81284370-Establishment of a Third-Party-Monitoring System in the Lake Chad Region (Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, Niger)

For over a decade, the so-called Boko Haram-crisis has been affecting the Lake Chad region comprising of states and regions in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. Combined with other security threats, this violent extremist insurgency has killed thousands of civilians, led to widespread displacement, and has crippled the region"s economy. Recent developments such as the Islamic State in West-Africa Province (ISWAP) attacks on the Boko Haram (Jam?'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jih?d, JAS) stronghold in the Sambisa forest are testimony to the highly fluid context that requires independent corroboration of information to allow for fact-based decision-making and programme steering. The consolidation of ISWAP control over communities and territories risk to further negatively influence the already weakened social contract between the Lake Chad region"s governments and their populace. As part of its continuously growing engagement, Germany has advocated a more coherent and coordinated response in the region and has adapted its approach to stabilization in the Lake Chad region in support of the Lake Chad Basin Commission"s "Regional Strategy for the Stabilization, Recovery & Resilience of the Boko Haram-affected areas of the Lake Chad Basin Region" (RSS). In addition to the Governors" Forum, which aims at strengthening the sub-national coordination and leadership from within the affected territories, Germany together with other partners supports the Regional Stabilisation Facility (RSF) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The RSF aims at stabilising locations selected on the basis of political and military strategic considerations to have an impact on the overall conflict dynamics and extending government presence into areas previously under terrorist control. Within the wider framework of international support to the region, there is a strong interest in monitoring conflict dynamics and broader security and political developments in the region to mitigate strategic and political risks and in assessing the effectiveness of the stabilisation engagement in the region. The monitoring of foreign policy-relevant dynamics sought via this tender is not a standard Third-Party-Monitoring (TPM) service, which for example could be limited to verification of aid-delivery. The contractor is responsible for providing information, in the form of reports and raw data, relevant for donor-decision making on the UNDP RSF for the Lake Chad Basin (LCB), as well as for decision making by the Federal Foreign Office (FFO) on overall foreign policy considerations. The geographical focus for the TPM-System shall be in general (but not exclusively limited to) (1) Cameroon, North and Far-North regions, (2) Chad, Lac and Hadjer-Lamis regions, (3) Niger, Diffa region, and (4) Nigeria, Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. For this purpose, methodologically competent sources in the field must be systematically directed to gather relevant data, which often will be fragmentary and/ or contradictory. This data must then be structured and processed to provide for nuanced answers on FFO and RSF-donor questions. The service provider is not expected to deliver definitive answers on any and all questions but needs to indicate degrees of likelihood or even limitations in answering questions. In order to be able to provide the required services, the tenderer must demonstrate the capability to design and manage monitoring processes, to independently collect data in the above-mentioned project areas, and to critically assess, analyze and process this data in order to make it useful for operational decision-making of RSF-donors and FFO project work.