UNDP Jobs - 63467- Consultancy - Workshop Facilitator

Consultancy - Workshop Facilitator

Location :

Home-based

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

01-Mar-2016

Application Deadline :

12-Feb-16 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

One Month

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

12 Working days

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

Both the UNDP Strategic Plan, 2014 to 2017, and DPA’s Strategic Plan, 2016-2019, highlight that development today takes place in a context of heightened and almost continuous turbulence. In many conflict-affected countries, supporting and strengthening national capacities for mediation, dialogue, negotiation and conflict resolution can be critical for ensuring that tensions related to development and political order are addressed peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law and human rights. The issue of violent extremism continues to pose new challenges to these efforts, both in terms of preventing violence and ensuring that development efforts seek to address the root causes of such movements, including poverty and exclusion. In the context of rapidly evolving and turbulent situations, development assistance, mediation support, and conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts need to be complementary and closely coordinated across the UN system. Resident Coordinators can play a particularly important role in facilitating and convening national partners, ranging from government, opposition, and civil society, while leveraging the comparative advantages of UNCT agencies (and HQ) to enable effective support to nationally owned processes and local capacities required to manage, resolve, and transform conflict constructively. While the entry points for such engagement often require nuanced and sensitive approaches, and the capacity to dedicate time and resources to developing relationships with key national stakeholders, the Joint UNDP-DPA Programme has served to provide support to such initiatives under the leadership of Resident Coordinators in more than 50 countries, and approximately 45 countries at present.

The Montreux Series

The ‘Montreux IV’ retreat will provide an opportunity for Resident Coordinators and other senior UN officials from across the system to reflect on emerging trends, challenges, and opportunities pertaining to the UN’s engagement in complex political situations. The retreat will also offer a forum to take stock of recent and ongoing policy developments that pertain to the UN’s work on conflict prevention and peacebuilding, focusing on the concrete implications of these processes for the UN’s engagement and country level and with a view to informing efforts to strengthen support thereof.

The retreat is the fourth iteration in the ‘Montreux’ series. The ‘Montreux II’ retreat held in 2012 was held shortly after the introduction of the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee Decision on “Special Circumstances in Non-Mission Settings”. As such, much of the discussion revolved around how the provisions outlined in the “Special Circumstances” Policy Committee Decision could be expanded to a broader variety of contexts. The issue of empowering Resident Coordinators to take calculated risks was a key element of these discussions. The need for providing coherent, complementary, and coordinated support in a manner that leveraged the comparative advantages across the UN system was also emphasized. ‘Montreux III’ revolved around similar themes, with participants discussing the implications of the Human Rights Up Front initiative. With major reviews of the UN’s work on conflict prevention and peacebuilding concluded in 2015, in addition to the external review of the Joint UNDP-DPA Programme completed in late 2014, ‘Montreux IV’ provides a timely opportunity to take stock of these important processes and advance the respective recommendations and, importantly, to gauge the areas requiring further strengthening based on feedback from Resident Coordinators and senior UN officials from across the system.

Focus Areas

While noting the various challenges facing the UN’s engagement in supporting national stakeholders in “sustaining peace” at country level, the workshop takes place in a context of significant policy developments both within the UN and the broader international community, including those pertaining to the 2015 Reviews on Peace Operations, the UN’s Peacebuilding Architecture, and SCR 1325, as well as the forthcoming planned capacity review of UN Agencies, Funds, and Programmes in “Sustaining Peace”; the Sustainable Development Goals; and the discussions surrounding the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. While some of these processes have implications for how the UN supports national counterparts to “sustain peace” or may otherwise present opportunities to leverage in this regard (particularly SDG 16), others provide a vehicle for Resident Coordinators and UN senior leadership to inform ongoing processes which will subsequently shape the work of UN Agencies, Funds, and Programmes as well as existing mechanisms providing support on conflict prevention and peacebuilding (such as the Joint UNDP-DPA Programme).

Given this policy context, there will be four broad areas that will frame the discussions during the retreat, including:

Implementation of Recommendations from Reviews on Peace Operations, UN Peacebuilding Architecture, and Implementation of SCR 1325, and contributing to the forthcoming capacity review of UN Agencies, Funds, and Programmes:

Recent reviews, particularly those pertaining to Peace Operations and the UN Peacebuilding Architecture, call for a ‘paradigm shift’ in how the UN system conceptualizes and engages in conflict prevention and peacebuilding. In recognizing the fluidity of country contexts and the risks associated with political transition and tendencies to relapse into violent conflict, the reviews underline the need for the UN to adopt more flexible and nimble approaches and move away from the strictures which currently delineate “mission” and “non-mission” settings. Many of the Resident Coordinators participating in the retreat are deployed in countries where mission presences have recently withdraw, may have hosted “light teams” under the auspices of the Human Rights Up Front, or otherwise experienced some measure of fragility. The retreat will provide a forum to interrogate the findings of the recent reviews as they pertain to the UN’s support to “sustaining peace” across a variety of different country contexts, and the implications for the UN’s engagement at country level and areas where support can be further strengthened.

