Implementation Agreement: Social Security Law Courts Work Stream (Federal Iraq). Court cases regarding private sector social security benefits.

Country: Iraq Organization: International Labour Organization Closing date: 5 Sep 2026 Background: Iraq's social protection framework rests on the Pension and Social Security Law for Private Sector Workers (Law No. 18 of 2023) and, for decided case law, its predecessor Law No. 39 of 1971. Iraq ratified the Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102) on 22 March 2023, accepting Parts II to X, all nine benefit branches. The European Union funds the EU-UN Joint Programme on Social Protection in Iraq, delivered with national counterparts and the social partners. This assignment addresses the point at which an entitlement becomes enforceable. ASSIGNMENT BACKGROUND The ILO holds an analytical draft report classifying social security court cases in Federal Iraq and identifying systemic barriers to access, and provides it at signature. The assignment strengthens that draft to publishable quality, extends it to the mechanisms through which workers pursue complaints and appeals, secures its validation, and converts the validated findings into training. It is not a new study, and bidders shall not price one. The Implementing Partner coordinates the work stream end to end: it contracts the expert resources each component requires, manages convening and event logistics, funds the supporting activities, and provides project management, monitoring, quality control, financial administration and reporting. The ILO supervises technically, secures counterpart engagement and accepts deliverables. The ILO alone assesses the conformity of Iraqi law with ratified Conventions. Judicial engagement runs through the Higher Judicial Council, whose prior agreement is a precondition for activities involving sitting judges; the ILO secures that agreement and access to the case records. Inception fixes the case-extraction template and anonymisation protocol; where a source institution cannot anonymise, the Implementing Partner's experts work on its premises and extract only anonymised data. If access is not secured by week 8, the parties agree an adjusted sample frame from published cassation decisions and key informants. If the Council's agreement to activities involving sitting judges is not secured by week 20, they agree in writing an equivalent substitute for the judicial training stream, deliverable through the judicial training institution or to court administrative staff. Neither adjustment changes the agreement value. Engagement with administrative counterparts is coordinated with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. The geographic scope is Federal Iraq. The Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which operates a separate scheme and court structure, is out of scope. 3. 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. 5) International labour standards. The analysis is anchored in these instruments and extends no further: Convention No. 102, branch by branch against Parts II to X; the Equality of Treatment (Social Security) Convention, 1962 (No. 118), for non-national workers; the Labour Inspection Convention, 1947 (No. 81), for legal proceedings and penalties, in the enforcement chapter only; the Workers' Representatives Convention, 1971 (No. 135), for the training stream addressed to workers' organisations; and the Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202), as guidance. The framing reference is Sustainable Development Goal indicator 1.3.1. The report states no conclusion on the conformity of Iraqi law and practice with ratified Conventions, reserved to the ILO under Section 2. 6) Options. The report concludes with a prioritised set of options for strengthening the legal and regulatory framework and its operationalisation. Each states the legal change required, the institutional home, an order-of-magnitude resource implication, the sequencing implication and the principal risks. 7) Equity analysis. Apply four cross-cutting lenses to the case sample and the barriers analysis, not as separate studies: gender, informality, sector and access to justice. Disaggregate findings by these lenses wherever the record permits, state where they cannot be, and treat the absence of a group or sector from the case base as a finding. 8) One quantitative output is required: an end-to-end reckoning of elapsed time and cost for three claim types confirmed at inception. Elapsed time is reconstructed from the dates in the anonymised case files, cost from key informants, including lawyers, workers' organisation legal-assistance services and the Bar Association. It is an indicative reconstruction, not a representative estimate. 9) The assignment addresses the clarity of the legal framework, the accessibility of procedures and the design of mechanisms. It does not evaluate the performance, competence or independence of the judiciary, of any court, or of any judge, nor the performance or competence of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, of the social security administration or of any official. Component B. Stakeholder mapping 1) Map the institutions whose engagement validation and uptake require: the judiciary, the ministry and the social security administration, the Bar Association, academic and access-to-justice institutions, and the most representative workers' and employers' organisations. 