UNDP Jobs - 64136- Gender Specialist

Gender Specialist

Location :

Kabul, AFGHANISTAN

Type of Contract :

FTA International

Starting Date :

Application Deadline :

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

Post Level :

P-3

Duration of Initial Contract :

One Year

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

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

UNDP Afghanistan Mission statement

UNDP supports stabilization, state building, governance and development priorities in Afghanistan. UNDP support, in partnership with the Government, the United Nations system, the donor community and other development stakeholders, has contributed to institutional development efforts leading to positive impact on the lives of Afghan citizens. Over the years UNDP support has spanned such milestone efforts as the adoption of the Constitution; Presidential, Parliamentary and Provincial Council elections; institutional development through capacity-building to the legislative, the judicial and executive arms of the state, and key ministries, Government agencies and commissions at the national and subnational levels. UNDP has played a key role in the management of the Law and Order Trust Fund, which supports the Government in developing and maintaining the national police force and in efforts to stabilize the internal security environment. Major demobilization, disarmament and rehabilitation and area-based livelihoods and reconstruction programmes have taken place nationwide. UNDP Programmes in Afghanistan have benefited from the very active support of donors. UNDP Afghanistan is committed to the highest standards of transparency and accountability and works in close coordination with the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan and the UN system as a whole to maximize the impact of its development efforts on the ground.

Organizational Context

LOTFA is a Trust Fund of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) originally established in 2002. In December 2014, newly elected H.E. President Ashraf Ghani instructed UNDP to transform LOTFA to accelerate and make effective a transition of the payroll functions to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIROA) and to develop national capacity for its efficient and accountable management.

A new project document was signed by the Government on 30 June 2015. The new LOTFA consists of two Projects. One Project, the Support to Payroll Management Project (SPM), provides exclusively for full MOIA payroll management by December 2016. The second LOTFA Project, MOIA and Police Development Project, is centred on developing national capacity for self-sustained reform and improvement of the MOIA as an institution, and the police services as instruments for citizen safety and maintenance of the rule of law. The two new Projects were jointly developed by GIROA, MOIA, UNDP, donors and other partners.

MOIA and Police Development (MPD) Project

The MOIA and Police Development Project is divided into two components. The Institutional Development component is intended to help the MOIA develop the capacity to conceptualize, lead and manage reform, while at the same time improving administrative and support services’ performance and accountability, which are critical for police functioning and safety. The Police Professionalism Component seeks to support MOIA in strengthening its foundations and training infrastructure for police professionalization, while ?at the same time supporting immediate police service delivery and outreach activities to strengthen police and community engagement. This is turn will contribute to increased trust.

Institutional Development Component

Institutional development interventions are based on lessons learned from institutional development assessments and three strategies developed by MOIA with support from LOTFA in the first half of 2015: a comprehensive MOIA capacity development strategy, and a mutually reinforcing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and Partnership strategy for the MOIA. These three overarching strategies form the core of the interventions to be implemented under the new institutional development component, together with a change management unit, yet to be established by the MOIA.

The new Project emphasizes the following areas of management relevant to reform and institutional development: Change management; Capacity development to improve functional performance; Strategic-level monitoring and evaluation; Performance management; Aid coordination.

In addition, the following cross-cutting service areas have been identified and agreed by MOIA with international partners:

Comprehensive review and development, as needed, of human resources policies;
Optimization of existing ICT assets and scoping for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP);
MOIA Gender Strategy implementation support;
Support to programme budgeting use;
Improvement of internal audit functions;
Improvement of the MOIA follow-up of complaints, especially those related to women police personnel and gender complaints in policing.

Jointly these interventions will lead to achievement of the following outputs:

Output 1: MOIA capacity to lead and manage reform, develop institutional capacity and to continuously improve functional performance is strengthened enabling implementation of the 10-year Vision and MOIA 5-year Strategy;
Output 2: MOIA capacities and performance of key administrative and police support services ?are increased enabling improvement in police services and safety for police officers;
Output 3: Internal control and accountability mechanisms for administration and finance are ?improved enabling transparency and accountability in the MOIA.

