UNDP Jobs - 57498- Consultant - Designing Tool and Pilot Programme on

Consultant - Designing Tool and Pilot Programme on Gender HIV and Plural Legal Systems

Location :

Home-based

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

13-Jul-2015

Application Deadline :

10-Jul-15 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

25 working days

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

Until 30 Setpember 2015

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

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. We are on the ground in 170 countries and territories, working with governments and people on their own solutions to global and national development challenges to help empower lives and build resilient nations.

The Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP’s Strategic Plan. BPPS’s staff provides technical advice to Country Offices; advocates for UNDP corporate messages, represents UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora including public-private dialogues, government and civil society dialogues, South-South and Triangular cooperation initiatives, and engages in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas. BPPS works closely with UNDP’s Crisis Response Unit (CRU) to support emergency and crisis response. BPPS ensures that issues of risk are fully integrated into UNDP’s development programmes. BPPS assists UNDP and partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links results based management and performance monitoring with more effective and new ways of working. BPPS supports UNDP and partners to be more innovative, knowledge and data driven including in its programme support efforts.

BPPS supports UNDP’s 2014-2017 Strategic Plan, focusing on 7 outcomes including strengthening institutions to progressively deliver universal access to basic services (outcome 3). The HIV Health and Sustainable development team, within BPPS, is helping to contribute towards this outcome.

HIV, Health and Development Approach

UNDP is a founding cosponsor of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), a partner of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and a co-sponsor of several other international health partnerships. UNDP’s work on HIV, health and development leverages the organization’s core strengths and mandates in human development, governance and capacity development to complement the efforts of specialist health-focused UN agencies. UNDP delivers three types of support to countries in HIV, health and development.

First, UNDP helps countries to mainstream attention to HIV and health into action on gender, poverty and the broader effort to achieve and sustain the Millennium Development Goals. For example, UNDP works with countries to understand the social and economic factors that play a crucial role in driving health and disease, and to respond to such dynamics with appropriate policies and programmes outside the health sector. UNDP also promotes specific action on the needs and rights of women and girls as they relate to HIV.

Second, UNDP works with partners to address the interactions between governance, human rights and health responses. Sometimes this is done through focused or specialized programmes, such as promoting attention to the role of legal environments (law and access to justice) in facilitating stronger HIV responses, including the use of flexibilities in intellectual property and human rights law to lower the cost of drugs and diagnostics and to increase access to HIV-related treatment. UNDP also works to empower and include people living with HIV and marginalized populations who are disproportionately affected by HIV - also known as key populations - such as sex workers, men who have sex with men, transgender people. Beyond these focused efforts, UNDP plays a key role in ensuring attention to HIV and health within broader governance and rights initiatives, including support to district and municipal action on MDGs, strengthening of national human rights institutions and increasing access to justice for marginalized populations.

Third, as a trusted, long-term partner with extensive operational experience, UNDP supports countries in effective implementation of complex, multilateral and multisectoral health projects, while simultaneously investing in capacity development so that national and local partners can assume these responsibilities over time. The UNDP/Global Fund partnership is an important part of this work, facilitating access to resources for action on MDG 6 by countries that face constraints in directly receiving and managing such funding. UNDP partners with countries in crisis/post-crisis situations, those with weak institutional capacity or governance challenges, and countries under sanctions. When requested, UNDP acts as interim Principal Recipient in these settings, working with national partners and the Global Fund to improve management, implementation and oversight of Global Fund grants, while simultaneously developing national capacity for governments or local entities to be able to assume the Principal Recipient role over time.

The HIV, Health and Development Group in the BPPS has a cluster on Mainstreaming, Gender, and MDGs. This cluster includes UNDP’s role as co-lead UNAIDS cosponsoring agency on Gender issues. Gender inequality and harmful gender norms are not only associated with the spread of HIV but also with its consequences. Women and girls bear a disproportionate burden of responsibility for families and communities affected by HIV, and women who disclose their HIV-positive status often face greater stigma and suffer more extreme negative reactions than men. Gender norms and expectations also influence male sexuality, risk-taking and their vulnerability to HIV. While promoting gender equality is important in itself, it is also crucial to fostering more effective national HIV responses, and to ensuring broader public health and human rights.

Objective of the assignment

The objective of the consultancy is to provide research, writing and program and tool design support to the HIV, Health and Development Group in its work on HIV, gender equality and legal empowerment, with a focus on gender equality, HIV and plural legal systems.

Situated at the intersection of law, health and gender equality, the challenge of improving women’s access to justice in the context of HIV requires a better understanding of the linkages between gender equality, HIV and plural legal systems. The programming tool under development builds on the recommendations of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, as well as UNDP’s broader work on HIV, gender equality and women’s empowerment. It contributes towards UNDP’s strategic goal of improving women’s access to justice, gender equality and the elimination of gender-based violence. This much needed programming tool will help guide and shape UNDP’s and partners’ engagement in this sector. The programming tool will provide a framework for assessment, information gathered about opportunities and challenges for addressing gender and HIV in plural legal contexts, and examples of effective programming. It will be designed for country level partners, including UNDP country office staff. The tool will facilitate broader engagement of actors working on HIV, gender equality, human rights and legal empowerment.

