Consultancy:Community Land Rights Final Evaluation Study

Community Land Rights Final Evaluation Study

Nepal Terms of Reference

Background

The Community Land Rights Programme was launched with the objective of applying innovative legal empowerment techniques to support 75 communities in Nepal and Kenya to gain legal protection over their land and natural resources. During this process, the extent to which community land protection mitigates and resolves conflict was rigorously tested. Throughout the testing of this innovative approach, 7,500 women and 7,500 men were targeted to directly benefit from more equitable and secure tenure over community land.

Description of the project

The Project’s primary objective is to provide technical legal support to strengthen community land and resource rights and then rigorously test the extent to which this mitigates and resolves local conflict. Together with the Centre for Community Self Reliance (CSRC), Oxfam has supported communities to gain legal protection for their lands and through an action research approach which will carefully track how this process affects local conflict and gender dynamics. The project has also facilitated the establishment of intra-community governance mechanisms, promoted gender equality and increased communities’ negotiating power with elites. The community land documentation has also ensured that the rights of vulnerable groups – particularly women – are protected and that local elites do not engage in corrupt or exploitative practices at the expense of the wider community.

Organizations Involved: Oxfam GB, Oxfam Nepal, Centre for Community Self Reliance (CSRC)

Description of the work to be carried out:

The objectives of the final evaluation are:

1.To obtain end line measurements of key indicators about the perception of tenure and physical security of community members, threats to their security on issues related to land and natural resource ownership and access.

2.To understand district and VDC dynamics after intervention, as well as evaluate understanding of community on their rights related to ownership and access to land and natural resources.

3.To evaluate the level of women’s engagement/participation on land and natural resource ownership.

4.To evaluate project impact on conflict resolution and mitigation.

5.To compare the findings with baseline findings and evaluate the project impact.

The final evaluation study will involve various data collection techniques to obtain detailed district level impact analysis, and will include but not be limited to household surveys in the project VDCs and focus groups discussions. The data collection will be done in the project working districts - three VDCs in Bardiya and one municipality in Kailali. The sampling methodology to be adopted will include systematic random sampling for identifying the households to be visited while Simple Probability Proportionality Sampling will be used to identify the Primary Sampling Units.

The purpose of the survey is to capture project end line information on perceptions of land tenure security and to evaluate it against the baseline information so as to find out the impact level. The final evaluation will also help to identify if the project can be replicated in other districts. It will also help to identify learnings from the project - its effectiveness, if project objectives were met and future improvements. The consultant/organization conducting survey will be guided and supported from Oxfam Nepal and Oxfam GB. The results of the surveys will be aggregated into a final evaluation report.

Focus Group Discussions (FGD) will be held in each Ward with a separate FGD for men and for women. Higher level FGDs will be held at the VDC and Municipality level. Key participants of the FGDs will be the VDC Chairperson, members of local authorities, members of Community Forest User Groups and also community members.

Expected Outputs

-1 x Final evaluation report showing the results of the Household Survey and analysis of FGDs

-Clean dataset of end line data

-All primary research outputs to be provided to Oxfam Nepal, along with final reports.

Methodology

Household Survey: A survey tool (template) developed by Oxfam GB with input from Oxfam Nepal. The number of households to be surveyed will be driven by population data factoring in practical considerations given the size of the research team. The specific target number of households will be determined at a later point once population numbers are established; however as a starting point approximately 10-12 households should be surveyed per community in all 4 communities (i.e. 200-240 households should be surveyed).

The amount of time to be allocated for the household survey will depend on the size of the research team, but as an indication:

• For each District: if there are 6 x enumerators conducting the survey, then they could each conduct 15 household surveys on each day, resulting 45 surveys being completed per day. On this basis one VDC could be completed in 6 days. Simply in municipality 36 HHs surveys on each day on that basis 2 ward can be completed in each day.

•10 HHs from each ward in VDC level could be cover, resulting 90 HHs in a single VDC and 270 HHs in a district. Similarly in Municipality level 15 HHs from each ward could be cover, resulting 180 HHs from a single municipality. In total 450 HHs will be covered.

•Surveys in both Districts should be completed in parallel so a total of 6 days surveying done by 2 district teams concurrently should result in 450 household surveys being completed over a 6 days period.

Through purposive sampling the survey team should select  14-15 households (approximately for planning purposes) in each ward to interview. The pool of households to be surveyed should be selected by the survey team to include:

-Representative of male and female headed households; agree on a 50:50 ratio

-A mix of large/small land owning households

-Households in the center/margins of the community

The survey should be conducted with the head of the household (male or female), or the female primary (in cases where the male in the male headed household is absent). Participants for the focus group discussion will be VDC chairperson, Chairperson of CFUG, Chairperson of Ward Citizen Forum, political leaders and other prominent person of community involved in land issues and disputes.

Characteristics of the team in charge of the exercise:

The team should have detailed knowledge of the evaluation/survey tools and experience working in communities, conducting interviews and preparing reports.

Responsibilities of the different parties involved:

Oxfam GB: Developing the survey and interview tools to be used by the research teams, Strategic oversight of the process.

Oxfam Nepal: Ensuring the quality of the process, providing technical and logistical advice to the survey team as needed, responsible for communication with and guidance survey team. Providing input and feedback on the survey and focus group discussion tools to ensure they are suitable for Nepal.

Evaluation consultant/s: Leading the endline survey implementation process and drafting and finalising the evaluation report.  Managing enumerators, conducting FGDs and key informant interviews as required.

Content and format of the final report and deliverables

The results of the survey should be delivered to Oxfam Nepal and Oxfam GB in electronic format. It should include a database (Excel spreadsheet) of the responses which can be further analyzed.

Proposed basic work plan:

Target: All surveying, analysis and write up should be completed by 30 November 2016

Responses:

Interested firms/individuals are requested to send their proposal clearly mentioning the title of assignment in their email subject line by 28 September 2016 via mail to recruitment_nepal@oxfam.org.uk. Please send the legal documents including Company registration certificate, VAT registration document and Tax clearance document along with your proposal.

Disclaimer

Oxfam GB reserves the right to alter the dates of the timetable.

OXFAM GB may cancel or postpone the Call for Proposal but notice will be provided to bidder.

Oxfam GB does not bind itself to accept the lowest or any Call for Proposal.

Oxfam GB is in no way responsible for the cost of preparation of the Call for Proposal response.