Project Officer

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.

Globally, UN Women focuses on six priority areas. These include increasing women’s leadership and participation in political spaces, ending violence against women, enhancing women’s economic empowerment, supporting women’s participation in achieving and sustaining peace, making gender equality central to national planning and budgeting and advancing gender in intergovernmental processes.

To ensure that women lead, participate in and benefit equally from governance systems, UN Women’s programmes on leadership and participation are designed to train women leaders to help build their capacities and promote women’s leadership at all levels of decision-making. It advocates for legislative, policy, budgetary, and constitutional reforms to end discriminatory laws that prevent women from meaningfully participating in all spheres of life. To ensure that women have income security, decent work and economic autonomy, UN Women promotes women’s ability to secure decent jobs, accumulate assets, and influence institutions and public policies determining growth and development. To ensure that women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence, UN Women focuses on women’s economic empowerment, early education, respectful relationships, and working with men and boys, recognizing that prevention is still the most cost-effective, long-term way to stop violence.

Presently, Sri Lanka is facing its largest economic crisis in history, triggering political instability and bringing the country to the brink of a humanitarian emergency. The economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened existing precarious economic conditions and pre-existing inequalities, and has led to a reduction in incomes across the country. Recent analysis indicates that 73% of households had seen their incomes decline amidst rising prices and inflation. Rising cost of living, including fuel and food prices, have coincided with massive food and supply shortages, pushing communities into extreme poverty and malnutrition. As the Gender Alert: Sri Lanka Crisis (GiHA, August 2022) reveals, the current socio-economic and political crisis generates significant risks to the safety and wellbeing of women and girls in Sri Lanka.

The crisis requires innovation and new approaches to advance the protection, participation, and empowerment of women in Sri Lanka to achieve sustainable peace, address the impact of the crisis on women, and promote inclusive development. Despite the challenges posed by the crisis, the effective implementation of the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (NAP WPS) becomes even more crucial as it addresses the specific needs and vulnerabilities of women in post-conflict and crisis situations – which is where Sri Lankan women find themselves.

UN Women will support the Government with the coordination of implementation, resourcing and monitoring of the NAP WPS between various stakeholder groups such as women’s organizations and CSOs, and support the direct implementation of NAP WPS activities tied to UN Women’s expertise – particularly in relation to women’s economic empowerment and women’s engagement in peacebuilding.

Reporting to the Head of Office, the Project Officer contributes to the effective management of UN Women project(s) by providing substantive inputs to programme design, formulation, implementation and evaluation. He/she will be responsible for coordinating and monitoring the implementation of the project led by UN Women.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Coordination and implementation of the project:

Source: https://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=115066