Maldives: INSTITUTIONAL CONSULTANT- Evaluate the Single Parent and Foster Care Social Protection Schemes in the Maldives

Terms of Reference

An Institutional Contract to Evaluate the Single Parent and Foster CareSocial Protection Schemes in the Maldives

TOR Reference Number: TOR/2019/21

Program Information

• UNDAF Outcome 3: By 2020, institutional capacities strengthened for implementation of legislative reform, oversight and local and national level evidenced based inclusive equitable and sustainable policies and planning
• CPD Outcome 2: Evidence Generation available for policy advocacy for inclusion of Social services by 2020.
• CPD Output 2.1 Systems for generating evidence are strengthened at national and sub-national levels for inclusive and equitable policies, plans and services, especially for the most disadvantaged.
• RWP 2019-2020 Activity: Evaluation of Social Protection Scheme.

Country context
The Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, has successfully, over the past 30 years, built on its extraordinary natural assets to promote growth and socio-economic development. The country shares many of the Small Island States development challenges, such as small domestic market, narrow and fragile resource base, shortage of skilled manpower, difficult inter-island transport and communication, high cost of social and economic infrastructure provision, heavy dependence on external trade, and vulnerability to external shocks and natural disasters.

However, in the case of the Maldives, these challenges are compounded by its high geographic dispersion with 1,190 coral islands (187 of which are inhabited) grouped in 20 atolls, spread over roughly 90,000 square kilometers. Nevertheless, the development of a profitable high-end tourism sector has fueled sustained growth rates and supported public investments in health and education. In the early 1980s, the Maldives was one of the world’s 20 poorest countries. Thirty years later, its inhabitants enjoy the same levels of GDP per capita and human development outcomes as a middle-income country.

Growth
Economic growth in the Maldives has been reliant on the development of tourism with limited contributions from other economic activities. The GDP growth rate between 2007 -2017 was quite volatile. After a high point in 2008/09 of 12.2%, followed by a collapse (to -3.6%) in 2009/10, as a result of the global financial crisis, and then a rapid rise to 7.1% in 2010/11, with recovery and reconstruction, growth then fell back to 3.0% in 2012/13. Over the subsequent five years (2013-2017), the rate of growth averaged 8.4%, though dipping to around 7% in the past two years (2016 and 2017).

Poverty in the Maldives
The Maldives’ poverty incidence is substantially in line with that of upper-middle-income countries. According to the latest available HIES, collected in 2009/10, the share of population living with less than $1.25 in 2005 PPP a day was 8 percent, where the corresponding share using the $2 a day poverty line was 28 percent. These shares are very similar to the average poverty outcomes of UMICs, two of the small Pacific islands, and neighboring Sri Lanka. In 2009/10, approximately 48,000 individuals (about one out of six Maldivians) were deemed poor, i.e they are consuming at a level not sufficient to satisfy minimum food and non-food needs.

However, the Maldives performs better than the other countries in South Asia with respect to different socioeconomic indicators and gender equality. Compared to other countries in South Asia, Maldives ranks first in terms of per-capita GDP and it is second only to Sri Lanka based on the Human Development Index ranking. In 2010, life expectancy at birth was 74, three years higher than both the average for UMICs and Sri Lanka, the second best of the South Asia region.

Over the seven years between 2003 and 2010, Maldives achieved a substantial decline in poverty. The poverty headcount based on the national poverty line declined by six percentage points, from 21 percent in 2003 to approximately 15 percent in 2010. Depth and severity of poverty declined from 6 to 4 percent and from 2.3 to 1.6 percent, respectively. Similar positive trends are observed considering the $2 PPP international poverty line. On the other hand, no statistically significant poverty decline is registered when considering the $1.25 PPP international poverty line.

Poverty declined in the atolls while remaining stable in the capital area Male. The decline in poverty observed at the national level is the result of opposite poverty trends at the regional level. In particular, while poverty remained substantially stable at around 7 percent in the capital Male, it declined markedly in the atolls – going from 39 percent in 2003 to 27 percent in 2010. The impact of poverty has been greatest on children, with 18 percent of the poor being children.

Historical overview and evolution of social protection programs in the Maldives
Social assistance for the needy and poor mandated under the Islamic Sharia Law (the Zakat) and the publicly funded pensions scheme for employees of the public sector constitute the oldest forms of social protection provided in the Maldives. The 2000s saw reforms in the area of social protection and several new initiatives were introduced such as medical welfare assistance, assistance for persons with disabilities, assistance for schooling, health insurance, and cash transfers for specific groups of beneficiaries (initially those in absolute poverty and later for persons with disability, elderly, foster parents and foster children and single parents). In addition, subsidies for food and electricity have been provided.
During the period of reforms, several assessments were carried out with donor support, which concluded that social protection programs were fragmented and not reaching the poor and vulnerable. Government planning documents recognized these gaps and the term ‘social protection’ emerged in the seventh national development plan (2006) and by 2009, transforming “fragmented elements of social protection into a comprehensive and effective system targeted at the most vulnerable”1 was identified as one of the policy goals in the area of social justice. The policy goals for social protection included the establishment of:

1. A minimum social protection floor addressing prevention, promotion, and transformation from vulnerabilities or deprivations.
2. Ensuring the sustainability of social protection expenditures.
3. Ensuring protection from uninsurable social risks for the most vulnerable and facilitate social risk management to increase social cohesion.
4. Reducing welfare dependency, providing incentives and increasing economic competitiveness

Several agencies have been involved in the designing and implementation of the various social protection programs and mandates for specific programs have shifted from one agency to another prompted by changes in government and administration and setting up of new institutions and agencies.

The following table presents an overview of the current set of social protection programmes being implemented in the country, the primary agency responsible for implementing them and the existing legal basis for each. While some programmes are guided and mandated by specific legislations, some are not.

UNICEF Maldives has supported National Social Protection Agency in its social protection program throughout the current country program, in terms of increasing SP services, better targeting and monitoring of the implementation of the Social Protection Programme. Hence, it is pertinent that an evaluation of the single parent allowance and foster parent allowance be undertaken at this point in time, so as to (a) inform the progress made in implementing the Social Protection Programme, (b)the challenges faced and how they can be addressed, (c)how the SP can be scaled up or increase coverage and (d) to inform enhanced partnership and leverage more funding of child sensitive SP

For this purpose, the UNICEF Office in the Republic of Maldives is seeking to hire a reputable international research institution to Evaluate the Single Parent and Foster Care Social Protection Schemes in the Maldives

Attached please find the following documents.

· RFP (Request for Proposal)- this will provide all the necessary information with regard to the bid submission process, kindly note that all bidders are supposed to submit the complete bid submission form as in page 3 of this document.

· Annex B: Terms of Reference for the contract.

· Annex C- Technical Evaluation criteria.

· Annex D- Price Schedule -

All interested parties please submit the proposals via email to snathif@unicef.org Subject line: Bid submission for RFP-2019-9151308

For bid to be completed the following should be submitted:

1. Bid form on page three of the RFP document.
2. Technical proposal
3. Annex D – Price proposal along with a detailed breakdown of expenses.

Kindly notes that the deadline for submission is on 11th September 2019 at 15:00 hrs (Local time).

Please don’t hesitate contact by Email (snathif@unicef.org) or phone (+960 7990053) for any questions or clarifications