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. UN Women works to ensure that women migrant workers contribute to sustainable development and benefit from reduced social and economic inequality through decent work and safe migration.
Recruitment of workers has become a successful business and growing area of service provision among private employment and recruitment agencies in Bangladesh. Private agents largely account for placement of the majority of Bangladeshi workers abroad.
A number of international conventions have advanced a guiding framework of what constitutes ethical recruitment, in particular ILO Convention 181 on Private Employment Agencies adopted in 1997, which contains important provisions aimed at preventing abuses of migrant workers in relation to recruitment and placement through private employment agencies. In 2005, UNIFEM supported the adoption of the Covenant of Ethical Conduct and Good Practices for Overseas Employment Services Providers. The ILO convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers completes the set of guidance’s available to government and the sector to regulate industry.
Government has an important role to play with regard to the implementation of international standards and regulating the industry. Beyond regulations, the recruitment agencies themselves and their National industry association(s) are also key players in ensuring that ethical recruitment practices prevail. National associations of recruitment agencies play a critical role in bringing the sector together and creating an enabling environment allowing the betterment of the industry. In Bangladesh, BAIRA (Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies) is an association of national level recruiting agencies formed with approximately 1300-member agencies in collaboration with and support from the Government of Bangladesh .
In 2005, overseas employment service providers and National associations from 8 Asian countries adopted the Covenant of Ethical Conduct and Good Practices for Overseas Employment Services Providers at UNIFEM’s Regional Consultation of Recruitment and Placement Agencies on Good Practices to Protect Women Migrant Workers. UN Women organized a Regional Workshop on protection of Women Migrant Workers and Ethical Conduct of Recruitment Agencies in Vietnam in 2013. Since 2005, BAIRA has been engaged with UN Women on developing and adopting ethical recruitment practices at national and regional levels.
Since 2015, UN Women implementing a regional project in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Nepal titled Empowerment of Women Migrant Workers in South Asia through Implementation of Standard Terms of Employment, funded by Swiss Development of Cooperation (SDC). The Gender Responsive Self-Assessment Tool for Recruitment Agencies was developed as part of this project. The Tool was jointly developed by UN Women and IOM and provides a checklist for recruitment agencies to ensure processes are adapted to meet the specific identified needs of women migrant workers. It is aligned with international ethical recruitment frameworks especially the IOM International Recruitment Integrity System (IRIS) and is designed as a practice tool for recruitment agencies, providing users with clear information and guidance on next steps to address gaps identified by undertaking the assessment.
Recruitment agencies have a critical role in reducing the vulnerability of women migrant workers to violations of their rights and promoting equality of opportunity and outcome for women migrant workers. This self-assessment tool was designed to enable recruitment agencies and employers to better respond to the needs of women migrant workers, who encounter various challenges throughout the migration process starting at the pre-employment phase, during recruitment, prior to departure, during the period of employment, and during and after the return to the country of origin.
Duties and Responsibilities
Overall Purpose and Specific Objectives: Support BAIRA to implement the Gender-Responsive Self-Assessment Tool for Recruitment Agencies, to strengthen the capacity of private recruiting agencies to better respond to the needs of women migrant workers of Bangladesh.
Specific objectives of the task:
- Adopt the regional Gender-responsive Self-Assessment Tool for Recruitment Agencies, including by translating the Tool into Bangla and contextualizing its content to Bangladesh; ensuring it is practical and user-friendly;
- Train selected recruiting agencies licensed to recruit women migrants on the Gender-responsive Self-Assessment Tool.;
Scope of the work and main responsibilities:
Under the direct supervision of the Women’s Economic Empowerment Programme Analyst of UN Women and overall guidance from the Regional Programme Coordinator - Migration, she or he will be carried out the work in line with the scope of assignment. The scope of work will include but is not limited to:
- Adapt the information and guidance in the regional Gender-responsive Self-assessment tool, ensuring it continues to comply with international standards, while being applicable within the relevant laws, regulatory frameworks, principles and standards in place in Bangladesh;
- Translate the Gender-responsive Self-assessment Tool from English in to standard and user-friendly Bangla;
- Conduct training programme for the selected recruiting agencies on the tool to use it effectively; This training to gather information on priority actions within the tool, and mechanisms within BAIRA to ensure the principles in the Tool are implemented.
Tasks:
- Prepare methodology and workplan for the task;
- Translate the Gender-responsive Self-assessment Tool in to standard and user-friendly Bangla from English (15 pages tool in English) and contextualizing its content to Bangladesh;
- Conduct Training session(day-long) with selected recruiting agencies and priority actions and implementation mechanism to identify for sustainability.
Deliverables:
- Deliverables: Methodology and workplan by By 25th of March 2019;
- Deliverables: Edited, standard Bangla and printer’s version of the tool by by 25th of April 2019;
- Deliverables: Final report on the task by by 15th of May, 2019.
Contract period and work location:
The National consultant will be based in Dhaka, Bangladesh and work at the UN Women Office as required. Travel costs and Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) for authorized travel outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh will be provided, if required, as per UN Women policy.
Competencies
Corporate Competencies:
- Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
- Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UN Women
- Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
- Treats all people fairly without favoritism;
- Fulfills all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.
Functional Competencies:
- Ability to pragmatically apply in-depth knowledge and experience of issues and practices in the fields of women's rights and gender equality in Bangladesh;
- Strong communications skills, and experience in facilitating training session with Government, CSOs and RAs desirable;
- Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude; Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities.
Required Skills and Experience
Education:
- Minimum Master’s degree on Economics, Development Studies or other Social Science related subject.
Experiences:
- Minimum 10 years working experience within the migration sector (including skills development, recruitment agencies, and migration governance) is required;
- A proven track record of developing capacity building tools/ training manuals/ training materials on labour migration focusing on issues affecting women migrants;
- Demonstrated experience in translating (English-Bangla) tools/ manual on gender and migration;
- Strong background to deliver the planned results in a professional manner, and to ensure the quality of the product.
Language
- Excellent Proficiency in written and spoken Bangla and English is required.
Submission of application:
The Offer should contain a technical and a financial proposal which includes
- Updated CV;
- Personal History Form (P11);
- Writing/ translation of similar work sample;
- Financial proposal indicating daily rate or lump sum amount against deliverables.
NOTE: Documents required before contract signing:
- UN Personal History Form;
- Full medical examination and Statement of Fitness to work and travel for consultants with travel involved. (This is not a requirement for RLA contracts);
- Security Certificate BSAFE: EN: https://agora.unicef.org/course/info.php?id=17891;
- Individual subscribers over 65 years of age are required to undergo a full medical examination including x-rays at their own cost and obtaining medical clearance from the UN Medical Director prior to taking up their assignment;
- Release letter in case the selected consultant is government official.
Only applications will all items mentioned above will be considered
Payments
Payments for this consultancy will be based on the achievement of deliverables and certification that each has been satisfactorily completed, at the end of the assignment
Please use "National Consultant: Capacity building of Recruiting Agencies (RAs) on Gender Responsive Monitoring (GRM) of recruitment process." as the subject heading of your application.
All applications must include (as an attachment) the CV and the financial proposal. Applications without financial proposal will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment. “Personal History Form - P 11” can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employme