Background

As the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, UN Women’s vision is of a world in which women and men have equal opportunities and capacities, where women are empowered and where principles of gender equality are firmly embedded in all efforts to advance development, peace and security. Globally, UN Women works to make the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) a reality for women and girls and stands behind women’s equal participation in all aspects of life, focusing on five priority areas: women lead, participate in and benefit equally from governance systems; women have income security, decent work and economic autonomy; all women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence and ensure that women and girls contribute to and have greater influence in building sustainable peace and resilience, and benefit equally from the prevention of natural disasters and conflicts and humanitarian action. At the national level, UN Women Ethiopia Country Office (UN Women ECO) works in all four priority areas.

Ethiopia has experienced different conflicts in the past years. These conflicts have resulted in Internal displacement, destruction and death. Every segment of the society has been affected by the conflicts. But the burden of conflict and displacement on women and youth is disproportionate compared to others.

The Ethiopian government has shown an interest to institutionalize peacebuilding effort through developing peacebuilding Strategy at national level through an Inclusive Governance and Conflict Management Support Project. Under this project, UNDP, IOM and UN-Women are collaborating with the Government of Ethiopia (GoE), with funding from the UN Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), to capitalize on recent political opening in the country at the highest level to start a national process on the inclusive development of a National Peacebuilding Strategy, while attending to regional peacebuilding challenges resulting from internal displacement. UN Women follows a two-pronged method to ensure that the project delivers for women: implementing activities focusing on empowering women to participate effectively in peace building processes and mainstreaming gender in the entire project activities delivered by other agencies.

Gender mainstreaming was established as a major global strategy for the promotion of gender equality in the Beijing Platform for Action from the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and Beijing Platform for Action in June 2000 mandated the UN to mainstream gender in its system. More recently, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) adopted a resolution 2001/41 on gender mainstreaming which calls on the Economic and Social Council to ensure that gender perspectives are taken into account in all its work, including in the work of its functional commissions, and recommends a five-year review of the implementation of the ECOSOC agreed conclusions 1997/2.

The ECOSOC agreed conclusions 1997/2 defines gender mainstreaming as:

…the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal of mainstreaming gender is to achieve gender equality.

Gender mainstreaming entails bringing the perceptions, experience, knowledge and interests of women as well as men to bear on policy-making, planning and decision-making. Mainstreaming should situate gender equality issues at the center of analyses and policy decisions, medium-term plans, programme budgets, and institutional structures and processes. This requires explicit, systematic attention to relevant gender perspectives in all areas of the work of the United Nations. While mainstreaming is clearly essential for securing human rights and social justice for women as well as men, it also increasingly recognized that incorporating gender perspectives in different areas of development ensures the effective achievement of other social and economic goals. Mainstreaming can reveal a need for changes in goals, strategies and actions to ensure that both women and men can influence, participate in and benefit from development processes. This may lead to changes in organizations – structures, procedures and cultures – to create organizational environments which are conducive to the promotion of gender equality.

Gender and peacebuilding is an exploration of how gender and peacebuilding interface both conceptually and practically. Gender mainstreaming has long been a goal within the field of peacebuilding. The aim is to recognize the influence of gender on different areas of expertise during the planning phase and to integrate a gender perspective right from the start of any initiative. In order to properly prepare experts for working in post-conflict environments, trainings must address the influence of gender and raise awareness of how it impacts the short- and long-term success of any peacebuilding activity.

Conflict is a gendered activity; hence gender is a very relevant dimension in efforts towards peacebuilding.  There is a strong gender division of labor; women and men have differential access to resources (including power and decision making) during conflicts men and women experience conflict differently. Despite the proven nexus between gender and peacebuilding, commitment to mainstreaming gender in peacebuilding interventions has not always been taken seriously as there is a divide between those who understand and accept the need and act accordingly and those who simply pay lip-service to the issue as a policy demand.

