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, the UN Women will lead and coordinate United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

The Strategic Partnerships, Coordination and Intergovernmental Bureau leads and coordinates UN Women’s implementation of its system-wide and interagency mandates and functions. Central to this is the operationalization of the intergovernmental mandate expressed in its founding resolution in which the UN’s General Assembly decided that UN Women will “lead, coordinate and promote the accountability of the United Nations system in its work on gender equality and the empowerment of women” at the global, regional and country levels.

The Policy Specialist is a member of the UN System Coordination Division’s team part of the Strategic Partnerships, Coordination and Intergovernmental Bureau of UN Women. S\he reports to the Coordination Advisor who provides overall strategic direction, guidance and oversight.

The Policy Specialist is responsible for supporting the coordination of the integration of gender equality considerations and women’s rights into UN System-wide initiatives on disability inclusion, and the rights of persons with disabilities into the work on gender equality and women’s rights, including through gender mainstreaming.

Provide Global Technical and Programme Support on Gender Equality and Disability Inclusion:

• Provide technical support to regional and thematic programmes, country strategies and knowledge management;
• Provide programmatic and operational support for the development and implementation of global programmes and related thematic initiatives;
• Liaise with other Divisions to ensure a coordinated approach to the work on gender equality and disability inclusion;
• Co-lead and coordinate UN Women’s Internal Global Task Team on Disability and Inclusion;
• Provide substantive contributions to the gender-responsive implementation of the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy (UNDIS).

Provide Technical Support on Monitoring and Accountability of Gender Equality and Disability Inclusion:

• Provide technical contributions to the gender-responsive formulation, roll-out and implementation of UNCT Disability SWAP building on the lessons from UN-SWAP and UNCT-SWAP Scorecard;
• Formulate a set of relevant, simple and straightforward indicators based on existing accountability frameworks for gender equality and the empowerment of women and for disability inclusion to monitor progress in the integration of disability inclusion and gender equality in respective system-wide and entity-specific strategy implementation;
• Design a baseline, establish the adequate metrics and implement an effective data-collection system and reporting forms for capturing quantitative and qualitative information on gender equality and disability inclusion using data sources embedded in existing systems.

Conduct research and analysis on Gender Equality and Disability Inclusion:

• Conduct research and analysis of global, regional and national trends;
• Provide technical support to the development of flagship publications related to and gender equality and women’s rights;
• Prepare selected written contributions and knowledge products for various purposes, i.e. case studies, short topical papers, briefings to leadership, speeches, and related products for wider dissemination. 

Provide technical support to intergovernmental and inter-agency processes and policy development:

• Liaise with other UN Women business units in coordinating UN Women’s engagement in Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and other related bodies;
• Provide substantive inputs to the preparation of position papers and reports for presentation to intergovernmental bodies such as Commission on the Status of Women, Economic and Social Council, the General Assembly and other policy-making organs, as appropriate and prepare analytical summaries of debates, supporting negotiations and analyzing/compiling outcomes;  
• Liaise with UN Women colleagues and other partners, as relevant, to ensure coordination with intergovernmental and policy initiatives;
• Participate in and/or represent UN Women in internal and external committees, inter-governmental and inter-agency task forces as required.

Provide knowledge management and knowledge sharing support:

• Create a knowledge hub including website and community of practice for gender and disability related information and good practices;
• Provide substantive contributions to the production of knowledge products and facilitate knowledge sharing across UN Women;
• Manage and maintain a roster of gender experts to provide technical support to UN Women offices, national partners, UNCT’s or other UN system entities in the related thematic area;
• Organize and implement trainings for UN Women personnel and partners on inclusion of women and girls with disabilities;
• Establish and nurture relationship with academia, research institutes, civil society and experts to expand and share knowledge, exchange views on latest findings, incorporate cutting-edge thinking in UN Women work.

Perform any other duties as requested by the supervisor.

Key Performance Indicators:

• Timely and quality support to regional and thematic programmes, country strategies and knowledge management;
• Regular Internal Global Task Team on Disability and Inclusion with results based on annual workplan;
• High quality research and background papers as per annual workplan;
• Community of Practice is up to date;
• Roster of gender experts is up to date.

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity;
• Integrity;
• Professionalism.

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
• Accountability;
• Creative Problem Solving;
• Effective Communication;
• Inclusive Collaboration;
• Stakeholder Engagement;
• Leading by Example.

Functional Competencies:

• Knowledge of accountability frameworks for gender equality and disability inclusion required;
• Ability to mainstream gender equality into the work on disability;
• Ability to integrate disability perspective into the work on gender equality and women’s rights including a broad-based understanding of disability issues in relation to women’s rights and gender equality;
• Strong knowledge of gender-related issues and disability;
• Strong analytical capacity and effective interpersonal, communication and presentation skills;
• Ability to undertake policy research and prepare quantitative studies, utilizing statistical methodologies, knowledge of database applications for statistical analysis;
• Ability to organize and complete multiple tasks by establishing priorities;
• Ability to handle a large volume of work possibly under time constraints;
• Ability to establish, build and sustain effective relationships with clients, demonstrating understanding of client’s perspective; anticipates client needs and addresses them promptly;
• Ability to draft policy papers, speeches, briefings, etc. 

Education:

• Master’s degree (or equivalent) in development related disciplines, international relations, gender issues, human rights, or other social science fields, of direct relevance to the Focus Area.

Experience:

• A minimum of five years of increasingly professional experience in gender equality, programme and policy analysis;
• Experience in research and coordination on gender equality and the empowerment of women at international level;
• At least two-year experience directly related to gender equality and disability inclusion;
• Experience working in the multi-stakeholder contexts, including interagency mechanisms and working groups and across regional and country teams on gender equality and disability inclusion.

Languages:

• Written (excellent drafting skills) and oral proficiency in English is required. Knowledge of another UN working language is desirable.

Application:

• All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from?http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment?Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.