Duties and Responsibilities

Working with the UNDP HIV, Health and Development (HHD) Group in BPPS, under the overall guidance of the Gender Specialist, the consultant will undertake the Activities outlined below.

Support the HHD team in revising and finalizing programming tool to support in-country work on gender equality and HIV in plural legal contexts;
Support HHD team and partners to validate the tool and complete the final revision based on feedback;
Support HHD to develop a pilot for the implementation of the tool in a pilot country (to be confirmed).

Specific Deliverables:

Completed draft gender equality, HIV and legal pluralism “toolkit”/programming tool. Envisaged Deadline: July 2015;;Final revised of toolkit, based on the results of a validation meeting or feedback from pilot country partners. Envisaged Deadline: early August 2015;
Designed pilot programme for implementation of toolkit in country, including: (1) A completed capacity assessment of regional and national partners to inform the overall pilot development plan; (2) A training sessions designed to build partner capacities to implement, monitor and evaluate pilot. Envisaged Deadline: September 2015.

Expected Outputs:

Finalized gender equality, HIV and legal pluralism “toolkit”/programming tool;
Completed design for pilot programme to implement the toolkit.

Reporting:

The Consultant will report to the HHD Gender Specialist and the HHD Deputy Director.

Competencies

Core Competencies:

Demonstrated analytical skills on gender and development;
Ability to work with a multi-disciplinary team and in a multi-cultural environment;
Excellent communication, presentation and writing skills;
Familiarity with the UN system, in particular with UNDP and its mandate;
Experience preparing programming tools in a related area and providing technical support to national partners.

Organizational Competencies:

Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competencies:

Strong analytical, negotiation and communication skills, including ability to produce high quality practical advisory reports and knowledge products;
Professional and/or academic experience in one or more of the areas of the Development or knowledge management field.

Project and Resource Management:

Ability to produce high quality outputs in a timely manner while understanding and anticipating the evolving client needs;
Ability to focus on impact and results for the client, promoting and demonstrating an ethic of client service;
Strong organizational skills;
Ability to work independently, produce high quality outputs;
Sound judgment, strategic thinking and the ability to manage competing priorities.

Communications and Advocacy:

Strong ability to write clearly and convincingly, adapting style and content to different audiences and speak clearly and convincingly;
Strong presentation skills in meetings with the ability to adapt for different audiences;
Strong analytical, research and writing skills with demonstrated ability to think strategically;
Strong capacity to communicate clearly and quickly;
Strong inter-personal, negotiation and liaison skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or higher) in international development, either in law, health or gender or in a related field, and with specific experience in gender and the law.

Experience:

Minimum 5 years of experience in the area of development, gender equality and women’s empowerment;
Very good knowledge of HIV and development issues;
Experience in implementing tools or programmes in a development context;
Strong track record of writing/developing programming tools and guidance materials;
Knowledge of gender, the law and human rights issues, with some experience working in or with plural legal contexts;
Working knowledge and experience of UNDP policies and programmes in the area of gender equality would be beneficial.

Language:

Fluency in English (written and oral);
Knowledge of another UN language is desirable.

Travel

No travel is expected for this consultancy. In the case of additional and unforeseeable travel, payments of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between UNDP HHD Team and the Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be covered and paid by UNDP. The fare will always be “most direct, most economical” and any difference in price with the preferred route will be paid for by the expert.

Payment Method

Payment will be certified through the Certificate of Payment (COP) and timesheet, certified by the direct supervisor. The rate will be based on the fee mentioned in the consulant's offer.

Evaluation

Applicants will be screened against qualifications and competencies specified below through a desk review and/or an interview process. Those selected for the next stage of the selection process will be reviewed based on a cumulative analysis method that combines the results of technical and financial evaluation results.

Specifically, the award of the contract will be made to the Individual Consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation; Technical Criteria weight: 70 points; Financial Criteria weight: 30 points.

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points (70%) out of a maximum 70 points on the Technical Evaluation will be considered for the financial Evaluation.

Criteria for Technical Evaluation (70 points maximum):

Very good knowledge of HIV and development issues (20 points);
Experience in implementing tools or programmes in a development context (20 points);
Knowledge of gender, the law and human rights issues, with some experience working in or with plural legal contexts (20 points);
Working knowledge and experience of UNDP policies and programmes in the area of gender equality would be beneficial (10 points).

Criteria for Financial Evaluation (30 points maximum): The following formula will be used to evaluate the financial proposal:

p = y (µ/z), where;
p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated;
y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal;
µ = price of the lowest priced proposal;
z = price of the proposal being evaluated.

Annexes:

The Individual Consultant’s General Terms and Conditions can be found here: http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/documents/procurement/documents/IC%20-%20General%20Conditions.pdf.

Additional questions:

Please include a CV;
Please note that the system takes only one attachment. Scan all documents into a single PDF file to attach;
Please also provide a writing sample from a recent and relevant guidance document, tool or pilot programme document where you have been the lead author.