishing our work are the one program approach which links development, humanitarian and influencing work with emphasis on building resilience and Oxfam partnership approach. However, we believe that there is scope to better realize the aspirations represented by our approaches by having greater clarity on key concepts such resilience, protection and incorporating these notions further in our developmental and humanitarian programs.in OPTI
While some of the interventions implemented nowadays respond to stand alone protection issues, like those addressing GBV, most of Oxfam projects and in particular those framed within the humanitarian response have had limited articulation with protection threats. Only recently, there have been some initiatives of integrating small scale protection activities in specific humanitarian projects, like the referral system of the ECHO partners, which is coordinated by Oxfam, the Oxfam contribution to the IDP profiling and tracking initiative in Gaza to improve the delivery of services as well as the interventions in Area C of West Bank.

Saving Lives program impact statement is that Palestinian women and men are more protected from and resilient to the humanitarian situation created by IHR and IHL violations, so the inclusion of protection in projects under this programmatic area should be ensured. Is in this scope of clarifying the concept of protection and incorporating it to Saving Lives programmatic area that this consultancy is framed.

The objective of the consultancy is to produce a protection analysis in the oPt (Gaza and West Bank) with recommendations for the incorporation of protection in SL programmatic area in accordance with the Oxfam Country Strategy (OCS) and its operationalization in the Country Operative Model (COM). This analysis should include
- Review of the Oxfam OIT Conflict analysis done in 2015;
- Analysis of the key protection threats according to Oxfam country analysis OPTI 2015, and updating the main Protection threats in the OPT (with particular emphasis in Area C and Gaza), with specific reference to patterns of violence, communities coping strategies and self-protective actions and capacities, impact, with gender disaggregated data and gender analysis;
- Assessment from a protection perspective of actual Oxfam program and its internal coherence as well as with policy interventions;
- Recommendation for incorporating Protection into the Oxfam response - Overall humanitarian response, key trends, approaches. Include key protection actors, their roles and priorities, coordination mechanisms, political factors e.g. integrated missions in brief.
- Identification and proposal of protection activities (response, remedial and environment-building ones) to ensure a good coverage in terms of protection in accordance to Oxfam OCS and in complementarity with wider efforts of international and local actors. Special attention should be paid to the role that the Palestinian Authority should/could play in protection.
- Recommendations in terms of structure, resources and support required (further study needs, human resources, capacity building, etc) to ensure protection inclusion in Oxfam programs in OPTI.

 Methodology

Building on previous Oxfam protection studies undertaken (OPTI and global level) the final methodology will be proposed by the consultant. Some of the proposed elements to be considered are:
- Desk research: revision of key Oxfam protection documents and key protection studies covering OPT and other strategic documents.
- Interviews with selected Oxfam staff in OPTI: both WB and Gaza.
- Interviews with key protection stakeholders in the OPTI: Protection Cluster, selected INGOs, selected local NGOs, AIDA, selected Israeli NGOs, ECHO, ECHO-Consortium, ICRC, selected municipalities
- Field visits, including focus group discussions: communities covered by different Oxfam projects in Area C and Gaza.


 Deliverables

- Protection analysis document with the following structure:

 Background and context
 Brief overview of Applicable Standards of Civilian Protection
 Conflict characteristics and trends
 Summary of key protection threats
 Recommendations for incorporating protection into Oxfam SL programmatic area

- One day workshop in WB and Gaza to return the main conclusions to Oxfam staff and receive feedback.

Timeframe

The expected timeframe for this study should be 31 days (1 month) since the signature of the agreement, until the approval of the final report document of the study by Oxfam.

Required skills and expertise
- Experience and understanding of protection programming in humanitarian organizations
- Extensive knowledge of and experience in leading (designing and undertaking) protection researches and studies
- Advanced degree in program oriented social studies/protection studies/ IHL/humanitarian action analysis
- Extensive expertise in IHL and IHRL.
- Clear understanding of the OPT context, including the main protection national and international stakeholders linked with protection.
- Clear understanding of the Oxfam protection approach worldwide.
- Advanced knowledge and skills on gender analysis in humanitarian settings
- Strong analytical skills.
- Excellent written and speaking skills in English, able to produce a high quality research report draft.
- Availability to travel (OPT: Area C, Gaza Strip).

 Application process

Interested consultants should submit: letter of interest, technical proposal, and financial offer no later than the 12th of September 2016 to the attention of Itziar de Miguel

[email protected]

The proposal should have detailed methodology including following:

a. Objectives -understanding of the scope of the research.
b. CV of the consultant including list of similar works
c. Tools that the consultant will use in English.
d. Plan of data collection and analysis.
e. Timeframe.
f. Detailed budget on a separate sheet, including the Income Tax percentage required to the corresponding government.

Important to note that only short listed applicants will be contacted. Applicants after deadline will be excluded. Applications not conforming to the conditions will not be taken into account.

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