Request for Proposal (RFP)
Application Deadline: 15 August 2010
Those that applied during previous calls need not apply again as their existing application (unless they want to modify) will be considered.
1. GENERAL BACKGROUND
A) Violence Against Women in the Pacific and Papua New Guinea
Violence against women (VAW) is endemic in the Pacific with some of the highest reported incidences in the world. Recent research nationally representative data from the Solomon Islands and Kiribati has revealed prevalence rates of physical and/or sexual partner violence of 64% and 68% respectively, among ever-partnered women aged 15 – 49.
In Papua New Guinea, distortions of tradition have negatively impacted on the status of women. The unequal status and power relations of women’s conditions in Papua New Guinea are most graphically illustrated by extreme forms of VAW. Papua New Guinea suffers from some of the highest rates of domestic violence per capita in the world. With 67 percent of the women surveyed in the Law Reform Commission’s work in 1980s had been a victim of physical assault by a male partner.[1] In one study by the Institute of Medical Research, 60 percent of the participating men admitted to having pack (gang) raped a woman at some time. For the same study 50 percent of married women interviewed said their husbands had forced them to have sex either by beating them or using threats.
B) Bougainville Crisis
The island of Bougainville was devastated by a civil war between local groups and the Papua New Guinean government. The Bougainville conflict had a tremendous impact on gender relations. There is a widespread perception that VAW increased dramatically during the crisis period, with women experiencing humiliation, physical and psychological violence and were regularly subjected to rape and other forms of sexual assault, forced marriage, forced separation from non-Bougainvillean husbands, by soldiers and Bougainvillean men. Interviews with women from different parts of Bougainville tell that most sexual crimes were under gunpoint and that women were raped and forced to have sex with soldiers from both sides.
During the crisis young boys were recruited by both sides. Some of these boys were not more than 10 years old and virtually grew up in the jungle and were trained as soldiers[2]. Some of these boys also were used as couriers, messengers and spies[3]. Youth that had lived in the jungle for years and trained as soldiers became violent and engaged in rape of women, incest and gang related violence (K Hakena 2001: 11). The militarization of Bougainville and normalization of violence has “revived young men’s roles as warriors, giving them glamour, status, power and income.”[4] Thus there is a whole generation of young men that have grown up without learning traditional livelihood and survival skills.
With the end of the war, a number of ex-combatants have passed down their weapons to younger members of their communities. The younger gun-holders are also hearing stories of war bravery associated with the armed violence, and these are forming parts of received masculinity patterns. To them, guns give them access to status that is otherwise reserved for elders. For the youth, the easy access to guns is creating the rapid development of a gun culture that challenges traditional and cultural ways of acquiring status and importance within communities.
During the crisis traditional leadership structures were affected, but in recent years they are slowly regaining authority in communities with clan and family structures returning. However, tensions remain especially in the Southern region not least among the “lost” generation of youth that grew up in the jungle and that were forgotten in the peace process, together with women.
There are many variables exacerbating and fuelling this violence. Among them, gender identities – the way in which men and women are socialized, the roles and expectations that are placed on them by family and society – “what it means to be a man,” and “what it means to be a woman,” - is a key feature. An emerging hypothesis is that for men, the use and control of violence - in both the private and public sphere – is increasingly a critical feature of their social identity and sense of manhood.[5]
C) Engaging Men and Boys to Prevent Violence
Recently there has been a growing recognition of the importance of working with men and boys for violence prevention. As the World Bank states[6] “the subject of male identities, the link between masculinity and violence, the need to encourage a non-militarized masculinity and the particular positions of adolescent and young men require considerable attention in research, programme design and planning.”
Global research has highlighted that approaches that work exclusively with women or do not address masculinity issues have proven to be ineffective in violence prevention[7]. In the Pacific there has been research on the incidence and prevalence of VAW, however, there has been less attention on the causes of violence or on men’s gendered roles – how violence influences them and why men use violence to assert themselves. Given the majority of perpetrators are young men, it is critical to gain an understanding of their experiences and identify potential alternatives and positive role models to prevent and reduce incidences of violence in the region.