Police Professionalization Component

The police professionalization interventions are based on lessons learned from reviews, consultations and assessments that found critical gaps and discrepancies in support provided to organizational and legislative structures for police professionalization, operational standards and police training and education. This holds in particular for gender, rule of law and human rights based policing, leadership, education uniformity and links with human resource development planning. In addition community security needs were identified as well as needs for better functioning of 119 centres, information desks and police women councils. Police professionalization interventions will focus on bringing the many conflicting polices, standards, curricula and district based interventions together in one Afghan owned consolidated approach. The component will support training and education promoting leadership, police retention and female policing. It will strengthen complaints reporting through the 119 call centres and information desks and support Police Women Councils in the further development and implementation of their mandate. Capacity development tools and partnership approaches are set out including investing in MOIA trainers and educators through partnerships with educational institutions, legal technical support, South-South cooperation and the integration of UNAMA’s democratic policing Project.

The section also describes the targets for each phase and the staffing approach to achieve the following outputs by the end of phase 3:

Output 1: Relevant legislation, regulation and policy related to police reviewed to ensure conformance with prevailing constitutional values and evolving challenges;
Output 2: Strengthened MOIA capacity in training and development for uniform and civilian personnel at all ranks and grades, making optimal use of existing resources and addressing current and future MOIA training priorities and police leadership development needs;
Output 3: Expanded application of piloted community partnership approaches, including a strengthened role for Policewomen’s Councils and wider use of public surveys for strategy, policymaking, planning and Service delivery.

Duties and Responsibilities

Summary of Key Functions

Under the direct supervision of the MPD Project Manager, the Gender Specialist will support both Chief Technical Advisors (Police Professionalization and Institutional Development) to provide specialized gender advisory, coordination and management support.

The key functions of this position are:

Manage, quality assure and oversee delivery of all gender-related activities of the LOTFA MPD Annual Work Plan;
Liaise with and coordinate gender activities with internal UN bodies/agencies as well as external partners; and
Advise on and serve as the primary resource person for gender and gender-mainstreaming activities including facilitating knowledge sharing and management within UNDP, LOTFA and MOIA.

Manage, quality assure and oversee delivery of all gender-related activities of the LOTFA MPD Annual Work Plan and support in gender monitoring, reporting and evaluation processes:

Provide technical input to the development of annual work plans for the Project component and oversee the preparation of documentation in support of AWPs accordingly (including letters of agreement, budgets, TORs, and schedules of payment for ICs);
Support the delivery of the work plan and its outputs through consultants, contractors and partners;
Analyze and monitor progress with implementation of activities and advise CTAs on timely corrective actions for proper project delivery;
Together with project counterparts, support the CTA to identify new areas of support and facilitate implementation of new initiatives;
Work closely with the UNDP Project M&E Specialist to ensure that Monitoring and Evaluation data for Project component are delivered in a timely manner and in an appropriate format;
Oversee the contribution to weekly, bi-monthly, quarterly, mid-year, annual and any other reporting;
Promote information sharing and coordination with other components and UNDP projects;
Ensure compliance of operation with UNDP rules and regulations.

Liaise with and coordinate gender activities with internal UN bodies/agencies as well as external partners:

Integrate with the UNDP Rule of Law team to ensure technical coordination of relevant support to the MOIA;
Engage in liaison with other international partners and key stakeholders involved in gender within the MOIA;
Coordinate with other parts of the UNDP Country Office as well as the broader UN Country Team in Afghanistan and UNAMA;
Create partnerships with civil society actors and higher education institutions to help create capacity building networks;
Support in designing and developing external communication pieces including press release, media advisories, success stories and other public information products that promote MPD’s support to MOIA on gender.