PBF and Gender

Having been established in October 2006 following the request from the General Assembly (GA) and the Security Council (SC), Gender is a key initiative of the UN Peace Building Fund (PBF).The PBF constitutes an essential component of the enhanced UN architecture to provide for a more sustained engagement in support of countries emerging from conflict and will support peacebuilding activities which directly contribute to post-conflict stabilization and strengthen the capacity of Governments, national/local institutions and transitional or other relevant authorities. PBF recognizes that systematic inclusion of women in peacebuilding is essential to the just reconstruction of political, legal, economic and social structures, and to the advancement of gender equality goals. This is not only a matter of women’s and girl’s rights, but of effective peacebuilding.

PBF Recognizes that it is a must to pay attention to gender in peacebuilding to make peacebuilding interventions more effective, to promote gender equality and to do no harm where some aspects of intervention reinforce the status quo or even advance inequality. As an overall principle, and as reaffirmed in its 2014-2016 Business Plan, PBF works to make sure that its entire portfolio is gender mainstreamed, i.e. that all peacebuilding interventions it supports consider gender issues as part of the conflict analysis, priority setting, budget allocation, implementation, as well as in monitoring and evaluation. In PBF project one of the commitments is to mainstream gender in peacebuilding.

Also in Ethiopia, the Joint Project supported by PBFO i.e Inclusive Governance and Conflict Management Support (IGCMS) brings together four UN Agencies (UN Women, IOM, UNDP and UNESCO) to capitalize on recent political opening at the highest level to kick-start a national process on the inclusive development of peacebuilding strategy, while attending to regional peacebuilding challenges resulting from internal displacement. The project seeks to deliver two key outcomes. Outcome 1 focuses on national level policy and capacity development aimed at resolving key conflict factors and ensuring national ownership by ensuring effective participation of women and youth while outcome 2 seeks to reduce regional and local level conflict and facilitating communal level social cohesion and ownership of process and results by empowering women and youth, by focusing on but not limited to challenges arising from conflict-induced displacements.

In line with the commitment of PBF at global level, mainstreaming gender and having a targeted intervention to empower women is among the main strategy the IGCMS uses to ensure gender is at the heart of its interventions. To further facilitate this commitment and build sustainable capacity to gender equality in peace building efforts, UN Women is planning to organize a capacity building training on gender and peacebuilding and conflict resolution. This term of Reference is therefore prepared to hire consultants to build the capacity of experts in UN Agencies implementing PBF and other peace building initiatives in the country and PBF partner organizations from Oromia, Somali and SNNPRS (MoP, MoWCYA, BoWCYA, BoAS and others) in addition to representatives of CSOs working in the area.

Duties and Responsibilities

The national consultant, in collaboration with the international consultant, will be engaged in preparing and delivering the training and is expected to carry out the following tasks: 

• Develop and design a three-day training programme on Gender Mainstreaming in Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution including outline with content and time frame
• Prepare major points of discussion (e.g. using Power Point) that could be easily referred to in the organization of the training
• In collaboration with the international consultant, develop exercises and simulations by collecting stories reported on Gender Mainstreaming in Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution
• Develop and conduct pre- and post-assessment of the training and prepare a final workshop report of the consultancy that includes assessment of participant evaluations

Competencies

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling 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 favouritism;
• Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Master’s degree or equivalent in Gender/women's studies, Peace and Security Studies, Peace and Development, Human Rights or related field is required.

Expierence

• A minimum of 7 years of demonstrable experience in area of Peacebuilding, Conflict transformation, gender and conflict at the national, regional and/or international level
• Technical expertise and strong understanding of gender and its concept women empowerment and gender equality; gender mainstreaming and gender in peacebuilding etc…
• Demonstrated ability and experience to facilitate trainings for adults, senior experts and officials in the areas outlined. The consultant should especially have an experience giving creative and engaging trainings
• Prior experience in providing training on gender and peacebuilding in post conflict countries especially in Africa is an advantage.
• Experience in developing lessons plan with relevant learning topics and exercises;
• The ability to engage and motivate interactive dialogue and peer learnings amongst trainees 
• Experience in working in a diversity team is an asset.
• An ideal candidate should have creativity, strong organizational ability, capacity to deliver on time, excellent presentation skill and be responsive to feedback

Language

• Strong command of written and oral English is mandatory.