Request for Proposal for Baseline Survey for Protection Measurement for VAWC in Uganda At International Justice Mission

Baseline survey for Protection measurement for Violence against Women & Children in Uganda

Due: Friday, April 29, 2022 5pm EAT **

Introduction

Violence against women, also known as gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence, are violent acts primarily or exclusively committed against women or girls. Such violence is often considered a form of hate crime, committed against women or girls specifically because they are female, and can take many forms. Women and girls across Uganda face a cycle of violence that follows them through every stage of their lives, beginning with the threat of child sexual abuse during puberty, to the threat of early marriage as teenagers, the likelihood of intimate partner violence and the possibility of land and property being stolen if widowed. Meanwhile, the threat of sexual assault hangs over women and children of all ages.**

IJM’s vision in Uganda is that vulnerable women and children are protected from violence. The focus of the IJM Uganda program is two highly prevalent and insidious forms of violence; “child sexual violence” and “intimate partner violence”, believing that improvements in the response to these crimes will lead to improvement in the response to other violent crimes against women and children. The program vision will be achieved through strengthening the mechanisms that enforce the law and through empowering survivors in their pursuit of justice. The program is to be delivered through implementation of scalable interventions in current IJM Uganda locations and in line with available data on key protection indicators. IJM works with government, civil society partners and other key stakeholders to enhance the scale and sustainability of our impact at national level. In achieving this vision, IJM Uganda also aims to demonstrate the value of improvements in justice sector services and contribute to a wide and diverse best practice debate. Evidence and best practice developed in Uganda will be utilized to the benefit of IJM’s global “violence against women and children” program and beyond.

IJM Uganda intends to undertake a baseline survey for its Violence Against Women & Children program (VAWC). The baseline survey will be a significant and high-quality piece of work, valuable not only for IJM’s own program measurement purposes, but also of interest to government stakeholders who will have significant ownership over the findings; and wider stakeholders working towards improvement of the Uganda justice system and/or a reduction in VAWC/sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Accordingly, IJM has allocated significant financial resource to this survey and places a premium on maximizing government engagement throughout the process.

Study Purpose

The purpose of the survey is to: Determine the prevalence of sexual violence against children and intimate partner violence in Uganda, stakeholder confidence and survivor reliance in the justice system and measure justice system performance in prevention and response to violence against women and children.

Specifically, this includes:

1. Measure availability and effectiveness of formal and informal reporting mechanisms of incidences of violence against women and children.
2. Measure the criminal justice system performance in responding and delivering justice and protecting survivors; this includes, investigation, prosecutions, and judicial outcomes
3. Measure the degree to which women and children rely on the justice system for protection from violence in their communities
4. Measure the level of confidence that key stakeholders have in the criminal justice system ability to protect women and children from violence
5. Measure vulnerability to re-victimization of survivors
6. Generate data for ongoing research learning and adaptation on violent crimes against women and children in Uganda

The baseline will purposely involve the different players in government including the Uganda Police Force; Judiciary; Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions; Ministry of Gender, Labour & Social Development, district local governments and local councils to generate collective ownership of survey results (including analysis and related processes) and stimulate ongoing data collection and effective use by government to measure improvement and motivate performance.

Study Objectives

1. To comprehensively describe and outline the legal framework and processes for handling cases of violence against women and children in Uganda
2. To assess the performance of the justice system in prevention and response to violence against women and children in Uganda, with an in-depth focus on the ability of the criminal justice processes to secure justice for victims of intimate partner violence and sexual violence against children
3. To explore stakeholder confidence in the criminal justice system (these may include those connected directly with a crime, actors in the justice system, actors connected informally with the justice system, members of the public with no direct connection to the justice system etc) and the reliance of victims / survivors of intimate partner violence and child sexual violence on the criminal justice system for redress
4. To determine the prevalence of violence against women and children, including prevalence of specific types of violence in Uganda

Study Methodology

The survey will measure IJM Uganda’s program indicators (goal and outcome level), and other indicators related to the four domains of protection measurement. These domains include Performance, Confidence, Reliance, and Prevalence. The baseline survey will not only provide information that could establish if change occurred at midline and the end of Uganda’s program implementation but also at global measurement level where the program directly contributes to the overall IJM 2030 vision.