2) For each institution the mapping states its role and interest, its decision-making or convening authority, the channel and stage of engagement, and any sensitivity affecting how it is approached. It concludes with a validation and uptake pathway agreed with the ILO before peer review begins. Component C. Expert peer review 1) Mobilise, as the first level of peer review, one expert in social security law and adjudication to review the report in detail and work with the author side to upgrade it, before the workshops. 2) Convene up to three peer-review workshops in Baghdad, engaging in turn judges and senior judiciary; senior lawyers and the Bar Association; and law faculties and access-to-justice specialists. Each produces a peer-review record feeding revisions to the report. One shall also include the most representative workers' and employers' organisations; where combining them is not appropriate, one or two dedicated sessions are convened with the social partners, together or separately, at the same stage. 3) Mobilise one or two further national or international experts to facilitate the process technically, consolidate the review findings and ensure the revisions reflect what the reviewers said. Component D. Validation 1) Convene one tripartite validation workshop in Baghdad, approximately 40 to 50 participants, with English and Arabic simultaneous interpretation, to validate the peer-reviewed evidence base. 2) Deliver, in addition to the workshop: an early framing session during inception at which the social partners comment on the analytical questions; circulation of the peer-reviewed report in Arabic at least ten working days before the workshop; a working-group format at the workshop; and a comment and disposition matrix recording every substantive comment, the response and the resulting change to the text, which conditions acceptance of the validation deliverable. 3) Where governorate-level tripartite committees on social security extension are active in a focus governorate, Component E draws on them and reports their views. Component E. Complaints and appeals mechanisms 1) Map how social security complaints, objections and appeals are raised and resolved in the four focus governorates of Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk and Ninewa, against a tiered model: front-line information and rectification; internal administrative review at the social security directorate; an independent or quasi-judicial appeal tier, independent only where it is institutionally independent of the administration whose decision is under review; and the labour court. One or two governorates may be substituted where access, security or counterpart availability requires, by written agreement with the ILO. 2) The mapping covers where grievances originate, including at enterprise level and at directorate offices; the barriers facing informal and not-yet-covered workers; the labour inspection route alongside claimant-initiated routes; whether an appeals function within the social security administration could be strengthened rather than created anew; and what each tier records, so that a minimum grievance dataset can be specified. 3) The mapping first establishes what Law No. 18 of 2023 and Law No. 39 of 1971 provide by way of objection, review and appeal, which of those provisions are operational, and how the tiers observed in practice relate to those provided in law. 4) Analyse how the mechanisms operate against Article 70 of Convention No. 102 in all three of its paragraphs, including the substitution permitted for medical care administered by a government department responsible to a legislature and the exemption where claims are settled by a special tribunal on which the persons protected are represented; against Convention No. 118 for non-national workers; and against Recommendation No. 202 as guidance, which shall not be presented as an obligation binding on Iraq. 5) For each gap the report states the realistic options, including strengthening an existing body rather than creating a new one, and for each option the elements listed under Component A other than the sequencing implication; it prescribes no single design. The ILO selects the recommended option, consulting national counterparts and the social partners. 6) This is a purposive qualitative mapping, not a statistically representative survey, and its findings are not extrapolated to national prevalence. The Inception Report fixes the methodology, the sites per governorate, the respondent categories and the approach to reaching workers whose claims were refused, abandoned or never lodged. A method relying only on institutional respondents is not accepted. 7) The classification of tiers is a convention for comparability with Convention No. 102 and implies no criticism of any body or its staff; the evaluation disclaimer in Component A applies. Claimants or employers registered with, or served by, the social security administration of the Kurdistan Region, which is out of scope under Section 2, are recorded as a coordination finding, without characterising the jurisdiction of either administration. 8) This Component is reported with Component A as a single consolidated evidence base, entering peer review under Component C and validation under Component D. Component F. Training of trainers 1) Convert the validated findings into training-of-trainers curricula and deliver them across four streams. Each curriculum derives from the evidence base, not generic material, and each outline goes to the ILO for approval before development proceeds. Development may begin from the peer-reviewed evidence base and is finalised against the validated findings. 