Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality and 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 and the third gender as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

All human development and human rights issues involve gender dimensions. Globally, UN Women focuses on key priority areas that are fundamental to women’s equality, that can unlock progress across the board. The six priority areas include increasing women’s leadership and participation in political spaces, ending violence against women, enhancing women’s economic empowerment, engaging in all aspects of women peace and security processes, making gender equality central to national planning and budgeting through Gender Responsive Budgeting and advancing gender in intergovernmental processes.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 recognizes that conflict affects women and girls differently when compared to men and boys, and that women must be part of conflict resolution and long-term peacebuilding processes. In this regard, UN Women has a universal mandate to assist countries and the UN system in progressing more effectively and efficiently towards achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women, as well as upholding women’s rights. UN Women plays a critical role in the development and strengthening of international norms and standards alongside their implementation through operational and coordination activities, while also informing the development of those norms and standards through experiences on the ground. It has also established strategic partnerships and networks with a wide range of stakeholders, including governments, women’s human rights advocates, and civil society organizations.

Following the aftermath of the conflict in 2009, Sri Lanka has made several commitments to peacebuilding, reconciliation and good governance, and represents a historic opportunity to advance accountability and reconciliation as necessary steps towards long-term and sustainable peace. In this regard, the Sri Lanka Peacebuilding Priority Plan (PPP) was developed, in collaboration with the UN, to serve as the framework for a coordinated Government, UN and development partners’ response to peacebuilding in Sri Lanka. The PPP places particular emphasis on integrating gender perspectives within its framework. As such, it aims to ensure that peacebuilding initiatives in Sri Lanka include leveraging women’s capacities and contributions, and developing strategies for inclusion, which recognize their roles, and diverse experiences of conflict. Without women’s engagement at the stages of peace consolidation, the dangers of relapse are greatly heightened. Empirical evidence reveals a strong connection between the inclusion of women in peace processes and more durable and stable peace. Despite this however, the most challenging gap in terms of women’s inclusivity in decision-making, concerns the participation of women in peace processes and post-conflict political transitions. This is particularly relevant to the context of Sri Lanka, given that, when compared to other development indices, the political participation of women claims the widest gender gap in the country.

In this context, with the generous support of the Multi Party Trust Fund (MPTF), UN Women is seeking the services of an assistant consultant to support implementation and provide administrative support for a series of dialogues and 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):

1. Puttalam Urban Council / Puttalam DS division
2. Kalpitiya Pradeshiya Sabha / Kalpitiya DS division
3. Chilaw Urban Council / Chilaw DS division
4. Arachchikattuwa Pradeshiya Sabha / Arachchikattuwa DS division

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

1. Nanattan 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

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[3]

[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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.