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 centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States' priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

Under its Women, Peace and Security portfolio, the UN Women Country Office in Mozambique, in partnership with the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Action (MGCAS) and with support from the Governments of Iceland and Norway is implementing the Project “Promoting Women and Girls´ Effective Participation in Peace, Security and Recovery in Mozambique.” Promoting and facilitating the documentation of good practices, in particular at community level, is one of the core areas of focus of the project.

The project seeks to document good practices in the different actors’ contribution to the promotion of women, peace and security in 14 districts that were most affected by armed conflicts in 7 provinces – Sofala, Manica, Zambezia, Tete, Gaza, Inhambane and Cabo Delgado.

Documentation of good practices on gender and women’s empowerment helps guide all actors in developing policy, programmes and legislation that better address challenges facing women and girls. Documenting good practices enable one to exploring solutions and taking them to scale to maximize gains for African women and girls within the context of accelerating achievements and realizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the African Union Agenda 2063. Further, the documentation of good practices produces a pool of knowledge of what actions took place, when and the way they contributed to a positive change in the lives of women and girls. The process of documenting good practices also provides the opportunity to capture challenges, risks and mitigation to contribute to learning.

Moreover, the documentation of good practices on promotion of women, peace and security and women´s socio-economic recovery will:

·         Provide an opportunity to systematically record and share good practices within and between countries and regions, and in turn, increase the potential for accelerating gains for women and girls;

·         Demonstrate the diverse ways that organizations/actors address challenges implementing the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and fostering the socio-economic empowerment of women and girls; and

·          Broaden the understanding about what works, and encouraging replicability, scalability and/or investment in further documenting successes and challenges in implementation. The documentation of good practices should balance information and details related to the intervention with good analyses to create a knowledge base of what works and why particular approaches succeed in certain contexts.

It is in this context; UN Women seeks to document the good practice of the realization of Women´s Solidarity Camps on Peace and Security that have occurred in the last 2 years in the province of Sofala. UN Women, in partnership with the Sofala Association of Women Sharing Ideas, have realized a couple of women´s solidarity camps on peace and security that brought to light the impact of conflicts on the lives of women and girls in Mozambique and developing grassroot methods of surpassing these hardships and striving for the socio-economic empowerment of women and girls whilst advocating for sustainable and durable peace. Furthermore, the Solidarity Camps on Peace and Security at community level have proven to be an innovative, very effective and low-cost model to gather women and young girls from urban and rural areas to discuss and understand the unique ways in which women and girls are affected at several levels by conflicts in Mozambique as well as draw coping methods and strategies to promote the socio-economic empowerment of women and girls in post-conflict contexts. 

II. Objectives of the Consultancy

The main objective of the consultancy is to document good practices in the promotion of peace, security and economic recovery for women and girls by civil society and the women’s movements at grass roots and community level.

Other Objectives:

Encourage gender equality actors and advocates to learn from these experiences and adopt similar approaches. Make both an empirical and analytical contribution to the field, with the overall aim of maximising the transformative potential of training for gender equality.

Identify the enabling factors that contribute to the success of the intervention in that specific context, including challenges faced by women in promoting peace and engage in conflict mediation at the local level;

Duties and Responsibilities

 Under the overall supervision of the UN Women Country Office Programme Specialist, the consultant will:

1.       Present an Inception Report

  • Draw a road map and detailed action plan for the entire consultancy and research (including a timeframe).
  • The methodology will be developed by the consultant (using the guidelines provided in the methodology section) and presented for approval to UN Women. The methodology should use qualitative research methods that are appropriate to address the objectives of the consultant and account for complexity of gender relations and to ensure participatory and inclusive processes that are culturally appropriate. These methods should be responsive to human rights and gender equality principles and facilitate the engagement of key stakeholders. Measures will be taken to ensure the quality, reliability and validity of data and data collection tools. Limitations with respect to the sample (representativeness) should be stated clearly.
  • Conduct a desk review of existing literature on the subject on global and local context with a strong focus on feminist concept on grassroots and community-based activities.
  • The inception report should identify possible members that will compose the reference group and consultation and reflection workshop in Sofala.

2.        Organize 1 Consultation and Reflection Workshop

•                     Co-organize and co-facilitate, with Sofala Association of Women Sharing Ideas, one regional workshop to gather data on the Solidarity Camps on Peace and Security at community level as an example of a good practice.

