Background

Access to justice for women is a critical component of UN Women work globally and at national level. UN Women’s progress report, In Pursuit of Justice (2012) presents evidence of factors that enable and hinder women’s access to justice. In Uganda, JLOS, the Justice, Law and Order Sector conducted on audit in May 2011 which showed among other things, the limited capacity of the judiciary to deliver gender sensitive justice to the general population of Uganda but more specifically for women. Although a number of training have been conducted for the judiciary on gender justice, some of the court procedures and judgments clearly demonstrate their inability to translate the gender training into concrete benefits for women. The major reason identified for this gap is the absence of tools for the judiciary to use in making the court processes and judgments more gender sensitive. In the JLOS work plan under JLOS SIP III (2011-2016), one of the key strategies identified for addressing this gender capacity gap in the judiciary is the development of Bench briefs for judicial officers to use and refer to in adjudication of cases. The court briefs would give local and international best practice, including recommendations from treaty bodies such as the CEDAW Committee. They would be used as persuasive authority by court officials in determining cases where women’s rights are involved. It would also assist judicial officers in addressing procedural issues that impede women’s access to justice.

The assignment under contemplation, seeks to develop such a tool. The consultant will document previous cases and lessons learned and work closely with JLOS and the judicial training college to produce  a bench book of high quality, which is both easily accessible and in line with the needs of JLOS. The Bench Book will aim at enhancing the gender responsiveness of the judiciary system and help to ensure that judgments in Uganda are increasingly gender sensitive and that access to justice for women is enhanced.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the supervision of the Deputy Representative, the consultant will be responsible for the following:

  •  Closely working with the two consultants on access to justice for women, conduct a participatory desk research on gender sensitive rulings in Uganda, in the regional and internationally, including specific precedents and examples of cases, both progressive and retrogressive; identifying  barriers to gender sensitive judgments and propose solutions on how to strengthen gender responsiveness of  court processes and rulings;
  • Conduct a consultative workshop with stakeholders at national and sub-national levels to identify barriers, solutions and already existing knowledge on gender in the judiciary system;
  • Synthesize the findings from the desk research and the outputs from the consultative workshop into a publication owned by JLOS (government) – and supported by UN Women;
  • Share the outcomes of the study with JLOS and its partners including magistrates, judges, prosecutors, law officers, lawyers, women’s rights defenders and legal aid service providers;
  • Conduct training for the judicial training school on how to use the bench book.

Competencies

Core Values

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, gender, religion and age sensitivity and adaptability 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, mature judgment and take initiative;
  • Ability to think out of the box;
  • Ability to present complex issues in simple and clear manner.

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;
  • Excellent writing and communication skills.

Self-management and Emotional Intelligence:

  • Stay composed and positive even in difficult moments, handle tense situations with diplomacy and tact, and have a consistent behaviour towards others;
  • Ability to work under pressure and deliver high quality results on time.

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:

  • Substantive knowledge and understanding of judicial procedures, systems and structures in Uganda and at international levels;
  • Technical expertise on gender equality issues and more broadly, women’s human rights, access to justice and the justice system in Uganda;
  • Technical expertise, knowledge and experience in using the  Ugandan judiciary approaches;
  • Strong  leadership and advocacy skills;
  • Knowledge management – support documentation of lessons learnt and development of tools;
  • Extensive experience as a researcher on gender and justice;
  • Ability to undertake policy research and prepare qualitative and quantitative studies, utilizing statistical methodologies, knowledge of database applications for statistical analysis;
  • Excellent knowledge of gender issues and women’s empowerment issues in Uganda;
  • Ability to organize and complete multiple tasks by establishing priorities;
  • Ability to establish, build and sustain effective relationships with clients, demonstrating understanding of client’s perspective;
  • Ability to anticipate client needs and address them promptly.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:
  • An advanced university degree in law/ women's law/, gender and human rights;
  • A combined gender and legal background will be an asset.
Professional Experience:
  • At least 10 years progressive legal practice on the administration of justice with bias on gender and rights;                                                                                                    
  • Prior research and publications on women's access to justice;
  • Experience working within the Ugandan government judicial system and thorough;
     understanding of how the system works;
  • Experience in conducting training for the judiciary;
  • Ability to influence decision making within the government high level judicial system and within the legal fraternity;
  • Solid experience in developing gender manuals, guidelines, toolkits and strategies for the judiciary;
  • Strong knowledge of pedagogical methodologies for adult learnings;
  • Experience with UN work highly desirable.

Language Requirements:

  • Excellent skills in English, both oral and written, are required.
Evaluation Criteria:
  • Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology.

Cumulative analysis:
The award of the contract shall be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

  • Technical Criteria: 70 points;
  • Financial Criteria: 30 points.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points (70% of the total technical points) will be considered for the Financial Evaluation:

Technical Criteria – Maximum 70 points:
  • Criteria A: Relevance of Education – 10 points;
  • Criteria B: Special skill (excellent communications, professionalism, language, etc.). - 5 Points;
  • Criteria C: Relevance of experience in conducting similar assignment – 25 points;
  • Criteria D: Description of Approach/ Methodology to complete the assignment– 30 points.

The assignment will be undertaken from September-November 2014. The consultant will be paid on deliverables as follows:

30% on:
  • Submission of an inception report detailing the methodology, sources and work plan: September 30th .
30% on:
  • Submission of first draft of report to selected stakeholders: October 30th .
40% on:
  • Successful validation of the research findings by selected stakeholders during a national round table meeting to be held in Kampala Uganda;
  • Submission of final report of not more than 40 pages, incorporating feedback received from stakeholders:November 30th;
  • Training for judicial training school: December.
Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications in one single PDF document:
  • Duly completed Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availabilityusing the template provided by UNDP (Annex II); http://www.ug.undp.org/content/uganda/en/home/operations/procurement.html
  • Personal CV or P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and, telephone number) of the Candidate and at least three (3) professional references.
Technical proposal:
  • Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment;
  • A methodology, on how they will approach and complete the assignment.
Financial proposal: