BACKGROUND
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After 8 years of conflict, Yemen still faces an unprecedented political, humanitarian, and development crisis. Yemen’s conflict broke into a full-blown civil war in March 2015. Despite the continued efforts by the UN to broker a peace deal, Yemen continues to be the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. An estimated 24 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, and Yemen already lost 21 years of developments gains just until 2019 after four-year of conflict. UNDP predicts that if the conflict persists unabated, Yemen will have the greatest depth of poverty (11.7 million people into extreme poverty), and second poorest in income inequality of any country in the world. The un-extended truce of April 2022 still holds in the country, with renewed hope for a peace process to be launched under the auspices of the UN.
Four years into the civil conflict, there are some glimmers of hope that a political breakthrough can be achieved and bring the war to an end. In anticipation, UNDP is scaling up its programming and staff capacity in Yemen to support the peace process going forward. In this regard, UNDP elaborated a revised country strategy note that focuses on supporting the transition from humanitarian to development, through three main pillars: (a) green economic recovery; (b) governance and peacebuilding; and (c) climate change, water, energy and environment. UNDP Yemen now seeks a qualified Team Leader to lead programming for the newly established Unit on Climate Change, Water, Energy & Environment.
UNDP Yemen currently operates in Sana’a (main Country Office), Aden (Sub-Office), Hodeidah (Sub-Office) and Amman (Liaison Office).
Under the Governance & Peacebuilding pillar, UNDP implements the European Union funded project Strengthening Institutional & Economic Resilience – SIERY, which supports local authorities in Yemen to restore and improve much needed (basic) public services and assists local small and medium enterprises with business advisory services, grants, and access to microfinance to stimulate local economic growth and job creation. SIERY is implemented in nine Governorates/47 Districts spread over the whole country. The project is currently in its 4th year.
DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES
UNDP is seeking to recruit a Chief Technical Advisor/Project Manager to manage the local governance and local economic development project (Strengthening Institutional & Economic Resilience in Yemen – SIERY), within a comprehensive vision of the transitional challenges in Yemen, as laid out in the Strategic Framework, and responsive to the potential and challenges of (local) governance and economic development.
The Chief Technical Advisor/Project Manager, under the overall guidance of the Deputy Resident Representative (P) and direct supervision of the Team Leader of the Governance and Peacebuilding Portfolio, shall oversee the timely, efficient and effective implementation of the project’s activities, manage the project team, nurture the relationships with the national counterparts and Responsible Parties, and provide high quality technical analysis and strategic advice on local governance and local (economic) development in Yemen.
He/she shall engage proactively with Yemeni sector institutions partners working in the relevant areas and provide advice on further engagement and programme development.
S/he will provide technical oversight and day-to-day management for the SIERY project to ensure that all outputs are of high quality, consistent with the Project Result Frameworks of the Project Document and implemented within the agreed time frame. S/he will provide coordination, technical guidance, support, and motivation to the geographically dispersed project team and contracted Responsible Parties (if and where necessary).
The Chief Technical Advisor will contribute to leadership in local governance and local (economic) development and provide expert advice. The CTA contributes to the identification of new related programme areas and creative responses to emerging challenges and opportunities, ensures consistency with CPD priorities and synergies with other UNDP programmes in Yemen.
The Chief Technical Advisor shall keep abreast of good international practices in the area of local governance and local (economic) development, build and manage partnerships, facilitate knowledge management and sharing and support and facilitate the elaboration of other initiatives of UNDP. S/he will pay special attention to the communication of the project’s results.
UNDP adopts a portfolio approach to accommodate changing business needs and leverage linkages across interventions to achieve its strategic goals. This is a recognition of interconnected nature of development risks & crises that the world is facing and that call for assembling of multidisciplinary teams for an integrated & systemic response. Therefore, UNDP personnel are expected to work across issues, units, functions, teams and projects in multidisciplinary teams in order to enhance and enable horizontal collaboration.
Key duties and accountabilities include:
Strategic and technical lead and programmatic development:
- Maintain a detailed, diversified and constantly updated overview of the status and performance of local authorities in Yemen, including their changing and evolving needs, political economy aspects, personnel mutations, relations with local stakeholders etc., in order to recommend adaptations to UNDP’s engagement, approach and priorities if needed.
- Maintain a detailed, diversified and constantly updated overview of the relationship and collaboration between local authorities and private sector for local economic growth, in order to recommend adaptations to UNDP’s engagement, approach and priorities if needed.
- Guarantee the coherence of UNDP approach between the two main components of the project (Institutional and Economic Resilience); between the project and related UNDP projects, especially those with a local governance and/or local economic development components; with priorities as defined in the CPD ensuring synergy across the three UNDP programme pillars (Green Economic Recovery and Development, Climate Change, Governance and Peace) including by coaching and/or training UNDP staff and organizing joint visioning exercises.
