ASSIGNMENT OBJECTIVES

The objectives are to:

1) Strengthen the existing draft evidence base on how social security entitlements are interpreted, applied and enforced, and extend it to the mechanisms through which workers raise and resolve complaints and appeals.

2) Secure tripartite and institutional validation of that consolidated evidence base.

3) Build the capacity of those who decide, administer and support social security claims, through curricula national training institutions can keep running after this agreement ends.

4) Place before decision-makers a prioritised set of options, with order-of-magnitude resource implications, for strengthening the legal framework and the routes by which workers pursue their entitlements.

4. SCOPE OF WORK AND METHODOLOGY

This agreement is the sole arrangement for this work stream and all activities are delivered within the agreed value. Bidders shall not assume that any event, expert engagement, expert fee, translation, printing, transport, entry permit, participant payment or venue requirement is met separately. Requirements outside the priced scope must be raised in the Technical and Financial Proposal and, if necessary, at the Inception Report stage.

Activity numbers, sizes, sequencing, locations and participant numbers are indicative and adjustable within the agreed value and period by written agreement. The deliverables in Section 6 are the binding outputs.

Component A. Strengthening the analytical report

1) Starting material. The ILO's draft report is the base text of the deliverable, not background material; proposals set out how they would appraise the full draft at inception and what they expect to remain, and the Inception Report fixes the remaining scope with the ILO on the basis of the draft as received. The ILO holds the rights in the draft, grants the Implementing Partner the right to use and modify it for this agreement, and determines authorship and acknowledgement in any publication.

2) Higher court analysis. Strengthen the analysis of how the higher courts interpret and enforce the framework, against a sample frame agreed at inception, bounded to the Court of Cassation and, for constitutionality challenges only, the Federal Supreme Court, and including first-instance and appellate decisions held in the same cassation file. Test, rather than assume, the premise that decided case law rests predominantly on Law No. 39 of 1971, Law No. 18 of 2023 having entered into force only on 26 November 2023. Establish which settled principles carry over to Law No. 18 of 2023, which are displaced and which the transitional provisions leave uncertain, and where liability falls when contributions were never paid or the worker never registered. Identify the procedural requirements that operate as barriers to claimants, including limitation periods, time limits for objecting to an administrative decision, and the medical assessment of invalidity and employment injury.

3) Enforcement. Provide a qualitative chapter on enforcing judicial decisions, drawing on the case sample and key informants and identifying the principal obstacles to executing judgments. A separate empirical study of execution files is not required and shall not be priced.

4) Legal framework. The review covers Law No. 18 of 2023, Law No. 39 of 1971, labour court and cassation procedure, and the constitutional provisions on social security entitlement. Labour Law No. 37 of 2015 is reviewed only where it governs social security claims: proof of the employment relationship, labour court jurisdiction and procedure, and labour inspection and the sanctions on employer registration and contribution compliance. No general review of that Law, or of constitutional labour protections, is in scope.

REQUIRED EXPERTISE OF THE IMPLEMENTING PARTNER

The Implementing Partner shall be a legally registered non-profit entity, such as a non-governmental organisation, research institution, university, legal institute or intergovernmental organisation, operating or able to operate in Iraq. It may be an ILO constituent organisation or affiliated member, or a non-constituent organisation meeting all other criteria. It shall practise non-discrimination in selecting participants. It shall not appear on any United Nations ineligibility or debarment list, be subject to European Union restrictive measures or appear in the EU Financial Sanctions Database, and shall have no history of failed obligations or prohibited conduct. Before award the ILO screens the proposed partner, its governing body and its senior management against these lists, under the Terms and Conditions applicable to Implementation Agreements, incorporated by reference under Section 16.

Bidders shall meet the following criteria. Each criterion specifies the documentary evidence required.

1) Organisational capacity and legal status. Established governance and internal financial controls, and at least three years of operational experience in Iraq or the Middle East region. Evidence: registration certificate; organisational profile; governance charter or by-laws; two years of audited financial statements.

2) Financial administration capacity. Capacity to manage donor funds at the scale of this agreement and to administer multiple expert engagements and event budgets transparently. Evidence: audit reports from two prior projects of comparable scale; reference letters from two prior funders; dedicated project account capability.

3) Capacity to mobilise specialised legal expertise. Senior legal expertise, in-house or through a roster of external experts, of the calibre required for analytical refinement, for peer review by senior judges and lawyers, and for training, together with social security administration and complaints-handling expertise. Evidence: how such expertise is mobilised; curricula vitae or profiles of indicative experts; one comparable assignment.

Desired Candidate Profile