2) Judicial officers, to apply the social security framework consistently, in a form the judicial training institution can run after this agreement ends. 3) Social security administration, equipping the officials who operate complaints and appeals mechanisms to resolve grievances early and accessibly. 4) Workers' organisations, equipping representatives who assist members on social security and on grievances, and covering the protection due to workers' representatives under Convention No. 135. 5) Employers' organisations, equipping representatives to handle registration, contribution and grievance matters arising among employers. 6) Mobilise the senior legal, administrative and training expertise required to design and deliver all four streams, producing reusable curricula, trained-trainer cohorts and delivery reports. The Implementing Partner proposes numbers of events, participants and locations against this scope. Component G. Publication inputs 1) Provide author-side substantive inputs and Arabic legal-terminology quality assurance to the consolidated report, supporting pre-press review. Production is centralised under the programme's publication service and is out of scope. Component H. Coordination, expertise and management 1) Provide project management, monitoring, quality control, reporting and the administration of all expert engagements, under ILO technical supervision. 2) Expert engagement. The Implementing Partner recruits, contracts, remunerates and administers all experts needed to deliver this agreement; the ILO contracts none of them. Each contract it issues flows down the confidentiality, personal-data protection, intellectual property, safeguarding and record-retention obligations of the Terms and Conditions and of Section 13. It submits each proposed profile and curriculum vitae for ILO written approval before engagement. Substitution follows the Terms and Conditions: the replacement possesses equal or better knowledge, experience and ability, the substitution is carried out so as not to affect delivery, and it requires prior ILO written approval, the replacement profile being submitted before that person starts. 3) International expertise. Two missions to Iraq by one non-Iraq-resident international expert form part of this assignment. They are fixed; every bidder prices them within the base proposal on the assumptions in Section 12, and the Implementing Partner arranges each in full on the terms in Section 10. Remote international input is additional to those two missions, not a substitute; the technical proposal sets out how the bidder combines it with them and with national expertise. The ILO may also send its own specialists, whom the Implementing Partner facilitates likewise but does not pay for. 4) Prohibition. No official or staff member of the International Labour Organization, and no person party to a contract with the ILO, may benefit financially, directly or indirectly, from the funds of this agreement. Monitoring and quality control The Implementing Partner carries the first level of technical review of every output, including those produced by the specialists it mobilises, and submits to the ILO an output it considers final on its side. No output goes to validation, publication or any other public stage before ILO review and acceptance. Progress is reported under Section 9. Indicative activity schedule The table below gives indicative specifications for the main activities. All timings, locations and participant numbers are indicative; the binding obligations are the deliverables in Section 6 and the agreement period in Section 7. The Inception Report re-bases the week bands against the actual signature date and around the Ramadan to Newroz window, on the basis set out under the deliverables table in Section 6; the ILO may consolidate or restructure individual events. 5. 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. 4) Convening and event management. Experience convening technical workshops and training events involving senior government, judicial and professional participants. Evidence: at least three comparable events managed in the past three years. 5) Coordination and stakeholder engagement in sensitive contexts. Ability to coordinate with government bodies, the judiciary, professional associations and the social partners, and to operate with discretion. Evidence: stakeholder coordination experience in at least two prior projects; reference letters. 6) Presence and local knowledge in Federal Iraq, including the four focus governorates. Evidence: office locations; local staff and operational footprint; prior implementation in Federal Iraq. 7) Capacity to mobilise and carry experts from outside Iraq. For the two missions to Iraq by a non-Iraq-resident international expert, every bidder must act as in-country sponsor for entry visas and permits, book and reissue international travel, arrange cleared accommodation and secure ground transport, and hold travel, medical and evacuation insurance covering Iraq. Evidence: the entry-facilitation process operated; at least one prior international expert mobilisation into Iraq; confirmation of insurance capability. 8) Safeguarding and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse. A written policy applying the United Nations standards of conduct. This gate applies at selection only and does not limit the ILO's rights under the Terms and Conditions on prohibited conduct at any time. Evidence: the policy and how it is applied, including reporting channels. The weeks above are indicative: no week number here is a due date, except week 8 and week 20 in Section 2 and week 31 in Section 11, all running from signature. No activity may precede signature. The Inception Report sets the working schedule against the actual signature date and keeps all peer-review, validation and training events outside the period from the start of Ramadan to Newroz inclusive, which in 2027 runs from about 8 February to 21 March. The binding obligations are the deliverables, their sequence and their completion, with the final comprehensive report and the final expenditure report, in time for ILO acceptance and the final payment to fall within the agreement period; the schedule may then be adjusted by written agreement, within the agreed value. 