72026719R00002_J.1__USAID_IDIQ_Statement_of_Objectives.pdf

72026719R00002

J.1 USAID IDIQ Statement of Objectives for USAID/Iraq Durable Communities and Economic Opportunities

C.1 PURPOSE AND SCOPE

USAID/Iraq seeks to support vulnerable communities to build community resilience against destabilizing factors by increasing their adaptive capacity and economic well-being. Adaptive capacities are the social and technical skills and strategies of individuals and groups that are directed towards responding to socioeconomic, environmental, or other changes.

To do so, the Durable Communities and Economic Opportunities (Durable Communities) activity will address the underlying drivers of conflict in target communities while building community leadership of inclusive local development and increasing economic opportunities.

Working through local organizations, civil society organizations, and private sector entities, Durable Communities will be a transitional stabilization activity. It will build upon ongoing programs that address immediate stabilization needs by targeting continuing drivers of conflict while laying the foundation for sustainable economic growth. In line with the joint Department of State, USAID, and Department of Defense Stabilization Assistance Review (SAR), the activity will seek to “create conditions where locally legitimate authorities and systems can peaceably manage conflict and prevent a resurgence of violence.”

USAID’s seeks to implement activities in the two objectives below:

1. Support to Increase the Adaptive Capacity of Vulnerable Communities by mitigating drivers of conflict in target communities and enhancing community leadership of inclusive local development and;

2. Support to Advance the Economic Well-Being of Communities by increasing economic opportunities through improving private sector networks and increasing the development of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises.

Durable Communities is intended to be flexible by design, with the ability to respond to emerging crises or opportunities identified throughout the country. Considerations for location of implementation may include, for example, concerns surrounding protracted displacement and/or the marginalization of certain populations outside of northern Iraq, evolving tensions within other vulnerable or displaced communities, the opportunity to build upon private sector investment or other economic opportunities, donor saturation, duplication of existing activities, or other considerations.

Task orders issued under this IDIQ may focus on one or both Objectives, or several subobjectives in one specific location, or one subobjective in a broader geographic area. For example, one task order may provide technical support to an urban agro-business which in turn benefits rural farmers in surrounding areas. Another may focus on towns in several geographic areas experiencing tensions between the communities and returning IDPs, working to build trust while also building capacity to advocate for collective needs.

The activity will leverage and mobilize local private sector organizations to collaborate with communities and develop innovative PPPs that promote sustainable results. The successful offeror will adopt a participatory approach that promotes community collaboration with an emphasis on enhancing inclusion across gender, age and religious affiliation to achieve commonly defined objectives. It is also expected that the successful offeror will simultaneously implement multiple community development and private sector activities entailing a large number of grants and subcontracts and a diverse cross-section of local partners.

While maintaining a focus on long term development objectives and sustainability, the successful offeror will need to be flexible and adaptive to accommodate emerging needs and changes in context or USG javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$body$homebody$RecentDocuments$C$RecentDocumentsControl$RecentDocumentResults$ctl00$DocumentNumberLink','') priorities. The successful offeror will also be expected to coordinate with relevant stakeholders, including religious and community leaders and host country government officials to ensure synchronization of efforts and identify gaps and opportunities

C.2 LOCATION AND PERIOD OF PERFORMNCE

See Section F.2 and F.3 of the RFP.

C.3 COORDINATION WITH OTHER ACTIVITIES AND OPERATING CONTRAINTS

USAID currently implements activities in Iraq that have synergies with the goals and objectives of this activity, as do many other donors. The results and evidence provided by other activities will feed into the design of the task orders under this IDIQ. The successful offeror will ensure that technical assistance provided is not duplicative of the efforts of others, and will coordinate with other USAID implementers or international donors to build on and leverage their work. For example, for Objective One activities, the successful offeror may identify water scarcity as a source of instability in a community, and build upon the restoration of a water treatment plant by the United Nations Development Program’s Funding Facility for Stabilization through establishing water usage committees until neighboring water treatment plants come online. For Objective Two activities, the successful offeror is expected to collaborate with USAID’s Iraq Government Performance and Accountability (IGPA) activity to advance reforms in the business enabling environment, as well as leverage technical assistance and financial investments made through USAID’s Middle East North Africa Investment Initiative (MENA II) which focuses on support to Iraqi SMEs.

C.4 BACKGROUND

Despite the territorial defeat of ISIS in 2017, Iraq still faces severe challenges to the ongoing stability of the country. This includes the effects of the conflict on the population, persistent unemployment and lack of livelihoods, enduring security threats from ISIS and other violent actors, the perception of fear and mistrust for some returnee communities, and the protracted displacement of an increasingly marginalized population. While as of December 2018, over 4.2 million of Iraq’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) have returned home according to IOM, 1.8 million remain displaced in and outside of camps. Iraq will remain a critical foreign policy priority for the United States over the next five years as we seek to ensure the durable stability of the country.

