Vetted Experts Roster – Gender Mainstreaming and EU Accession

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 gender equality, considering women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates the United Nations system’s efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN Women works in Europe and Central Asia across the development, peace, humanitarian and refugee response and recovery nexus to ensure gender-transformative results for women and girls. Its programmatic, normative and coordination work is grounded in the mandate operationalized by the corporate Strategic Plan and the Humanitarian Strategy launched in 2022. These strategic documents provide guidance for programme development, advise on norms, policies, and strategies for achieving the internationally and regionally agreed goals related to gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE) issues, deliver policy and technical advisory services and quality assurance support to partners.

UN Women has pioneered an innovative programmatic approach – Gender Equality Facility (GEF) to support accession states to leverage EU approximation process for increased GEWE. The GEF is designed to support  EU candidate countries in the Western Balkans and Eastern European ensuring that through the EU accession process, gender equality is mainstreamed across sectors, and gender equality mechanisms are strengthened on institutional and normative levels to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030. UN Women GEF has been applied in the Western Balkans for close to a decade, and it is now being rolled out in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – following the June 2022 decision by the European Council to grant candidate status to Moldova and Ukraine and December 2023 decision on Georgia candidate status.

Moreover, supported by the government of Denmark, in 2024 UN Women is starting a new multi-year programme in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine to build sustainable peace, resilience, and economic transformation by upholding women’s rights and promoting inclusive decision-making processes. Entitled “Women Increased Leadership for Resilient and Peaceful Societies,” the programme will also have a regional component implemented by the Europe and Central Asia Regional Office (ECARO) which is concentrated on knowledge generation and mobilisation of partners to build alliances and create communities of practice in the region. Working within the framework of the country-level UN Women Strategic Notes, the programme will support gender mainstreaming in EU accession as a shared goal across the three countries. The program will support candidate countries in accelerating progress on gender equality by specifically strengthening those institutional structures, processes and procedures that are responsible for transposing the EU gender equality acquis and integrating gender responsiveness into laws and policies. While each country will have its own needs and advance at its own pace in the candidacy process, the regional component will in particular support the development of a set of EU-aligned, standardized approaches and tools, which clearly respond to the needs and challenges of the countries, and is expected to result in a consistent approach to gender mainstreaming, strong alignment with EU GAP III, and enhanced and accelerated harmonization with the EU Gender Equality acquis.

In this context, UN Women ECA RO is currently inviting experienced experts to apply to be considered for registration in the UN Women ECA RO expert roster on mainstreaming gender in the EU accession process.

1. Objective

Consultants play an important role in contributing to implementation of activities of the UN Women and they form significant part of capacities of the organization. In order to increase effectiveness of contracting process and enable instant contracting in emergency and urgent situations, ECA RO launched a competitive process to create a pool of qualified consultants and experts in the area of gender and good governance, i.e. mainstreaming gender in the EU accession process and supporting member states which are EU candidate countries to leverage EU approximation process for increased GEWE.

Duties and Responsibilities

Roster members selected for the consultancy assignment will work with ECA RO and COs in the region in the following areas:

1. Technical Assistance

• Provide strategic and operational advice to governments, private sector and/or civil society organizations on the formulation and execution of gender responsive national and sectoral policies in line with EU gender equality acquis;
• Provide technical support in designing, implementing, monitoring or evaluating policies in the assigned areas;
• Develop tool, protocols and operating procedures for state and non-state service providers in line with the national policies;
• Undertake gender analysis of laws and national/sectoral and policies and develop a set of recommendation on how to integrate gender perspectives;
• Design and delivery of various trainings;

2. Knowledge Management

• Carry out research and prepare a comprehensive needs assessment reports;
• Provide technical inputs to development of knowledge products and reports;
• Share knowledge, experience, good practices and lessons learned;
• Developing toolkits, guidelines, publications;
• Collect and analyse relevant documentation;

3. Advocacy

• Design advocacy strategies to support the gender mainstreaming efforts;
• Support to improving legislative framework, processes and procedures;
• Support to awareness raising.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission and strategic goals of UN Women;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats people fairly and without favoritism.

Functional Competencies:

• Strong interpersonal, teamwork and communication skills;
• Ability to work independently and proactively solve problem;
• Capacity to plan, priorities and deliver tasks on times;
• Capacity to engage with national and international staffs, to provide clear feedback and maintain effective rapport with different kinds of people;
• Actively works towards continuing learning and share with other to support local capacity development;
• Ability to research, analyze and present complex information.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master Degree in Gender Studies, Social Science, Sociology, International Relations, Development studies, Political Science or a field relevant to the requirements of the TOR.

Experience:

• At least 5 years’ experience in development work with specific emphasis on gender equality and women’s empowerment focusing on EU accession and gender mainstreaming and/or and supporting member states which are EU candidate countries to leverage EU approximation process for increased GEWE;
• Experience with development, implementation, monitoring or evaluation of national and sectoral policies;
• Experience on design and development of assessments/studies and analytical knowledge products  and report from gender perspectives;
• Experience in this or a related field in Europe and Central Asia would be considered an asset;
• Previous professional experience with the United Nations or similar organisations in this or a related field would be considered an asset;
• Experience working with EU institutions will be considered as an asset.
• Experience in conducting trainings is an asset.

Language:

• Fluency in English is required;
• Knowledge of the other UN working language is an asset;
• Knowledge of other regional languages is an asset.

Contracting arrangements:

Successful candidates will be included in the Vetted Roster of Experts until the end of 2027. Membership beyond that period must be renewed through a new application process. Entry into the expert roster system does not necessarily mean that contract with UN Women is guaranteed.

Where a request for services arises, the UN Women shall directly contact consultants with the most appropriate experience from the roster. A specific Terms of Reference outlining outputs for each assignment shall be provided and a Consultants Contract will be issued. Conditions of a particular assignment may be negotiable.

Application procedure:

The following documents should be submitted as part of the application:

• P11 with past experience in similar assignments; can be downloaded at , a signed copy should be submitted.

• Examples of previous work related to EU accession and gender mainstreaming area.

All applications must include a completed and signed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from

Applications without P11 may be treated as incomplete and may not be considered for further assessment.

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).