Request for proposal for DCASS Country Programme Evaluation 2023-2026

Terms of Reference (ToR)Country Programme Evaluation: South Sudan, and Area (A1)1. BackgroundSouth Sudan has continued to grapple with recurrent humanitarian crisis since independence in 2011. This is mainly triggered by the ongoing political and inter-communal tensions that have left over 7.8 million people in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Persistent displacements have destabilised communities, damaged the economy and crippled the government capacity to provide basic services. The collapse of the power-sharing agreement, delays in the implementation of the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan have also contributed to the humanitarian crisis. Moreover, persistent human rights abuse amid the ethnic mobilisation and political grievances, widespread arming and repression of civic freedoms have exacerbated the instability. Deep mistrust, resource-driven conflicts, and focus on power hinder reconciliation and endangering fragile peace efforts.DanChurchAid (DCA) has been operating in South Sudan since 2007, providing humanitarian support to the most vulnerable communities across Central Equatoria, Eastern Equatoria, Jonglei, Upper Nile, Unity, and Greater Pibor Administrative Area States of South Sudan. DCA is also implementing humanitarian response programme in the regions (A1). DCA’s Country Office programming is guided by the three global goals: save lives, build resilient communities, and fight extreme inequalities.The programme is implemented through two diverse approaches namely, partner-led implementation with greater technical backstopping, and direct implementation (mainly for the humanitarian mine action activities). In the current strategy period, DCA has collaborated with nine local partners in South Sudan and four local partners in the regions. DCA is part of efforts to strengthen localisation and has continued to strengthen the capacity of the local and faith-based actors. In line with DCA's focus on localization and increased focus on the survivor and community-led responses, humanitarian, development, mine action, and peacebuilding responses are largely implemented through local and national partners.DCA developed a four-year Programme Strategy (2023-2026) for South Sudan aimed at guiding the Country Office (CO) efforts in aligning with the organisational goals, responding to the local needs, and driving impact over the years. The main objective of the programme strategy is to ensure people are self-reliant and have access to basic goods and services, live in dignity in peaceful and resilient communities and enjoy equal rights. This is centred around the three goals of save lives, build resilient communities, and fight extreme inequality, achieved through the following sub-objectives:1. Support communities through improved, coordinated, timely and high-quality humanitarian assistance that enables them to recover from disaster and conflict. 2. Increase access for crisis-affected communities -including displaced and returnees to basic services, food and livelihood opportunities. 3. Support the development of peaceful communities with equal opportunities for all through community-based initiatives.The programme aims to achieve these objectives through a range of sectoral focuses. The primary focus areas include cash assistance, protection, livelihoods, peacebuilding, climate and disaster risk reduction, and humanitarian mine-action, among others. DCA South Sudan, and A1 is approaching the end of the 2023-2026 country programme strategy. The next country programme strategy shall be developed in the third quarter of 2026 and will incorporate lessons learned from the last four years.2. Overview of the Country ProgrammeThe strategic focus of the Country Programme is to build self-reliance while ensuring access to basic goods and services, dignity, peaceful and resilient communities, and equal rights for all. It prioritizes immediate relief (cash-based and protection measures, shelter assistance) alongside long-term resilience (village savings and loan associations, market linkages, value chains, and sustainable natural-resource management), with a focus on localization, inclusive governance, and accountability. The approach links conflict sensitivity, climate adaptation, and crisis-modified governance to reduce vulnerability and support systemic peace, while empowering communities, partners, and local authorities and promoting dialogue with duty-bearers and evidence-based advocacy on climate impacts.In South Sudan, the short-term focus of the country programme is on supporting the vulnerable households to meet their basic needs through cash assistance and increasing area under agriculture production by clearing ERWs and ensuring that the cleared land is utilised for agricultural production (From Hazard to Harvest). In the medium and longer term, the programme seeks to strengthen community-led protection approaches, including through mainstreaming and integrated protection, diversity, and inclusion practices, while DCA's human rights-based approach aims to increase community safety and peaceful coexistence.The programme also aims to increase the inclusion of gender-based violence survivors in targeting frameworks and strengthen its support for a community-led response approach (sclr/GCT). Diversifying livelihoods to increase income through agricultural production and market linkages, income-generating activities, the Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA), and community-managed disaster risk and reduction (DRR) will increase the individual, household and resilience. The resilience-building activities focus on adopting the agroecological practices, value chain analysis, and DRR.DCA equally seeks to integrate conflict sensitivity analysis throughout the programme cycle, support policy dissemination at the community level, support vocational and life skills training, strengthen access to gender and protection services, financial inclusion, and promote inclusive participation in the decision-making process. This is aimed at addressing unequal power relationships and decision-making structures. DCA South Sudan works with other agencies to build the national authorities' capacity to coordinate and support non-state service providers.In the Regions, DCA has continued to respond to the food security needs by providing multi-purpose cash, agricultural inputs and market support; shelter/settlements support, protection (EORE and protection), and integrated natural resource management (INRM). This focuses on supporting both the IDP and host communities in the response to Sudan war that broke out in April 2023. In addition, the programme contributes to the core services by supporting humanitarian coordination. The operational environment is expected to continue to be challenging, as the arrival of returnees and the political uncertainty stretches existing systems and resources in both regions.DCAs Programme in South Sudan, A1 primarily targets conflict affected populations including IDPs, refugees, returnees and the host communities; women and girls at the risk of gender-based violence; children; persons with disabilities and other marginalised groups; smallholder farmers, pastoralists and rural households; and survivors of violence including SGBV. Secondary stakeholders include local communities and leaders, government authorities, faith actors, NGOs, UN agencies, donors and supporters, service providers, and