International Consultant-Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA) and Coordination

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination 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. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality (GE) and gender mainstreaming translate into action globally. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts.

In South Sudan UN Women actively engages in women, peace, and security, Women Economic Empowerment, Ending Violence Against Women Governance and women leadership, and Humanitarian action.  UN Women, South Sudan Country Office leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action. UN Women work in humanitarian include mainstreaming gender in humanitarian work, reviewing relevant policies and strategies, participating in cluster meetings and humanitarian working groups to ensuring gender mainstreaming, strengthening the gender capacity of humanitarian actors (GIHA trainings), developing gender alerts, and conducting gender analysis to identify gender gaps to inform Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) and Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) and related programming as well as  resilience work.

South Sudan Context:

South Sudan is categorized as humanitarian setting with South Sudanese continuing to suffer from the increasing effects of years of conflict, violence, destroyed livelihoods and infrastructure, climate change and inadequate basic services. According to Humanitarian needs overview 2023, out of the estimated 11.5 million inhabitants 8.9 million people are considered in humanitarian need (2.2M are women, 2.0M are men, 2.4M are girls and 2.5M are boys), and more than 2.1 million South Sudanese refugees are in neighboring countries and two additional million are considered Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), out of which 55% are women and girls. The situation has been made worse with the influx of over 291,224 individuals which have been recorded at border crossings into South Sudan since the fighting in Sudan erupted on 15 April 2023.  Heavy rains and flooding continue to interrupt humanitarian service delivery, Intercommunal tensions and violence have been increasingly reported in several areas.

Existing gender inequalities coupled with the humanitarian impact on the displaced and returnee women and girls contribute to increased burden of unpaid care activities as women continue to hold on the burden of managing water, food, and energy at the household level. Compounded with cultural norms and practices, including decision making, access to resources including humanitarian assistance. In addition, coping strategies such as early or forced marriage to increase personal security and livelihoods, for young women and girls within a crisis setting is common.

It is against this background that UN Women is looking for a consultant to provide technical and strategic planning in UN humanitarian response and UN Coordination and is strategically placed to support coordinate humanitarian work and to work with the UN Women Humanitarian team and UN Country Team in South Sudan.  The overall goal of the assignment is to support in mainstreaming gender in UN Women humanitarian work and UNSDCF reviewing relevant policies and strategies, participating in cluster meetings, Gender Theme Group meetings and humanitarian working groups to ensure gender mainstreaming, strengthening the gender capacity of humanitarian actors (GIHA trainings), developing gender alerts, and conducting gender analysis to identify gender gaps to inform Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) and Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) and related programming as well as  resilience work and protection.

Under the overall guidance of the Deputy Country Representative, the GIHA advisor will work closely with the the GiHA Specialist, and also work in close coordination with other sectors to implement the following.

Technical Leadership and Strategic Planning:

• Advise, support, and provide substantive inputs to ensure the formulation of gender-sensitive UN humanitarian response in the emergency, recovery, and post emergency development stages;
• Actively participate in country-level programming processes, in particular assessments and recovery planning efforts to ensure that UN Women is strategically placed within the UN humanitarian and recovery context;
• Advise in the development and use of gender analysis and collection of sex and age-disaggregated data and promote its institutionalization.

Coordination, partnership, and resource mobilization support: 

• In partnership with the humanitarian gender working group, participate and provide gender-related inputs to the interagency UN coordination mechanisms, and other relevant sectoral-level processes focusing on humanitarian issues including the various assessments;
• Advocate for the engagement and participation of national women-led organizations and civil society networks in humanitarian coordination mechanisms;
• Advise GiHA working group, at the national and sub-national level;
• Advise on the GiHA training for women-led organizations, community initiatives, and UN Women staff;
• advise on gender issues within the Inter-Agency Cross-cutting Group framework - which includes Accountability for Affected Population working group, a Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and Child Protection (CP), PSEA;
• Support the drafting of project proposals in response to the humanitarian crisis and mobilize resources to fund UN Women’s coordination and technical support efforts;
• Build and maintain alliances and strategic partnerships for the advancement of humanitarian action;
• Map key coordination related work into a coordination strategy;
• Assess the resources needed to implement initiatives and request support from Humanitarian Action and Crisis Response Office (HACRO) and UN System Coordination Division to boost the capacity of the coordination function, including a strategic value proposition at the UN Humanitarian Country Team and its clusters;
• Support in ensuring that the Resident Coordinator’s Office and Gender Theme Group take stock of progress against UNCT-SWAP issues, define key accountabilities and update the Gender Theme Group work plan with remaining actions.

 Capacity Building and Knowledge Management:

• Identify needs and opportunities to provide capacity-building support across sectors/ clusters in coordination;
• Facilitate capacity-building activities on concepts related to gender-responsive humanitarian action, and engendering information management and analysis;
• Support partners, and country staff capacity development to engage in gender in humanitarian response, and gender needs assessments;
• Contribute to the identification and documentation of challenges, lessons learned, and good practices from the implementation of gender-responsive humanitarian programming in Sudan.

Advocacy and Communication:

• Support UN Women’s advocacy efforts to help raise awareness and stimulate action in addressing the specific needs of displaced, returnee women and girls and advancing gender equality and women's rights in South Sudan, especially in the most affected States and Counties;
• Develop Gender Alert, or other communication pieces as required.

Key Performance Indicators:

• Timely and quality technical advice and support;
• Quality reports and other strategic documents drafted and submitted promptly;
• Strong relationships with various partners and stakeholders;
• UN Women is well represented in important meetings on topics related to expertise;
• Contributions to resource mobilization;
• Timely and quality knowledge products.

Core values:

• Integrity;
• Professionalism;
• Respect for Diversity.

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and sensitivity regarding gender issues;
• Accountability;
• Creative problem solving;
• Effective communication;
• Inclusive collaboration;
• Stakeholder engagement.

Functional Competencies:

• Strong background in humanitarian action, returnee, IDP and refugee response, gender equality, and human rights/women’s rights
• Strong understanding of Do No Harm principles around the delivery of SGBV and protection services;
• Excellent research, analytical, and writing skills;
• Ability to think and work logically and work precisely with attention to detail;
• Initiative, sound judgment, and demonstrated ability to work harmoniously with staff members of different national and cultural backgrounds;
• Ability to work independently and meet tight deadlines in a high-pressure environment.

Education:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in gender, international relations, humanitarian action, international development, or other social science fields is required;
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted instead of the advanced university degree.

Experience: 

• At least 5 years of progressively responsible experience in gender equality and women’s empowerment, humanitarian action, and gender protection in emergencies;
• Substantive and technical experience in inter-agency and humanitarian coordination;
• Experience in conducting research, assessments, gender analysis;
• Experience working with, and building partnerships with donors, and civil society organizations internationally and in the field;
• Experience working with the UN is an asset.

Application:

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-P11-Personal-History-Form.doc. Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.

Diversity and inclusion:

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.