D) Rationale for Action Research
In 2008 the PNG Government approved the UN Country Programme (UNCP) – A Partnership for Nation Building, for the period 2008 – 2012. The UNCP has three intermediary outcomes that focus on crisis prevention and recovery: a) conflict prevention and nation building b) disaster risk management c) Gender-Based Violence (GBV).
Building on existing partnerships, programming experience and field presence, the work on community security, peace building and gender-based violence will commence first in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.
While the environment in PNG is riddled with complexities making it difficult to tackle the issue of GBV, there is a renewed focus on addressing GBV through a national strategy and action plan on ending family and sexual violence in PNG, through the Family Sexual Violence Action Committee (FSVAC) and the work of the National Council of Women (NCW).
The UNDP GBV work programme has three main components: a) Research for Policy & Programming: adding to the research base to support a stronger evidence base for further targeted advocacy, policy support and programming to address GBV; b) Awareness for Action: use targeted and relevant messaging to raise awareness with youth groups and involve boys and men in supporting GBV prevention; c) Institutional Capacity Development for enhanced response and prevention for GBV: a two-pronged approach to support the formal and informal response mechanisms which support women’s security and prevent further perpetuation of GBV.
The UNDP GBV work programme will leverage support from the UNDP Pacific Centre and the UN Partners for Prevention Programme (P4P): Working with men and boys to prevent gender-based violence in the Asia-Pacific region. P4P have developed a regional research project on engaging men and boys to prevent gender-based violence in the Asia-Pacific region, including some conflict and post-conflict contexts. This includes research in China, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Indonesia.
In Bougainville there is a lack of reliable information related to violence in Bougainville. This includes statistics and prevalence of different forms of violence, a lack of understanding of the root causes and triggers of violence from a gender perspective; lack of understanding of boy’s and men’s attitudes and behaviours related to violence.
Within this context and with the UNCP in mind, UNDP Papua New Guinea Country Office in partnership with UNDP Pacific Centre and supported by the UN Partners for Prevention Programming are proposing to undertake action-oriented research on the gender dimensions of violence in Bougainville.
The overall objectives of the research in Bougainville, developed in consultation with various local stakeholders, are:
· To determine the nature and extent of violence in Bougainville;
· To examine how violence affects men and women in Bougainville;
· To explore how masculinities and gender relations have changed before and after the crisis;
· To explore the factors (individual, cultural, social and contextual) that contribute to gendered violence in Bougainville;
· To explore what factors enable men to be non-violent;
· To understand what gendered violence prevention efforts engaging men show promise, and how they can be improved.
The action research has three main components (see figure 1 below):
- Quantitative research – cross-sectional household survey with men and women (based on the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES));
- Qualitative research – in-depth, life history interviews with men focusing on alternative non-violent understandings of “manhood” / “masculinity” and with male perpetrators of violence;
- Policy analysis – analysis of institutional factors that contribute to dominant masculinities and GBV and mapping governance and policy spaces to identify entry points for engaging boys and men for violence prevention.
Refer to attached PDF Images: Figure 1 - Research components of the Gender Dimensions of Violence Action Research in Post Conflict Bougainville, Papua New Guinea
Understanding the gender dimensions of violence require looking at multiple, interconnected factors at the societal, community, family and individual levels. The structure of the research, with three inter-connected and complementary components, creates a comprehensive and holistic picture of the underlying norms, attitudes and behaviours related to the use of violence from a gender perspective in Bougainville.
The quantitative research gives us broad statistics, the qualitative research will provide a more in-depth and nuanced picture of masculinities and violence from an individual perspective, and the political analysis with produce an understanding of the structural conditions that fuel GBV and the changes that are needed in the making and enacting of public policy in order to address these conditions. Figure 3 illustrates the different perspectives of each research piece and the different types of information they will illicit to contribute to the overall goal of producing evidence-based responses to GBV prevention.
