Consultant for ICSP Lebanon Learning Initiative on Adaptive Protection Programming and Service Linkages

About Trócaire

Trócaire is an international NGO. We work with local partners in the world’s most at-risk communities and with people in Ire-land to tackle the underlying causes of poverty and injustice and respond to the crises they create. Together we bring about positive and lasting change for a just world. Trócaire works in up to 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

We work towards five goals:

- Promote Access to Justice; - Achieve Climate & Environmental Justice; - Ensure Women & Girls’ Protection, Voice & Influence; - Save Lives and Protect Human Dignity and - Mobilise the Public on the island of Ireland to achieve Global Justice. Find out more about the organisation at www.Trócaire.org Trócaire works through national and local partners in Lebanon and Syria delivering an integrated humanitarian & development programme that includes the provision of basic assistance, food security, livelihood, and protection assistance and strengthening social cohesion within conflict affected and displaced communities. As a partnership agency, Trócaire works with a portfolio of national and local partner organisations to strengthen their capacities to deliver humanitarian assistance and implement development-oriented programmes in a way that ensures compliance with international standards.

1. Background

Trócaire received funding from Irish Aid under the five-year Ireland Civil Society Partnership (ICSP - 2023-2027) funding scheme to implement a programme in Lebanon. The programme responds to a complex and rapidly changing context through local partners and includes protection, specialised services, cash assistance, livelihoods, and other forms of support for vulnerable communities. Across the ICSP period, protection programming has had to respond to changing needs, repeated shocks, conflict, displacement, economic pressure, and shifts in the operating environment. At the same time, Trócaire and its partners have worked to strengthen disability inclusion, age and gender responsiveness, accountability to affected populations, protection mainstreaming, referral pathways and links between protection, cash and other relevant interventions. As Trócaire prepares for the final year of the current five-year ICSP cycle and the next programme development cycle, there is an opportunity to bring together the learning generated since 2023 and use it to inform future protection programming. Trócaire therefore intends to commission a learning initiative focused on how protection programming can remain adaptive, safe and relevant, how existing formal and informal linkages with other forms of assistance and specialised services have worked in practice, and what these experiences imply for more intentional integration in future programming.

2. Purpose of the consultancy

The purpose of this consultancy is to document, analyse and synthesise practical learning from ICSP Lebanon since 2023, with a primary focus on women and girls’ protection and GBV programming. The learning will focus on two main areas: (1) how protection programming has adapted to changing needs, shocks and operating conditions; and (2) how protection pathways and linkages with other relevant services have worked in practice, including through formal or informal referrals, coordination and sequencing. Disability inclusion will be examined as a key cross-cutting learning strand, drawing on the experience of the three-year disability inclusion initiative. The exercise will explore what these experiences suggest for future programme design, including where more intentional service linkages may add value and where specialised or standalone approaches remain more appropriate. It will not assume that ICSP Lebanon currently operates an embedded integration model or that greater integration is always desirable. This is a learning and improvement exercise and should not be treated as a programme evaluation. It is not expected to measure impact, attribute outcomes to ICSP, score partner performance, or assess the effectiveness or merit of the programme as a whole against evaluation criteria. The learning focus is to understand and explore how programming adapted, how linkages and referral pathways operate in practice, what approaches and practices appear useful, where important gaps or constraints remain, and what should inform future design. The consultant should build on existing monitoring and evaluation evidence, programme documentation, partner and staff experience, and limited primary qualitative inquiry appropriate to the protection context to identify patterns, practical lessons and actionable learning.

3. Objective

The overall objective of the consultancy is to strengthen Trócaire Lebanon and partners’ future protection programming by generating practical learning from ICSP experience since 2023 on adaptation, protection pathways and service linkages, with disability inclusion as a key cross-cutting lens, and translating this learning into concrete implications for the next programme design cycle.

4. Specific objectives

- Document how protection programming under ICSP Lebanon has evolved and adapted since 2023 in response to conflict, displacement, social tensions, economic pressures and other changes in needs and operating conditions. - Understand how protection programming has connected with other relevant ICSP or external services through formal or informal referrals, sequencing, coordination and follow-up, including where cash or basic assistance has been used alongside protection support. - Identify practical approaches and learning from the three-year disability inclusion initiative, alongside the application of age, gender, accountability to affected populations and protection mainstreaming across protection programming. - Identify the main enabling factors, constraints, risks and gaps affecting adaptive protection programming and coherent referral or service pathways, including partner roles, capacities, service a