- Identify and develop new programmatic opportunities and draft related proposals.
- Contribute to the thorough analysis of the institutional situation in the country, esp. in as far as it concerns local governance; contribute collaborative inputs to the preparation/revision of the Country Programme Document (CPD), Integrated Work Plan (IWP) and other strategic documents.
- Constantly monitor trends analysis for future informed and anticipatory programming; track achievement of strategic results, and effectively apply results-based management tools.
- Ensures that performance monitoring, evaluations and impact assessments are carried out.
- Ensures that the project effectively contributes to results in gender and the promotion of women and youth in recovery, transition, peace building and development in line with UNDP’s mandates.
- Facilitate policy development, including the review and analysis of issues and trends, provide regular strategic insights and analyses to UNDP on new and emerging areas related to the local governance sector.
Management of UNDP SIERY Project and the team focusing on quality assurance and risk management:
- Advise the TL of the Governance & Peacebuilding portfolio on the strategic direction and adaptation of the project
- Assume technical leadership on the various areas of the project, including capacity building for service delivery, design and operations of a local recovery fund (allocation formulas and Standard Operating Procedures), rebuilding the central – local relationship and on the role of local governance for stabilization and peacebuilding.
- Seek supplementary high-quality external technical expertise on the Project’s areas of intervention if necessary.
- Ensure that the Project’s intended results are reached through the planned activities and constantly adapt the activity plan as required to reach targets in a timely fashion.
- Oversee the preparation of the Annual Work Plan (integrating results of the annual review by the Project board) by the Project team, in close consultation with responsible parties, local authorities and the donor, and negotiate approval of the AWP by the Project Board.
- Oversee the day-to-day implementation of activities as listed in the approved AWP by Responsible Parties.
- Seek technical inputs of the relevant UNDP and UN colleagues to guarantee that the project maintains a high level of political economy and conflict-sensitivity.
- Represent the project to the Project Board and guarantee satisfactory secretarial services are provided to the Board.
- Ensure that the required goods and services necessary to implement all planned activities, including by preparing terms of reference and specifications for tenders and Request for Proposals, are timely and cost-effectively procured according to UNDP’s POPP.
- Monitor the disbursement of the projects’ funds and guarantee proper financial management as per UNDP’s POPP.
- Ensure the effective use of data in projects’ implementation, across the data lifecycle, and ensure effective monitoring, evaluation and learning on projects’ impact.
- Ensure reports are regularly prepared on activities, outputs and outcomes, including preparation of donor and corporate reports.
- Ensure that progress reports are timely produced and distributed, showing progress made against intended results, and submit reports to the TL Governance & Peacebuilding for later presentation and discussion in the projects’ Boards.
- Ensure optimal financial planning and identification of human resource requirements within the area of responsibility
- Determine the need for, recommend, and mobilize technical experts to support projects implementation or provide technical support or guidance
- Lead the development of innovative and appropriate implementation modalities and address the uniqueness of the current political and operational context in Yemen.
- Monitor and manage risks and take mitigation measures where needed.
- Prepare the project’s Annual Report.
- Effectively manage the team, including identification of their learning needs and facilitation of learning opportunities, and sharing of substantive knowledge with the team
- Effectively motivate the geographically dispersed team members
- Develop shared understanding with project staff for project implementation, both technically and operationally
- Promote teamwork and a good team spirit among the project’s team.
- Monitor and evaluate staff performance and take necessary actions to address under-performance if happening.
Substantially contribute to advocacy, partnership building and resource mobilization:
- Identify and build partnership based on strategic approaches, and support UNDP in resource mobilization.
- Ensure that a strong evidentiary and analytical base on local governance, local economic development and local (basic) service delivery is available for internal and external evaluations, case studies, lessons learned exercises and other studies as required.
- Ensure that the projects maintain an effective presence on social networks to better disseminate lessons learnt and results and guarantee higher accountability in project implementation.
- Present the projects and achievements in donor fora and other events organized nationally or internationally.
- Support UNDP TL Governance & Peacebuilding Portfolio in donor coordination as necessary.
- Propose and implement technical and financial partnerships to support the Country Office’s objectives in the local governance sector.
- Seek opportunities and propose approaches for private sector involvement.
- Propose strategic programmatic areas of cooperation, including joint programming, in line with agreed global, regional and national priorities.
- Contribute to the development of joint programming exercises with UN development and humanitarian agencies.
- Maintain excellent relationships with the project’s donor, based on trust, honesty and regular (in)formal information sharing and discussion on implementation progress.