Refer to attached PDF Images: Figure 2 - Promoting evidence-based policy and programmatic interventions for violence prevention, engaging men and boys
UNDP Papua New Guinea and UNDP Pacific Centre are seeking a research organization to carry out the quantitative research survey – based on the IMAGES tool and adapted to the Bougainville context.
2. OBJECTIVES OF THE ASSIGNMENT
The overarching objective of this assignment is to undertake the quantitative research survey in Bougainville, analyze the data and draft a report of the findings. Technical assistance and oversight for this process will be provided by a Provincial Working Group and an Asia-Pacific Regional Technical Advisory Group.
The focus of the quantitative survey and data analysis is the following:
- Prevalence of different types (political, social, criminal, economic etc) of violence in Bougainville based on a fully representative sample;
- Current behaviours and attitudes of men focusing on gender dimensions violence and the post-conflict context in Bougainville;
- Compare these results with women’s attitudes and behaviours on the same issues;
- Explore individual, community and social factors that explain variation in men’s behaviours.
- Assess men’s knowledge of attitudes towards policies that have sought to promote gender equality and on the peace process;
Furthermore, the quantitative component of the study will seek to address the following broad research questions:
For male questionnaire:
a) How do men perceive the general level of safety and security in their community?
b) What are the most common forms of violence in the community according to men in Bougainville? Who are the main perpetrators of such violence?
c) What factors make men vulnerable to being involved in different types of violence, according to men in Bougainville?
d) What is the prevalence and frequency of physical, sexual, emotional violence and controlling behaviour against intimate partners as reported by men in Bougainville?
e) What is the prevalence and frequency of rape of a non-partner as reported by men in Bougainville?
f) What is the prevalence and frequency of gang rape as reported by men in Bougainville?
g) What is the prevalence and frequency that men report having participated in violence during the conflict? Why did they get involved in the conflict?
h) What is the prevalence and frequency that men report having perpetrated politically or economically motivated violence?
i) What is the prevalence and frequency of physical and/or sexual violence against men in Bougainville?
j) What individual, relationship, family and community attributes are associated with perpetration of violence against women – i.e. detailed exploration of factors such as male attitudes re gender norms and roles, men having witnessed violence between their parents as a child, male loss of status, male violence towards other men, male ownership of weapons, or alcohol and drug use?
k) How much knowledge do men have of policies that have sought to promote gender equality in Papua New Guinea? What are their attitudes towards such policies?
a) How do women perceive the general level of safety and security in their community?
b) What are the most common forms of violence in the community according to women in Bougainville? Who are the main perpetrators of such violence?
c) How do women’s attitudes on issues related to GBV compare with men’s attitudes and reported behaviour?
d) What is the prevalence and frequency of emotional, economic, physical, sexual intimate partner violence and controlling behaviour within each study population as reported by women? How does this compare with men’s reports?
e) What is the prevalence and frequency of sexual violence by non-partners as reported by women within each study population, particularly during the conflict? Prevalence of other types of violence and trauma experienced during the conflict? How does this compare to men’s reports?
f) What is the prevalence within each study population that women report participating in transactional sex?
g) To what extent is a history of domestic violence associated with different indicators of women’s ill-health and the use of health services?
h) What factors are associated with different forms of violence against women occurring? Is there an association with factors such as a woman’s access to and control of resources, attitudes related to GBV and gender equality, childhood experiences of violence and gender norms?
i) How much knowledge do women have of policies that have sought to promote gender equality in their country (e.g. employment and political quotas for women, women’s economic empowerment, paternity establishment, gender-based violence, among others)? What are their attitudes towards such policies? How does this compare with men’s attitudes?
3. SCOPE OF WORK
For the research a working group will be set up comprised of provincial and national government, UN, civil society and research/academic institution. They will provide support and advice during the three components of the research: quantitative, qualitative and policy analysis. Different partners may take on different roles for the different components of the research but the three components should be understood as a whole process.