This activity seeks to leverage the significant humanitarian, stabilization, and development investments already made by the U.S. government in Iraq while addressing the challenges to the enduring stability of Iraq that can be mitigated at the community level. This activity also recognizes that while community resilience to withstand future shocks is important, so is the adaptive capacity of communities to adjust to the systemic changes caused by ISIS, including demographic, tribal, gender-relations, and socio-economic transformations. That being said, assessed communities continually cite a lack of livelihoods and resource competition as barriers to durable stability. Therefore, in addition to community-level stabilization support, this activity will provide focused efforts to enhance job growth by creating a sustainable and active private sector environment that supports the growth of established businesses and fosters the ability of entrepreneurs to start new business initiatives. USAID believes that these two objectivess of the project are integral to Iraq’s journey to self-reliance and enduring stability.

C.5 DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS

The goal of the Durable Communities activity is to build resilient, adaptive communities and advance economic well-being in target communities in Iraq by addressing underlying drivers of conflict, increasing community leadership of inclusive local development, improving private sector networks, and increasing micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) development.

Through these proposed activities, USAID will assist Iraqi communities to transition from immediate humanitarian and stabilization assistance to sustainable recovery and self-reliance.

javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$body$homebody$RecentDocuments$C$RecentDocumentsControl$RecentDocumentResults$ctl00$DocumentNumberLink','')

Hypothesis: If targeted communities are more resilient, adaptive, and have increased economic opportunities, then Iraq will become more stable and self-reliant.

The theory of change is as follows: If we decrease destabilizing factors in communities by increasing their adaptive capacity and economic well-being, then communities will be more resilient and stable.

C.6 RESULTS FRAMEWORK

The activity will focus on two objectives: 1) Support to Increase the Adaptive Capacity of Vulnerable Communities, and 2) Support to Advance the Economic Well-Being of Communities.

C.7 PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES

A. Objective 1: Increase Adaptive Capacity of Vulnerable Communities

Iraq’s physical, socio-economic and security landscape has been significantly reconfigured following the fight against and liberation from ISIS. Many small towns and larger cities were partially or almost completely destroyed, and local residents were forced to flee. Since the liberation from ISIS control, this population has slowly returned and essential service delivery has slowly been re-established through immediate stabilization activities; however, the demographic re-composition and structural challenges the returning population face are critical. The residual grievances and trauma from the javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$body$homebody$RecentDocuments$C$RecentDocumentsControl$RecentDocumentResults$ctl00$DocumentNumberLink','') conflict (including the differing experiences women and youth endured with armed actors and displacement compared to those of men), internal and protracted displacement, the enduring presence of armed groups, and historic ethnic and religious discordance are just some of the destabilizing factors which threaten community durability throughout Iraq. In addition, demographic recomposition naturally leads to shifting gender norms and youth roles that will need to be understood, addressed, and built on (if positive) or mitigated (if negative).

USAID support will enable communities to identify, prioritize, and operationalize actions that will circumvent or mitigate destabilizing conditions that would jeopardize their social, economic, and physical security. It is expected that these communities will be able to differentiate critical versus tangential drivers of conflict through informed, comprehensive means and broad, inclusive community participation. These communities will be able to assess their own conditions against systemic shocks, potential conflict, and/or social discomposure equitably to then collectively propose focused actions to mitigate, deter or eliminate the identified drivers of conflict. Particular care will be given to ensure the inclusion of extremely vulnerable groups, households or individuals, including but not limited to women-headed households, unemployed youth, and those with residual trauma. Leadership will competently represent the needs of the community as a whole, problem-solving through inclusive processes and thereby ensuring concerted buy-in. These skills would prevent communities from experiencing an upsurge in future social unrest.

Activities under Objective One will be flexible, adaptive, and specific to the local context of each target community. It is envisioned that in some areas activities under Objective One will support the successful implementation of Objective Two and vice versa, although both objetives may not always be implemented in the same target communities.

1. Objective 1.1: Mitigate Drivers of Conflict in Targeted Communities.

The remaining challenges to stabilization that individual communities face across Iraq are diverse and stem not only from the 2014-2017 conflict with ISIS, but the various conflicts over the past decade, as well as historical and structural factors. In addition, communities’ experiences during the ISIS conflict differed, with some communities facing genocide, sexual slavery, conscription, the execution of primary income-earners and religious, political, or community leaders , and/or protracted displacement. The level of stabilization or other assistance afforded to a community afterward has also differed, leading to increasingly dangerous resentment in various sectors of society. Some communities have also experienced extreme demographic change or degradation of social capital and the increase of intra-or inter communal conflict within the community, remain in protracted displacement, or have permanently emigrated or settled elsewhere. Life for many communities in Iraq has irrevocably changed. As such, the current conflict dynamics in individual communities differ, and mitigation strategies will as well.

