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.

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. That created a robust framework for implementing the WPS agenda and reinforced 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 and drafting 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 and women leaders as well as with the development community.

Against this background and with generous support from the Government of Japan, UN Women is seeking the services of an assistant consultant to support implementation and provide administrative support to convene a series of multi-party dialogues (MPDs) and capacity building programmes 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.

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

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 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 is mandatory.

CONTRACT PERIOD:

The consultancy is expected to be started in February 2021 and continue until October 2021 (approximately 120 days). 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.

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.

SUBMISSION OF APPLICATION:

Interest candidates are encouraged to submit electronic application to hr.bangkok@unwomen.org, and copy to Pradeepa.kulasekera@unwomen.org not later than 27 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.