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 the United Nations system’s 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 towards building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), unanimously adopted in October 2000, stressed the importance of the equal participation and full involvement of women in all efforts to maintain and promote peace and security. In the years since, seven additional resolutions on WPS have been adopted, creating a robust framework for implementing the WPS agenda and reinforcing global commitments, treaties and conventions on women’s rights, including the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. To deliver these commitments at the national level, the United Nations has encouraged Member States to adopt policies to implement the resolutions and monitor the progress of the WPS agenda, including National Action Plans on WPS (NAPs-WPS).

In Sri Lanka, the Government has committed to advancing the development of a NAP WPS and the State Ministry of Women and Child Development, Pre-schools and Primary Education, School Infrastructure and Education Services is leading its formulation with the technical support of UN Women. Parallelly, UN Women also supports the implementation of the Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda through the increased engagement of national and local level government authorities, civil society organisations, women leaders and the development community.

Against this background and with generous support from the Government of Japan, UN Women is seeking to hire a national lead consultant to conduct multi-party dialogues (MPDs) at grassroot level to advocate for gender responsive policies and strategies on WPS, under the project “Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in Sri Lanka”.?The MPDs are expected to engage local-level government officials, CSO representatives, religious bodies, media representatives and women leaders in North Central, Uva, Sabaragamuwa and Western provinces. 6 MPDs and the accompanied capacity building and follow-up programmmes are scheduled to take place in Anuradhapura, Badulla, Ratnapura, Gampaha, Kalutara and Colombo districts.

Similarly, under the umbrella of WPS and with the generous support of the Multi Party Trust Fund (MPTF),?UN Women ?is also assigning the same ?national lead consultant to facilitate a series of multi-stakeholder dialogues, capacity building programmes for women community leaders on collective leadership and conflict resolution, as well as a series of village townhalls under the project: “Promoting Women’s Engagement in Waste Management to Prevent Conflict in Sri Lanka”?The project will unfold in targeted local authorities and DS divisions within the districts of Puttalam and Mannar:

1. Puttalam District (04 local authorities and 4 DS divisions):

• Puttalam Urban Council / Puttalam DS division
• Kalpitiya Pradeshiya Sabha / Kalpitiya DS division
• Chilaw Urban Council / Chilaw DS division
• Arachchikattuwa Pradeshiya Sabha / Arachchikattuwa DS division

        2. Mannar District (01 local authority and 1 DS division)

• anattan Pradeshiya Sabha / Mannar Town DS division

This MPTF funded project takes an innovative, integrated approach to peacebuilding, tackling ethno-religious tensions by bringing communities together to provide a sustainable solution for a shared environmental issue – Solid Waste Management (SWM) – with women at the forefront for conflict prevention. The nexus of Environmental Conflicts – Gender – Communal Tensions is unique, and a new area of peacebuilding not yet explored in Sri Lanka.

The project focuses on women’s role within their communities to support conflict prevention Gendered division of household labour results in women being mostly responsible for waste management, hence they play critical roles in responding to environmental degradation at community level. Women’s community engagement results in greater responsiveness to citizens’ needs, often increasing cooperation and delivering more sustainable peace.

Despite high involvement in communities, women remain under-represented in policy and decision-making; their experiences and skills are often overlooked. Thus, any solutions related to waste management, and communal tensions therein, require women’s meaningful participation. Women are uniquely positioned within families/communities to influence motivations that drive individuals to support intolerant ideologies or violence. Their gendered roles in shaping and informing families and communities allow women to support in countering intolerant narratives, mistrust and fear, which converge to exacerbate tensions and promote violence. The project will adopt an integrated approach to achieve its overall objective: building community resilience through women’s engagement in conflict resolution and their participation within community and local governance systems; strengthening community governance systems such as Praja Mandala to better lobby with local authorities; strengthening SWM systems within target divisions, including technical support to local authorities on better managing SWM systems; and supporting different communities to coalesce around the issue of SWM via Praja Mandala - with the goal of improving inter- and intra-community relations.