Sustainable Development Goals

Endorsed in late 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals emphasize the importance of “peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, the provision of access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable institutions at all levels”. In particular, Goal 16 on “Promoting just, peaceful, and inclusive societies” explicitly recognizes the importance of strengthening national capacities for conflict prevention, while also seen as an enabling goal and “threshold condition” for the remaining SDGs. The SDGs have already proven to be a useful tool for engaging with a broad range of national stakeholders in dialogues on issues related to governance and peacebuilding, particularly in contexts where there has been sensitivity and hesitation towards explicitly recognizing the presence of social and/or political fault lines.

Humanitarian/ Development/ Conflict Nexus

In many contexts, challenges pertaining to peace and security often include a humanitarian dimension. Recent examples as varied as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Malawi demonstrate the complex relationship between disasters and conflict dynamics, with humanitarian challenges often serving to exacerbate tensions or conversely, strengthening social cohesion. With the World Humanitarian Summit to be held in May 2016, and with ‘Montreux IV’ to partially converge with Humanitarian Coordinator Retreat, participants will reflect on the interconnectedness of these challenges, while also exploring the challenges and opportunities associated with strengthening UN collaboration across the humanitarian/ development/ conflict nexus.

UN’s role and comparative advantage(s) in supporting efforts to prevent violent extremism

Violent extremism continues to manifest across different regions and though often leveraging localized conflict dynamics and pre-existing grievances and cleavages, there is a growing trend to brand, broadcast, and align with transnational actors, movements, and phenomena. Launched in late 2015, the Secretary-General’s Plan of Action on the Prevention of Violent Extremism outlines a series of measures aimed at addressing the root causes of violent extremism, centred around human rights, accountable institutions, equitable service delivery, and political participation. While clear complementarities exist with the SDG framework, the S-G’s Plan of Action provides an important normative reference for UNCT agencies in seeking to support national stakeholders in addressing and preventing violent extremism. The retreat will provide an opportunity to gauge the views of RCs in terms of the risks, challenges, and opportunities associated with explicitly orienting the UN’s development programming and other engagements in terms of violent extremism, while seeking to draw out nascent good practices and lessons learned in this regard.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work

In this context, two consultants will be recruited to develop the design and undertake the facilitation of the above workshop. The ‘facilitation team’ will involve one consultant who will lead the design and facilitation process, with the support of a second consultant. Throughout the assignment (a total of 12 days), the consultant will work in consultation with an internal task team (DPA, UNDP, PBSO and DOCO) established to organize the event. The consultants will collaborate with the task team, through liaising with the Programme Specialist of the Joint UNDP-DPA Programme and other relevant colleagues, to achieve the deliverables described hereafter. The design of the workshop agenda and methodology will need to be carefully calibrated with the composition and level of experience, needs and expectations of the participants, and should engender active participation and open discussion, while drawing on the specific and sometimes politically-sensitive lessons learned in a constructive manner.

Before the workshop:

Develop the agenda, detailed programme and methodology using an experiential approach for the workshop. The design of the workshop programme will build upon interviews with selected RCs (at least 5 of the approximately 30 invited RCs), Peace and Development Advisers (at least 2), and other invited UN senior management staff at Headquarters (at least 2) to explore their concrete experiences with regard to the subject matter and solicit their feedback and expectations with regards to the content, process, interaction, and outcome of the workshop. The agenda will include a mix of UN policy and process issues related to the prevention and mitigation of violent conflict as well as content issues regarding the infusion of conflict transformation principles and practices in UN programmes, processes and mechanisms. The facilitators should carry out selected follow-up interviews with RCs, PDAs and HQ based staff in order to further ascertain and validate the proposed elements, issues and methodology for the workshop. The identification of the particular staff to be interviewed, as well as debriefing on the conversations, will be done in close collaboration with the organizing team;
Building on salient points from the interviews, develop interactive interventions to be used during the workshop, which highlight the challenges of working in complex political situations and provide pointers to possible elements of a support system;
Organise the final workshop preparation in situ prior to the meeting.

During the workshop:

Facilitate the workshop;
Lead the stock-taking and planning sessions with the task team following each day of the workshop to ensure progress toward the envisioned outputs and adjust the agenda and methodology, as necessary;
Towards the end of the workshop, develop a two-page summary on the key lessons learned and recommendations to be endorsed by the participants before the end of the workshop. The two-pager will be complemented by a more comprehensive report to be drafted by appointed UN staff following the workshop.

After the workshop:

Lead the debriefing of the workshop in situ, following the completion of the seminar together with the staff task team;
Elaborate a report on the workshop process and facilitation (max. 10 pages) describing the various steps, lessons learned, and recommendations for similar follow-on events. The report will include the conduct of post-meeting interviews (a minimum of 1-2 RCs, 1 PDA, 1 HQ staff), plus appendices with the materials prepared ahead of the meeting, and will draw on the meeting deliberations.