A cross sectional survey will be carried out in Bougainville with randomly selected men and women from the prescribed study sites (will be discussed after the award, however the bidders are encouraged to suggest their thinking) on men’s and women’s behaviors and attitudes as they relate to gender equality and violence.
Men and women ages 18 to 49 years will be interviewed. These individuals will also be a representative sample of the different socio-economic classes of the study sites. Sample size for the quantitative study is approximately 1500 for both men and women. To insure the safety of women, interviews with men and women are not carried out in the same household.
Implementation Stages
Programming Personal Digital Assistants:The survey will use personal digital assistants in the data collection for the following reasons:
• They facilitates the asking of questions about the most sensitive topics;
• No data entry is required which reduces data entry error and speeds up data input and clean-up;
• They address the ethical issues related to asking questions of men about involvement in criminal activities (i.e. rape, theft etc). It is unethical for an interviewer to ask such questions face-to-face as they may have a legal obligation to report positive responses to the police. With PDAs the respondent’s answers will remain totally anonymous;
• They address issues of interviewer fatigue and interviewer bias;
• Experience from the previous studies clearly indicates that self-administered paper and pencil questionnaires are difficult for respondents to complete due to complex skip patterns. This often results in missing data. PDAs can be programmed to automatically make the necessary skips, thus addressing this issue;
• PDAs can be audio enhanced which is particularly useful for populations with low literacy.
The UN Partners for Prevention Programme will be procuring and programming the PDAs for the survey research.
National Research Protocol: The successful research institute will work with the National Working Group to develop a national protocol (based on regional protocol) for the quantitative research phase.
Instrument adaptation and validation:
The large scale survey of 1500 men and 1500 women will be adapted for the Bougainville context from IMAGES by the National Working Group, which the successful research institute will be part of.
The surveys will include items relevant to the key constructs of gender norms; attitudes toward women in general; gender dimensions of different types of violence; Survey items will assess knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, values, and practices relevant to all the key constructs. Item response format will include Likert-type, yes/no, and checklist. The instruments will be translated into the local language using a back translation method to insure accuracy.
The instruments will be piloted with a small sample of respondents to assess instrument utility (e.g., with regard to meaning, language, clarity of instructions). Revisions will be made on the basis of this feedback. The revised instrument will then be administered to a representative sample for the larger survey. A field supervisor will make sure the data collected is of highest quality and will do quality checks on a regular basis.
Training of Field Investigators
Given the complexity of the questionnaire and the sensitivity of the research topic, and based on WHO ethical guidelines for research on violence against women, interviewer training will require a minimum of 2 weeks. Technical assistance for interviewer training will be provided by UN Partners for Prevention.
Interviewer training will focus on practicing using the questionnaire, and on preparing the interviewer for the field. The curriculum for training interviewers will cover the following:
· Sensitization activities on gender and violence against women;
· Employment expectations, payment and working conditions, mechanisms for quality control;
· The aim of the survey, the role of the interviewer, how to conduct interviews;
· Elementary counseling principles and techniques;
· The importance of safety, privacy and maintaining confidentiality;
· Procedures on how to respond to men/women reporting violence;
· Practice interviews, including identifying when it is safe to proceed with an interview, ways to handle interrupted interviews;
· Sampling procedures, including repeated visits and re-sampling;
· Use of PDAs.
Data Cleaning:
With the use of PDAs, no data entry will be required. The research institute will be responsible for data cleaning with technical support from the regional advisory group.
Data Analysis Plan: Analysis will include frequencies, and measures of association between relevant variables, and the testing of hypotheses regarding associations and factors associated with men’s attitudes, behaviours and GBV.
A data analysis and report writing workshop will be organized in collaboration with the Technical Support Team for the analysis plan of the collected data. This workshop will in identifying key indicators which can then be used for wider dissemination. One of the key outcomes of this workshop will be the finalization of the contents of the report.