7. DURATION This Implementation Agreement runs from the date of signature for an indicative period of ten months, tentatively between October 2026 and July 2027. All timings are in weeks from signature. A working day means Sunday to Thursday, excluding public holidays in Iraq. Final reporting and financial reconciliation are completed by the end of the agreement. 8. VISIBILITY AND BRANDING 1) All workshop materials, training curricula, reports and publications must carry the approved logos and credit lines of the European Union, the ILO and the programme, the European Union logo appearing on all outputs under European Union visibility guidelines for external actions. These Terms of Reference, with the branding guidance issued under this Section, are the ILO's prior written authorization to use the ILO emblem, logo and name for that purpose only; the restriction on otherwise publicising the partnership continues to apply. 2) Any new material must receive ILO clearance before printing or distribution. 3) Detailed branding guidance is provided by the ILO at the start of implementation. 9. REPORTING ARRANGEMENTS 1) The Implementing Partner reports to the National Social Protection Officer, ILO Iraq, under the overall supervision of the Chief Technical Advisor. 2) Monthly technical progress reports, recording progress against the delivery plan, activities completed and planned, expert engagements, risks, issues and any variance from the schedule. These are not payment triggers. 3) Consolidated technical and financial reports at the points in Section 11, each covering the period since the previous one, presenting the deliverables completed and supported by an expenditure report with invoices, bank statements and proofs of payment. These reports, with acceptance of the deliverables they relate to, trigger payment. 4) Incident or issue reports, as required, and a final comprehensive report with full financial reconciliation. 5) All reports are in English on the ILO templates provided. Key outputs are in English and Arabic as specified per deliverable. 10. SUPERVISION AND LOGISTICAL ARRANGEMENTS Supervision is as set out in Section 9. The ILO provides the existing draft report, technical reference documents, branding guidelines and reporting templates; secures Higher Judicial Council agreement where judicial participation is required and access to the case records; issues the substantive invitation letter to counterparts; signs letters of introduction the Implementing Partner drafts; grants security clearance; and issues, on request, a confirmation letter of an expert's engagement. It may make monitoring visits and attend any event; the Implementing Partner notifies the ILO at least five working days before every event. The Implementing Partner makes all other arrangements: venue booking, accommodation, catering, audio-visual and information-technology hire, workshop coordination, staffing, interpretation and translation, printing, equipment, participant movement, expert mobility and duty of care, and all payments to participants and mobilised experts. Security and postponement. The Implementing Partner tracks United Nations security advisories, coordinates contingency planning with the ILO, and reports any security incident or access constraint promptly. In-person events and field movements need prior ILO security clearance, requested in writing at least ten working days ahead. Where the ILO postpones, suspends or modifies an activity, the Implementing Partner works to the adjusted schedule within the agreed value and bears the cancellation, change and re-booking costs from that value; bidders shall include a Tier 2 contingency provision. Where an activity is cancelled and not rescheduled, the cost not incurred is not claimed and remains available within the agreed value. Mobility and duty of care. The Implementing Partner bears the full cost of entry and stay for every non-Iraq-resident expert it mobilises, including the two international missions; acts as named in-country sponsor and hosting entity; lodges each application at least 25 working days before the activity; replaces at its own cost any expert who cannot enter in time; books and reissues travel in economy class by the most direct routing; arranges accommodation from the current United Nations cleared list, daily subsistence, secure ground transport and airport handling; and holds travel, medical and personal-accident insurance with medical evacuation, evidenced to the ILO before travel. Participants and venues. The Implementing Partner arranges and pays participants' travel, accommodation, transfers and local transport at every event, and pays any per-participant subsistence at the rate the ILO notifies in writing at contracting. Bidders price at the rate in the invitation to bid or, if none is stated, the prevailing United Nations rate for the governorate; any difference from the rate notified at contracting is absorbed by reallocation within the agreed value under Section 12, leaving the total agreement value unchanged. It issues invitations under ILO cover, maintains the participant