International Consultant-Conduct Gender Responsive Assessment in the work of UN Liaison Team

Consultant Human Rights

Overview

Support the gender capacity assessment initiative for UNLT gender focal points.

You have:

• An advanced degree in Gender Studies, Human Rights, Political Science, Public Policy, or related Social Science fields with a minimum of five years of experience.
• A first-level university degree in combination with four additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• Ability to analyze organizational processes, identify constraints and opportunities and recommend targeted solutions.
• Proficiency in English is required. Knowledge of French will constitute an advantage.
• The consultant will be required to be computer literate, have excellent writing, analytical and communicative skills and be flexible in terms of working hours.

Contract

This is a International Consultant contract. More about International Consultant contracts.

Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination and violence against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action, and peace and security.

The UN Women office in Ethiopia plays a dual role: representation (i) to the African Union (AU), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and (ii) to Ethiopia. In this regard, under its regional function, the Ethiopia country office engages with the AU and its various organs and the United Nations Development system. UN Women provides technical support to member states, the AU and ECA in the adoption, implementation, and monitoring of commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE) at the regional level, and in accordance with its mandate. Furthermore, the Ethiopia Country Office (ECO) represents UN Women in the UN Liaison Team (UNLT) and contributes to gender mainstreaming in UN Development System in the context of the Regional Coordination Mechanism (RCM) Africa to advance the GEWE agenda on the continent.

UN-Women’s triple mandate endows it with a unique capacity to: (i) support the strengthening of global norms and standards; (ii) promote more effective coordination, coherence and gender mainstreaming across the UN Development system in support of commitments for gender equality and women’s empowerment; and (iii) support Member States, upon request, to translate global norms and standards into legislation, policies and development plans at the regional, national and local levels as part of its operational activities.

The COVID19 pandemic has further reinforced the need for comprehensive approach that incorporates gender across all activities towards achieving the SDGs as the pandemic has threatened progress for women and girls across most of the SDGs.1 As stated in the 2030 Agenda, the systematic mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the implementation of the agenda is crucial in realizing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls and will make a substantial contribution to progress across all the Goals and targets.

The UNLT member entities collectively have promoted greater coordination and synergy in UN Development System partnership with the AU through the Regional Coordination Mechanism (RCM) and other mechanisms. In this regard, the 10th annual RCM Africa session held in Addis Ababa on 5 and 6 November 2009 affirmed that gender is a cross cutting issue and recommended that it should be mainstreamed in plans and activities of all RCM clusters and sub-clusters.

To strengthen synergies and interagency coordination among UN organizations working with the AU including in the context of RCM Africa and other mechanisms, the UN Liaison team was established in 2011 in Addis Ababa constituting 20 UN agencies accredited to the African Union and UNECA. Since its establishment, the UNLT has provided a platform for concerted and coordinated support to the African Union.

However, the Regional GEWE agenda tends to suffer from interventions that are executed in silos. Moreover, the lack of regional gender mainstreaming strategy and monitoring and evaluation framework has made it challenging to effectively mainstream GEWE and measure impacts of the initiatives. This is attributed to lack of technical and financial capacity within the AUC and UN system to systematically document results and share experience.

The 17th Annual Session of the RCM held in Addis Ababa on 2 and 3 April 2016, resolved to constitute the GEWE as a stand-alone Cluster and mandated the AUC Gender and Youth Directorate as well as relevant UN entities including UN Women, UNFPA and the UNECA Africa Centre for Gender to coordinate implementation of GEWE initiatives at the continental level. RCM Africa also agreed on the need to implement capacity building activities to ensure that AU and UN partner organizations have the necessary capacity to boost gender mainstreaming in the development and implementation of continental initiatives.

As such, building on previous experience and leveraging on its mandate for supporting gender mainstreaming in UN Development System efforts for the realisation of SDGs and Agenda 2063, the UN Women Representation to AU and UNECA proposes to implement gender mainstreaming in UNLT member organisations through series of capacity building and coordination related activities. To this end, UN Women has mobilised the commitment of the UNLT members to this initiative who nominated gender focal points to coordinate and support gender mainstreaming in their respective organisations.

As a preliminary step, UN Women proposes to conduct a rapid gender equality capacity assessment of the UNLT gender focal points and the Liaison Offices to establish a baseline on the extent to which the agencies currently mainstream gender in their support to the AU and Member States as well as the existing capacities to implement this key mandate. Based on this analysis, practical and actionable recommendations will be proposed to address the gaps, strengthen good practices and promote collaboration among UNLT members for gender responsive support to AU and its organs.

Against this background, UN Women is proposing to recruit a consultant to support the gender capacity assessment initiative.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant will be required to undertake the following:

• Administer a capacity assessment survey for the gender focal points using UN Women’s gender equality capacity assessment tool
• Conduct desk review of relevant documents to assess the status of knowledge, attitudes, capacities, and actual gender mainstreaming status in UNLT member agencies

• Develop a report that analyzes the outcomes of survey and desk review of documents to show levels of existing capacities, progress, gaps, good practice, and recommendations for accelerated gender mainstreaming in UN Development System support to the AU.

  Deliverable

• An analysis report of the outcomes of the survey for UNLT gender focal points

• Based on desk review, a report on capacities, progress, good ?practices and recommendations for accelerated gender mainstreaming in UN Development System support to the AU
• An action plan for strengthened gender mainstreaming in UNLT

Competencies

Professionalism:

• Demonstrate a solid professional competence and expert knowledge of GEWE and gender mainstreaming in UN Development System as well as other regional organizations’ initiatives.

Teamwork:

•Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi-ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds

Ethics and Values:

•Demonstrate and safeguard ethics and integrity.

Organizational Awareness:

•Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.

•Be able to communicate easily and effectively, using various communication channels.

Functional Competencies:

•Extensive research experience on gender issues at global and regional levels.

•Excellent writing, presentation and communication skills.

•Good knowledge of the African Union, UN Development System and regional mechanisms

•Experience in UN interagency coordination works is an added advantage.

Required Skills and Experience

Education and Experience Required

• An advanced degree in Gender Studies, Human Rights, Political Science, Public Policy, or related Social Science fields with a minimum of five years of experience.
• A first-level university degree in combination with four additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• Ability to analyze organizational processes, identify constraints and opportunities and recommend targeted solutions.

Language Requirement

• Proficiency in English is required. Knowledge of French will constitute an advantage.

Other Relevant Skills

The consultant will be required to be computer literate, have excellent writing, analytical and communicative skills and be flexible in terms of working hours.

• Please note that applications without a completed and signed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.
• UNWomen Personal History form (P-11) can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment.

UNWOMEN is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

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Potential interview questions

Added 4 years ago - Updated 1 year ago - Source: jobs.undp.org