Background

The 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. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, the UN Women will lead and coordinate United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

The mandate and functions of UN Women call for the promotion of organizational and UN system accountability on gender equality through evaluation, strengthening evaluation capacities and learning from evaluation, and developing systems to measure the results and impact of UN Women with its enhanced role at country, regional and global levels. The purpose and role of evaluation in UN Women is to enhance accountability, inform decision-making and contribute to learning on the best ways to achieve women’s empowerment and gender equality through operational and normative work.

Reporting directly to the Executive Director, the independent Evaluation Office of UN Women serves as the custodian of the evaluation function in line with United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and Standards. The Evaluation Office deploys quantitative and qualitative approaches to evaluate transformative changes in gender equality and human rights and UN Women’s contribution therein. It undertakes corporate evaluations and promotes their use at decision making levels; supports decentralized evaluations for improved programming and evidence generation on what works for gender equality; supports evaluation capacity development within the organization and of regional and country partners, and promotes coordination with the UN system on joint evaluation of gender equality and the inclusion of gender in system wide evaluation.

UN Women is searching for a Regional Evaluation Specialist to be based in Panama Regional Office to cover a maternity leave for six months period. Under the supervision of the Director of Evaluation, the Regional Evaluation Specialist will support decentralized evaluations at regional and country level by strengthening decentralized evaluation systems, ensuring use of evaluation findings and recommendations, providing evaluation capacity development and promoting coordination on evaluation that is gender responsive at regional and country levels.

Duties and Responsibilities

Undertake/manage evaluations and strengthen decentralized evaluation systems at regional, multi-country and country levels in the Americas and the Caribbean:

• Undertake/manage evaluations in the region, including regional and country evaluations, promoting stakeholder’s ownership and learning, alignment with country evaluation systems and partners participation;
• Provide sound methodological advice and quality assurance to decentralized evaluation processes, including the preparation of TOR, evaluation study, final evaluation report, management response and dissemination strategy;
• Support the planning, monitoring and implementation of evaluation plans in UN Women’s regional, multi-country and country offices and the implementation of the Regional Evaluation Strategy for the Americas and the Caribbean;
• Coordinate with the Regional Planning and Coordination Specialist to ensure the alignment of evaluation with RBM systems of the Regional Office, multi-country and country offices;
• Contribute to corporate level evaluation processes led by the IEO and ensure alignment to corporate evaluation systems.

Promote the use of evaluations and that evaluation findings and recommendations are followed up:

• Prepare aggregate analysis and qualitative assessments of decentralized evaluations to input to Independent Evaluation Office Annual Report and management briefs;
• Organize meetings, workshops and other discussion fora to establish a dialogue on evaluation results and the evaluative knowledge management at regional level;
• Ensure that evaluation results are taken into account for the continued implementation of strategies, programmes/projects and for the design and appraisal of new projects/ programmes;
• Ensure that project/programme managers respond to recommendations and monitor the follow up on evaluations.

Promote evaluation capacity development at regional, multi-country and country levels:

• Provide training and coaching on evaluation, UN Women Evaluation Policy and guidelines, monitoring and results based management within the Regional Office, multi-country and country offices, including substantial support in coaching and training M&E focal points at country level;
• Provide advice/information/guidance to programme managers on evaluations, including technical inputs to Programme Appraisal Committee on programme design from evaluability perspective;
• Establish partnerships with National M&E Systems, regional and national evaluation associations and networks, EvalPartners and academic institutions to promote capacity and learning on gender responsive evaluation in the region;
• Substantially contribute to the development of methodologies for country evaluations, and to the review of guidelines, systems, procedures and tools related to decentralized evaluations.
  

Promote UN coordination on evaluation that is gender responsive:

• Collaborate with UN Country Teams on UNDAF evaluations and regional inter-agency evaluation working groups on integrating gender equality perspective in evaluation;
• Collaborate with other UN joint evaluation initiatives at regional, multi-country and country level;
• Collaborate with professional evaluation bodies in the area of gender responsive evaluation.

Regional Evaluation Specialist will perform other related duties and assignments as and when required.

Impact of Results:

The key results have an impact on the successful implementation of the Independent Evaluation Office strategy and of country and regional strategies in the Americas and the Caribbean.

Competencies

Core Values and Guiding Principles:

Ethics:

• Acts according to the standards of ethical conduct for evaluators, including policies on receiving and giving gifts, conflicting financial interests, outside employment and activities, misuse of position, impartiality in performing official duties and related statutory authorities. Acts with integrity and honesty in relationships with all stakeholders.

