Evidence-based advocacy paper on the Women, Peace and Security agenda for 25th anniversary of UNSCR 1325

Background

We are confronted with a sobering moment for the WPS agenda - with record levels of armed conflict; militarisation and increase in military spending spending; growing backlash against gender justice and the rights and bodily autonomy of women, girls and LGBTQIA+ people; funding cuts for conflict prevention, peacebuilding and gender equality; multi-pronged assaults on civil society space, human rights and on international humanitarian law, rule of law and democracy; crises of forced displacement and closed borders, of protection and hunger, all of which have disproportionate and intersecting gendered impacts, while women and other marginalized groups are systematically excluded from international decision-making and peacemaking processes. Women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights organisations, peace activists and human rights defenders often face pushbacks, violent attacks, killings and a shrinking space for their agendas. They continue to face multiple barriers to self-organising, influencing decision-making, forming and leading local networks and seeking and receiving funding for their work.

For nearly 25 years, the Security Council, the UN and Member States have pledged their support for women’s full, equal, meaningful and safe participation in peace and security. The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) was adopted on the 30th of October 2000, and hence has its 25th anniversary in 2025. The resolution calls on all parties to conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence and human rights violations and reaffirms the crucial role that women play in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in humanitarian response, recovery and peacebuilding. Yet today 25 years on, women’s rights are under ceaseless attack in contexts marked by intensifying conflict, rising authoritarianism, militarization and backlash. Women’s participation in peace processes remains unacceptably low, and is decreasing even in UN-supported peace processes. Women are disproportionately affected by conflicts, yet their voices are seldom heard. Extensive research has shown that women's participation is a necessity to create sustainable and lasting peace. On top of this, the operating landscape for the applying organizations has changed the past couple of years, with the war in Ukraine, the assault on Gaza as well as the global backlash on women’s rights and the climate crisis. These changing global geopolitical-, climate- and security conditions call for a renewed focus on, as well as new approaches to implementing the resolution 1325 in relevant ways for the three applying organizations.

Given alarming trends globally, Oxfam has strengthened its programming and policy work in relation to the Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Oxfam takes a feminist approach to peacebuilding, recognising that structural inequalities and discriminatory gender and social norms need to be transformed in order to build peace that is inclusive. This is essential as it involves addressing gender norms and inequalities as root causes of violence, which is required for both preventing and responding to conflict. Feminist peace supports, recognises and values women’s leadership and their role as agents of change. Oxfam’s conception of feminist peacebuilding incorporates a decolonial, anti-racist and intersectional lens, and recognises that gendered social norms and toxic masculinity affect everyone in society of all genders and diversities. Oxfam promotes gender-transformative changes in crisis and conflict settings through engaging with and supporting women and women’s organisations as leaders and change agents to ensure they lead, participate in and benefit from relief and response efforts, as well as longer-term recovery, resilience and peace processes in an equitable, safe and meaningful manner.

Oxfam Denmark’s WPS efforts started under the Strategic Partnership (SP) I with the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) 2018-2021 programme with a focus especially on the participation pillar of the four WPS pillars (participation, protection, prevention, and relief & recovery), which showed strong results in relation to locally-led peacebuilding, conflict resolution and prevention by women and youth. In the present DANIDA SP 2022-2025, Oxfam Denmark strengthened its nexus programming (humanitarian, development and peace) and applied a more holistic way of promoting gender justice across the nexus by working with the four pillars of the WPS agenda. Under the Danida Strategic Partnership II, Oxfam Denmark has strategically committed to ensuring that “Marginalised voices, such as young women and women from displaced communities, will be a particular focus for Oxfam IBIS and partners, to ensure their participation in and influence of decision-making spaces including in peacebuilding processes and policy reform processes.” Two years into the implementation of the SP II, some of the ambitions set towards implementing the WPS agenda, such as focusing on partnering increasingly with local women’s rights and women-led organisations (WROs and WLOs), strengthening women’s participation and influencing work towards decision-making on peace and security, as well as linking this work more strongly with protection from and prevention of all forms of human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence in crisis still need to be strengthened further.