list, and submits for ILO clearance a note stating venue, accommodation, transfer arrangements and entitlement basis. It facilitates ILO nominees and ILO personnel likewise, the ILO bearing the cost of its own personnel. Venues and participant accommodation must be on the current UN-cleared premises list for the governorate, standard and rate justified against local comparators. It names one event focal point and one contract focal point, reachable in Iraqi working hours and on event days. 11. PAYMENT SCHEDULE Payment requires satisfactory performance and ILO acceptance of deliverables. After the first advance, each payment requires ILO acceptance of the deliverables listed below and of the completed ILO Implementation Agreement Technical Report and Expenditure Report for the period since the previous report, substantiated as required by Section 9. The total agreement value is the accepted financial proposal across Tiers 1, 2 and 3, denominated in the single currency stated in the Agreement Document, Iraqi dinars or United States dollars, and firm-fixed, not adjusted for currency fluctuation; a payment made in the other of those two currencies is converted at the United Nations Operational Rate of Exchange, which alters neither the total agreement value nor any tranche ceiling. The schedule, carried into the Agreement Document, is: first advance 15 per cent of the total agreement value, which shall not in any case exceed the lower of 30 per cent of that value or USD 30,000; second payment 25 per cent; third 20 per cent; fourth 25 per cent; final payment 15 per cent, on the formula in the table below. Payment Condition First advance payment On signature, where the ILO authorized official has approved an advance payment in writing; an advance is exceptional, not automatic. Covers activities for Deliverables 1 and 2. The first advance is 15 per cent of the total agreement value, and shall not in any case exceed the lower of 30 per cent of the total value of the Implementation Agreement or USD 30,000 (whichever is less). It is settled against documented expenditure on ILO acceptance of Deliverables 1 and 2 and submission of the first consolidated technical and financial report supported as required by Section 9; any unutilised balance stays with the Implementing Partner and is reconciled in the following report. ILO acceptance of that report, not exhaustion of the advance, conditions the second payment. Second payment Upon settlement of at least 80% of the first advance payment and ILO acceptance of Deliverable 3. Third payment Upon ILO acceptance of Deliverables 4 and 5, and the settlement of at least 80% of the previous advance payment. Fourth payment Upon ILO acceptance of Deliverables 6 to 8, and the settlement of at least 80% of the previous advance payment. Final payment (balance) On ILO acceptance of Deliverables 9 and 10, the final comprehensive report and the final expenditure report. Where the ILO does not make the pre-press material for Deliverable 9 available in time for submission by week 31, that deliverable ceases to condition the final payment and is discharged on submission of the inputs the Implementing Partner can provide. The final payment is 15 per cent of the total agreement value or the balance remaining after the payments actually made, whichever is greater, and not less than 5 per cent of the total value of the Implementation Agreement. Where the ceiling above reduces the first advance below 15 per cent of the total agreement value, the final payment absorbs the difference, so that the five payments together always total 100 per cent of the total agreement value and no more. 12. BUDGET STRUCTURE The budget has three tiers. Bidders complete the Financial Proposal Template (Annex 1) and price each tier and line item themselves; no indicative amounts are published. Costs proposed must reflect the scope of work in Section 4, the operational responsibilities in Section 10 and the deliverables in Section 6, at competitive market rates. Tier 1: Specialised expertise mobilisation 1) Specialised legal and technical expertise for report refinement and legal analysis; peer-review specialist inputs; curriculum design and delivery across the four training streams; and publication inputs. 2) Specialised expertise for the complaints and appeals mapping and for the resulting recommendations. Tier 2: Events, convening, participant movement, goods and services Bidders price this Tier on these assumptions: one early tripartite framing session, half a day, 15 to 25 participants; three peer-review workshops, one day, 15 to 25 participants each; up to two dedicated social-partner sessions, half a day, 15 to 25 participants each; one validation workshop, one day, 40 to 50 participants; four training-of-trainers events, two days, 20 to 25 participants each. The framing session, peer-review workshops, social-partner sessions and validation workshop are in Baghdad, participants travelling from the three other focus governorates; the training-of-trainers events are in Baghdad and the focus governorates per the activity schedule in Section 6. These assumptions govern pricing only; the actual number, size, sequencing and location of events are agreed under Section 4. 1) Peer-review workshops; the tripartite validation workshop; training events for the four streams; interpretation; translation, including the full Arabic version of the consolidated evidence base and of the training curricula and materials; printing; audio-visual and information-technology hire; and communications for virtual or hybrid meetings. 