4. DURATION OF ASSIGNMENT, DUTY STATION AND EXPECTED PLACES OF TRAVEL
Duration: October 2010 – July 2011
Duty station: Port Moresby and Bougainville, Papua New Guinea
Expected places of travel: Selected sites in Bougainville.
5. FINAL PRODUCTS
a) National protocol for quantitative research, including sample design;
b) An adapted and translated version of the IMAGES survey tool focused on gender dimensions of violence in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea;
c) Trained field staff and survey takers;
d) Data collection in selected study sites with approximately 1500 men and 1500 women;
e) Draft report of the quantitative research findings; and
f) Final report incorporating feedback from NWG and Regional TAG.
6. MONITORING AND PROGRESS CONTROLS - Refer to the attached detailed TOR
7. ASIA-PACIFIC REGIONAL GBV & MASCULINITY RESEARCH PROTOCOL – Download the Regional GBV and Masculinity Research Protocol from http://www.undppc.org.fj/pages.cfm/working-with-us/
8. DEGREE OF EXPERTISE AND QUALIFICATIONS
The research organization will have:
- Proven experience conducting primary research on development issues, including VAW mainly in the context of Papua New Guinea.
- Proven experience in quantitative research, data analysis, and dissemination of knowledge in the fields of gender and development and VAW;
- Demonstrated ability to conduct complex data analysis including frequencies, cross-tabulations, multi-variate logistic regression, and modelling.
- Proven experience selecting, training and supporting effective and committed researchers.
- Experience in research that aims to understand the gender dimensions of violence or men’s attitudes towards violence, or in areas related to gender and violence a strong asset;
- Education for research team: advanced university degree in research methods or related field;
- Demonstrated ability to ensure representative sampling and rigorous data collection resulting in comprehensive and quality data: i.e. A strong portfolio of past research projects and examples of work available for review during the bidding process.
- Understanding of and respect for ethical and safety issues associated with conducting research on violence against women.
- Language: research team must be able to work and communicate well in English and knowledge of the local language would be an asset.
Interested research institutions are encouraged to form research teams from multi-sectoral disciplines and agencies for the survey.
9. GENERAL TERMS & CONDITIONS
- Submitted offers will be reviewed to determine compliance with the criteria/requirement included in the TOR. Examples of formal requirements may include, but not limited to, the following:
- The offers must be submitted within the stipulated deadline;
- The offers must meet the required offer validity;
- The offers have been signed by the proper authority; and
- The offers include requested organization’s/company’s documentation, including documentation regarding the organization’s/company’s legal status and registration.
- No additional support services or cost reimbursement will be provided outside of the amount agreed upon in the contract.
· The data, study report and findings will be treated as UNDP property. The reports or documents or any part, therefore, cannot be sold, used, or reproduced in any manner without the prior written approval of UNDP.
- Information related to evaluation of proposals and recommendations concerning awards shall not be disclosed to the organizations who submitted the proposals or to other persons not officially concerned with the process, until the winning organization has been awarded the contract.
- The proposal shall be valid for 90 days from the deadline for submission. UNDP will make its best effort to select a company/organization within this period.
- The cost of preparing a proposal and of negotiating a contract, including any related travel, is not reimbursable nor can it be included as a direct cost of the assignment.
- The price component must contain an overall quotation in a single currency, either PNG Kina or in US Dollars. If you opt for the latter and for evaluation purposes only, your proposal will be converted into PNG currency using the United Nations rate of exchange in effect on the date submissions are due.
The proposals must be received by UNDP address no later than Sunday, 15 August at or before 2400 hrs Fiji time.Any proposal received after this date may be rejected. UNDP may, at its discretion, extend the deadline for the submission of proposals.
For more information, visit http://www.undppc.org.fj/pages.cfm/working-with-us/. Visit this site to also download the Request for Proposal Template and Regional GBV Quantitative Research Protocol.
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