Advise on and serve as the primary resource person for gender and gender-mainstreaming activities including facilitating knowledge sharing and management within UNDP, LOTFA and MOIA:

Support MOIA to ensure effective means to collect, store and analyze gender-related data to improve gender programming and gender-mainstreaming approaches;
Advise on key policy and legislative reform/development processes, ensuring there is an enabling environment for gender work streams;
Advise the MOIA on budgeting for gender activities and activities to promote and support the recruitment, retention and promotion of women in the ANP, in coordination with UNDP-LOTFA support for programme budgeting;
Advise and assist the MOIA to develop the effective community liaison structures that promote and develop a vision representing needs of women within the community as well as in police service;
Advise and assist the MOIA to include activities for inclusion of women in decision-making and consultation in the next annual revision of the 3-year strategic plan and other key strategic planning documents, ensuring effective adherence to UNSC 1325;
Develop interventions to strengthen gender awareness and integration in key departments of the MOIA and particularly those which have a link to issues which are prioritized by the project;
Advise and participate with the MOIA and UNDP LOTFA teams working on communication and outreach initiatives to ensure gender-sensitive messages and inclusion of issues affecting women in policing;
Advise on and promote actions that increase MOIA’s accountability to women officers including through enhanced accountability and complaints’ mechanisms through the Inspector General’s Office;
Make contributions to knowledge networks and communities of practice including corporate communications repositories including, appropriate learning strategies for counterparts.

Impact of Results

Gender considerations are effectively mainstreamed and integrated throughout the LOTFA MPD portfolio, thereby increasing the responsiveness and public confidence in the Afghan National Police (ANP).

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

Knowledge Management and Learning;
In-depth practical knowledge of inter-disciplinary development issues;
Seeks and applies knowledge, information, and best practices from within and outside of UNDP.

Development and Operational Effectiveness:

Ability to lead strategic planning, change processes, results-based management and reporting;
Ability to lead formulation, oversight of implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development projects;
Ability to apply development theory to the specific country context to identify creative, practical approaches to overcome challenging situations.

Management and Leadership:

Builds strong relationships with clients, focuses on impact and result for the client and responds positively to feedback;
Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities;
Ability to lead effectively, mentoring as well as conflict resolution skills;
Demonstrates strong oral and written communication skills;
Remains calm, in control and good humored even under pressure;
Proven networking, team-building, organizational and communication skills.

Job Knowledge/Technical Expertise:

Understands more advanced aspects of primary area of specialization as well as the fundamental concepts of related disciplines;
Keeps abreast of new developments in area of professional discipline and job knowledge and seeks to develop him/herself professionally;
Demonstrates comprehensive knowledge of information technology and applies it in work assignments;
Demonstrates comprehensive understanding and knowledge of the current guidelines and project management tools and utilizes these regularly in work assignments.

Client Orientation:

Anticipates client needs;
Works towards creating an enabling environment for a smooth relationship between the clients and service provider;
Demonstrates understanding of client’s perspective;
Solicits feedback on service provision and quality.

Core Competencies:

Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
Promoting ethics and integrity, creating organizational precedents;
Building support and political acumen;
Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation;
Building and promoting effective teams;
Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication;
Creating an emotionally intelligent organization;
Leveraging conflict in the interests of UNDP & setting standards;
Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning;
Promoting learning and knowledge management/sharing is the responsibility of each staff member;
Fair and transparent decision making; calculated risk-taking.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Master’s degree in public administration or social sciences with specialty in Gender issues or other relevant field from an accredited college or university.

Experience:

At least 5 years of professional experience in gender issues, including at least 3 years in public sector institutions;
Previous experience working with Ministries of Interior or police services is a distinct advantage;
Past experience working in conflict affected countries desirable;
Prior work experience in Afghanistan is an advantage.

Language:

Excellent written and oral English skills a necessary requirement;
Competence in Dari and/or Pashtu is an asset.

International vacancy

Interested and qualified International candidates should apply on-line through the UNDP Jobs site at http://www.af.undp.org/content/afghanistan/en/home/operations/jobs/ and please ensure that to fill up and upload Personal History Form-P.11 which is available at http://www.af.undp.org/content/afghanistan/en/home/operations/jobs/ in the relevant field of the on-line application.

Incomplete applications or applications received after the closing date will not be given consideration. Please note that only applicants who are short-listed will be contacted.

Successful candidates must be prepared to start work within 6 weeks of the offer of appointment.

Qualified female candidates are highly encouraged to apply.