Consultant – Human Rights and Environment

Position description

Duties and Responsibilities

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes the coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment.

The UN Environment Management Group (EMG) is a UN system-wide coordination body on the environment, promoting system-wide policy coherence, synergy and collaborative and flexible approaches to environmental issues in the United Nations system. The EMG coordinates an interagency Issue Management Group (IMG) on Human Rights and Environment to promote a coherent, rights-based approach to environmental action across the UN system. The IMG supports joint and integrated policy and programming on human rights and the environment, the integration of human rights in multilateral environmental agreements, and capacity-building and peer-learning on rights-based approaches in UN programming, including with respect to the UN Secretary-General’s Call to Action for Human Rights.

The EMG Secretariat is hiring a consultant to facilitate the development of technical documents and reports for the IMG, and to support multi-agency contributions to these materials.

The Consultant will support the development of outputs of the IMG on Human Rights and the Environment in line with the IMG’s workplan.

Expected Main Outputs:

• Common messages and coordinated interagency contributions to international events and negotiations such as for COPs, UNEA7, etc.;
• Guidance materials, including on the implementation of the human right to a healthy environment and human rights in the context of pollution, and testing their use;
• Capacity building webinars on aspects of human rights in an environmental context;
• Analysis of human rights inclusion in NDCs.

Tasks and responsibilities:

• Organize a series of capacity building webinars on different aspects of human rights in an environmental context;
• Develop advocacy and guidance materials for UN entities, in particular UNCTs, including on topics such as the implementation of the human right to a healthy environment and human rights in the context of pollution;
• Develop concept notes, agendas and briefings for side events at COPs and other global conferences;
• Draft UN joint messages on human rights in the specific context of COPs, UNEA, and international negotiations;
• Analyse and document lessons learned from testing HRBA toolkits in development programming at country level;
• Analyse the level of inclusion of human rights in Nationally Determined Contributions;
• Develop presentations, including on the work of the IMG with the purpose to strengthen synergies with other EMG processes;
• Develop a survey to gather information from UN entities on expectations of future work;
• Develop a workplan for the IMG for 2026-2028;
• Prepare meeting documents and minutes, and facilitate meetings of the Issue Management Group (IMG);
• Provide support to IMG co-chairs;
• Draft progress report(s) on the IMG to the EMG midterm meeting and SOM31.

Qualifications/special skills

• An advanced university degree in the area of humanitarian/international law, international relations, environmental science, sustainable development, or social science. In case of more experienced candidates in the relevant area, the academic requirements could be reduced;
• Minimum 5 years of relevant work experience in human rights, environmental affairs, international relations or law is required;
• Experience of working with the United Nations in the area of human rights and environmental law/policy is desirable;
• Strong knowledge of rights-based approaches and human rights within environmental contexts is desirable;
• Ability to drive multi-stakeholder initiatives, communicate effectively, and engage stakeholders at all levels is desirable.

Languages

• For the advertised post, fluency in oral and written English is an absolute requirement.

 

Application instructions

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