Consultant - Conflict Mediation and Negotiation Web Map Tool Development - Remote

Background:

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action — helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within.

Mercy Corps’ Advancing Inclusive Mediation (AIM) program seeks to increase local communities, Mercy Corps, and the broader peacebuilding community’s skills and knowledge in inclusive mediation, which will ultimately reduce violent conflict. The program seeks to identify and fill key gaps to advance peacebuilders’ ability to drive cutting-edge, inclusive, and effective mediation practice.

AIM intends to adapt mediation and negotiation delivery to meet people where they are, including increasingly online and on their phones. Particularly as we engage youth and women to engage in substantive roles and practices in their communities. AIM’s mediation resources will be accessible in a variety of digital and analog forms to accommodate male and female preferences. Further, as communities deal with the effects of online harm contributing to conflict, mediation resources need to be refreshed to account for the influence of the online space in shaping disputes and provide guidance for community leaders dealing with the effects of social media polarization.

Purpose / Project Description:

As part of the AIM program through the Peace and Conflict Technical Support Unit (TSU), the team is supporting Interest-based mediation and negotiation of conflict in several countries. Records through our various conflict programming of each of these community mediations are kept, but are often collected manually on paper forms or if they are taken digitally, they are collected, but not analyzed or visualized in order to understand insights like geographic distribution of mediation and negotiation work or the thematic focus.

The Peace and Conflict teams in Iraq and Nigeria need to better understand the distribution (over space and time) of community-level incidents, the corresponding mediation work for these incidents, as well as thematic focus of the mediation/negotiation incidents (i.e. conflict analysis, gender, dispute category) so that better targeting of future mediation/negotiation work can be done.

Additionally, in many contexts, natural resources scarcity, physical access, and stress are major factors in where mediation/negotiation must take place. The team would also like to be able to layer spatial information on natural resources scarcity and shocks (i.e. drought prevalence, locations of boreholes…) in order to better understand the drivers of conflict requiring mediation or negotiation.

As a solution, the program requires an interactive, web-based tool with a web map component enabling community partners and Mercy Corps teams to better assess incidents, analyze, and prioritize responses more effectively by engaging appropriate mediators and negotiators. Nigeria and potentially Iraq will be chosen as locations for the pilot of this platform. However, locations for the pilot could subsequently change in the near term according to program needs and the relevance of the tools.

Full feature design will be done as a human-centered design process with the consultant, program team and key stakeholders, but anticipated key features of the platform include:

• Points of mediation incidents displayed with pop-ups showing relevant information from the dataset including things like those involved (gender, religion, tribe), type of incident (economic, natural resource based, theft & criminality, GBV, political, climate shock, intergroup, murder, extremist violence), number of people affected (injured, displaced, killed)
• Note: dataset will be available in a digital format, but may need data cleaning and engineering in order to make it usable for the platform. Consultant will have the opportunity to inform and adjust how data is collected/transcribed so that this process is smoother.
• Color coding of incidents based on types of disputes
• Ancillary data like water resources (boreholes, typical surface water availability, other WASH resources), physical infrastructure (roads, bridges), drought prevalence, rangeland availability, agricultural extent, land use/land cover, that can be layered with the incidence data (final list of ancillary datasets will be finalized with the consultant)

Desired features include:

• Flags or triggers suggesting specific actions for an incident based on the type (i.e. physical violent conflict must be referred to the constituted mediation bodies, an incident may be particularly well suited to traditional mediation, and there is someone in the roster trained in this discipline nearby).
• Flag or display incidents for follow-up after a certain amount of time has passed that they have been on the platform.
• Ability for users to edit and update data points from the platform.

Some of the decision making needs for this platform include:

• The team needs to be able to visualize disputes, work with relevant stakeholders to decide a mediation approach for a particular incident, and determine who is best positioned to resolve these disputes.
• The team will look at the following avenues for action based on the information provided by the platform:
• Types of mediation
• Referrals to appropriate channels
• Remote mediation options

Consultant Activities:

The work for this projects will be broken down into 5 sprints:

• Sprint 0: Initial Design
• Consultations with MC staff key users who will be part of design
• Design pilot platform
• Include essential elements of Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
• Start data engineering work for key mediation dataset and any ancillary datasets previously identified in design (will likely have support of MC staff in this element of work)
• Sprint 1: Initial development of MVP
• Essential MVP features implemented
• Product working and ready for user testing
• With MC/TSU focal points, develop user testing matrix
• Sprint 2: Round 1 of pilot tests
• Test with users with user testing matrix
• Make adjustments incorporating feedback
• Sprint 3: Round 2 of pilot tests
• Test with users
• Make adjustments
• Sprint 4: Final product
• Any final adjustments or bug fixes after user testing sprints
• 3 working days of reserved support time for bug fixes
• Handover documentation and guidance document for using and maintaining
• Training/onboarding session (see below)

Consultant Deliverables:

The Consultant will provide as final deliverables:

• A final web-based web map application with all associated code, files and documentation necessary to fix bugs and make feature improvements.
• All associated code, files and documentation of data engineering of main mediation dataset and any ancillary datasets included in the platform.
• A handover/guidance document for the tool with information on use and maintenance.
• A training/onboarding session on use of the platform for key Mercy Corps staff (no more than 2 hours).

Timeframe / Schedule:

Consultant will work with the AIM team to develop a timetable and workplan for the deliverables in the first week of the consultancy during the kickoff meeting.

The projected start date for this consultancy is as soon as possible and the end date is November 30, 2023.

This will be a part-time consultancy with periods of higher volume than others.

The Consultant will report to:

Peace & Conflict Advisor, TSU

The Consultant will work closely with:

• Senior Advisor - Peace and Governance, T4D TSU
• Geospatial Technology Manager, T4D TSU

Required Experience & Skills:

• 5-10 years of technically relevant experience.
• Demonstrated experience with front-end web development and/or building and deploying web applications is essential, including experience with JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and Node.js.
• Demonstrated experience with web mapping platforms and paradigms including MapBox, Carto, Open Layers, or ArcGIS App Building tools and OGC standards like WFS, WMS, and WMTS.
• Demonstrated experience with GIS and spatial data manipulation is essential.
• Experience and skills with data engineering including data cleaning and ETL processes (preferably on AWS) very strongly preferred.

Documents Comprising the Proposal

Please submit the following documentation for the proposal:

• CV (if available, please include links to a portfolio or examples of relevant past work building web applications).
• Work examples may be requested at a later point if not provided
• A brief (no more than 1 page) proposal document outlining:
• Time needed to complete each stage of the sprint (in days) and;
• Total price (broken down by each sprint)

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Achieving our mission begins with how we build our team and work together. Through our commitment to enriching our organization with people of different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, and ways of thinking, we are better able to leverage the collective power of our teams and solve the world’s most complex challenges. We strive for a culture of trust and respect, where everyone contributes their perspectives and authentic selves, reaches their potential as individuals and teams, and collaborates to do the best work of their lives.

We recognize that diversity and inclusion is a journey, and we are committed to learning, listening and evolving to become more diverse, equitable and inclusive than we are today.

Equal Employment Opportunity

We are committed to providing an environment of respect and psychological safety where equal employment opportunities are available to all. We do not engage in or tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender identity, gender expression, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability (including HIV/AIDS status), marital status, military veteran status or any other protected group in the locations where we work.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our stakeholders and to international standards guiding international relief and development work, while actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects. Team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner and respect local laws, customs and MC's policies, procedures, and values at all times and in all in-country venues.