humanitarian clusters, who coordinate, facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and monitor outcomes.DCA has made substantial progress towards achieving the key strategic objectives and outcomes. This has been demonstrated through the following:* Food security and livelihoods: DCA collaborated with the local partners to address the food security and livelihood needs of the vulnerable communities through the market and cash-based interventions, as well as promoting agro-ecology principles in farming * *Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA):*DCA focused on building safer communities and saving lives by clearing landmines and explosive remnants of war and raising safety awareness through explosive ordnance risk education. Specifically, DCA employed an integrated approach to Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA), combining with food security under the theme “from Hazard to Harvest.” * *Peace and conflict mitigation:*DCA supported the local partners working with community structures to prevent and mitigate conflict through peacebuilding and social cohesion activities in conflict-prone areas. * *Saving lives through community-led response:*In response to the humanitarian needs of disaster-affected households, DCA has continued to support the local structures in developing and implementing action plans for timely and appropriate responses. This focuses on helping the communities to become more resilient to future disasters. * *Women’s empowerment:*Through local partners, DCA has continued to promote women’s economic, political, and social empowerment in South Sudan/A1. This involves supporting organisations that aid victims and survivors of gender-based violence and rape, including providing psychosocial support. DCA has also worked with traditional leaders and other stakeholders to foster a sustainable attitude change towards women and girls.The programme faces a convergence of volatile contexts that threaten implementation: ongoing conflict, institutional weakness, and ethnic and political tensions that fuel displacement and limit civilian access; a collapsing economy with hyperinflation, capital shortages, and reduced public spending that undermines service delivery and project sustainability; climate shocks and recurrent flooding that disrupt livelihoods, infrastructure, and markets; a deteriorating humanitarian crisis with millions in need and persistent protection risks, including gender-based violence; and operational constraints such as restricted access and potential policy changes affecting NGOs, coupled with landmine/ERW risks in some areas. These factors create fragility, erratic resource availability, volatile regulatory environments, and complex coordination challenges across local authorities, partners, and displacement sites, all which risk delaying delivery, reducing effectiveness, and jeopardizing sustainability.DCA South Sudan, and A1 works through the local partners, ensuring that community knowledge drives the programme design and continues to shape implementation and monitoring. Each partner is anchored in the communities they serve, with local offices that strengthen mandates, relationships, and understanding with the people they aim to assist. DCA’s role is to enhance partners’ technical and organizational capacities, provide financial and contract management support, and share best practices and learning to improve local practices and reduce rural communities’ sense of isolation.3. Purpose, Objective and Evaluation Questions3.1 The purposeDCA’s country programme in South Sudan, and A1 is coming to the end of a 4-year cycle in 2026. DCA is seeking to carry out a consolidated external evaluation of the country programme during the 2023 to 2026 programme cycle for learning and accountability purposes. The findings, conclusions and recommendations of the evaluation will provide substantial guidance to the design of the next country programme cycle starting January 2027 and will contribute to organisational learning at the global and country levels of the organisation.3.2 The objective of the evaluationTo assess the performance of DCA’s country programme in South Sudan, and A1, with a specific focus on the contribution of the programme to DCA’s global goals of Save Lives, Build Resilient Communities and Fight Extreme Inequality. The evaluation should also assess programme performance and learning with a nexus lens, examining outcomes against set goals, but also how the programme has been designed and implemented to contribute to collective humanitarian, development, and peace outcomes through complementarity in DCA’s country programme in South Sudan, and A1. The evaluation shall also assess the extent to which the programme has succeeded in achieving the triple nexus goals, and enhancing humanitarian, development and peace outcomes through an integrated approach.The evaluation shall be conducted against the OECD DAC evaluation criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, impact and sustainability with a view to drawing conclusion on the programme’s overall impact and effectiveness and to informing lessons and make recommendations for future programme periods at country and global levels.The evaluation is expected to generate findings for organisational and programmatic learning on DCA’s global approaches, organisational commitments and thematic priorities. In particular, DCA is keen to understand how the adoption of the PANEL principles of participation, accountability, non-discrimination, empowerment, and linkages to the Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) to development and humanitarian work, and the country programming approach (including use of Theory of Change) have contributed to the performance of the country programme and the achievement of the objectives, hereunder how the programme has been able to adjust after the ToC critical reflection workshops together with implementing partners. The evaluation should generate findings and learning on how the implementation of DCA’s fundamental principles and cross-cutting commitments have contributed to programme results.3.3 Standard DCA country programme evaluation questions and criteriaThe Programme evaluation should be guided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's/Development Assistance Committee (OECD/DAC) criteria and Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance (ALNAP) criteria for evaluating humanitarian actions of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, impact, and sustainability criteria). These questions are not exhaustive, and DCA will further review the questions with the successful bidder at the inception phase.RelevanceKey question:1. To what extent is the country’s programme strategy relevant to the needs identified?Sub questions:1. To what extent is the intervention aligned with international human rights instruments and principles (including relevant international law for humanitarian and disaster response), and with national and local frameworks that advance human rights, gender equality, and social inclusion, in terms of programme design, implementation, and outcome?2. To what extent was the programme design aligned with the identified gaps in the humanitarian preparedness, capacities, and coordination mechanisms?3. To what extent are climate adaptation and mitigation appropriately reflecting the needs in the country programme and well-integrated in the programme?4. To what extent has the country programme considered drivers of v…