External Consultant (Category B) – Endline Evaluation for Displaced Afghans Regional Programme

Position Title: External Consultant (Category B) for the Endline Evaluation of the Project "Support to Displaced Afghans in Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia, and Afghanistan (EU/DG INTPA-funded)"

Duty Station: Kabul, Afghanistan

Expected Start Date of Deployment: 01 November 2026

Deployment Duration: 5 months

Background:

The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and its neighboring countries Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Tajikistan – together constitute one of the world’s most complex and protracted displacement contexts. Sustained conflict, economic collapse, climate shocks, and large-scale cross-border return have combined to produce acute and overlapping humanitarian, protection, and reintegration needs that extend well beyond Afghanistan’s borders. Since 2021, the region has absorbed sustained, high-volume returns of undocumented and documented Afghans from Iran and Pakistan, while smaller but significant caseloads of Afghans on the move and at risk of displacement remain present in Tajikistan and the wider Central Asia sub-region. It is this regional character of the crisis – and not Afghanistan alone – that defines the programme under evaluation.

IOM’s programme, funded by the European Union through DG INTPA and implemented across three Top-Up phases over a total duration of 63 months (with a revised end date of 31 March 2027), was designed accordingly as a two-outcome, four-country regional response. Outcome 1 covers the regional response in Pakistan, Iran, and Tajikistan; Outcome 2 covers the Afghanistan-based response. Programme design, resource allocation, and results reporting are structured around this regional architecture, and the evaluation must be resourced and scoped to reflect it in full not as an Afghanistan evaluation with regional context, but as a four-country regional evaluation with an Afghanistan component.

Roles and Responsibilities of the Consultant:

• Develop and finalize the evaluation matrix, methodology, and country-specific data collection tools, fit for purpose in each of the four programme countries.

• Design and apply an appropriate sampling methodology for each country and for the regional comparison.

• Lead the training and supervision of any locally engaged field data collectors in each country, ensuring adherence to the agreed protocol and methodology.

• Coordinate and technically oversee the two-phase field data collection exercise across all four countries, including locally engaged data collectors and other approved field support, and ensure consistent application of the evaluation methodology, ethical standards and data-quality requirements.

• Assure data quality through supervision and database review.

• Submit the Inception Report, Draft Report, and Final Report using agreed IOM templates.

• Present findings to the Evaluation Reference Group and other key internal and external stakeholders.