National Consultant for the technical support on advancing GEWE and gender mainstreaming into climate change and disaster risk reduction actions

Background

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.

For 2024 and 2025, UN Women Cambodia Office focuses its programme actions on contributing toward the achievement of planned output results that are in line with a Five Year United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2024-2028 as well as global Strategic Plan outputs and outcomes of the UN Women. In doing so, the high level actions include the provision of support to the government, women organisations as well as gender advocate movements/networks to address gender inequality causes through the development of the fourth National Action to Prevent Violence Against Women (4th NAPVAW) and its monitoring framework, building national understanding of Women Peace Security, implementation of policies, tools and standard procedures for more gender-responsive actions in climate change and disaster risk reduction (DRR) and labour governance, the transformation of negative social norms via strengthening community-based women networks and movements and advocacy by using a normative framework such as CEDAW, Security Resolution 1325, Sandai and Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

More specifically, normative priority is to strengthen government capacity and accountability to integrate international norms and commitments (CEDAW, SDGs, Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Security Resolution 1325Sendai) into national legislative and regulatory frameworks. This also supporting the government to engage in the regional and national platform which further strengthen state obligations to achieve gender equality. At the same time, UN Women continues supporting dialogues and CSO engagement in accountability for gender equality and women’s empowerment commitments.

The Empower project: Women for Climate-resilient Societies is a unique partnership between UN Women and UN Environment, supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) that aims to ensure that climate action and disaster risk reduction in Asia-Pacific respond to gender equality and human rights. From 2018 to 2022, EmPower phase I was implemented regionally across Asia and the Pacific, with national footprints in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Viet Nam. EmPower phase II (2023-2027) was built on successes and lessons learnt of the phase I and aims to scale up for regional implementation and generate new regional commitments and national policies, financial mechanisms and tools, methodologies, evidence, and knowledge to further impact. The project will contribute to the overall Impact: “People in Asia-Pacific are less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and experience greater gender equality and the full enjoyment of their rights, including equal access to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.” EmPower aims to achieve the outcomes bellow:

• Outcome 1: Asia-Pacific actors increase action on gender responsive climate change adaptation and mitigation.
• Outcome 2: Women in all their diversity and other marginalized groups are represented as key environmental actors in climate and DRR decision-making
• Outcome 3: Women and other marginalized groups in Asia-Pacific secure climate-resilient livelihoods

EmPower approach is to strengthen capacity of national actors and the institutions to promote gender-responsive climate action and disaster risk reduction through providing technical inputs on monitoring and evaluation frameworks, roadmaps, action plans and guidelines to implement climate change, renewable energy and DRR policies. To achieve this, UN Women has worked in partnership with government institution and agencies to ensure gender transformative climate change and disaster risk reduction related policy, strategy, programme and action plan development and implementation. For instance, as part of the EmPower phase II Program, UN Women Cambodia is supporting the key government actor including Ministry of Women Affair to promote gender mainstreaming in climate action including producing gender and climate change statistical profile and promoting climate sectoral women leadership and working with National Committee for Disaster Management to strengthen the capacity of the committee to reduce disaster risk using gender lenses. More importantly, EmPower focuses on promoting gender transformative climate-resilient livelihood activities by putting emphasis on women climate resilient livelihood option especially though the use of renewable energy. For this, reason, UN Women is recruiting a national consultant to provide technical support for gender mainstreaming into climate change and disaster risk reduction actions under retainer contract.

Duties and Responsibilities

The national consultant will provide technical support to government partners regarding gender analysis and gender mainstreaming in the national strategy, policy and plan purposefully addresses concerns related to climate change and disaster management. The national consultant will also support the programme team to enable effective outcome harvesting for mid-project and end-of-project implementation with government partners. the assignment will also include supporting the programme team to provide technical input and facilitation for national and provincial events to promote gender transformative climate-resilient livelihood. Moreover, building on a momentum of the Beijing+30 national review report, the consultant will support the capacity development and proactive involvement of the relevant government bodies in advancing gender equality, focusing on women’s participation in power and decision making.  The consultant also expected to mobilise civil society’s engagement in intergenerational dialogues as well as campaign for advancing women’s participation.

