Background

Context / 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.

The Fiji Multi Country Office (MCO) covers 14 Pacific countries, with field offices/presence in 6 countries, and five ‘focus countries’ (Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Samoa). Each field presence is led by a national Country Programme Coordinator. UN Women, in partnership with Pacific Islands Governments, regional organizations, CSOs, donors and UN agencies, focuses on delivering within four interlinked programme areas:

• Women’s Political Empowerment and Leadership (WPEL)
• Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE)
• Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG)
• Gender and Protection in Humanitarian Action (GPiHA) and Disaster Risk Reduction

UN Women Fiji MCO is implementing the Women’s Resilience to Disasters (WRD) Programme in the Pacific. UN Women promotes gender-responsive disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience across its triple mandate through technical and policy support, provision of gender expertise to DRR mechanisms and processes (local, national, regional, and global), advocacy and knowledge management, and by implementing programmes and projects for gender-responsive DRR and resilience building, including the Women’s Resilience to Disasters (WRD) programme, which is UN Women’s signature DRR initiative. The WRD Programme aims to reduce the loss of lives and livelihoods from disasters and threats, including COVID 19 and climate change, and to contribute to sustainable, secure and thriving communities and countries through addressing critical gender gaps in disaster and climate resilience. UN Women’s key partners include the 50 UN entities related to the UN Plan of Action on Disaster Risk Reduction for Resilience, all stakeholders working on disaster and climate resilience including the Early Warnings for All Initiative, the Loss and Damage collaboration and international financial institutions, and various gender, DRR and climate platforms at the global, regional, and national levels.

UN Women’s WRD programme proposes a comprehensive package for building women’s resilience to disasters, climate change and threats.   The aim of the WRD Programme is to render women’s and girls’ lives and livelihoods disaster-resilient, contributing to sustainable and secure communities, by promoting gender responsive prevention, preparedness, and recovery systems, plans and tools; and by enabling targeted action to help women and girls withstand hazards and threats, recover fully from disasters, and increase their resilience to future risks. 

Together with UNDRR, the WRD Programme is supporting national disaster management authorities to strengthen the collection and analysis of risk information and disaster damage and loss data and ensure that data is disaggregated and can contribute to evidenced based decision making that is gender responsive and inclusive.

UN Women Fiji MCO is looking for an individual consultant to support the Vanuatu National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) to strengthen collection, management, and analysis of inter-connected risk data, as well as the collection and analysis of sex, age and disability disaggregated data.   The consultant will also support mainstreaming of gender and disability into existing national early warning systems in line with the UN Secretary General’s Early Warning for All Initiative.

For this purpose, the selected consultant will work under the leadership of the Director of the Vanuatu National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) with technical support from UN Women and UNDRR.  He/ She will report to and be supervised by the UN Women Gender and Resilience Programme Specialist.

Under the overall guidance of the Director of Vanuatu NDMO and UN Women Programme Specialist-Gender and Resilience working in collaboration with UN Women and UNDRR, the consultant will undertake the tasks as outlined in the deliverable table below.?

Duties and Responsibilities

Responsibilities

The National Risk Information and Early Warning System Consultant will be seconded to the Vanuatu National Disaster Management Office and is expected to:

1. Advise on disaggregated risk data and information collection, application and governance of risk information which includes but not limited to multi hazard exposure, vulnerability and climate information and analyses, loss and damage data, and Sendai Framework indicators.
2. Support national partners to collect, analyze and use sex, age and disability desegregated data.
3. Review decision-making and planning processes and recommend improvement to ensure decision making processes are evidence-based and draw on risk information.
4. Prepare a preliminary list of nationally generated risk information (on hazards, vulnerability, exposure) - of priority to national stakeholders. 
5. Assess the institutional arrangements for (risk) data management, collection, access and revision cycles and recommend steps to improve data governance framework and dissemination of risk information.
6. Assess the type of information management systems in use for managing and sharing risk assessment results: data platforms for management and visualization, software systems in use, modules, analytical functionalities, automated linkages, operational architecture, etc.
7. Collect meta-data about applicable information management systems in the country (software, models, storage, sharing, information management strategies, etc.).
8. Review existing early warning system and messages and identify gaps.
9. Mainstream gender and disability into early warning messages to ensure EWS is gender responsive and inclusive.

