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.

UN Women South Sudan has developed a Strategic Note for the period 2013-2014 and which is aligned with the South Sudan Development Plan and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) (2012-2013). Targeted gender equality and women’s empowerment interventions will be undertaken to increase development effectiveness. To this end, UN Women will support a “package approach” to consolidate response particularly at state level. The package approach will combine for example, functional literacy with economic empowerment and capacity building; and functional literacy and economic empowerment for peace building and ending violence against women. The integration of gender equality is intended to ensure not only that mainstreaming takes place in all areas of operations and programming, but that real progress is made in supporting South Sudan in reducing gender inequalities and improving the lives of women.

The three strategic priority areas for UN Women South Sudan elaborated in the Strategic Note and annual work plan are as follows:

  • Women’s leadership and participation in gender-responsive governance
  • Increased Women’s access economic empowerment and opportunities
  • Improved Security and protection for women and girls
Women’s economic security is critical for the eradication of poverty and achieving sustainable development because when women have ownership and control over productive resources and access to productive work, they can ensure a better livelihood for their families and communities. Furthermore  when women are economically empowered, they are more likely to attain political and social empowerment.

Three components are envisaged for promoting women’s economic security:
  • Mainstream women’s economic empowerment across South Sudan government machineries and existing development programmes. This will be through the enhancing technical capacity as well as by increasing the number of economic empowerment gender-sensitive initiatives, policies, strategies and programmes across the GOSS and UN agencies; and enhancing the economic livelihoods of women farmers by increasing access to agricultural markets for women farmers and diversifying their sources of income.
  • Enhance economic livelihoods and capital base of women by providing them with entrepreneurship skills training and development services to facilitate their access to markets and finance.
  • Increase access to functional numeracy and literacy for women and girls.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Women’s Economic Security and Rights Specialist will: a) enhance the technical capacity of Government staff as well as work to increase the number of gender-sensitive economic empowerment initiatives, policies, strategies and programmes across the Government and UN agencies; (b) engage and support all initiatives that will increase women’s access to agricultural inputs, tools and markets; (c) engage with all other partners especially finance-based institutions to come up with interventions that would help the women diversify their sources of income; (d) oversee a literacy and numeracy programme for women and girls.

Specifically, Programme Specialist, Women’s Economic Security and Rights, will perform the following duties:

Project Management
  • Develops, manages and oversees project budget, in consultation with the UN Women Representative and Deputy Representative including the management of programming funds received for the programme component.
  • Develops annual work plan for implementation of outputs and generation of results. Ensure high-quality, evidence-based, results-oriented reporting on the results generated.
  • Supports the selection of partners for project implementation in line with UN Women Guidelines.
  • Ensures procurement and staffing requirements of the programmes are met and comply with UN Women and UN rules and regulations.
  • Supervises and coordinates all administrative and financial matters related to the project.
  • Technical assistance and coordination support to partners
  • Manages a working-level coordination forum for women’s economic security in partnership with government and UN counterparts.
  • Supports the development of a capacity building plan on Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting for national counterparts within the economic development sector.
  • Oversees the commissioning of studies on gender issues within the economic development sector.
Capacity Building:
  • Assess the capacities and needs of partners and design, implement, monitor and evaluate a capacity building strategy to meet these needs.
  • Arrange and facilitate workshops and trainings for the UN Women women’s economic empowerment team, government partners and civil society organizations as needed on issues relating to women’s economic empowerment.
  • Supervises and mentors staff in the women’s economic empowerment programme
  • Sharing of knowledge and communicating results
  • Ensures high-quality timely and accurate reporting of project results internally and to external partners as required.
  • Participates in the collation of knowledge, best practice and lessons learned for global programme implementation, as well as for further replication of best practice in South Sudan.
  • Provides expert advice to UN, CSO and Government partners as requested on women’s economic security.
  • Facilitates South South and regional cooperation on women’s economic development
Monitoring and Evaluation
  • Ensure the effective monitoring and evaluation of all economic empowerment activities, projects and initiatives.

Impact of Results:

The Women Economic Security and Rights Specialist will oversee the implementation of the UN Women South Sudan’s programming on women and economic security and rights component with the aim of enhancing the economic livelihoods of women through gender sensitive initiatives, policies, strategies and activities

Competencies

Core values and Guiding principles:
  • Integrity:   Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
  • Professionalism: Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work. 
  • Cultural sensitivity and valuing diversity:  Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff.   Demonstrate an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity.
Core Competencies:
  • Ethics and Values: Demonstrate and safeguard ethics and integrity
  • Organizational Awareness:  Demonstrate corporate knowledge and sound judgment.
  • Development and Innovation:  Take charge of self-development and take initiative.
  • Work in teams:  Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
  • Communicating and Information Sharing:  Facilitate and encourage open communication and strive for effective communication
  • Self-management and Emotional Intelligence: Stay composed and positive even in difficult moments, handle tense situations with diplomacy and tact, and have a consistent behavior towards others
  • Conflict Management: Surface conflicts and address them proactively acknowledging different feelings and views and directing energy towards a mutually acceptable solution.
  • Continuous Learning and Knowledge Sharing:   Encourage learning and sharing of knowledge. 
  • Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making: Demonstrate informed and transparent decision making.
Functional Competencies: 
  • Ability to conceptualize and convey strategic vision from the spectrum of development to experience.
  • Demonstrated negotiating, cultural sensitivity and diplomatic skills.
  • Well-developed people management skills.
  • Provide information, tools, resources to support work achievement.
  • Effectiveness orientation and pro-activity.
  • Ability to leverage information technology, executive information systems, management techniques and tools for optimal office performance.
  • Strong interpersonal, communication and presentation skills .

Required Skills and Experience

Education:
  • An advanced University degree (Masters level) in social sciences, political science, international affairs, international development studies, gender/women’s studies, human rights or a related technical field.

Experience:

  • At least 5 years relevant experience programming on women’s economic security and rights.
  • Knowledge of and country experience in conflict and post-conflict situations.
  • Demonstrated knowledge and understanding of programming for women’s economic empowerment.
  • Experience providing high level policy advice and technical assistance on women’s economic security and rights.
  • Experience engaging in results oriented in-country capacity development. Experience supporting women’s organizations in conflict and post conflict situations is desirable.
  • Professional project management, monitoring and evaluation experience.
  • Experience working within the UN is an asset.

Language:

  • Outstanding oral and written communication skills in English and one other UN language.
  • Working knowledge of Arabic is an asset .

Application Information:
  • All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment
  • 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.
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.