Adyan calls for an external project evaluator to evaluate the Women, Religions and Human Rights in Lebanon project.

1. Introduction

About Adyan

Adyan, Foundation for diversity, solidarity and human dignity, works locally, regionally and internationally for pluralism, inclusive citizenship, community resilience, and spiritual solidarity, through homegrown solutions in Education, Media, Policymaking, and intercultural and interreligious relations.

Adyan is registered in Lebanon as a non-profit and non-governmental organization (NGO), under registration number 1103 by a ministerial decree dated 18 September 2008.

This project is under Rashad Center for Cultural Governance.The Rashad Center for Cultural Governance is Adyan’s Think-Do-Tank for policymaking and enhancement of cultural governance and diversity management. It is the newest expansion of Adyan’s structure to respond to the work for a better diversity management on the level of political and educational public policies, legislation and affairs.

About the project

The Women, Religions and Human Rights in Lebanon (WRL) project, is implemented by Adyan Foundation in partnership with Danmission funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from July 2019 – December 2022.

In Lebanon, legislative power over family affairs is delegated to religious family courts, with each religious community having its own theological and jurisprudential interpretations.

Therefore, this project aims at advancing women’s rights in the current 15 personal status laws and addressing the legal discrimination against women, by engaging with religious, political/legal, and civil society groups via a structured process of value-based dialogue to overcome polarization and find common ground between their disparate positions, resulting in agreed-upon recommendations for how best to eliminate the discrimination and safeguard and promote women’s rights. This structured process is unique as it included the different stakeholders concerned (religious legal experts/judges, parliamentarians, civil judges and civil society representatives) through using different methods ensuring all stakeholders participate equally. The project included a public opinion survey, individual meetings with religious legal experts, joint meeting with religious legal experts from different sects and courts, three sectorial meetings with each of the stakeholders, a policy roundtable along with a media campaign to spread awareness. A consolidated report on the situation of personal status laws, gaps and possibilities of reforms will be published soon along side an international conference on Women, Religion and Human Rights taking place in June 2022.

This evaluation comes at the end of this project phase thus giving the partner organizations the time to evaluate the extensive and valuable work that has been done for the past three years and act as an opportunity to plan for the next phase based on the lessons learnt form the current project.

This evaluation aims at looking into the impact of the WRL project based on the originally prepared results framework as the approach used is unique in the sense that the project works on a very important topic yet not frequently approached. This project is a benchmark for working within the religious system to enhance human rights in general and specifically women’s rights.

1. Cause and objective of the evaluation

The evaluation will be performed in order to understand further the project’s impact stemmed from its unique approach. The results of the evaluation will feed in the future steps of the project and will allow the project team and partners to built upon them. The evaluation is done now after almost three years of project implementation and just before the project life ends.

The aim of this evaluation is to:

• Understand and analyze the impact of the project
• Highlight project gaps
• Identify ideas for future steps of the project.
• Built upon the lessons learnt from the project.

2. Key questions

Relevance:

1. Does the project address a subject matter of core public concern (women’s rights situation in the current religious personal status laws)?
2. How relevant is the subject matter currently to the overall socio-political context in Lebanon?
3. Is the project’s conceptual and logical framework adequate to addressing the matter?
4. To which extent do the objectives of the project align with the needs of the right holders and strategies (policies) of the partners (Adyan and Danmission) and donors?
5. Was Gender balance respected in the whole implementation process?
6. Did women have influence on the whole process, from conceptualization to implementation?

Effectiveness:

7. How effective was the project planning in achieving the objectives of the project?
8. How effective was  the implementation process and can it be considered as a successful best practice for similar projects?
9. How effective were the methodology and tools and methods applied?

Efficiency:

10. To which extent were the methodology and the tools/methods used efficient to the situation in which the project was implemented in?
11. To which extent were the resources deployed efficient in relation to achieving theresults?

Impact:

12. To which extent did the project contribute to the attainment of overall SDG 5 onGender equality along with better respect for human rights?
13. To which extent did the project have an impact on changing the actual situation on the ground?
14. Any other positive or negative changes are to be noted and investigated?

Sustainability:

15. To which extent does the intended changes (foreseeably) contribute to a long term effect beyond the end of the project?

Coherence:

16. How compatible is the project with other interventions in the country, among Gender concerned civil society and women’s rights organizations? To which extent do other interventions (particularly policies) support or undermine the project, or vice versa?

3. Evaluation design/methods

The evaluation methods, design and processes should follow the OECD-DAC standards for evaluation. The evaluation must involve the different stakeholders in the project which include but are not limited to: project team at both Adyan and Danmission, external experts and consultants, religious leaders and jurists, parliamentarians and civil society organizations. The evaluators should also look into project proposals and narrative reports prepared during the project life.

We propose that the evaluators use the adequate methods for evaluation and the project team is ready to assist at any point to ensure that the evaluators reach the different beneficiaries and have the needed logistics support in place.

4. Process of the evaluation/time frame

The project evaluation will take place in the last quarter of the project life starting October 2022 and ending at the 15 December 2022. Based on the below timeframe:

Task/Activity

September

October

November

December

Informing selected consultant and meeting with Adyan to Finalize the Consultancy Work plan and Sign Agreement

X

Inception Report

X

First Draft of Final Report

X

Final Report (second draft if needed + final version)

X

5. Expected products

All final products of the evaluation should be in English. Different tools needed in the evaluation may be translated to Arabic to accommodate the needs of the stakeholders taking part of the evaluation.

We expect to receive:

• Inception report (see also the guide on the inception report)
• Draft of the final report with a summary of the findings
• Final report with a summary (e.g. 25 pages,  language: Arabic and English)

Review and approval:

• Once a report is sent to Adyan, the consultant can expect Adyan to review the document and submit comments – if any – or give approval.

6. Key qualifications of the evaluators

The Consultant must:

• Be able to fluently understand written and spoken Arabic and English, personally or with the support of an assistant engaged by him/her in the consultancy, with professional standard in producing the reports in English.
• Be independent from Adyan, Danmission and the WRL project.
• Have a proven track record in delivering high quality and complex external evaluations, and up-to-date knowledge of evaluation tools, techniques and best practices.
• Have knowledge and awareness of the nuances of the social and political contexts of Lebanon.
• Be sensitive to and respectful of religious, social and cultural differences and comfortable with working and communicating across difference, including able to communicate complex ideas in accessible ways and gather data from and with partners across society.
• Be skilled and experienced in offline and online workshop facilitation.
• Have access to their own computer. To note: no hardware/software or IT support will be provided by Adyan.
• Have access to fast, stable internet connection and a webcam. Even if the selected Consultant is based in Lebanon, a work station at Adyan’s office in Lebanon will not be provided.