Nature and scope of the assignment/service

Oxfam Denmark seeks to contract a service provider to conduct the following assignment:

Strengthening WPS evidence base to inform advocacy

In light of the above context and background and with the upcoming 25th anniversary of the UNSCR 1325, Oxfam Denmark seeks to undertake a multi-country action research to develop effective strategies to inform context-tailored WPS policy advocacy work that can advance a feminist locally-led WPS agenda. This will focus particularly on exploring enabling and hindering factors as well as effective strategies to advance women’s, women’s organisations and feminist networks’ participation in peacebuilding contexts, processes and spaces.

The research findings and outputs will be targeted at actors working in policy and advocacy. Along with the service provider, Oxfam will identify spaces to disseminate the findings and outputs in order to effectively influence the reconceptualization of the WPS agenda. The project will specifically target a series of policy spaces, including the 2024 WPS Open Debate, formal and informal discussions planned around the 25th anniversary of UNSCR 1325 in 2025, UNSCR 1325 NAPs, CSW69/ Beijing +30 Commemoration in March 2025, Protection of Civilians Week (2025), as well as regional initiatives to enhance women's participation and protection in peacemaking and peacebuilding, such as the AU WPS Summit in December 2025.

Methodology

Strengthening multi-country WPS evidence base to inform advocacy

The methodology for the multi-country contextualised participatory action research would combine the following elements:

- Literature review and research tool development: designing the research questions and methods by taking stock of recent WPS research and practice work in consultation with Oxfam and partners involved

- Country-specific and expert consultations: KIIs and FGDs based on identified research questions focusing specific country contexts (focusing on a minimum of 3 conflict/crisis affected countries in which Oxfam works on WPS programming ensuring diversity in regional representation). This would involve a combination of key informant interviews, focus group discussions and peer exchanges with Oxfam staff and partners, including practitioner networks and coordination platforms and mechanisms, regional and global CSO platforms, partnership with national researchers, and desk research.

- Validation: Final validation process with Oxfam staff and partners involved.

Deliverables, timetable and budget

The assignment must be completed within 25 days over a 5 month period (1st February 2025 – 31st July 2025) as per below:

Strengthening multi-country WPS evidence base to inform advocacy

• Desk Review: Summary analysis of Oxfam and partner documents (progress reports, tools, analyses/assessments, case studies, evaluations, etc.) - 2 days
• Methodology Plan and Tools for KIIs and FGDs: Overview of approach and survey questionnaires - 1 day
• Consultations and analysis from each selected country and with key regional and global actors: Online interviews (KII and FGDs) with identified stakeholders per country (relevant CSOs and Oxfam staff working on WPS in each country) as well as members of the wider Oxfam WPS CoP and relevant regional and global CSO platforms on WPS - 11 days
• Draft paper outline and full draft narrative paper: Responding to identified research questions consolidating findings from desk review, KII, and FGDs. Draft outline to be shared and approved first, followed by full draft paper. - 5 days
• Presentation of findings and recommendations for validation with reference group: Key Oxfam and partner WPS focal points will serve as the reference group - 1 day
• Final paper: Incorporating feedback from reference group. - 5 days

The consultant/consulting firm will submit a financial proposal that indicates all-inclusive costs for conducting the assignment. The consulting firm shall bear all costs associated with the preparation and submission of the proposal. All costs should be quoted in USD and will remain valid up to sixty days (60) from the day of proposal submission.

Invoicing and payment shall be managed according to the following:

1. 25% upon approval by Oxfam Denmark of the desk reviews and methodology plans (item 1.b above), submitted after signing of the contract and a preparatory meeting.
2. 50% upon approval by Oxfam Denmark of the draft final reports (item 1.d above) .
3. 25% upon finalization of the final reports (item 1.f above) approved by Oxfam Denmark capturing all findings, recommendations and lessons learned (in English). Issues requiring management response should be clearly outlined. The Report length should not exceed 40 pages in total (excluding annexes). The executive summary should be maximum 3-5 pages understandable as a stand-alone document.

All the outputs – reports, data base, etc, produced under this assignment will not be disseminated in part or whole without authority from Oxfam Denmark. Thus, the consultant firm shall not produce these materials in any form (electronic, hard copies, etc) to a third party without written permission from Oxfam Denmark. The consultancy firm shall handover to Oxfam Denmark a clean data set and transcriptions of the data gathered.

Relevant project documentation will be provided by Oxfam Denmark and relevant Oxfam Country offices in the inception phase.

