Consultancy - Documentation of Women’s Peace-Making Experiences at Oxfam

Background

Women have played important roles in national and grassroots peace processes and maintaining security in Africa. They have lived history, through their direct participation and their role in influencing key actors. Despite women’s critical contributions to security, their representation in peace processes has lagged. Their contributions and experiences have not been sufficiently documented. Analysts and international organizations have made efforts to document women’s participation, but there remains a significant gap in the availability of women’s first-person accounts and reflections, that give their perspectives on important moments and events in their national history, in their own words.

There is currently limited established base in Africa that offers a space for documentation, reflection and sharing of experiences of women peacemakers, many of whom are making vital contributions to sustaining peace at community levels. This gap hampers opportunities to better-analysis on how lessons from these experiences of women and young people can be harnessed to inform national, regional and international policy processes. It also reveals a gap in historical recording of peace-making experiences in Africa and presents a missed opportunity for younger African women and men who could draw inspiration from learning about the documented experiences to support peace efforts in Africa.

Objective

Oxfam seeks to engage a consultant, company or organization to produce an inspirational documentary demonstrating how women have participated in peace processes and what effect they have had.

This project aims at producing a documentary of women peace makers from the different regions of Africa. This is an opportunity for female peacemakers to share their accomplishments and narrate the challenges they encountered as Africans on their journeys towards such accomplishments and how their peace-making activities has benefited their society having in mind the responsibilities to empower, motivate or encourage other young/aspiring future women peace makers in the continent.

The documentary will be used for citizens mobilisation and organising across Africa and as a tool for raising awareness on the important role women are playing in peace processes. It will also be used as advocacy and influencing tool targeting policy makers and duty bearers at national, regional and continental levels on the need to invest in women’s participation in conflict prevention and resolution.

The target is not to get stories from renown women and top female politicians, but to have stories from women peacemakers at all levels. The documentary will gather stories on their experiences in peace making processes at local, regional and continental levels.

Audience

African Governments, AU institutions, Regional Economic Institutions (RECs) Institutional donors, CSOs, Citizens

Expected result

• A documentary film with a short version (5-7mns) and a long version (11-15mns) is produced
• Photo album with high quality photographs and case studies of the women peacemakers
• Online versions for all the edited materials
• High quality photographs
• The master footage in DVD
• After production support in ensuring high viewership of the videos

Methodology

The following tasks will be undertaken to achieve the objectives of this assignment:

• Prepare an inception meeting report and work plan
• The consultant will hold an inception meeting with Oxfam to (i) review and discuss the process for conducting the assignment, (ii) determine roles and responsibilities (iii) identify preliminary background information related to the assignment (iv) finalize a draft work plan and timetable. The final work plan and an inception report will be prepared by the Consultant within three days of the meeting, and submitted for review, feedback and approval. The work plan will guide this assignment to facilitate timely completion of all tasks and satisfactory end results.
• Develop a script/storyboard for the video interviews
• The consultant will develop a script that will guide the flow of the videos to ensure there is a similar layout for all the videos that are developed. The script will be developed in consultation with the project team. The script should highlight the backgrounds of the speakers, the challenges faced and how they responded to the challenges to their current situations.
• Tentatively the following regions and countries where women actively contributed or are contributing in peace making processes have been identified as shown in the table below;
• Region
• Country
• Peace making Situation
• Name of interviewee (contact person)
• North Africa:
• Egypt & Tunisia
• Arab spring
• Southern African
• South Africa
• Apartheid
• Central African Region
• C.A.R & DRC
• La lucha
• East/Horn of Africa region
• S.Sudan & Rwanda and Burundi
• Peace talks & Genocide
• West Africa
• Sierra Leone & Liberia
• Civil war
• Sahel (Niger, Mali, BukinaFaso)

Violent extremism

Distribution channel

We will aim to showcase the film at the next AU summit in Niger in June 2019.

The documentary will be also released in Oxfam International social media and websites. It will be also made available to interested TV channels.

Timeline

We intend to have the task done IMMEDIATELY (Beginning March 2019) hence applicants are highly encouraged to confirm immediate availability in their applications. Actual timeline will be developed after discussion with the selected consultant. Sufficient time will be allocated to ensure content is relevant and brings about the desired results.

Supervision

The Overall supervision will be led by the project team who will work closely with the consultant in ensuring high quality deliverables.

Qualifications

• The individual or consultant firm should have extensive experience in producing highly-engaging visual products for campaign and advocacy purposes
• Extensive understanding of peace and security issues and peacemaking processes in Africa
• Technical capacity to run a smooth production (own equipment, production studio and team)
• Ability/willingness to work in difficult or unpredictable circumstances
• Creative and innovative with an eye for detail
• Ability and willingness to travel on short notice
• Ability to produce material within tight turn-around.
• Demonstrated understanding of Oxfam values/ways of working, preferably from prior experience of working with Oxfam.