The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) is at a critical juncture of transitioning when COVID-19 wreak its havoc globally.  The impacts of the pandemic in a fragile system continued to exacerbate the on-going conflicts especially those that has to do with land and natural resource management.  The pandemic has been identified as a new factor driving the emergence of a non-armed confrontational kind of conflicts which manifested in attacking and discriminating on COVID-affected persons or those health workers caring for the sick; propagating of misinformation and hate speeches directed towards locally stranded individuals and other groups with probable exposure to the virus; hatred over local officials for failing to deliver on the much-needed social protection and aid coming from the state; and so many more.  These factors added a new dimension to the existing horizontal conflicts that beset most communities of the BARMM. Further, it puts a strain on the resources and capacity of the new government to respond to the multi-pronged issues related to peace and development.

The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao continues to face these transforming security challenges with women at the forefront of actions.  The new regional women’s machinery, the Bangsamoro Women’s Commission had been leading several interventions at the regional level.  This included development of policies that promotes the agenda of women in conflict and post-conflict set-ups. On October 30, 2020, the office, through the support of UN Women launched the Regional Action Plan of Women, Peace and Security 2020-2022.  This recognized the pandemic as one of the challenges that significantly puts strain on women’s lives. Moreover, it proposed women’s leadership and participation as a crucial element of inclusive development programming in the BARMM.

Along these developments and rationale, the UN Women continues its implementation of flagship women, peace and security projects in the BARMM.  This year, the organization will implement components of the Peacebuilding Fund Project Phase 3 (PBF 3) along with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA).  PBF 3 aims to promote conflict prevention, social cohesion and community resilience in BARMM in the time of COVID-19 through transformation of women ex-combatants, marginalized women and youth into agents of peace.

 Another initiative entitled, “Supporting the normalization process towards peace and security in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in the Philippines” aims to promote a gender-sensitive normalization process. It is a joint undertaking with the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes. The aims to complement the PBF 3 outcomes by strengthening the role of the security and law enforcement sectors to adopt policies that shall strengthen organizational capacities on gender programming.

To support the UN Women in these two projects, we are seeking the expertise of a Communications for Development (C4D) specialist who shall provide technical advisory and coordination work.  The contracted candidate will lead both the internal and external communications aspect of the women, peace and security programme.

The Programme Communications for Development Specialist will support the Women, Peace and Security programme of UN Women.  The Specialist will be responsible for coordinating internal communications with UN Women project partners.  The Specialist is expected to provide technical expertise in building communications for development capacities to organizational partners under the two aforementioned projects and produce tools and knowledge products that increase the visibility of UN Women in online platforms and among various stakeholders. The Specialist will work in close collaboration with Regional Communications Specialist at the Regional Office based in Bangkok to generate and produce good content for the two programmes for regional and global visibility.  

The Specialist is expected to deliver the following:

1. Draft and finalise Programme Communications Strategy and Communications Plan that aims to strengthen internal capacity at UN Women Philippines and with project implementing partners in enhancing policy and advocacy for development;
2. Provide technical backstop to Communication for Development (C4D) both online and in-person focused on Capacity-building of project partners both from CSOs and the BARMM agencies;
3. Produce regular feature articles, press releases, snapshots of UN-PBF3 and UNODC  project milestones, and other communications materials that shall increase the visibility of UN Women to external stakeholders both for online and offline UN Women corporate communications platforms;
4. Serve as technical backstop in all major Communications for Development activities by providing activity documentation, report editing, and other related tasks that may be NMNdetermined by the reporting officer.  

Knowledge and experience:

Experiences in developing Communications for Change and Communications for Development tools, knowledge products and advocacy briefs on gender equality programming in the government and women empowerment, peace and security in the Philippines;

• Excellent writing skills, with significant written work on the security sector, peace and security and/or gender mainstreaming in the Philippines;  
• Fluency in English , Tagalog and dialects of Mindanao.

Corporate competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the United Nations’ values and ethical standards;
• Promotes 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.

Confidentiality and Copyrights

• All documents compiled by or received by the Contractor in connection with this contract shall be property of UN Women, shall be treated as confidential and shall be delivered only to duly authorized UN Women officials on completion of the work or services under the contract.
• In no event shall the contents of such documents or any information known or made known to the Contractor by reason of its association with UN Women be made known by the Contractor to any unauthorized person without the written approval of UN Women.

• University degree in the communications, journalism, social sciences, women studies, public administration, laws and policiesand/or any relevant field directly related to gender and peace, security and governance;
• Minimum three years of relevant work experience with strong background in doing communications work in development, policy and advocacy, and gender programming in peace and security contexts;
• Published work in the area of communications relating to gender and peace, security and governance with strong context of the BARMM; and
• Excellent command of English and Tagalog.  Knowledge of Mindanao dialects is highly desirable.