Background Information
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is an international humanitarian
organization helping people forced to flee. Through its programmes, NRC
addresses immediate humanitarian needs, prevents further displacement, and
supports durable solutions. The Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance
(ICLA) Core Competency (CC) is a specialised legal protection programme targeting
displaced and conflict-affected populations and is operational across all 40 NRC
Country Offices (COs).
It provides legal aid in the form of information provision, counselling, and legal
assistance to allow people to claim rights and seek redress for rights violations, and
undertakes advocacy, capacity development, and coordination activities to remove
legal, systemic, or practical barriers so that displaced persons are free, unhindered,
and protected to claim their rights and seek remedies. In this way, ICLA works with
others to address both immediate legal protection needs and longer-term
development and peace objectives.
The ICLA CC works on six specific thematic areas: housing, land, and property (HLP)
rights; legal identity; legal stay; employment law and procedures; government legal
procedures and policies for registration of internally displaced people; and access
to essential services.
ICLA AS TECHNICAL SERVICE PROVIDER| JULI 2025 | PAGE 2
The Global development Strategy (2022 – 2026) for ICLA identifies technical service
provision as a workstream to be further explored. Over the years, ICLA has refined
its technical legal expertise on several thematic focus areas such as HLP rights,
legal identity, and employment law and procedures. These thematic areas have
proved to be requisites for other sectors to realise their outcomes. HLP rights have
become a central feature in Livelihoods and Food Security (LFS), Shelter and
Settlements, WASH programming, and demining actors have also turned to ICLA for
technical assistance on HLP rights. For instance, successful implementation of
food security or agricultural initiatives hinges upon a nuanced comprehension of
access to land and corresponding land rights. It allows project participants not only
to gain access to vital land resources but also empowers them to secure a
foundation for sustainable livelihoods.
Beyond HLP rights, there are other legal thematic focus areas that constitute
prerequisites for humanitarian programmes to realise their outcomes. For example,
setting up a business involves navigating often complex registration and regulatory
processes and might be dependent on having or acquiring other documents, such
as identity documents or work permits. When it comes to education, many contexts
highlight the absence of civil or identity documentation, such as birth certificates,
as an obstacle to accessing education or obtaining educational certificates.
Many of these sector actors lack sufficient expertise in these legal thematic areas
and ICLA is often called upon to provide technical legal services to those other
sectors, internally and externally, integrating legal components in their sector
response.
The ICLA CC is providing technical services to other CCs or programme sectors
within NRC (in the form of integrated programming) and this technical legal service
provision is also happening to some extent with external actors in a variety of ways.
There is no official definition of what technical legal service provision is within NRC,
but we are using the following as a working definition: the provision of support to
other organisations or entities (both non-governmental and governmental) to
address a specific need or problem in the form of legal or policy advice or legal
services to their project participants.1 This does not include legal or administrative
services to other organisations such as real estate contracting (i.e. office premises)
or labour law issues related to their staff.
This way of working is aligned with NRC’s role as an ‘enabler’ which envisions a
reduced role for NRC as a direct service provider and an increased role as an
1 For example, NRC provides specific legal support to an agreed-upon number of project participants of another
organisation/entity, financed by the other organisation.
ICLA AS TECHNICAL SERVICE PROVIDER| JULI 2025 | PAGE 3
empowering, facilitating agent, capitalising on existing (local) capacity.2 For this
consultancy, we are looking at technical legal service provision to both national and
international organisations or entities.
2 Objectives and Scope of Work
2.1 Objective
The overall objective of this consultancy is to assess the potential for NRC’s ICLA
Core Competency to evolve as a technical service provider in the legal aid space—
both within the humanitarian sector and in support of local systems. This includes
understanding the current landscape, identifying demand and market potential,
and proposing viable models for how NRC could deliver such services in a
principled and sustainable manner.
2.2 Scope of Work
To ensure a comprehensive analysis based on learning and evidence, the
consultant is expected to follow the below approach:
1. Landscape and Market Analysis
• Map existing technical legal service provision undertaken by NRC’s ICLA
teams to external actors across COs, including thematic focus, modalities,
and target audiences.
• Identify real-world examples or case studies of similar models used by
peer organisations or actors (e.g. INGOs, CSOs, private sector,
development agencies, donors) currently providing technical legal service
provision within the humanitarian and development sphere, including:
o Thematic or sectoral focus of their assistance
o Delivery models and funding mechanisms
o Geographic or institutional reach
• Assess demand and appetite for such technical legal services externally,
including:
o Key legal needs of humanitarian actors and local systems
o Thematic areas of highest relevance or unmet demand
o Willingness and ability to pay for legal services
2. Typology and Design Options
2 NRC’s Framing Paper – Engaging local systems and actors
ICLA AS TECHNICAL SERVICE PROVIDER| JULI 2025 | PAGE 4
• Develop a typology of potential service delivery models for technical
legal service provision, ranging from light-touch advisory to embedded
partnerships, contracted service provision or other.
• For each model, outline:
o Capacity and skills required (team structure, scale, competencies)
o Pros and cons, risks, and mitigation strategies
o Cost analysis (e.g., financial investment, implementation effort) and
benefit analysis (e.g., efficiency gains, scalability, innovation
potential)
o Implications for MEAL and how activities would be tracked and
reported
3. Business Models
• Apply the developed service delivery models to NRC to act as a technical
legal service provider to external (national/international) actors across the
humanitarian and development sphere. This should include identifying
viable legal, governance, and financial (cost and income) frameworks
through which NRC could provide ICLA expertise in a sustainable and
principled manner.
