Follow-up Evaluation Consultancy for the Project: ‘Protecting Children Against Torture (2021-2024)’ At World Organisation Against Torture

The OMCT. The World Organisation Against Torture (Organisation Mondiale Contre la Torture – OMCT in the French acronym) works with around 200 member organisations which constitute its SOS-Torture Network, to end torture, fight impunity and protect human rights defenders worldwide. Together, we make up the largest global group actively standing up to torture in more than 90 countries. Helping local voices be heard, we support our vital partners in the field and provide direct assistance to victims. Our international secretariat is based in Geneva, with offices in Brussels and Tunis.

The Project: “Protecting Children Against Torture (2021-2024)”. The OMCT’s Protecting Children Against Torture (2021-2024) project has been designed in cooperation with members in our SOS-Torture Network in 2012, intended to build on many years of engagement of the OMCT in this critical area of work often falling between the lines between child rights and anti-torture struggles. Although the extent of the problem of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment inflicted on children is, in short, immense, our work in this area has also achieved concrete improvements in the protection of children through partnership projects with the OMCT’s members and partners in civil society on the ground.

The overall objective identified for the OMCT Child Protection Against Torture Project is:

• To help ensure that children throughout the world, particularly those deprived of their liberty, are better protected from torture and ill-treatment.

The specific objectives of the project are to:

1. Improve the prevention and protection of children deprived of their liberty against torture by monitoring places of detention and identifying and documenting cases of torture and ill-treatment more effectively, enabling strategic legal action to be taken.
2. Increase the conformity of national legislation and practices with international standards, in particular through increased participation in international mechanisms.
3. Strengthen the capacities of key actors for change (civil society organisations, juvenile judges, prison staff, law enforcement agencies, families, children, etc.) to enable sustainable prevention and protection against torture.

Period covered by the project: November 2021 through December 2024.

Information about the OMCT and its activities with the Child Protection Against Torture Programme can be found on the OMCT’s website, as well as the OMCT’s social media outlets on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn.

1. Follow-up Evaluation on Recommendations from the Initial Full Evaluation

This project has been supported by the City of Geneva for more than a decade, and in 2019/2020 the City of Geneva contracted an evaluator to assess the Programme and provide concrete measures to improve it. The present Call for Bids is requesting proposals from evaluators experienced in international human rights to conduct a limited Follow-up Evaluation of the project designed and implemented after the 2020 Evaluation.

Bids must therefore focus on how the Contractor would assess the extent to which the initial Recommendations have been incorporated and addressed (whether fully, partially, or not at all), and identify what if any improvements this has introduced to this area of the OMCT’s work.

The evaluation of the project takes place within a diverse human rights and civil society context. However, its scope should be limited to the assessment of the Recommendations and in particular:

• The cooperation between the OMCT and its network members at the country level;
• the evaluation of the project’s relations with and outcomes related to relevant UN human rights mechanisms; and
• the analysis of the OMCT’s role in enhancing the capacity of local organizations to address this highly invisible issue.

Additionally, the evaluation should consider the value that the OMCT adds to the work of network members and partners in achieving significant impacts for its primary beneficiaries—children deprived of liberty in the project’s focus countries.

It should also seek to assess the impact and sustainability (as per OECD DAC Standards for evaluation[1]) of the project, and provide practical recommendations that the OMCT can implement to improve performance in the next phase of the project.

Recommendations from the initial full evaluation:

a) On the content of the project

• Recommendation no 1 – Capitalise on the project’s experience and share knowledge. The rich experience accumulated during the project deserves to be capitalised on. The Global Guide for the Protection of Children Deprived of their Liberty represents an excellent opportunity to institutionalise and share the knowledge and know-how developed. It responds on the one hand to the lack of global capitalisation, and on the other hand to the need to integrate the ‘global network’ dimension into the project, and thus allow other members to benefit from the experience of the OMCT Secretariat and the six national partners. From this point of view, the preparation of the Global Guide should not be limited to contributing to the stated objective of “strengthening the capacities of players deemed key to changing practices”. It should also be a participative sharing and learning process, and treated as an opportunity for OMCT to establish its trademark on the subject. To ensure the success of this process, support from senior management and other relevant programmes is encouraged. The Global Guide could include a section on methods of monitoring visits to places of detention for minors, including practical tools, taking into account the cultural and geographical specificities that OMCT has been confronted with in the project. This section could be inspired by or complement the Practical Guide – Monitoring places where children are deprived of their liberty, in the development of which OMCT was involved, which focuses on practice in European countries.
• Recommendation 2 – Strengthen regional synergies and direct cooperation between national partners. The comparative work of identifying and analysing the lessons learned from the project experience is mainly carried out by the OMCT Secretariat team in its role as overall coordinator of the project. Through the new regional dimension, experience sharing and direct mutual support between project partners should also be strengthened, at regional level and, where possible, on a transcontinental basis. These efforts could be inspired by, or even grafted onto, the innovations implemented by other OMCT programmes to encourage cooperation between network members.
• Recommendation no 3 – Institutionalise knowledge transfer to authorities. In order to strengthen the sustainability of knowledge transfer, the project should explore the possibilities of developing permanent training modules on the protection of children deprived of their liberty against torture within the relevant national bodies. This process of institutionalising training would require close collaboration with the training centres/units of various actors, such as the prison service, the police, universities and professional associations (e.g. for magistrates). This work on training curricula would complement the workshops currently being conducted on an ad hoc basis.
• Recommendation no 4 – Explore other situations of deprivation of liberty. Consideration could be given to the desirability and feasibility of exploring the extension of the project to other situations of deprivation of liberty – with a view to the next cycle and subject to additional resources. The Global Study on Children Deprived of their Liberty published at the end of 2019 examines six types of situation. To date, the project has focused primarily on violence and abuse committed in one of these situations, namely detention related to the administration of justice. The project has already looked into the possibility of developing this area further, in particular the monitoring of police detention, especially in Uruguay where SERPAJ has considerable expertise in the forces of law and order. During the interviews carried out for the evaluation, two types of situation were highlighted as potential sites for the work of protecting minors from torture and other forms of violence: deprivation of liberty in institutions – a category that includes various forms of non-family care – and detention linked to migration. According to the Global Study, these two situations account for two-thirds of the deprivation of liberty of minors worldwide, and are the subject of considerable recommendations.

