Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates the United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality translate into action. UN Women supports improved UN coordination and accountability mechanisms, and up-scales the quality of support provided to Member States in addressing national gender equality priorities.

UN Women has placed emphasis on strengthening its country presences in order to provide stronger and more coherent support to Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant partners to effectively deliver on gender equality.

In Mozambique, UN Women’s work encompasses interventions in the areas of women’s economic empowerment, ending violence against women and girls, gender responsive planning and budgeting, women’s leadership and participation and women peace and security. The work takes place at central, provincial and district level. The main partners are government institutions at the central, provincial and district levels, media and civil society organizations.

Through technical assistance, capacity building and advocacy UN Women assists a wide range of national partners and other development stakeholders to put in place the policies, laws, services, adequate resources, implementation, monitoring and accountability mechanisms and capacities to unlock rapid national progress in attaining national and international commitments to women and gender equality as part of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. 
 
Under the overall guidance of the Representative and direct supervision of the Programme Specialist, the communication officer leads the development and implementation of the Country Office communications strategies in line with corporate standards geared towards increasing the outreach and visibility of contribution to the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment in Mozambique.

Duties and Responsibilities

Summary of Key Functions

  • Provide advice and manage the CO institutional and programmatic communications and media/press relations
  • Manage the CO media/press relations
  • Provide advice and support the organization of communications events and implementation of campaigns
  • Build communications partnerships and media alliances
  • Coordinate with the other UN Agencies in Mozambique on communications
  • Description of Functions
  • Provide advice and manages the Constitutional and programmatic communications
  • Manage the CO institutional and programmatic communications
  • Develop and implement a strategy in line with corporate guidelines to enhance the CO positioning and support resource mobilization
  • Development/production of communication materials for marketing and awareness raisings activities including briefing materials and press releases
  • Organize and conduct the communication component of project activities/events including drafting the background notes, agreeing the terms of participation with partners, media relations, preparing talking points, invitations, press-releases
  • Organizes press-conferences, interviews, press tours and other events with media involvement
  • Oversee and manage the CO office social media accounts in line with corporate social media policy and provides inputs to corporate social media accounts
  • Produce quality content and ensures publication via multiple channels for dissemination including newspapers – print and online, radio, TV and Social media as well as internal media platforms such as UN Women websites, intranet, and other related web-based communications
  • Produce quality and appropriate information materials for outreach to different audiences – Ex Newsletter, posts etc.
  • Identify stories from all CO interventions and package in different formats to inform the media, UN partners, donors and the public (articles, interviews, posts etc.)
  • Participate in hiring the selection and supervises the production of audio visual materials
  • Identify and use of the most effective channels for dissemination of all information products to relevant target audiences
  • Contribute content to the regional communications networks and platforms to ensure the visibility of the CO’s work
  • Develop and implementation of a simple tool for tracking and assessing progress and performance of the implementation of communications and advocacy activities.
  • Manage the CO media/press relations:
  • Develop and implement a strategy in line with corporate guidelines to enhance the positioning of the CO with the media
  • Build and maintains strong media partnerships and alliances
  • Identify opportunities for engagement with the media press conferences and leads;
  • Draft press releases and media kits
  • Respond clear, consistent and timely to media inquiries ensuring issuance of statements and corporate positions to media and other external audiences;
  • Maintain and expands contacts with the media
  • Set up and maintain an updated database of the office’s media contacts
  • Provide advice and support to the CO on special events and campaigns:
  • Identify opportunities for and leads implementation of the communications components of UN Women or UN Campaigns, ex: HeForShe, Orange days, 16 Days of Activism ;
  • Conceptualizes and organizes special events or UN Women inputs to special events with a view to reaching wider audiences; to that end
  • Liaise with UN Women Communications Team at the regional and Global levels to feed national/regional/global initiatives and vice versa.
  • Build communications partnerships and media alliances:
  • Identifies and develops new communications partnerships and media alliances to enhance the visibility and cement UN Women leading position on Gender and manages and nurtures existing partnerships
  • Organizes press-conferences, interviews, press tours and other events with media involvement
  • Identifies innovative opportunities and new communications tools and platforms which can serve to highlight the work of UN Women;
  • Guides and collaborates closely with regional and HQs communications officers to advance regional and global communications 

Competencies

Core Values and Guiding Principles

Integrity:

  • Demonstrate the values of United Nations and UN Women, act without consideration of personal gain, resist undue political pressure in decision-making, no abuse of power or authority, stand by decisions in the organization’s interest, and take action in cases of unprofessional or unethical behavior.

Professionalism:

  • Show pride in work and achievements, demonstrate professional competence and mastery of subject matter, conscientious and efficient in meeting commitments and achieving results, motivated by professional rather than personal concerns, show persistence when faced with challenges, and remain calm in stressful situations.

Respect for Diversity:

  • Work effectively with people from all backgrounds, treat all people with dignity and respect, treat men and women equally, show respect for and understand diverse opinions by examining own biases and behaviors to avoid stereotypical responses, and do not discriminate against any individual or group.

Core competencies:

Ethics and Values:

  • Promoting Ethics and Integrity / Creating Organizational Precedents

Working in Teams:

  • Promoting effective teams

Communicating Information and Ideas:

  • Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication

Self-management and Emotional intelligence:

  • Creating an emotionally intelligent organization

Conflict Management / Negotiating and Resolving Disagreements:

  • Leveraging conflict in the interests of the organization & setting standards

Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning:

  • Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning

Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making:

  • Fair and transparent decision-making; calculated risk-taking

Planning and Organizing

  • Demonstrates ability to plan own work and manage conflicting priorities;
  • Identifies priority activities and assignments and adjusts priorities as required.

Functional Competencies:

  • Outstanding networking and communication skills;
  • Capacity to work with diverse partners including mass media;
  • Interest and commitment to the empowerment of women;
  • Knowledge of gender issues;
  • In-depth substantive knowledge of communications for development

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • Degree or equivalent in communication, journalism, public relations or related areas.

Experience:

  • Minimum 5 years of relevant experience in Communications, public relations, publishing or advocacy (experience with International Organizations and UN an asset)
  • Knowledge of gender equality and women´s empowerment
  • Demonstrated experience in designing and implementing communication and media outreach strategies and plans in support of corporate goals;
  • Demonstrated experience in developing content that clearly communicates development ideas for media, web, print production and audio-visual productions
  • Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages
  • Experience in handling of web-based communications (social media)

Language Requirements:

  • Excellent written and spoken English and Portuguese required.