Antecedentes

The UNDP Country Office for Somalia (CO) has since 2010 been re-positioning itself for a more effective and coherent response to gender equality and women’s empowerment in its programmes. While CO programming to date has been informed by significant efforts to ensure gender sensitivity and gender responsiveness, the current move is to upscale to more gender transformative programming i.e. by addressing the causes of gender inequality through strategic actions that seek to transform the unequal power relations between men and women resulting in improved status of women and gender equality.

The current Country Programme Document (CPD) (2011-2015) provides a framework within which to implement the mandates of gender mainstreaming in the country programme overall and responds directly to the acute challenges faced by Somali women today. The CPD contains one specific outcome on gender (Outcome 4) and gender is mainstreamed across the other three outcomes.

• Somali women and men are better able to build peace and manage conflict,
• Somali women and men benefit from more inclusive, equitable and accountable governance, improved services, human security, and access to justice and human rights;
• Somali women and men benefit from increased sustainable livelihoods opportunities and improved natural resources management
• Somali women and men attain greater gender equality and are empowered

In 2012, the country office established a gender unit to have dedicated capability to implement gender specific interventions and support mainstreaming across other projects. The Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment project is implemented by the gender unit and responds to the four sub-outcomes under Outcome 4 of the CDP.

• 4.1: Gender equality and the empowerment of women implemented through advocacy initiatives in partnership with civil society and public institutions.
• 4.2: Women’s participation in peace-building, representation, civil service and public life increased at all levels.
• 4.3: Women are empowered in social and economic development.
• 4.4: Women supported by appropriately designed, implemented and enforced legal and policy frameworks in line with Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and Security Council resolutions 1325 (2000), 1888 (2009) and 1889 (2009)

The GEWE project works with CSO’s and the national gender machineries to empower women to achieve these outcomes. Through decades of conflict, Somali women have contributed immensely to maintaining daily life and keeping local communities functioning. However, they continue to face a great number of challenges in their daily lives and in accessing justice and other basic rights. Women were largely marginalized in the peace process and in the new Somali parliament less than 14 % of seats are held by women. Sexual and gender based violence is widespread and response mechanisms insufficient. Illiteracy rates are higher for women than for men, girls continue to be taken out of school earlier and women continue to be subject to the authority of male family members.

Furthermore, with the inroad of Islamist ideologies promulgated from some Arab Gulf countries the public perception of acceptable behavior for women within Islam has become stricter over the recent decades. While the most radical versions of this ideology, as exemplified in Somalia by Al-Shabab, is not readily accepted by the Somali population, the general trend has been towards conservative interpretations of Islam that generally limit women’s freedoms and opportunities. This means that there has been only very limited space for more progressive views on women’s rights in Islam.

While there are a number of strong and active women’s rights organisations operating in Somalia, the years of conflict have limited opportunities for formal training and exchange with organisations from other countries in the region. Knowledge and understanding of international gender frameworks are limited among Somali women’s rights activists meaning that they are not able to draw effectively on international standards and experiences when developing local campaigns and interventions. It is against this backdrop that the GEWE project is planning to provide trainings to Somali women’s rights activists on the international frameworks on gender and how these can be applied in Somalia. For this purpose, a gender trainer is required to develop and facilitate training that will build the advocacy capacity of Somali women’s rights activists and enable them to promote legal and policy frameworks in Somalia in line with CEDAW and relevant SCR’s.

Deberes y responsabilidades

The purpose of the Consultancy is to build the capacity of women’s rights activists and women in elected bodies in Somalia to do effective advocacy for women’s rights based on international standards.

• To impart contextualized knowledge and understanding of the international frameworks on gender to Somali women’s rights activists and women in elected bodies
• To facilitate preparation of small localized activities for participants in the training to spread their new knowledge to their professional networks.

• To enhance participants’ theoretical knowledge and conceptual understanding of the frameworks for gender and women’s right internationally (CEDAW, Beijing Platform, SCR 1325 and subsequent resolutions), regionally (Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa/Maputo Protocol) and nationally (the Somali Provisional Federal Constitution)
• To facilitate discussions aimed at enabling participants to see the comparative strengths and weaknesses of the different frameworks.
• To conceptualize the relevance of the different frameworks to the Somali context.
• To facilitate planning by participants of small localized out-reach activities to disseminate what they have learned at the training to relevant target groups within their professional network.

The consultant will work closely with the Gender Unit to plan and deliver the gender trainings and be supervised by the Gender Specialist.

Training planning:

The consultant will be expected to review relevant documentation especially national gender policies and strategies of the various regions of Somalia, reports of consultations between UN agencies and Somali women, Human Development Report and other recent UN reports on women’s situation in Somalia with a view to understanding the context that Somali women’s rights activists are working in.

This review will form the basis for the final design of the training modules, programme and development of training materials tailor-made to the Somali context with sensitivity to each region.

The consultant will deliver a participatory training that will increase the participants’ technical knowledge of international frameworks on gender and foster reflection on how these can be applied to promote women’s rights in Somali.

At the end of the workshops, all participants will be asked to record on video the most important lesson they are taking away from the training (an alternative in form of audio or writting may be provided if some beneficiaries feel uncomfortable with video). These recordings may be used by UNDP and its partners for public awareness raising campaigns.

Following the training the consultant will develop a contextualized user guide for Somali women’s rights activists providing inspiration and guidance on how to apply and invoke international gender frameworks in the Somali context.

Working with the Gender Unit the consultant will facilitate a session during the trainings in which participants in groups develop small localized outreach activities aimed at disseminating the knowledge of international gender frameworks within their professional networks. Following the training, the consultant will liaise with participants to finalize the activity descriptions and collect activity reports from participants for submission to the gender unit.

The consultant will prepare a Workshop report for submission to the UNDP Gender Specialist.

This entire Consultancy is expected last for 24 working days within a validity period of 5 months (from issuance of the consultancy contract) broken down as follows: 10 workshop days (including travels to the regions); 10 planning, preparation and reporting days; 4 days for development of the sub-office action plans and other knowledge products. The consultant will work under close supervision of the Gender Specialist based on the draft plan of work below. The consultancy will be monitored and progress to set tasks determined accordingly:

• A desk-top analysis of entry points and challenges for effective application of international gender frameworks in Somalia
• Final training modules and programme
• User guide for Somali activists on how to use international gender frameworks
• Project descriptions for localized outreach activities by participants.
• A report of the training workshop including an analysis of the participant’s evaluation forms and the materials used as appendixes.

• 15%  - 1st Installment upon Signature
• 45%  - 2nd Installment upon Submission of draft report and project descriptions for localized outreach activities by participants.
• 40%  - 3rd Installment upon submission of satisfactory final report after final comments

Competencias

• Knowledge of critical gender issues in the Somali context; in addition in a conflict and Islamic context
• Excellent skills in gender mainstreaming, analysis and monitoring
• Proven ability of planning and managing training programmes in related issues 
• Excellent communication skills
• Good interpersonal, presentation and teamwork skills
• Ability to set priorities and manage time effectively

Habilidades y experiencia requeridas

• Master’s degree in relevant social science discipline (preferably gender studies).

• Minimum of 7 years’ experience in the field of gender and development.
• Solid understanding of and experience with implementation of international gender frameworks.
• Experience in participatory training and adult experiential learning techniques
• Good working knowledge and experience of the UN System; knowledge of UNDP processes and Gender Equality policies is an asset
• Experience in working with local CSO’s and with working in conflict settings
• Experience in delivering presentations with translation