Integrity:

• Demonstrating consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
  

Cultural Sensitivity/Valuing diversity:

• Demonstrating an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating differences in values and learning from cultural diversity.
  

National ownership:

• Promotes the leadership and ownership of evaluation processes by country key stakeholders.
  

Core Competencies:

Ethics and Values:

Organizational Awareness:

 

Developing and Empowering People / Coaching and Mentoring:

• Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation.
  

Working in Teams:

Communicating Information and Ideas:

Self-management and Emotional intelligence:

 

Conflict Management / Negotiating and Resolving Disagreements:

• Leveraging conflict in the interests of the organization & setting standards.
  

Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning:

 

• Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning.

Functional Competencies:

Knowledge of UN context and gender equality:

• Has a detailed knowledge of the role of the UN and its components and UN Women’s mandate with the UN system. Has a detailed understanding of the Organization, funds and programs and the distinctions between them. Has a good knowledge of key UN topics. Has competencies to provide supervision to evaluation staff in the evaluation of gender equality and women's human rights activities, projects and programmes.

Technical and professional skills:

• Evaluation design - Has the required competencies to develop well-focused Terms of Reference that includes a complete background, addresses salient issues, and identifies potential impact, with minimal guidance. Has a good understanding of various methodologies in evaluation, both qualitative and quantitative, such as surveys, record reviews, focus groups and case studies and is able to contribute to the development of the most efficient and effective methodology for the design, with minimal guidance. Has a good understanding of various sampling techniques and their applications and is able to develop the most accurate sampling technique for the methodology.Has grounded knowledge of how to address gender equality on evaluation design.
• Data collection and analysis - Has the required competencies to collect reliable, valid and accurate information in an objective way. Masters effective interviewing skills and is able to conduct interviews independently. Has a good understanding of questionnaire design and is able to develop questionnaires and other review instruments that will address issues identified in the design, independently. Masters effective interviewing skills and is able to conduct interviews independently. Has the skills to use programme data and documents and to design and conduct case studies independently. Is able to guide and direct junior staff in data collection and to ensure the data analysis addresses evaluation issues.
• Gender analysis – has experience in conducting gender analysis; has grounded knowledge of gender equality and women’s human rights.

Oral and written communication:

• Has the required competencies to: articulate relevant subject matter in a clear and concise way; pose basic questions and contribute information appropriately in formal settings; effectively use appropriate support items, including charts, graphs, audio-visual techniques, and hand-outs; conceptualize ideas and issues during the evaluation reporting process; and use critical thinking to formulate findings and recommendations based on the results of both qualitative and quantitative data, and the broader context of evaluation issues. Is able to develop clear, concise and compelling evaluation reports that meet UNEG reporting standards, with minimal guidance. 

Evaluation process management:

• Masters the skills of evaluation management, including developing a plan and schedule, assigning tasks, ensuring milestones are met on a timely basis, ensuring project costs are within and approved budget and ensuring evaluation objectives are adequately addressed. Is able to independently assume responsibility for managing complex evaluation projects and to supervise evaluation team members. Has skills to negotiate outside the organization on issues related to evaluations and conflict resolution skills.

• Shares knowledge and experience;
• Encourages office staff to share knowledge and contribute to UN Women practice areas;
• Develops substantive knowledge of one or more Practice Areas;
• Promotes a learning environment in the office;
• Provides helpful feedback and advice to others in the office;
• Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development in one or more practice areas, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills.

Development and Operational Effectiveness:

• Ability to perform a variety of specialized activities related to HR management, including performance evaluation, learning and reporting;
• Strong IT skills;
• Ability to provide input to business processes re-engineering, implementation of new systems.

• Focuses on result for the client;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Demonstrates strong oral and written communication skills;
• Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure;
• Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
• Responds positively to critical feedback and differing points of view;
• Autonomy, working remotely and prioritizing.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Advance university degree in evaluation or post graduate degree on relevant social science or related field.

Experience:

• A minimum of 7 years professional experience in evaluation;
• Relevant experience working on gender equality and human rights;
• Background in international relations, proven knowledge of gender equality analytical work and programming, knowledge of current development issues;
• Proven field work experience;
• Experience related UN Women’s mandate and activities an asset.

Languages:

• Fluency in English, working knowledge of Spanish;
• Knowledge in any other UN official language an asset.

• 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;
• Previous applicants need not reapply as their previous submissions will be considered.

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.