Duties and Responsibilities

The consultant will work closely with UN Women programme coordinator and EmPower programme team and the project’s partner especially government partners to perform the following tasks:

• Provide technical support to government partners to ensure high quality gender mainstreaming in climate change and DRR related strategy, policy, programme and plan
• Provide technical guidance and coaching to national and subnational disaster management actors to promote gender transformative disaster risk reduction. This includes supporting disaster management committee at national and subnational level to collect gender data and use existing gender data for gender responsive disaster risk reduction actions.
• Support programme team to design monitoring and partners project outcome harvesting tools and method to measure progress against the outcome and indicator of the overarching EmPower programme which is contributed by the partner project.
• Collect data for significant change or human interest stories
• Support project team to conduct project monitoring and evaluation
• Provide technical input for the promotion of the gender transformative climate-resilient livelihood activities. Specifically, this mean supporting the planning and organization of events and connecting to key stakeholder, actors and resource people and/or agencies.
• Provide technical support to the government via the ministry of women’s affairs enable the participatory engagement of civil societies as well as relevant line ministries to meaningfully dialogue on Beijing Platform for Action at national and regional level.  

Final Products and Deliverables

• The consultant must submit report of the provision of technical guidance and support report that evince what are the technical support have been provided and how they were provided to the government partners
• Produce project partner monitoring plan and report showing its contribution to the programme outcome and indicators and highlighting the gaps as well as the recommendation.
• Data information record which can be used to produce significant change stories or human interesting stories
• Produce plan, concept notes and report for the national and provincial events to advance gender equality international norms, including CEDAW, Beijing Platform for Actions, and SDG, gender transformative climate-resilient livelihood activities.

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel

The time required for the consultancy is estimated at a maximum of 200 working days within the period from 10 September 2024-10 September 2026. For any travel within and outside of duty station, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, UN Women will be responsible for the accommodation and travel expenses if any travel is incurred during the assigned period. The consultant will be engaged under a retainer contract, which facilitates direct engagement of the consultant depending on need and availability within the contract period for a pre-agreed fee.

UN Women will not be committed to purchasing any maximum quantity of the Services, and purchases will be made only if there is an actual requirement upon the issuance of a Purchase Order based on this retainer contract.  UN Women shall not be liable for any cost in the event that no purchases are made under this retainer contract.

The expected number of workdays for each deliverable will be discussed between the consultant and UN Women on a case-by-case basis. Payment will be made upon satisfactory completion of a deliverable or as agreed between the consultant and UN Women. 

Schedule of Payments

Payment will be made monthly, 15 day after the submission of monthly claim. The amount paid will be based on the number of day within the month that the consultant has done the assignment.

Competencies

Core Values: 

• Respect for Diversity 
• Integrity 
• Professionalism 

Core Competencies: 

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues 
• Accountability 
• Creative Problem Solving 
• Effective Communication 
• Inclusive Collaboration 
• Stakeholder Engagement 
• Leading by Example 

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies:  

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES: 

• Promotes knowledge management and a learning environment in the office through leadership and personal example.
• The capacity to liaise with a range of stakeholders to build rapport, working relationships, and exchange information in order to mobilize support and collaborative action.
• Strong understanding of gender equality and social inclusion in the context of visual communications
• Strong written and face-to-face communication skills in a cross-cultural context.
• Sound knowledge and skill in developing monitoring tool and harvesting outcome including collecting information to build impact and/or human-interest stories is asset
• Sound knowledge in promoting climate-resilient livelihood and its ecosystem is advantage

Required Skills and Experience

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree in gender, development study, social sciences public policy and administration, or other related disciplines.
• A first-level university degree in similar fields in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• Minimum 2 years progressively responsible relevant experience in providing technical support to government institutions working on gender analysis for policy development and implementation.
• At least 2 years relevant professional experience working toward gender equality and women empowerment through gender mainstreaming in climate change and DRR issues
• Experience in group facilitation using a participatory, inclusive approach to managing differences and honing agreements.
• Experience in facilitation high level policy dialogues is asset

Languages:

• Fluency in English is required.

EVALUATION

• Applications will be evaluated based on the cumulative analysis:
• Technical qualification (100 points)

Technical qualification evaluation criteria:

Only the candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% of total points will be considered as technically qualified candidates who may be contacted for validation interview.

How to Apply: 

Interested candidates are encouraged to submit an electronic application to , with cc to not later than 30 August 2024 by 5 p.m. local time in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Late application submissions will not be considered.

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from    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.

Submission package includes: 

• Personal CV or P11 (P11 can be downloaded from: )
• A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page)
• Sample work for only shortlisted candidates

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.

Inclusion Statement:

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits employ, 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.)