2) Participant movement for every event: round-trip domestic air and road travel, accommodation, transfers, local transport and per-participant subsistence for participants travelling from the focus governorates. 3) Field mission costs for the complaints and appeals mapping across the four focus governorates, including travel, accommodation, subsistence and vehicle hire. 4) Travel and complete duty of care for every expert mobilised from outside Iraq, on the terms in Section 10, including the two international expert missions. Price those two missions on these assumptions: two missions, one expert, five working days each, expert fees, international travel in economy class by the most direct routing, daily subsistence at United Nations rates, the Section 10 duty-of-care costs, and Baghdad as duty location. Tier 3: Implementing Partner facilitation and management 1) Project staff, project management, monitoring and quality control, financial administration of the agreement, banking, and field monitoring. Reallocation between budget lines Any reallocation between budget lines requires prior written ILO approval, whatever the amount. Variation within a single budget line requires no prior approval, provided the total agreement value is unchanged and the variation is reported in the next expenditure report. The expenditure report is measured against the latest allocation agreed in writing. 13. QUALITY CHECKS AND ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA Each deliverable is subject to ILO review and approval before being final; deliverables that do not meet these requirements are returned for revision. Analytical reports must include an executive summary, the methodology and data sources, the legal and policy analysis, evidence-based findings and practical recommendations, and the disposition of ILO and stakeholder comments. The expenditure report reconciles to the latest budget allocation agreed in writing under Section 12, with category-separated reporting and proofs of payment; on the same basis, reallocation between budget lines requires prior written ILO approval, whatever the amount, and variation within a single budget line requires no prior approval, provided the total agreement value is unchanged and the variation is reported in the next expenditure report. The Implementing Partner must allow sufficient time and capacity for these reviews and reporting. The Terms and Conditions govern confidentiality, data protection, record retention, audit access, safeguarding and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, and intellectual property. Records are kept ten years after the end date, open to verification by the ILO and, under the audit and verification rights that apply to this European Union funded programme and flow down to the Implementing Partner and to any party it contracts, by the European Union, the European Court of Auditors and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF). Three requirements are specific to this assignment. Judicial data, draft reports and workshop discussions are confidential and are not disclosed without prior written ILO approval. Case-level material is anonymised before leaving the source institution, so no claimant, judge or case is identifiable in any deliverable; no claimant, refused or abandoned claimant or key informant is interviewed without recorded informed consent in the form agreed in the Inception Report; field personal data is held encrypted, access restricted to named team members; direct identifiers are destroyed within three months of ILO acceptance of the final comprehensive report, and the anonymised research record is retained and open to audit for the period in the Terms and Conditions. Publishing the analytical report and the mapping report is an intended outcome, proceeding on ILO authorisation. Performance indicators, reported in each progress report: peer-review workshops convened and records accepted by the ILO; focus governorates covered by the mapping; trainers trained under each of the four streams, disaggregated by sex; proportion of deliverables accepted at first submission, target at least 70 per cent; proportion of ILO and peer-review comments addressed, target 100 per cent; and expenditure reconciled against the latest allocation agreed in writing. 14. EVALUATION CRITERIA Technical and financial proposals are submitted simultaneously. Evaluation follows Quality and Cost-Based Selection (QCBS), weighted 80/20. The lowest responsive financial proposal takes the full 20 financial points; each other responsive proposal scores 20 multiplied by the lowest responsive price and divided by its own price, to two decimal places. If the lowest is rejected as non-responsive, the lowest remaining responsive price becomes the reference price and the financial scores are recalculated. A financial proposal inconsistent with the scope of work and the deliverables set out in these Terms of Reference may be treated as abnormally low. The ILO requests written justification of the rates and quantities proposed and may reject the proposal as non-responsive where the justification does not show that the work can be delivered in full at the price offered. A proposal is examined on this ground where its price is more than 30 per cent below the average price of the responsive financial proposals. The request is made in writing, the bidder replies within five working days, and the evaluation panel records its decision and reasons in the evaluation report. Each technical sub-criterion is evaluated against the documentary evidence in Section 5. Criterion Points 1. Relevant experience, in-house or through mobilized capacity, in legal analysis, judicial engagement and capacity building in Iraq. Direct experience with social security legislation is an advantage. 