b) On internal processes

• Recommendation no 5 – Refine the tools for planning and evaluating results. With a view to the next cycle, the project team could continue the work on clarifying the theory of change begun in 2019 (see Appendices), focusing on the expected effects and the complex links between activities, outputs and effects. A limited set of strategic indicators should be developed. Each indicator should be clearly linked to the level of outcome it measures (activity, output or effect) and linked to a target (quantitative or qualitative). Indicators should be set taking into account the practical possibilities of providing reliable information without committing excessive resources. This work could benefit from the methodological support of the new post of monitoring and evaluation officer (see ‘Institutional reforms’, section of the Full Evaluation).
• Recommendation no 6 – Adjust the pace of institutional reform. OMCT’s ambitious institutional strengthening agenda should be implemented with circumspection. It would be advisable to find the right balance between the urgency of changing/formalising practices – particularly in response to the demands of donors – and the capacity of teams to take ownership of transformations, in order to adapt the pace accordingly. Adopting an institutional policy is not the ‘beginning of the end’ of the change process, but rather the ‘end of the beginning’. Implementing reforms and managing change requires not only additional staff, but also time to adjust staff habits and behaviours. Thus, care should be taken to ensure that the reforms do not come at the expense of the positive dynamic that prevails within the Secretariat, the participative working culture and the strong sense of belonging to the organisation, which are among the key factors in OMCT’s success.

Recommendations to both the City of Geneva and the OMCT

• Recommendation 7 – Strengthen dialogue between the City of Geneva and OMCT. In order to iron out the respective misunderstandings related to the functioning of the partnership noted during the evaluation, a more sustained dialogue should be initiated between the City of Geneva and OMCT. Facilitated if necessary by a third party, this dialogue should aim to clarify respective expectations and constraints for the future, by involving different levels of hierarchy.

1. Timeframe, Methodology and Deliverables

The evaluation will include a desk review of the project’s key documents, including the reports produced as part of the regular monitoring and the initial full evaluation conducted for the project. It will also include interviews with the staff responsible for the project and the partners.

The Consultant(s) is expected to deliver to OMCT a written report of maximum 20 pages excluding annexes. The evaluation should produce a concise list of practical, actionable recommendations to improve the OMCT’s work in the coming years.

The tasks for this evaluation are expected to be completed over an estimated period of 20 working days. The draft report must be submitted to the Programme Director for review, after which the evaluator should be available approximately one week later to address feedback and comments. The finalized report must then be submitted by the end of that week, no later than February 21, 2025.

The location of the evaluation will be Geneva, Switzerland.

Expected activities and key deliverables:

• Inception phase (desk review of relevant documents).
  • Deliverable: inception report.
• Discussion of the inception report and incorporation of comments.
• Desk review of relevant documents, proposals and reports;
• Analysis of data collected;
• Report compilation with list of recommendations;
  • Deliverable: draft implementation plan.
• Presentation and discussion on the draft report.
• Final report compilation.
  • Deliverable: final evaluation report, including recommendations and an executive summary.

The evaluation may include additional elements and approaches as appropriate. Applicants are encouraged to suggest a comprehensive methodology that includes these elements and others to meet the evaluation objectives.

1. Requirements and Qualifications

Consultants with the following skills and competencies are encouraged to express their interest by submitting a bid which also satisfies the below:

• Post-graduate degree in a relevant discipline (e.g., fields of Social Sciences, Law, Politics, Economics, and Human Rights);
• At least 7 years of international experience and additional training in project evaluation, including in the field of human rights, civil and political rights and/or human rights defenders;
• Strong data collection, analytical and writing skills;
• Competence in organisational development;
• Demonstrable experience in evaluating programmes and projects in different regions and with different institutions and organisations;
• Demonstrable knowledge and understanding of the architecture of human rights organisations;
• Fluency in English and French is required.

1. Eligibility, Applications, and Consideration

Bids should be submitted via email to applications@omct.org with the subject “Protecting Children Against Torture (2021-2024)”, with the following attachments, in PDF:

• A Letter of Interest summarising the Bid (max. 1 page)
• A Bid for Contract, detailing the proposed methodology, timeframe, and fee (max. 2 pages)
• Individuals: a CV/resume, with at least two references (max. 2 pages)
• Firms: a list of relevant evaluations completed during the past three years (max. 1 page)

Applications will be accepted until 6 December 2024 and reviewed on a rolling basis as they are received. The total amount available for the evaluation is capped at EUR 10.000. Competitive bids will be given due consideration during the selection process.

[1] Please see here for the six evaluation criteria identified by the OECD DAC Network on Development Evaluation (EvalNet), as well as DAC Guidelines and Reference Series Quality Standards for Development Evaluation (https://www.oecd.org/development/evaluation/qualitystandards.pdf). These standards should be used as guidance, where they are relevant for or appropriate to evaluating human rights work.