Background

United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) is the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. A global champion for women and girls, UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting their needs worldwide. UN Women supports UN Member States as they set global standards for achieving gender equality, and works with governments and civil society to design laws, policies, programmes and services needed to implement these standards. It stands behind women’s equal participation in all aspects of life, focusing on five priority areas: increasing women’s leadership and participation; ending violence against women; engaging women in all aspects of peace and security processes; enhancing women’s economic empowerment; and making gender equality central to national development planning and budgeting. UN Women also coordinates and promotes the UN system’s work in advancing gender equality.
 
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is used as a guide for all programming on women’s rights and the Country Office focuses in areas of protection of women migrant workers, increasing the role of men in preventing violence against women; linking the twin pandemics of violence against women and HIV. UN Women produced a series of advocacy materials, reports, publications and studies capturing the main areas under the programme. In view of ensuring quality of materials used for awareness rising, advocacy and public dissemination, UN Women seeks to hire an English Editor Consultant to provide timely and qualitative editing of UN Women’s documents.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the supervision of the Regional Programme Manager, English Editor will be assigned to the following task(s):

Edit a variety of materials including reports, publication and studies for UN Women as per UNDP Style Guideline (http://web.undp.org/comtoolkit/reaching-the-outside-world/docs/tools/UNDPStyleManualNovember2008FINAL20Nov08.pdf), using appropriate terminology and taking into account the style and nuances of the United Nations language, UN Women Gender Term and Lexicon and the United Nations Multilingual Terminology (UNTERM). Areas covered by such documents include Human Rights, Gender, Development, Lawmaking and the Role of Judiciary in Promoting Women’s Access to Justice. This editing would entail

  • Ensuring correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, syntax and general usage of the language;
  • Checking the overall clarity and consistency of style, tone and structure;
  • Reorganizing the text or changing paragraph order to improve overall clarity and flow;
  • Rephrasing to improve the structure and content without changing the original meaning;
  • Remove redundancies, repetitions, inappropriate terms or jargon in track change mode;
  • Ensuring the consistency of formats for footnotes, bibliography, Tables, Figures, Annexes, etc. 
  • Checking the accuracy of the final proofs before approving proofs for printing

In doing this language editing, the editor is expected to perform terminology research (i.e. on UN Women, UN Women CEDAW SEAP website) to ensure the accuracy of the editing.

Proof read the reports after the layout design has been received from the printing company to ensure clear formatting, readability and no errors.

Edit the 6 documents as listed below as per UNDP Style Guideline and guides stated in the Scope of Work section
Submit in electronic version in two formats; one with tracked changes, the second a clear copy.

Competencies

Core values/Guiding principles:

Professionalism:
  • Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work;
  • Ability to work quickly and responsively.
Cultural sensitivity 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 and take initiative;
  • Communicating and Information Sharing: Facilitate and encourage open communication and strive for effective communication.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • Masters degree in Linguistics , English literature, Journalism and associated fields.

Experience:

  • At least 3 years of experience in editing / proof reading texts in the related strategic area;
  • Experience in language editing, experience with UN agencies will be preferred;
  • Understanding of gender equality and human rights is preferred.

Language:

  • Excellent command of English (written and oral).