12 2. Capacity to mobilise senior legal, judicial and social security administration expertise of the required calibre, including the two international expert missions and the associated entry, travel and duty-of-care arrangements 17 3. Understanding of the Terms of Reference; methodological approach, work plan, quality assurance, appropriateness of tools, and the assessment of foreseen difficulties and challenges during implementation with the mitigation methods proposed 25 4. Organisation of tasks, including the timetable and the coordination of multiple events and participant movement across the four focus governorates 9 5. Human resources proposed for the assignment, including curricula vitae of the team leader and key experts 11 6. Presence and local knowledge in Federal Iraq, including the four focus governorates, and capacity for discreet engagement in sensitive contexts 6 Technical total 80 (minimum 56) Financial evaluation (the whole financial proposal, Tiers 1, 2 and 3) 20 Total 100 Proposals scoring below 56 technical points do not proceed to financial evaluation. Clarity of the proposal, completeness of documentation and innovative delivery are cross-cutting measurement criteria. Organisational capacity, legal status, financial administration track record and the safeguarding and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse policy required by Section 5 are pass or fail eligibility gates, not separately scored; a proposal failing any gate is not scored. The Implementation Agreement is awarded to the responsive proposal with the highest combined score out of 100, the technical score out of 80 plus the financial score out of 20; on a tie, the higher technical score is preferred. The ILO may decline to award where no proposal is responsive or the prices offered exceed the funds available, and may cancel this procurement at any time before award, recording its reasons in the evaluation report. 15. PROPOSAL SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS Technical and financial proposals are submitted in English by organisations meeting the criteria in these Terms of Reference. The technical proposal (separate file) includes: organisational profile; registration certificate; understanding of the Terms of Reference; methodology for each component of the scope of work, including how the required senior expertise is mobilised; a work plan linked to the deliverables; curricula vitae or profiles of key personnel and indicative senior experts; at least three comparable projects in the past five years; foreseen challenges and mitigation; and every item of documentary evidence in Section 5. Bidders disclose all intended sub-contracting and give the profile or curriculum vitae of each expert to be mobilised per component, stating the profile they will recruit against where an individual is not yet identified. Named individuals are indicative; substitution follows Section 4. The financial proposal (separate file) is the completed Financial Proposal Template (Annex 1), in Excel and signed PDF, with a detailed cost breakdown across Tiers 1, 2 and 3. It must price every activity needed to deliver the work stream end to end, including participant movement, the two international expert missions and the duty of care of experts mobilised from outside Iraq. Both proposals remain valid for 90 days from the submission deadline. The two proposals go in separate digital folders marked “Technical Proposal” and “Financial Proposal”; the Financial Proposal Template is not in the technical proposal. A single administrative mailbox receives all proposals; only the technical proposal goes to the technical evaluation panel, and financial proposals are opened and evaluated after the technical evaluation, under Section 14. Both folders are saved in one zipped folder titled: [Full name of bidder] - Social Security Law Courts Work Stream (Federal Iraq) - [date of submission]. Applications are submitted by email to iraq-procurement@ilo.org , with the subject line "Proposal - Social Security Law Courts Work Stream - [Organisation Name]". The deadline is 17.30 hrs (Baghdad time), 5 September, 2026. Late submissions will not be considered. Questions on these Terms of Reference should be sent to iraq-procurement@ilo.org no later than 17.30 hrs (Baghdad time) 24 August 2026. Responses are shared with all prospective bidders not later than five working days before the submission deadline. 16. ANNEXES Annex 1, the Financial Proposal Template, is issued with these Terms of Reference. These Terms of Reference and the completed Annex 1 form part of the resulting agreement to the extent listed in, and annexed to, the Agreement Document. The Terms and Conditions applicable to Implementation Agreements, at the hyperlink in Section 5, are incorporated by reference and form part of the resulting agreement, and prevail where inconsistent with these Terms of Reference. Annex Document Purpose Annex 1 Financial Proposal Template Excel workbook with Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 line items. The bidder completes and returns it in Excel and signed PDF. How to apply To apply for the job, please click on the provided link and follow the instructions on the website. Make sure to read the job description carefully before submitting your application. You may be asked to create an account. UNGM Link: Implementation Agreement: Social Security Law Courts Work Stream (Federal Iraq). Court cases regarding private sector social security benefits.