•                     The workshop, with feminist activists, will serve to reflect collectively on the achievements made thus far, the advantages and disadvantages of having a community-based feminist movement in the promotion of peace, security and economic recovery of women and girls in the central region of Mozambique.

•                     During the workshop (with a Solidarity Camp format), the consultant should also conduct individual interviews with the feminist leaders as well as other key stakeholders.

3.       Produce a Good Practice Report

·         Produce a good practice report that reflect the template in Annex 1.

·         Plan and coordinate all the activities for the primary data collection.

  • Primary data collection should be undertaken through observations, site visit, individual key informant interviews and focal group discussions with representatives of relevant government institutions (duty bearers), women´s and feminist activities and key community players seeking to address gender equality and human rights issues.
  • Produce the report on the good practice with the supervision of UN Women in a timely manner.
  • The consultant is required to produce the report in English and in Portuguese
  • The consultant should organize a validation and dissemination of good practices workshop in Maputo. The workshop should involve subject matter experts, activists and members of civil society, government officials, and development partners in the review to ensure that your documentation covers all the areas listed and aligns to the minimum thresholds for good practice documentation in the context of gender equality and women’s empowerment. The review will also point to areas of weakness in the documentation such as information and data gaps. Following peer review, the content should then be subjected to technical editing and proofreading to ensure alignment with relevant agency standards including referencing and template compliance. Where a lot of changes are recommended by the reviewers, it is recommended that after the revision, the draft be presented again to the reviewers for validation; however, where the comments are not major, the draft can then undergo editing, design and publishing.

4.       Produce a synthetized good practice knowledge product   

•                     Based on the final good practice report, design a synthetized and bit-size knowledge product in Portuguese and English. If examples of should knowledge product are need, the consultant can request UN Women to share some examples done in the past in Mozambique and at Global level.

•                     The knowledge product must be done in a printing friendly manner.

IV. Methodology

UN Women recommends a systematic methodology for documenting good practices. The steps suggested to be taken include:

·         Develop a concept paper for the documentation outlining objectives, process, methodology and deliverables from the documentation.

·         Conduct a stakeholder mapping to identify who will contribute information for documentation and include beneficiary mapping to capture the impact of the intervention on the lives of women and girls.

·         Develop an implementation plan for the documentation including data sources and reliance on evidence produced from evaluations and/or monitoring data.

·         Select a qualitative methods documentation methodology. The mixed methods approach is preferred since it captures the quality of the intervention in the lives of women and girls by ensuring information is captured on the magnitude of the impact while also recording their feelings and perceptions about it.

·         Develop the tools for data collection including interviews, questionnaires, observation checklists, focus group discussion guides, key informant interview guides among others.

·         Collect data

·         Develop a Report as per the template (Annex 1): This includes collating all data collected ensuring the minimum criteria of what constitutes good practices on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Finalizing the report shall involve quality assurance, editing, approval, and design of the documentation in readiness for dissemination.

·         After documentation, conduct a peer review workshop with external stakeholders to present and validate findings

ANNEX 1: UN WOMEN GOOD PRACTICES DOCUMENTATION TEMPLATE

The documentation must leverage evidence-based reporting with available and/or sourced qualitative and quantitative data and information. It requires clear articulation of methodologies allowing for lessons learned to emerge for readers to borrow and replicate. Make sure to combine the use of multimedia including photos, text and data to capture the impact and drive readers into potential replication and adoption. The writing style must be in line with respective agency guidelines and templates.

The documentation must consider diverse dissemination mechanism and platforms beforehand to ensure that information captured is designed in a manner that makes it possible to leverage print, multi-media infographics, text, audio, images, animations, video and interactive content among others for effective and efficient dissemination. It must also consider tools of dissemination including convening, digital media, social media, print and/ or other forms available for wider outreach on the GEWE agenda.

The following sections must be included in the documentation of a good practice on gender equality and women’s empowerment:

1. Cover page

·         Organization name, address and contact information; intervention’s title, high resolution picture, and geographical focus.

 2. Executive Summary

·         This should be a summary of the documentation including key messages and lessons. This section should clearly state why the documentation is relevant to broader learning and potential replication and scalability.

3. Table of Contents

•                     This should include a list of figures, tables, text boxes, acronyms, abbreviations and acknowledgements. It should be accurately aligned to the respective pages.

4. Context

•                     Demonstrate a thorough understanding of context and challenges, with a gender lens, to justify the design of the intervention and the problem being addressed as it relates to women and girls. It should situate the intervention within the broader literature and current debates on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

5. Documentation Methodology

•                     The methods utilized. For example; consultations with stakeholders, peer reviews, data collection processes

6. Description of the Intervention

•                     The description needs to reflect the rationale and justification for the intervention, and detail its geographical coverage, beneficiaries (women and girls), the problem being tackled by the intervention, intended outcomes, strategies utilized in implementation, activities aligned to the objectives, stakeholders involved including their specific roles and the duration of the intervention.

 7. Originality

•                     Is it a new concept or a variation of an existing idea?

•                     Is it unique to the specified area or adapted from elsewhere? Documenting Good Practices on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment

8. Results, relevance and impact

•                     Has it, or will it, result in fundamentally positive change or simply a minor adjustment in the lives of women and girls?

•                     Will the impact be on multiple operational areas or just one specific area?

•                     How many women and girls have, or will, benefit from the intervention? And how? (Please include qualitative and quantitative information.)

•                     Include any quotes, anecdotes or short stories from beneficiaries and other stakeholders, that relate to the impact of the intervention on the lives of women and girls.

•                     Does the intervention make women central to development?

•                     Does it employ cost-effective methodologies in its implementation including demonstrating the link between activities and results (actual or expected) in women’s and girls’ lives, and in relation to the strengthening of systems?

•                     How does the intervention relate to the needs of women and girls at all levels and respond to those needs by offering sustainable solutions that identify the priorities and needs of women and girls? The intervention must be accessible, affordable and mitigate challenges they face.

9. Sustainability

•                     Does the intervention meet the essential needs of the world’s poorest specifically women and girls, without disempowering any other population and compromising their ability to address future needs?

•                     Does the innovation lead to long lasting impact on socioeconomic empowerment for women and girls?

•                     Can the development approach be applied to similar problems/ opportunities?

•                     Is the intervention friendly to the ecological environment of women and girls?

•                     Is the intervention socially sustainable? Does it create/ensure understanding and support between women and men in the society?

•                     Will it be cost-effective to implement?

•                     Does the intervention build into adoption of policies or programming, and build the capacity of actors (whether government, academic institutions, civil society, communities, women and girls) to integrate the initiative into existing service delivery systems and community development frameworks to ensure continued institutional and financial support?

•                     Is this intervention easy to replicate and scale up in different contexts for the benefit of women and girls?

•                     Where is the intervention rooted? Government; decentralized government; community?

10. Challenges and Risks This section should discuss all the key challenges and risks the implementation faced across social, political, cultural, technological, legal and economic contexts.

•                     What are the key challenges and risks?

•                     What did not work and why?

•                     What were the impacts of the challenges in the achievement of results for women and girls?

•                      What mitigation options should be adopted to avoid the same challenges in the future?

11. Lessons Learned This should outline overall lessons learned in the process of implementing the intervention.

•                     What improvements could be done to the intervention as learned from the implementation experience?

•                     What were the key enablers and accelerators of change in the lives of women and girls?

•                     Why was it important to involve stakeholders in the implementation of the intervention, including women and girls?

14. ANNEX

•                     This should include relevant data, information and links that the readers would find useful in broadening their understanding of the intervention and its impact in the lives of women and girls including lessons learned and potential replication and/or scalability

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Competencies

Corporate Competences and Ethics

•                     Demonstrate integrity, values and ethics in accordance to UN Women norms

•                     Promote the vision, mission and strategic objectives of UN Women

•                     Show respect regardless the race/colour, sex, religion, nationality and age as well as be sensible to cultural adaptation capacity

•                     Consultant are expected to have personal and professional integrity and abided by the UN Code

Functional Competences

•                     Knowledge of legislation, programme and public policies on gender, women’s economic empowerment, and women’s rights in general in Mozambique

•                     Demonstrated experience in gender and economics related research

•                     Leadership and skills to work with autonomy and initiative

•                     Strong Advocacy skills

•                     Excellent knowledge of gender equality and women's empowerment in country

•                     Strong knowledge of UN system

•                     Ability to perform a variety of specialized tasks related to results management, including support to design, planning and implementation of programme, managing data, reporting;

•                     Strong Knowledge of WEE and gender;

•                     Strong capacity in research and capacity development.