If travel becomes relevant for this consultancy, the consultancy team will be responsible for its own travel itinerary to select countries as well as necessary security arrangements in coordination with Oxfam country offices. Oxfam Denmark will be contracting the consultancy team and coordinating on travel arrangements with Oxfam Country Offices for country travel. Oxfam Country Offices will support and facilitate the data collection, workshop arrangements and help in coordination with the different stakeholders. If required, Oxfam country offices will assist in arranging stakeholder interviews, support identifying interviewees for different interviews, in-country transportation arrangements including the booking of UNHAS flights, identifying enumerators and translators in the data collection locations, availing training facilities for enumerators/translators, organizing of the cost of translators and enumerators related to the data collection, coordinating meetings with relevant government counterparts or other stakeholders, and obtaining the needed approvals. Some of these costs will be agreed with the consultants and deducted from the final consultancy budget (specified above) and consultancy payments.

Reporting requirements

Narrative Reports

• Semi-Annual: 1st January – 30th July 2025. Due 20th August 2025
• Annual: 1st January – 31st December 2025. Due 28th February 2026

Financial Reports

• Quarterly: 1st January – 31st March 2025. Due 20th April 2025
• Quarterly: 1st April – 30th June 2025. Due 20th July 2025
• Quarterly: 1st July – 30th September 2025. Due 20th October 2025

Qualification criteria for suppliers

Qualifications

• Team members with Master’s degree in Law, human rights, gender, international relations, international development, international law or other social science fields is required; A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree;
• Team members with each at least 10 years of progressively responsible experience in designing and implementing Women, Peace and Security programming and policy/advocacy initiatives;
• Technical expertise in conducting participatory action research and facilitating focus group discussions and key informant interviews
• Experience working with feminist civil society in crisis/conflict-affected contexts
• Technical expertise in feminist MEAL principles
• Experience working with Oxfam an asset
• Experience working in at least one of the Oxfam Denmark focus regions (West Africa, East Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Latin America)
• Fluency in English required, fluency in French, Spanish and Arabic an asset.

Compliance requirements:

ODK imposes a requirement on all co-operating partners (including suppliers and consultants) to consider an environmentally sustainable development and that goods and services shall be produced and supplied in the most environmentally friendly way possible. ODK also requires that fundamental human rights such as those expressed in the ILO’s Core Conventions relating to freedom of association and the right to organize, prohibition against forced labor, child labor, and discrimination are respected. Suppliers that breach fundamental human rights shall not be accepted. Further suppliers should not be involved in tax evasion activities or tax heaven constructions. It is also a requirement that all contractual parties accept our anti-corruption provisions, which among other things prohibit bribes and corruption. Suppliers shall not be bankrupt, convicted of a crime or guilty of grave professional misconduct, or have tax debts. Danish suppliers must hold a business tax certificate. Consultants shall also comply with Oxfam’s Code of Conduct.

Expression of Interest

Interested consultants must submit:

1. A cover letter including an expression of interest and related experience.
2. Technical proposal (maximum eight pages), including consultants understanding of the TOR, clear and elaborate workplan, CVs for all the consultant(s) proposed and proposed capacity of any complementary staff, and organizational capacity statement, experience and activities related to project/programme evaluations.
3. Financial proposal (including a suggested schedule of payments).
4. Applications should include 3 organizations that will act as professional references.
5. Two copies of similar samples of written work and relevant publications undertaken in the last 3 years.

Interested applicants must submit their proposal with all required documents merged in one standalone file including all them by 10th January 2025 to the following email: procurement2@oxfam.dk 

Incomplete applications or applications received after the closing date will not be given consideration. Please note that only applicants who are shorted-listed will be contacted.

For any questions or queries about this call, please contact Senior Humanitarian and Peacebuilding Adviser, Marie Sophie Pettersson: msp@oxfam.dk

Evaluation process

An internal Evaluation Committee will be established by Oxfam Denmark consisting of members of Oxfam Denmark along with members of other Oxfam Affiliates and Country Offices involved in this assignment.

Criteria for Evaluation of Proposal: Only those applications which are responsive and compliant will be evaluated. Offers will be evaluated according to the combined scoring method – where the educational background and experience on similar assignments will be weighted at 70% and the price proposal will weigh as 30% of the total scoring. The applicant(s) receiving the Highest Combined Score may be invited for interviews.