Duties and Responsibilities

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Under the supervision and guidance of the UN Women Programme Analyst, Sri Lanka the national assistant consultant is expected to undertake the following tasks, in collaboration with the national lead consultant, the second assistant consultant and the rapporteur. The national assistant consultant will remain accountable for the timely submission of the deliverables as per the timeline given below. The consultant’s duties and responsibilities have been defined as follows:

*Considering restrictions to mobility (in light of Covid-19) at the time of implementation, there is a possibility for the sessions to be conducted online. Options for both offline and online sessions have been provided.

EXPECTED DELIVERABLES[1]

[1] Payments will be made upon installment basis upon the submission of each deliverable subjected to approval of the UN Women Programme Analyst, Sri Lanka

[1] The assistant consultant together with the lead consultant is requested to closely engage with the project’s CSO ?implementing partner for beneficiary mobilisation to ensure sustainability to the project’s interventions. The women community leaders can also have linkages with Praja Mandalas established by the project’s CSO implementing partner.

[2] Ibid.

CONTRACT PERIOD:

The consultancy is expected to be started in January 2021 and continue until May 2021. The national assistant consultant is expected to visit the project locations to undertake the project activities, if travel is not restricted by national health authorities or UN Women due to the COVID 19 health emergency. In such cases, the cost of most economic and direct travel on mission must be pre-approved by Programme Analyst of UN Women Sri Lanka and will be reimbursed following UN Women travel guidelines. Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) and travel costs in compliant with UN Women Travel Guideline will be reimbursed to the consultant at actual amount upon submission of receipts and travel stubs.

EVALUATION:

Applications will be evaluated based on the cumulative analysis.

• Technical Qualification (100 points) weight; [70%]
• Financial Proposal (100 points) weight; [30%]

A two-stage procedure is utilised in evaluating the applications, with evaluation of the technical application being completed prior to any price proposal being compared. Only the price proposal of the candidates who passed the minimum technical score of 70% of the obtainable score of 100 points in the technical qualification evaluation will be evaluated.

Technical qualification evaluation criteria:

The total number of points allocated for the technical qualification component is 100. The technical qualification of the individual is evaluated based on following technical qualification evaluation criteria:

Financial/Price Proposal evaluation:

• Only the financial proposal of candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% score in the technical evaluation will be considered and evaluated.
• The total number of points allocated for the price component is 100.
• The maximum number of points will be allotted to the lowest price proposal that is opened/ evaluated and compared among those technical qualified candidates who have attained a minimum of 70% score in the technical evaluation. All other price proposals will receive points in inverse proportion to the lowest price.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the United Nations' values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of the UN and UN Women;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Ability and willingness to work as part of a team to meet tight deadlines and produce high quality work.

Required Skills and Experience

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration, Business Administration, Human Rights or equivalent in relevant fields of Social Science.
• At least 2 years of demonstrable experience in working on programmes on peacebuilding and reconciliation, governance and WPS.
• Previous experience in conducting training programmes for women and youth on women’s leadership in governance and peacebuilding is an advantage.
• Experience of working with provincial/local levels of governments is required.
• Proficiency in Sinhala and Tamil is mandatory.

SUBMISSION OF APPLICATION:

Interest candidates are encouraged to submit electronic application to hr.bangkok@unwomen.org, and copy to Lihini.ratwatte@unwomen.org not later than 04 January 2021, COB.

Submission package includes:

• Updated CV
• Personal History Form(P11) of all team members. The P11 form can be downloaded from http://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/about-us/jobs
• Writing sample
• Financial proposal as template below:

PAYMENTS:

Payments for this consultancy will be based on the achievement of each deliverable and certification that each has been satisfactorily completed. Payments will be based on the number of days worked in correlation to the completion of each stated deliverable within the indicated timeframes. Payments will be made upon submission of deliverables with an approval of the National Programme Analyst at UN Women Sri Lanka.