The primary method of data collection is a population-based survey, case file reviews and an assessment of the criminal justice system. Data collection will vary significantly between indicators and, especially, between the four domains of protection measurement. In some instances, the needed data may match closely with existing government statistics; in other instances, baseline values may be extrapolated from existing government sources; whilst in many cases, no existing data is available and primary data collection is needed. The table below summarizes the four domains and possible data collection methods.

Table 1: Summary of the four domains

Indicator type

Possible data collection methods

Performance of the justice system

1. Data disaggregation and review
2. Case File Reviews
3. Qualitative data collection (e.g. key informant interviews).

Confidence of stakeholders in the justice system

1. Secondary source data review
2. Qualitative and Quantitative Primary data collection

Reliance of survivors 0n the justice system

1. Secondary source data review
2. Qualitative and Quantitative Primary data collection

Prevalence of sexual violence against children and intimate partner violence

1. Primary data collection (Household Survey)

We plan to embed a research evaluation alongside implementation of the program to enable the development of robust evidence to guide scaling of the program. The consultants are therefore requested to define a study with a clear counterfactual and that accounts for the phased program implementation. At minimum, the proposed study should include household surveys, VAWC survivor care model assessment and a justice system assessment etc. Where direct measurements cannot be made, the consultants should propose how this data can be modeled or estimated. The rigor and quality of the research should make it eligible for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

The research consultants are expected to prepare a detailed proposal for IJM to review including a robust study design to generate all baseline program core indicator values and enable future studies (mid-term and end line) to assess the impact of IJM proposed innovations under the different domains across the county. The proposal should explain the rationale for the design, the sampling strategy and sample size calculations to be used. In addition, the criteria for evaluation will examine the robustness of the relevant experience, logical presentation, and cost alongside the technical evaluation.

Ethical Review and Approval

The research consultant will be responsible for designing and seeking ethical approval from a Uganda-approved ethical review board and approval from the National Council of Science and Technology (UNCST).

Deliverables

· Inception report with a complete draft of the study protocol

· Final study protocol

· Baseline report

Tasks

1. Study Protocol Development (in collaboration with IJM and Key stakeholders)

· Develop study aims, research questions and objectives.

· Develop the study methodology.

· Support the systematic selection of areas for program and research sites including making recommendations on inclusion and exclusion criteria.

· Develop the baseline data collection tools, quality monitoring and control SOPs, and data collection approaches.

· Develop a data analysis plan.

2. Design of validation approaches

· Test the quantitative and qualitative data collection tools.

· Develop a data audit and feedback mechanisms to ensure high quality data capture and continued improvement.

3. Data collection

· Recruit and contract research assistants as needed

· Develop a data collection methodology and tool training guide for research assistants.

· Train the research assistants on data collection and protocols.

· Develop a work plan for data collection according to the methodology prescribed.

· Monitor and support quality control during data collection.

4. Data analysis and reports

· Baseline report that includes analysis and insights

· Draft publication manuscripts and policy briefs

5. Dissemination, documentation, and publication

· Provide a power point presentation for stakeholder dissemination**

· Provide a final reviewed and edited report**

Timelines

The entire activity after selection of the consultant(s) is estimated to take 5 months including Protocol finalization, ethical review, data collection, data analyses, development of research outputs and dissemination. The baseline survey is expected to kick off in May 2022.

Consultancy and payments

Due to the complex and diverse nature of the survey, it is expected that no single consultant (individual, company or academic institution) will be capable of doing the job alone. So, the winning tender is expected to be a consortium of different actors. Although a consortium approach is preferred, IJM would want to contract only one entity with the requisite experience to act as project leader. The project leader would be responsible for all downstream contracting with consortium members.

More specifically, the consultant (or team of consultants) would be expected to have the following skills/experience:

1. Technical skills in data collection and analysis
2. Experience in management of large-scale data collection
3. Subject matter knowledge of sexual and gender-based violence, including experience in dealing with primary data collection with survivors of SGBV/IPV/CSA and in child protection
4. Specialized knowledge of the investigation, prosecution and adjudication of criminal cases and the working of the criminal justice system.
5. Existing relationships with key government justice system stakeholders in Uganda
6. Experience in IRB approval processes and knowledge of related ethical and compliance issues

International consultants with considerable expertise in VAWC and justice systems strengthening are encouraged to apply. However, any international consultant would need to partner with strong local consultant/firm.

Payments will be milestone-based and linked to the project deliverables (these will be spelled out at contracting level). All milestone deliverables must be confirmed in writing via email by the service provider to the IJM Uganda Senior Manager, MERL for approval and processing of payments.