Ensure provision of top-quality advisory services and facilitation of knowledge building and management:
- Collaborate closely with the Programme Teams, Sub-Offices, as well as the cross-cutting units, especially the Oversight Support Team, the Communication and Advocacy Team, and the Gender Specialist, with a view to ensuring that the project is responsive to beneficiary and donor needs and requirements, and that results are communicated in a timely and transparent manner.
- Coordinate and ensure integrated support in development of policies and institutions to address country problems and needs in collaboration with the strategic partners.
- Strengthen the CO’s substantive in-house capacity in the area of local governance, local economic development and local (basic) service delivery, by providing substantive support and organize capacity-building activities to enhance UNDP capacities in this area.
Ensure Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment:
- Facilitating gender mainstreaming throughout the project life cycle including design, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation
- Ensure coordination and partnership with national gender mechanisms, women-led organizations, academies, networks, forums, etc;
- Facilitate the institutional and technical capacity of the project team and stakeholders on gender equality and women’s empowerment as well as social safeguards aspects.
- Facilitate the implementation and reporting of gender-responsive actions and allocating the required resources.
- Contribute to the country office communication, and knowledge management system on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Other Duties:
- The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization.
Supervisory/Managerial Responsibilities:
- Supervision and performance management of SIERY project team.
COMPETENCIES
Core Competencies:
- Achieve Results: LEVEL 4: Prioritize team workflow, mobilize resources, drive scalable results/strategic impact
- Think Innovatively: LEVEL 4: Easily navigate complexity, encourage/enable radical innovation, has foresight
- Learn Continuously: LEVEL 4: Create systems and processes that enable learning and development for all
- Adapt with Agility: LEVEL 4: Proactively initiate/lead organizational change, champion new systems/processes
- Act with Determination: LEVEL 4: Able to make difficult decisions in challenging situations, inspire confidence
- Engage and Partner: LEVEL 4: Construct strategic multi-partner alliances in high stake situations, foster co-creation
- Enable Diversity and Inclusion: LEVEL 4: Create ethical culture, identify/address barriers to inclusion
People Management Competencies:
- UNDP People Management Competencies can be found in the dedicated site.
Cross-Functional & Technical Competencies:
Business Direction & Strategy: System Thinking
- Ability to use objective problem analysis and judgement to understand how interrelated elements coexist within an overall process or system, and to consider how altering one element can impact on other parts of the system.
Partnership Management: Strategic Engagement
- Ability to capture and sustain attention, interest and agreement of high-level, influential policy and decision makers and secure their buy-in of high-level vision and objectives.
Business Development: Knowledge Facilitation
- Ability to animate individuals and communities of contributors to participate and share, particularly externally.
Business Management:
- Portfolio Management: Ability to select, prioritize and control the organizations programmes and projects, in line with its strategic objectives and capacity; ability to balance the implementation of change initiatives and the maintenance of business-as-usual, while optimizing return on investment.
- Client Satisfaction/Management: Ability to respond timely and appropriately with a sense of urgency, provide consistent solutions, and deliver timely and quality results and/or solutions to fulfil and understand the real customers’ needs. Provide inputs to the development of customer service strategy. Look for ways to add value beyond clients’ immediate requests. Ability to anticipate client’s upcoming needs and concerns.
- Results-Based Management: Ability to manage programmes and projects with a focus at improved performance and demonstrable results.
- Project Management: Ability to plan, organize, prioritize and control resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals.
QUALIFICATIONS
Education:
- Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in public administration, local development, political science, social sciences, management, or a related field is required, or
- A first-level university degree (Bachelor’s degree) in the above-mentioned fields in combination with an additional two years of qualifying experience will be given due consideration in lieu of the advanced university degree.
Experience, Knowledge, and Skills:
- A minimum of 10 years (with Master’s degree) or 12 years (with Bachelor’s degree) of progressively responsible experience in the area of inclusive and sustainable development including extensive field experience in leadership positions is required.
- Relevant experience in managing projects in the areas of local governance, local development, local economic development, resilience programming or area-based development is required.
- Relevant experience at the national and/or international level in providing management advisory services, hands-on experience in design, monitoring and evaluation of development programs and projects is required.
- Experience/Knowledge of UN/UNDP policies, programming frameworks and procedures is desirable.
- Proven ability to facilitate complex development interventions in crisis setting is desirable.
- Proven capacity to perform effectively under pressure and hardship conditions as well as proven ability to handle confidential and politically sensitive issues in a responsible and mature manner is desirable.
Languages:
- Fluency in oral and written English is required.
- Working Knowledge of Arabic is desirable.
Please note that continuance of appointment beyond the initial 12 months is contingent upon the successful completion of a probationary period.
Note: Please upload copies of your academic qualifications and 3 latest performance evaluations (if applicable).
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