Background
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is a non-governmental, humanitarian organization with 75 years of experience in saving lives and supporting people forced to flee – refugees and internally displaced people – to claim their rights and rebuild a future. We specialise in providing emergency assistance and supporting progress towards self-reliance and durable solutions, with expertise in shelter & settlement, education, information counselling and legal assistance, protection from violence, and water, sanitation and hygiene. We work in crises across 40 countries, where we help save lives and rebuild futures. In 2024 we assisted more than 9 million people.
In its strategy for 2022-26, NRC laid out that by 2030, through its actions those forced to flee are safer and can exercise their rights, can quickly access the services needed to regain control of their lives and are able to become self-reliant and find solutions, while self-reliance and durable solutions for people in protracted displacement is one of five sub-objectives in NRC’s Global Strategy for 2022-2026. A global roadmap for NRC’s sub-objective on self-reliance and durable solutions serves as a key resource to guide the organization towards this ambition in the current strategic period.
In the environment of the current funding crisis and need for humanitarians to “hyper-prioritize” areas where the needs are most severe, we need to transform humanitarian responses and work against the growing divide between emergency work on one hand and solutions work on the other. NRC needs to ensure all responses, including emergency, are as sustainable as possible, building on locally-led processes and capacities and continuing to invest in ways of working that allow laying the foundations for solutions to displacement as early as possible, including through policy and advocacy work that builds a conducive environment for people to sustainably access services and rights.
As a humanitarian displacement organization and in a climate of shrinking aid budgets, it is our duty to ensure that even at the onset of an emergency response, we do not lose sight of the longer-term aim of supporting displaced people to become independent of humanitarian assistance and progress towards solutions to displacement.
For this to happen, we need to work on “solutions from the start” to pave the way for durable solutions and for people to reclaim their futures. We do this by analysing and removing systemic barriers displaced people face to sustainably access services and rights, by advocating for and supporting their inclusion in local formal and informal systems, and by working with local actors to ensure that legislation, policies and their implementation are inclusive of displaced people’s needs. Even during emergency assistance, we need to pivot away from the humanitarian default of creating parallel, entrenched systems for providing direct services wherever this is feasible and instead support local systems and actors to do so in an enabling function, or a hybrid between the two where necessary.
Whether we will be able to support the most vulnerable displaced people with shrinking budgets effectively, will also depend on whether we will manage to include the long term vision shift from the start, both in continuum and contiguum, focusing not only on the where to prioritise but also how we do this work, and on whether we will manage to shift from emergency to transitional responses as early as possible, promoting self-reliance and solutions and sustainable responses instead of perpetuating cycles of repeated aid dependencies – which were never ideal but are certainly now no longer an option in a global climate of massively reducing funding and donor fatigue and rising numbers of displacement.
We lack clarity of what exactly this approach looks like on the ground when designing the response. To operationalise this way forward and make it as concrete as possible, NRC seeks to commission a consultancy to develop practical guidance and a tool to design any emergency response that allows for this to happen. The guidance should provide practical examples, broken down by sectors relevant to NRC portfolio and within area-based approaches, while promoting an integrated approach overall.
Objectives of the work
The scope of the exercise will be to develop a practical tool that supports the design process of an emergency response, incorporating a focus on practical examples of activities and integrated approach.
The tool would need to build on existing processes guiding NRC’s responses, such as the emergency response design, work out a simplified version of the One Response design process, while ensuring alignment with NRC’s internal framing papers on self-reliance and durable solutions and local actors. It would also need to build on what Country Offices are doing already with informal tools and approaches by mapping the most relevant ones.
Together with NRC HO colleagues, the consultant will explore the best modality and contents for the solutions from the start guidance tool, including based on previous experience.
Duties of the consultant
The consultant will liaise with and report to the Global Lead for Self-Reliance and Durable Solutions at regular and agreed times during the consultancy to help ensure success of the project, and will need to liaise closely with additional critical interfaces, such as a focal point from the ERS team, a focal point from the policy team, the Global Lead for Local Actors and Core Competency Leads. The consultant is required to retain flexibility and respond to the feedback provided. NRC will have the final decision on the set up and presentation of the tool developed as a result of the consultancy.
Deliverables
Phase 1
- Desk review of existing framing papers, tools and benchmark of relevant practices applicable for NRC programme response planning and implementation and key aspects of these relevant for this consultancy listed in bullet points to be discussed and agreed on
- Key Informant Interviews with relevant NRC internal stakeholders
- Initial data gathering and mapping of existing formal and informal processes and consultation on the same before the tool design is started
- One report (max 5 pages) outlining the conception of the tool and background to the approach
- Small online workshop on prototype for the tool – internal NRC with diversity from HO and region, role and experience of participants
Phase 2
- The solutions from the start tool (according to best modality and contents identified during the consultancy). The tool package is to also include examples as key deliverable that make the guidance practical and user friendly and remove it from being theoretical considerations only.
- One technical guidance document for the use of the tool
- One summary (around 2 pages) as quick guide for what the tool is intended for and how it works
Phase 3
- Online workshop with presentation of final version of the tool – internal NRC
- One simple recording of a short 3min video introducing the tool and its use to complement the technical guidance and quick guide.
Reports should be submitted in Microsoft Word format, in UK English. Graphs or other graphical devices should be editable (i.e. not pictures). Publications and PowerPoint should be based on the NRC template. All materials should be freely available for use by NRC and partners. Any plagiarism in any form, or any other breach of intellectual property rights, will automatically disqualify the consultant from receiving any further payments under the contract by NRC, and NRC will seek to recover any payments already made.
The consultant will follow Ethical Research Involving Children guidance on the ethical participation of children, where relevant for the deliverables. In addition, all participants in any study or other interaction will be fully informed about the nature and purpose of the interaction and their requested involvement. Informed consent must be obtained for any photographs, audio or video recordings, etc., in accordance with NRC’s policy on consent.
NRC will own the intellectual property rights to all materials submitted by the consultants under the contract. The consultants must therefore ensure that they have possession of any materials provided to NRC as a part of the deliverable. The rights to reproduce the reports/training will fall to NRC and its contracted agents. NRC will be free to reproduce the materials at will and to grant reproduction and onward training rights.
Duties of NRC
NRC will
- provide a suitable understanding of NRC’s work and the task,
- provide administrative facilitation and ensure time available from relevant colleagues,
- provide timely feedback to the consultant.
Implementation schedule and estimated inputs
Consultancy is expected to take around 20-25 days, start in September, with all deliverables finalised by 20 December 2025.
Qualifications of the consultant
- Demonstrated knowledge of the implementing emergency responses enabling local systems and transition quickly
- Understanding of emergency and development assistance approaches and gaps between the two
- Understanding of response strategy development beyond individual projects
- Experience with development of operational tools
- Experience with Key Informant Interviews
- Experience at adviser (or manager) level of self-reliance, durable solutions, and emergency response work
- A broad knowledge and experience of work with local actors and policy work in humanitarian settings
- Field-based humanitarian experience across both emergency and transitional/development contexts would be an asset.
Submission of interest
Interested applicants should submit the following:
- An up-to-date curriculum vitae
- Cover letter including a description of the proposed process and a breakdown of total cost of the deliverable consisting of 4 pages maximum
- Quotation
- Examples of relevant work designing similar guidance or tools
- Selection of practical examples where emergency responses have been made more sustainable, working towards inclusion of displaced people from the start
Please send submissions to the NRC Global Lead for Durable Solutions and Self-reliance, Lena von Naso (lena.vonnaso@nrc.no), copying Global Adviser Jason Bell (Jason.bell@nrc.no) by Tuesday 2 September 2025.