Background

• Increased leadership and political participation for women;
• Increased economic empowerment of women , especially those who are most excluded;
• Women’s leadership in peace, security and humanitarian response;
• National planning and budgeting processes which promote stronger institutional accountability to gender equality commitments.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide advice and support to MIA to ensure that the final Local Government Act is gender-responsive and prepare an overview of all changes made to the Act (based on the Study recommendations).
• Provide advice and technical support to MIA to review and amend its decentralization implementation frameworks and plans (including the Liberia Decentralization Implementation Plan and the Liberia Decentralization Support Programme) to ensure that they are gender responsive.
• Support the Governance Commission (GC) and MIA to organize public awareness events and to develop resources and materials that target women and raise their awareness about the proposed local governance reforms and the opportunities and benefits that
  decentralization will bring for women.
• Support MIA and MOGD to update their capacity development plans to include activities and resources to implement a gender-responsive decentralization process.
• Support efforts to mobilize resources and secure donor support for implementation of the Study recommendations, including through the possible development of a gender and local governance programme for MIA/MOGD/UN Women.
• Organize meetings between the GC, MIA, MOGD, UN and donors to discuss needs related to technical/financial support for implementation of Study recommendations and to ensure coordination of resources and efforts.
• Provide advice and technical support (through training/mentoring) to the MIA National Decentralization Implementation Secretariat to build their capacity to lead and implement gender-responsive decentralization/local governance.

Impact of Results

• Documentation and research available for stakeholders, both private and public, on opportunities for women in decentralization
• Policy recommendations available for Government of Liberia and key stakeholders to protect women’s rights and ensure their participation in local governance and to remove barriers to women’s participation in local governance;
• Increased capacity of the Government of Liberia to implement a gender-responsive decentralization reform process
  

All interested applicants must submit an application letter, CV with a UN standard personal history form and send to: sourcing.liberia@unwomen.org . Please download the P11 form from http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment. The deadline for application is March 27, 2014.

We will only consider applications with complete P11 attached. UN Women will only be able to respond to those applicants in whom UN Women has a further interest. UN Women does not solicit or screen for information in respect of HIV or AIDS and does not discriminate on the basis of HIV/AIDS status. 

Competencies

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.

• Ability to lead and guide others to develop new skills or knowledge that will enhance their work.
• Ability to assist a group or individuals to accomplish specific goals.
• Ability to manage change by providing the need structure and environment for interactions to be effective.
• Ability to observe, monitor, collect, and record data. Ability to assess the accuracy, validity and integrity of the data. 
• Ability to interpret and evaluate results, and create reports and/or presentations.
• Communicating the scope of work and findings or recommendations.
• Ability to follow instructions through a standard work process.
• Ability to perform routine tasks;
• Ability to check work for accuracy before completion of tasks.  
  

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree (or equivalent) in Social Sciences, Economics, Political Science, Gender/Women’s Studies.

Experience:

• At least 5 years of working experience in gender and governance or related fields;
•  Demonstrated experience building the capacity of national partners in areas including governance, decentralization and gender;
• Experience providing technical assistance to Government structures in the area of decentralization reforms, governance reforms, and / or gender is preferred;
• Experience in a post-conflict country required with previous experience in Liberia preferred;
• Demonstrated experience writing programme documents and gender-related studies is required(writing samples may be requested).

Language Requirements:

• Written and oral proficiency in English is required.