In undertaking the above task, the consultants will be provided verbal briefings as well as with background documentation on areas such as: an overview of the terms of reference of all Peace and Development Advisers (and other staff), programme documents to which these staff are attached; background papers on complex political transitions, existing lessons learned papers; etc. The consultant(s) will work in close collaboration with the organizing team and under the direct supervision of Mr. Alex Shoebridge, Programme Specialist, Joint UNDP-DPA Programme. The consultants are expected to undertake the assignment during the period from 1 March 2016 to 15 June 2016. Payment will be made as a lump-sum upon satisfactory completion of all tasks. An additional lump sum will be provided for travel expenses for the most direct economy class route to and from Montreux, Switzerland.

Expected results / deliverables:

To achieve the objective UNDP is seeking an International Consultant to meet the following deliverables:

Results Timing

Development of the workshop agenda, detailed programme and methodology - 5 days
Effective facilitation of the workshop - 3 days
Workshop process report with a focus on key insights,evaluation; and recommendations - 4 days
Total working days -12 days

Institutional Arrangement

Two Consultant(s) will report directly to the Programme Specialist of the Joint UNDP-DPA Programme and liaise closely with the organizing team comprised of UNDP, DPA, PBSO and DOCO colleagues.

Competencies

Professional Skills:

Demonstrates strong ability to manage, facilitate, and engage in discussions with multiple stakeholders in a formal setting, seeking to encourage participation in an open and collegial environment;
Works collaboratively with team members sharing information openly and displaying cultural awareness and sensitivity;
Proactive in problem-solving and recommendation for conflict prevention and resolution;
Strong ability in managing confidential and politically sensitive issues, in a responsible way, and in accordance with protocols.

Interpersonal and communication skills:

Strong communication skills and proven ability to collaborate between different actors and high level of internal and external relationship management;
Uses tact and sensitivity when delivering sensitive information or resolving delicate issues;
Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

A minimum of a Master’s degree or equivalent in Social or Political Sciences, International Relations, Conflict Resolution, Peace building or related field.

Experience:

At least 15 years of professional experience in development or related field, at the national or international level, preferably including experience in the area of conflict prevention and/ or peacebuilding;
Hands-on experience in the design and facilitation of multi-stakeholder meetings involving large international organisations (such as UN), with an advanced ability to facilitate participation in team work in such settings;
Good understanding of the United Nations system, and UNDP, its expertise, practices, and procedures; particularly in conflict-affected and fragile areas;
Experience within the UN system and/or inter-agency settings an advantage, preferably in areas focusing on conflict prevention, transformation, and/or peacebuilding;
In-depth knowledge of Joint UNDP-DPA Programme on Building National Capacities for Conflict Prevention complemented with knowledge of the role of Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators, linkages between HQ and field offices, and inter-agency cooperation.

Language:

Excellent writing, editing, and oral communication skills in English;
Proficiency in at least one other UN official language is desirable.

Duration of the Work

The consultancy will take place over the course of 12 working days, including 5 days prior to the retreat, 3 days of the retreat, and 4 days to finalize the facilitators report. The consultancy will be completed between March and June 2016.

Duty Station

The consultancy will be home-based, except for the duration of the retreat for which the consultant(s) will be required to attend. The consultant(s) should plan to arrive at the location of the retreat at least two days prior to the scheduled start in order to finalize preparations.

Evaluation of applications:

A two-stage procedure is utilized in evaluating the applicants, with evaluation of the technical proposal (CV/application) being completed prior to any price proposal being opened and compared. The price proposal of the Applicant will be opened only for submissions that passed the minimum technical score of 70% of the obtainable score of 100 (may vary) points in the evaluation of the technical proposals. The Technical proposal (CV/application) is evaluated on the basis of its responsiveness to the Term of Reference (TOR);
Demonstrates strong ability to manage, facilitate, and engage in discussions with multiple stakeholders in a formal setting, seeking to encourage participation in an open and collegial environment (15 Points);
Strong communication skills and proven ability to collaborate between different actors and high level of internal and external relationship management (15 Points);
A Master’s degree or equivalent in Social or Political Sciences, International Relations, Conflict Resolution, Peace building or related field (10 Points);
At least 15 years of professional experience in development or related field, and hands-on experience in the design and facilitation of multi-stakeholder meetings involving large international organisations (such as UN), with an advanced ability to facilitate participation in team work in such settings (30 Points);
In-depth knowledge of Joint UNDP-DPA Programme on Building National Capacities for Conflict Prevention complemented with knowledge of the role of Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators, linkages between HQ and field offices, and inter-agency cooperation.(30 points);
Lowest evaluated offer of technically qualified applicant. In the Second Stage, the price proposal of all contractors, who have attained minimum 70% score in the technical evaluation will be compared/evaluated. The contract will be awarded to the Contractor offering the lowest price.