 Managing knowledge and learning

•                     Promote knowledge sharing and a learning culture;

•                     Team working; and

•                     Strong communication skills, oral and written in Portuguese and English; knowledge of local languages is an asset.

Ethical Code of Conduct

•                     Independence: Consultant shall ensure that independence of judgment is maintained, and that evaluation findings and recommendations are independently presented.

•                     Cultural Sensitivity/Valuing diversity: Demonstrating an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating differences in values and learning from cultural diversity.

•                     Impartiality: Consultant shall operate in an impartial and unbiased manner and give a balanced presentation of strengths and weaknesses of the policy, program, project or organizational unit being evaluated.

•                     Conflict of Interest: Consultant are required to disclose in writing any past experience, which may give rise to a potential conflict of interest, and to deal honestly in resolving any conflict of interest which may arise.

•                     Honesty and Integrity: Consultant shall show honesty and integrity in their own behaviour, negotiating honestly the evaluation costs, tasks, limitations, scope of results likely to be obtained, while accurately presenting their procedures, data and findings and highlighting any limitations or uncertainties of interpretation within the evaluation.  

•                     Competence: Consultant shall accurately represent their level of skills and knowledge and work only within the limits of their professional training and abilities in evaluation, declining assignments for which they do not have the skills and experience to complete successfully.

•                     Accountability: Consultant are accountable for the completion of the agreed evaluation deliverables within the 30 day timeframe and budget agreed, while operating in a cost-effective manner.

•                     Obligations to Participants: Consultant shall respect and protect the rights and welfare of human subjects and communities, in accordance with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other human rights conventions. Consultant shall respect differences in culture, local customs, religious beliefs and practices, personal interaction, gender roles, disability, age and ethnicity, while using evaluation instruments appropriate to the cultural setting. Consultant shall ensure prospective participants are treated as autonomous agents, free to choose whether to participate in the evaluation, while ensuring that the relatively powerless are represented.

•                     Confidentiality: Consultant shall respect people’s right to provide information in confidence and make participants aware of the scope and limits of confidentiality, while ensuring that sensitive information cannot be traced to its source.

•                     Avoidance of Harm: Consultant shall act to minimize risks and harms to, and burdens on, those participating in the evaluation, without compromising the integrity of the evaluation findings.

•                     Accuracy, Completeness and Reliability: Consultant have an obligation to ensure that evaluation reports and presentations are accurate, complete and reliable. Consultant shall explicitly justify judgments, findings and conclusions and show their underlying rationale, so that stakeholders are in a position to assess them.

•                     Transparency: Consultant shall clearly communicate to stakeholders the purpose of the evaluation, the criteria applied and the intended use of findings. Consultant shall ensure that stakeholders have a say in shaping the evaluation and shall ensure that all documentation is readily available to and understood by stakeholders.

•                     Omissions and wrongdoing: Where consultant finds evidence of wrong-doing or unethical conduct, they are obliged to report it to the proper oversight authority.

•                     The evaluator will have the final judgment on the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the evaluation report, and the evaluator must be protected from pressures to change information in the report. If the evaluator identifies issues of wrongdoing, fraud or other unethical conduct, UN Women procedures must be followed, and confidentiality be maintained. The UN Women Legal Framework for Addressing Non-Compliance with UN Standards of Conduct defines misconduct and the mechanisms within UN Women for reporting and investigating it.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

  • Advanced university degree (Masters Degree) in gender studies, social sciences, human rights, peace and security or a related field.  

Experience:

At least 5 years’ experience in development work with specific emphasis on gender equality and women’s empowerment focusing on women economic empowerment;

  Demonstrated hands-on experience in development, monitoring the implementation and the evaluation of development projects, capacity building and resource mobilization;

Recognized experience in the field of gender and development;

Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages, experience in handling of web-based management systems; and

Have experience documenting and producing knowledge products.

 Language Requirements:

Fluency in written and spoken English and Portuguese. Fluency in the local languages spoken in Mozambique is desirable.