Pakistan is one of the top ten countries affected by climate change with the 2022 floods underscoring the unpredictability, magnitude, and adverse impacts of the challenge. To date, almost one third of Pakistan is inundated affecting 33 million people in the form of displacement, hunger, increased vulnerability to diseases, and disruptions in the conduct of daily business including social and economic activities- more than 1,700 have died. Furthermore, it is estimated that 6.4 million people affected by the floods require immediate humanitarian assistance, 1.4 million are exposed to the elements because of damage to their homes, and more than 627,000 are seeking shelter in official Government run displacement sites.

The scale of damage is unprecedented and spread to all provinces of the country with damages estimated at more than USD 30 Billion. In this regard, out the 70 districts that have been declared calamity hit by the Government of Pakistan, the largest number (31) is in Balochistan, followed by Sindh (23), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (17), Gilgit-Baltistan (6), and Punjab (3). In Balochistan, it is estimated that more 61,000 households have been severely damaged in the province killing more than 200 people and adversely affecting the lives of more than 400,000 individuals. Being the second and third most affected provinces, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have witnessed immense damage to lives and property. It is estimated that more than 896,000 homes have been damaged in Sindh and more than 76,000 houses have been destroyed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with the death tolls exceeding 540 and 290 people in the two provinces respectively. Immediate coordinated and rigorous response is needed to begin to tackle the crisis.

UNDP is well positioned to act at the onset of crises to establish a clear link between humanitarian activities, recovery planning and the transition to sustainable development pathways. This has been clearly formulated in UNDP’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025 under which UNDP aims to strengthen the capacity of countries, institutions, and people to prevent, mitigate and respond to diverse risks and crisis, whether they stem from a conflict, a natural hazard or climate event or social and economic shocks or any combination of them. In this regard, the Agency has formulated a Floods Response Plan to respond to the multifaceted development challenges emanating from the unprecedented natural disaster- realized through the implementation of the Resilient Recovery to Floods 2022 Project, the response plan calls for reviving livelihoods, restoring community infrastructure and access to services, and improving governance-based response to tackle the flood emergency in Pakistan.

While meeting critical and immediate humanitarian needs where they appear is vital, these actions must be underpinned by simultaneous efforts to address rapidly growing multi-dimensional vulnerabilities, enhance resilience to shocks, protect development gains and invest in local capacities of civil society as an important agent of change in sustainable development. Furthermore, urgent efforts are needed to protect basic human rights like education, health, work, housing, and food, to address exclusion, intergenerational poverty that will further exacerbate the crises. In response to the current context and challenges UNDP has launched several initiatives that aims to enhance resilience of vulnerable communities by working directly at the community level.   

In this specific context and with the need to be able to respond to any type of conflict and/or disaster, the UNDP Country Office is taking measures to ensure its preparedness to support the Pakistan and its citizens in times of crises. In this regard, the UNDP Pakistan Country Office is launching development of National Experts Roster.

To be considered for inclusion in the roster, applicants would need to have expertise in one or more of the following areas of practice:

Communications/Public outreach

• Development and implementation of communication and public awareness strategy on different topics including but not limited to : disaster risk assessment, management, preparedness and response, climate change and climate resilience, gender mainstreaming, SDG, social inclusion, inter-agency coordination, elections, etc.
• Social media
• Professional photographer and/or video maker
• Graphic design
• Web design
• Translation/Interpretation including ethnic/local  languages
• Editing

Collaborative learning expertise

• CSO’s/CBO’s capacity building 
• Development of trust and mutual understanding among different actors
• Empowerment of national leaders
• Conceptualization of training programmes on different aspects
• Development of training curriculums
• Agricultural topics related training
• MSME business model development training

Programme and Project management

• Administrative services support
• Financial services support 
• Procurement services support
• ICT services support
• Project implementation support
• Civil engineer
• Civil works oversight and quality assurance
• Preparation of Bill of Quantity for Civil works
• Site engineer
• Monitoring, evaluation, and reporting
• Value chain assessments
• Project exit strategy developer

Climate change

• Environment
• Energy efficiency
• Disaster risk reduction
• Climate resilience
• Disaster preparedness and response
• Climate change adaption planning

Community support

• Coordination and local governance support
• MSME, private sector, and entrepreneurship specialist
• Loan facilitator
• Cash based interventions specialist
• Agriculture specialist
• Community development facilitators
• Livelihood specialist
• Social Cohesion specialist
• Social inclusion specialist

Electoral support

• Knowledge of electoral processes
• Technological support to electoral processes
• Electoral reforms expertise
• Electoral violence
• Access to electoral processes
• Elections support and capacity building

Research & Survey

• Literature review
• Development of survey methodologies
• Conducting surveys and survey data analysis
• Statistics
• Vulnerability assessment

Gender

• Gender expert
• Gender and social inclusion project implementation
• Gender mainstreaming
• Protection against sexual harassment

ICT and Information Management 

• Technology innovations
• Data management and analysis
• Mapping
• Geospital data management, analysis and advocacy
• Capacity building in information management
• Technical partnership
• Digital platforms and interactive dashboards
• Cybersecurity & cybersecurity protocols

Scope of Work

Tasks assigned in each individual assignment may include one or more of the following:

Policy and Strategy Development

• Prepare Policy briefs, Status papers on developmental challenges/issues based on secondary review of existing literature for evidence-based advocacy and policy dialogue
• Develop performance management systems
• Perform socio-economic analysis
• Technical assistance to local community and non-state actors at all level
• Develop institutional and regulatory frameworks to facilitate climate change and adaptation and disaster risk reduction
• Review of policy literature in respect to the subject
• Formulation of community development policy
• Identification of barriers and solutions for proposed interventions
• Risk identification and mitigation plans

Project Design, Formulation & other project related functions

• Prepare conceptual framework/concept note on new area of work/developmental challenge
• Provide technical assistance in identification of developmental challenges, target areas, beneficiaries and partners and formulation of implementation strategy for UNDP support
• Provide technical support in development on new interventions/projects with Implementation (operational plan, monitoring, and resource requirement) Institutional and management arrangements
• Identify issues, formulate, and implement interventions that focus on various activities.
• Conduct studies on project/program highlights, activities and processes involved.
• Prepare and review Project documents.
• Proceed with administrative, finance, IT,  logistic and procurement related tasks. 
• Identify areas/beneficiaries and partners; timing, sequencing of activities; mobilization of finance.
• Prepare project proposals to ensure innovation in concepts, strategies, and incorporation of best practices
• Prepare project exit strategy
• Project baseline , monitoring and evaluation, and reporting tools
• Partnership building and resource mobilization
• Perform civil engineering services including small infrastructure construction.
• Development and maintenance of different data management systems and platforms

Research and Documentation

• Undertake primary and/or secondary research in the new areas of developmental concern based on review of existing literature
• Develop research design, research questions and scope of work for undertaking primary research in new areas
• Develop research and survey methodologies
• Document good practices, case studies, innovations and pilot models for wider dissemination and sharing
• Undertake process documentation of models for upscaling

Capacity Development/Training

• Based on capacity assessment, develop Capacity Development Plan to achieve the milestones identified and address the identified capacity gaps.
• Develop target specific training tools/toolkits and manuals based on training needs assessment
• Design training curriculum, conduct and/or coordinate trainings programmes for various stakeholders
• Design and delivery of training toolkits, products etc.
• Conduct and/or Coordinate trainings and workshops

Knowledge Management

• Prepare knowledge and communications products related to the projects/programs (Audio, Video and Hard copies)
• Review of Knowledge products (subject, design and content)
• Prepare and publish featured articles and case studies in publications of the UNDP, other pertinent organizations, academic journals
• Disseminate knowledge and communications products.
• Develop literature on best practices and case studies.
• Guidance of different media intervention (Radio, TV, etc.)

Monitoring & Evaluation

• Monitor and evaluate effectiveness of national and sub-national policies
• Carry out required independent monitoring and evaluation of UNDP projects
• Facilitate community and process monitoring
• Undertake Baseline and Client satisfaction surveys

Educational Qualifications

Bachelors (for implementation support) and advanced university degree (Master’s or equivalent) in Business Administration, Management, Economics, Finance and Banking, International development, Sociology, Communications, Agriculture, Law, Environmental sciences, Natural resource economics, or related fields.

Experience

Band 1, Implementation Support: Masters Degree in relevant field with minimum 3 years of related work experience, or Bachelors Degree in relevant field with minimum 5 years of appropriate work experience.

Band 2, Specialist Support: Master’s Degree in relevant field with minimum 10 years of related work experience.

• Demonstrated experience in research, analysis, policy support, programme and project development, project management, knowledge management, and/or monitoring, reporting and evaluation.
• Proven experience working with a wide variety of development actors including governments, international development organizations (including United Nations agencies), donors and other funding agencies, private sector entities, and/or civil society organizations including community groups, academia, and the media.
• Previous work experience with international agencies in Pakistan is an asset.

Language Requirements

Excellent oral and written native language skills and good command of English is required.

Application:

Please note that UNDP jobsite system allows only uploading of one application document, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your on-line applications submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an e-mail acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application, if necessary.

Applications should include:

• A cover letter,
• Updated CV + contact details of 3 referees and;
• Proposed daily fee.

A brief cover letter, clearly identifying the “Areas of Expertise” as mentioned in the section above.

Travel

In the case of unforeseeable travel, payment of travel costs including economy tickets, lodging and terminal expenses will be reimbursed as per actual expenses in line with UNDP rules.

Successful candidates will be included in UNDP Pakistan Experts Roster for a period of 3 years. Inclusion in the expert roster does not guarantee a contract with UNDP.

Evaluation of Applications

Applicants will be screened against qualifications and the competencies specified above.

The inclusion into the National Roster of Experts will be offered to those individual consultants whose offers have been evaluated and determined as:

a) Responsive/compliant/acceptable, and

b) Meeting requirements across the functional bands in each selected area of expertise.

Applicants may be requested to participate in a brief interview.

Contracting

When a request for services arises, the roster manager shall contact the individuals in the specific area of expertise with ToR, location and dates of the assignment seeking confirmation of availability, as well as possible other costs.

The individual selected for the deployment will be contracted as per the UNDP IC modality. The Contract template and conditions are available at http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/procurement.html

Payment:

Payment(s) shall be made following certification by UNDP that the services related to each deliverable, as specified in the contract, have been satisfactorily performed and the deliverables have been achieved by or before the due dates specified, if any.

Other information

This call for experts is not linked to other UNDP rosters or to a specific UNDP recruitment opportunity.

Due to the large number of applications we receive, we are only able to inform the successful candidates about the outcome or status of the selection process.

For any clarification regarding this assignment please write to pakistan.procurement.info@undp.org and /or andra.brige@undp.org 

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.