Call for consultant - CONCORD AidWatch Briefing Paper Migration in the EU NDICI

In the framework of its work on EU Official Development Assistance trends, CONCORD Europe, the European Confederation of Development and Relief NGOs, is launching a call for external consultants. As CONCORD leads the work of civil society on the quantity and quality of European ODA, the AidWatch briefing paper about migration in the EU Neighbourhood Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) aims to inform coordinated EU advocacy work and to influence policy makers.

Background
Migration is one of the 5 European Commission’s geopolitical priorities in its external action. The EU is about to roll out a new instrument for development cooperation for the next 7 years, the NDICI. The agreement behind it is that the NDICI contains a 10% allocation for migration-related actions. A form of conditionality (called ‘flexible incitative approach’) could apply to the migration-related actions, but not necessarily to the ODA, which is kept at 93% of the instrument. Some NDICI portions will not necessarily be DAC compliant. The details of the final agreement are still to be released publicly.
Conditionality on migration remains a controversial discussion, high on the EU political agenda. Horse-trading development assistance sends a very bad signal: peoples’ lives are less important than EU migration objectives. A clear risk of migration policy conditionality on ODA is to fail to respect partner country ownership or, indeed, a new approach based on partnership. Rather it will divert ODA from its genuine goal - to reduce poverty - and from the people and countries in most need. A people-centred and human rights-based approach must guide EU external actio ns. Therefore CONCORD would like to produce a 4/5 pager analysis of the NDICI migration benchmark.

Objectives
As an advocacy objective, the analysis aims to influence how the NDICI migration allocation (10%) can be implemented to ensure that development effectiveness principles and the ODA definition are respected, and that migration related activities will do no harm toi people. This analysis can feed into the broader discussion about criteria for the use of aid for migration-related activities - which is happening at the OECD level too. Ideally, the analysis will also be part of CONCORD’s reaction to the DAC 2020 preliminary statistics release and feed into the planned OECD DAC review of members´ use of the reporting code for Facilitating safe, orderly and regular migration.
With evidence and data, part of the narrative of the briefing paper will aim to suggest how, in practice, the EU should go about the implementation of the share of the NDICI budget earmarked for migration-related activities. By doing so, the analysis aims to counteract the current EU discourse which sometimes borders on anti-migrant rhetoric and counterfactual assumptions about the links between migration and ODA.

Timeline
The work should be carried out between February and April 2021, when the briefing paper should be released.

Job description
The main tasks of the work would consist in:

• Conducting desk research, interviews and focal groups with CONCORD and other EU aid experts on a structured basis (webinars) on the topics of the briefing paper;
• Drafting and finalising the briefing paper, including graphs and tables and incorporating comments from the consultation process with CONCORD members and Secretariat.

Application process
To apply for this post, please send:

• your CV outlining your relevant expertise to meet this assignment (1 page max);
• your proposal on how you will undertake this research, including a suggested number of days and their distribution between the different tasks and phases of the work and your day rate (2 pages max).

Please submit this to Riccardo Roba ( riccardo.roba@concordeurope.org ) and Celia Cranfield ( celia.cranfield@concordeurope.org ) by 19 February at midnight cob.1 Interviews are planned to take place in the week of 22 February.