USAID support will build the capacity of communities to identify sources of instability and resilience within their communities and to develop prioritized, local, and actionable mitigation plans that lead to sustainable approaches that enable communities to adapt to new realities. The successful offeror will build sustainable, inclusive, and tailored processes for communities, including women and youth, to prioritize and implement strategies to mitigate conflict, including assisting the community in identifying resources needed to address interventions that fall outside of this project.

2. Objective 1.2: Enhance Community Leadership of Inclusive Local Development.

In many communities across Iraq, the resurgence of terrorism, extremist violence, inter-tribal revenge operations or civil strife continue to be a real threat to the social fabric of a highly vulnerable population. Many of these issues have been long-standing points of contention in heterogeneous communities dealing with weak leadership structures exacerbated by the dismantling of previously existing social capital due to the ISIS crisis, including the demise of former inter-and intra-communal peer-support groups and institutions such as universities that javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$body$homebody$RecentDocuments$C$RecentDocumentsControl$RecentDocumentResults$ctl00$DocumentNumberLink','') once played a central role in community adhesiveness. Furthermore, frustration due to the perception of the lack of government responsiveness has been building up to the point where credibility in government actions is minimal or non-existent. This has led to widespread lack of trust, arbitrary assistance distribution, and discriminatory practices that continually debilitate the problem solving and advocacy abilities of these communities.

USAID support will strengthen leadership in targeted communities that will foster engagement across heterogeneous communities, ensure inclusion of diverse ethnic and religious groups, stimulate women and youth participation and representation and peer-support structures, and facilitate participatory processes to address common issues. Said leadership should be encouraged through diverse spaces, such as religious or student-led initiatives that strengthen the deteriorated social capital. This trained cadre of community leaders will exhibit enhanced communication skills and adept problem-solving competencies; they will also promote gender-sensitive outcomes that adequately represent their constituents, with a special focus on returnees, survivors of the armed conflict, and women-led households.

B. Objective 2: Advance the Economic Well-Being of Communities

The stagnant or low levels of growth in Iraq’s private sector impede economic opportunities for communities, particularly in the post ISIS context. The lack of growth in the private sector can be attributed to the domination of the economy by the public sector, inefficient bureaucratic red tape which facilitates corruption, the existence of unprofitable state-owned enterprises, and a credit system that is actively hostile to extending loans to private sector firms.

Through this activity, USAID/Iraq will promote demand-driven job growth and the development potential of vulnerable communities through private sector initiatives. This objective will be achieved by providing firm level technical assistance focusing on improving competitiveness, increasing access to credit and innovative financing mechanisms and collaborating with partners to improve the business enabling environment and employment outcomes.

This objective will leverage the economic priorities identified through community dialogues under Objective One to define and mitigate barriers to private sector growth on the community level.

1. Objective 2.1: Improve Private Sector Networks

In response to the challenges that inhibit the growth of the private sector, the activity will work to increase the capacities of the diverse actors that provide essential services to businesses and entrepreneurs. The goal of Objective Two is to foster the growth of these networks which include incubation and business development service providers, financial institutions, business associations and others so that they are better able to fulfill their roles in the private sector. For instance, the activity will work with incubators and business development service providers to help them adapt their offerings to promote MSME growth. These service providers, whether standalone businesses or located within a university environment, are charged with helping startups and existing MSMEs master the business skills needed to run a successful enterprise.

The activity will also work with financial institutions, such as banks and impact investors, to find solutions to the barriers that restrict access to finance in the private sector. To improve the enabling environment, the activity will collaborate with and build upon the current efforts of the IGPA project in analyzing legal and institutional gaps for the development and amendment of laws and regulations to strengthen the private sector and support Public Private Partnership (PPP) process implementation. To achieve this, it is anticipated that IGPA will help local authorities streamline mechanisms, clarify roles and responsibilities, and introduce best practices for local economic development.

2. Objective 2.2: Increase MSME Development javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$body$homebody$RecentDocuments$C$RecentDocumentsControl$RecentDocumentResults$ctl00$DocumentNumberLink','')

USAID will strengthen local business economic networks by increasing the competitiveness of MSMEs through providing business development and incubation services. The activity will also increase opportunities for firms to access scarce capital resources in the case of existing businesses and startups, and coordinate such opportunities with USAID’s private equity program MENA Investment Initiative. Business development service providers are expected to increase the competitiveness of firms by teaching them important management skills such as accounting, marketing and the tools to undertake business analyses. It is also expected that MSMEs will receive assistance from business development service providers, such as helping businesses identity and overcome constraints to growth, obtain certifications and requisite government licensing, increase their capacity to better market their firms for investment, and/or complete applications for loans or other financing opportunities. Despite efforts by civil society and international organizations to provide economic empowerment as part of their projects and interventions, there is still significant need for skills and training for women who are interested in pursuing economic opportunities as entrepreneurs or as employees.

javascript:__doPostBack('ctl00$ctl00$body$homebody$RecentDocuments$C$RecentDocumentsControl$RecentDocumentResults$ctl00$DocumentNumberLink','')