• For each business model scenario, outline the following elements:
o Governance: What legal and operational structure would be required
(e.g. internal NRC unit, hosted/shared model, or externalised spinoff).
o Financial structure: Implications for staffing, partnerships, funding
modalities (fee-for-service, framework agreements, etc.).
o SWOT analysis: Opportunities and constraints to scale.
o Local systems: Assess how these business models could enable
NRC to support local systems and national legal aid actors.
2.3 Methodology
The consultant will be asked to consider the following steps and approaches:
Discovery Phase (Scoping Step 1 and 2)
• Desk review of key documents, including NRC Programme Policy,
Partnership Strategy, legal and governance frameworks.
• Interviews with relevant NRC staff to collect existing internal examples of
technical legal service provision, surface early insights, and clarify strategic
priorities and constraints.
• Desk review, consultations and interviews with external stakeholders to
identify real-world examples and develop a typology of delivery models.
Discovery Report
• Report presenting the findings and analysis, and the developed delivery
models with design options and corresponding real-world examples. Each
ICLA AS TECHNICAL SERVICE PROVIDER| JULI 2025 | PAGE 5
proposed delivery option should be accompanied by a brief rationale
explaining its assumed relevance and potential applicability for NRC.
• Discussion of the report with the NRC Steering Group to decide on the
models and scope for the development of business model scenarios for
NRC.
Analysis Phase (Step 3)
• Comprehensive assessment of each of the selected service delivery types
(governance, financial structure, SWOT analysis, support to local systems).
• Reference to relevant real-world examples in case there is any learning or
good practices from their implementation.
Final Report
• Detailed report synthesising the findings from the analysis phase. The report
will provide clear recommendations for each business model scenario’s
feasibility and (strategic) implications for NRC.
3 Deliverables and Implementation Schedule
Key Deliverables
• Brief inception report after inception meetings, including list of stakeholders
for interviews/consultations and timeline
• Discovery report and presentation for discussion with NRC Steering Group
• Draft final report and presentation for discussion with NRC Steering Group
• Final report
Proposed timeline
The consultancy needs to take place within the period of September 15th, 2025, to
December 30th, 2025.
4 Institutional and Organisational Arrangements
NRC will own the intellectual property rights to all materials submitted by the
consultant under the contract. The consultant must therefore ensure that he/she
has possession of any materials provided to NRC as a part of the deliverables. The
rights to reproduce the report will fall to NRC and its contracted agent. NRC will be
free to reproduce the materials at will and to grant reproduction rights.
ICLA AS TECHNICAL SERVICE PROVIDER| JULI 2025 | PAGE 6
Duties of the consultant(s):
• Lead and coordinate the assignment including being responsible for:
o Desk review.
o Identify external stakeholders for interviews and consultations.
o Preparation and facilitation of interviews/consultations with NRC
staff and other external stakeholders as agreed upon with NRC.
o Deliverables (including addressing NRC questions/comments).
• Ensure the timely submission of the above-mentioned deliverables.
Reports/documents should be submitted in Microsoft Word format, in UK English.
All text should be unformatted. Graphs or other graphical devices should be
editable (i.e. not pictures). All references must be cited according to convention,
and detailed in a bibliography, using the Harvard system as set out in the UNESCO
Style Manual. All verbatim quotations must appear in quotation marks and must not
be of excessive length. All data collected under the consultancy must be submitted
with the deliverables, in a widely recognised format such as Microsoft Excel.
Everything submitted to NRC must be the original work of the consultants. Any
plagiarism in any form, or any other breach of intellectual property rights, will
automatically disqualify the consultant from receiving any further payments under
the contract by NRC, and NRC will seek to recover any payments already made.
Duties of NRC:
• Accompany and support the consultant.
• Ensure proper inception meetings with the consultant(s).
• NRC will provide the consultant with the relevant documents for the desk
review.
• Identify key NRC staff to be interviewed and organise their introduction to the
consultant(s).
• Support with the identification of external stakeholders to be interviewed or
consulted.
• Participate in interviews as relevant.
• Review and feedback to the draft deliverables.
• NRC will bear the consultancy fees.
5 Qualifications of the Consultant(s)
NRC seeks expressions of interest from people with the following
skills/qualifications:
• Advanced university degree in law, social studies, political science,
international relations or relevant field of study.
ICLA AS TECHNICAL SERVICE PROVIDER| JULI 2025 | PAGE 7
• Minimum 7 years of proven experience in conducting programme
evaluations and strategic/organisational reviews in humanitarian settings,
including displacement settings.
• Demonstrable experience related to legal aid, access to justice and rule of
law in humanitarian settings, including in displacement settings.
• Familiar with traditional humanitarian and development donors as well nontraditional
funding streams such as commercial contracts etc.
• Understanding of humanitarian principles, standards, and code of conduct.
• Strong analytical and writing skills with proven experience in producing high
quality research with ability to present complex information in a simple and
accessible manner.
• Fluency in English both spoken and written. Knowledge of French or Spanish
is an asset.
​
How to apply
Proposals should be submitted by 9 September 2025 strictly through the following
email address:Â katrien.ringele@nrc.no.
Failure to meet the closing date and manner of submission will result in the
proposal being rejected.
Applications should include the following:
• CV of the consultant(s).
• Cover Letter outlining consultant experience in similar work.
• Evidence/Sample of related previous consultancy reports/ evaluations
similar in nature (no more than 5000 words).
• Technical proposal outlining the consultant’s understanding of the
assignment and proposed approaches.
• Budget proposal, detailing consultancy fee and number of days.
o Any costs related to procurement and provision of equipment,
material, services required to complete the consultancy should be
included in the fees. No additional costs shall be charged separately.
• Legal and Administrative Information.
o Company registration number or consultant tax ID.