CONSULTANT - ASSIST UN WOMEN TO ACCELERATE GENDER EQUALITY IN THE EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRY (EI) SECTOR IN AFRICA

Background

The UN Entity on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) focuses  on addressing issues of women’s poverty, violence against women (VAW) and governance in post conflict contexts and in peace through initiating and supporting mechanisms and processes that call for accountability of duty bearers to the principles of gender equality and women’s human rights; contributing to the increase of women’s security in both the private and public sphere; and providing concrete support to women’s organizations and networks. ESARO is based in Nairobi and covers the ESA region; UN Women has presence in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa (Multi Country Office), South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The Multi-Country Office in South Africa covers Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) countries i.e. Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. At country level UN Women country offices work with key partners – national governments, civil society, development partners and the private sector to implement programmes. Initiatives and operations of UN Women in ESARO are guided by its regional Strategic Plan for the period, as well as country specific strategic plans.   UN Women ESARO has over the past 12 months made considerable advances leading in the area of Gender Equality in the Extractive Industries (EI). This engagement has been particularly important since the sector is characterized by gender inequalities impacting on women’s disadvantage, but also the vast potential opportunities for women’s economic empowerment in the sector. To improve gender equality in the sector UN Women has taken several recent measures, both engaging in normative activities, as well as seeking ways to influence operations to promote women’s participation in, and benefits from the sector. A Roadmap and a Policy Brief for engagement in the sector have been recently prepared with the aim to guide work in this area.   We now need to engage in expanding the normative dimension of this work and are launching this assignment with the main aim to prepare a tool that can guide policy review and dialogue on integrating gender in the sector at national level. The work will be inspired by earlier work undertaken on engendering the Africa Mining Vision, the domestication of policies at country-level, and experiences on how to engender / influence this process.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the leadership of the UN Women Economic Empowerment Advisor and in collaboration with the UN Women Program Analyst, the Consultant will undertake the following tasks: Develop a tool on how to engage in policy dialogue to engender policies in the EI sector. The tool will be used by UN Women ESARO to serve member countries that are embarking on policy dialogue in this area. The tool will highlight the rationale, describe entry points, review of content, process, and actual experiences in undertaking policy dialogue in the sector (the ‘what’, the ‘why’, the ‘how’ of gender integration in EI policies). The development of the tool will also involve dialogue with UN Women country offices engaged in policy dialogue in the sector. The tool will be developed in close cooperation with the country offices and involve virtual seminar validating the output; Present and facilitate a virtual seminar to share UN Women’s previously developed draft documents with country offices: These include the Draft Roadmap for engagement in the EI sector and a Draft Policy Brief for gender equality in the extractive industries. Based on the comments and inputs from country offices, finalize the Roadmap; Deliver a comprehensive presentation on the need for gender integration in the EI sector to a donor meeting and contribute to subsequent discussions at that meeting.  Deliverables: Finalized tool for engendering national policies in the EI sector; Presentation of UN Women’s Roadmap and Policy Brief on GE in EI to country offices (virtual seminar); Presentation on GE in EI delivered at donor meeting.

Competencies

Core Competencies  Ethics and Values: Promoting Ethics and Integrity / Creating Organizational Precedents. Working in Teams: Building and promoting effective teams. Communicating Information and Ideas: Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication. Self-management and Emotional intelligence:  Creating an emotionally intelligent organization. Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning: Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning. Functional Competencies Demonstrable knowledge of gender and human rights frameworks; Capacity to work with diverse partners including governments, civil society and women’s group; Ability to manage for results including excellent planning, goal setting prioritization and organizational skills; Demonstrated political acumen and technical capacity in representing the organization effectively to advocate and to promote organizational priorities, initiatives and a better understanding of the organizational strategic agenda;  Ability to go beyond established procedures and practices, introduce new approaches and strategic innovations; Demonstrable expertize in policy dialogue and guidance; Ability to communicate effectively – both written and oral presentation.

Required Skills and Experience

Education: A Masters Degree in women's studies, international development and/or relevant field. Experience: At least ten years experience in gender programme development; Institutional capacity development; Demonstrated experience of working on gender dimensions of the extractive industries in the region;  Familiarity with UN Women programming will be a high priority requirement; Demonstrated experience in policy dialogue and guidance. Language: Fluent in spoken and written English.

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