The consultant will work in close collaboration with NDMO (and relevant government agencies) to enhance the collection and management of disaster loss data.

The consultant will also support the NDMO in reporting on disaster loss data (DesInventar and Sendai Framework Monitor). Strong engagement with other national DRR stakeholders like the National Advisory Board, Vanuatu Association of Non-Government Organizations, Vanuatu Climate Action Network, Vanuatu Council of Churches, Department of Women’s Affairs, and others will be required. 

Expected Deliverables

The duration of this assignment will be to up 220 working days over 12 months.

The Consultant is expected to deliver, specifically, the following major tasks or outputs:

The assignment should be carried out within a period of 12 months, not exceeding 220 working days, with the incumbent being responsible for delivering the following outputs:

• Monthly reports on major tasks performed and the results, including related to support provided to the NDMO, inputs collection etc., as per above description of tasks.

• Monthly time sheet.

• Final report on carried out activities, achievements, and challenges.

• Information management relevant to the assignment.  

• Supporting documents of the month’s activities including any minutes, workplans, briefs, analytical work papers etc.

All the deliverables should be agreed with the UN Women’s Humanitarian & Resilience Programme Team provided in English hard and electronic copy. 

Note that all materials, including any video footage and images, will remain property of UN Women and cannot be used without UN Women’s permission.

Upon receipt of the final deliverables and prior to the payment of the instalment, the deliverables, related reports, and documents will be reviewed and approved by UN Women at least within 10 business days of submission.

All the documents and materials utilized need to be returned to UN Women in electronic format. Any printed materials utilized to be referenced and returned.

Input

The NDMO, UN Women and UNDRR will provide the Consultant with background materials.  UN Women will only cover Consultant’s travel and within Honiara should the need arises and upon prior approval by the NDMO and UN Women.

The Consultant is expected to be based at the NDMO with frequent meetings with UN Women and UNDRR for technical inputs.  The Consultant may access the either the NDMO or the UN Women Office for printing of relevant documents or should he/she be required to work on-site at any point during the assignment.

Management Arrangements

The National Consultant will work under the overall coordination of the Director of NDMO and direct supervision of the UN Women, Gender, and Resilience Programme Specialist.  The National Consultant workspace will be provided by the NDMO with the necessary information, materials, and logistics, as well as office space.  The selected candidate will be provided with a laptop, while NDMO will provide access to other equipment for the fulfilment of his/her tasks (such as printer, copier).

Performance Evaluation

The Consultant’s performance will be evaluated based on timeliness, responsibility, initiative, communication, and quality of the products delivered.

Financial Arrangements

Payments will be disbursed to the consultant in instalments, upon submission and approval of deliverables, monthly timesheets aligned with actual days worked and certification by the UN Women Programme Specialist for the Humanitarian & Resilience Programme that the services have been satisfactorily performed.

Travel

Travel costs outside Port Vila, Vanuatu are not envisaged and if needed will be covered separately by UN Women with prior approval.  During the consultancy assignment’s related missions, UN Women will cover travel cost for the Consultant for the agreed upon routing and in conformity with UN Women applicable rules and regulations. 

The Consultant will be responsible for all administrative and travel expenses associated with undertaking this assignment and be based in Solomon Islands. 

In the case of unforeseeable travel, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between NDMO and UN Women and the National Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

Competencies

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

Required Skills and Experience

The Consultant should fulfil the following requirements:

Education:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in Social Sciences, International Development, Disaster Risk and Climate Change, Environment, Programme Management, Data Analysis, or other related areas is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience and Skills:

• At least 2 years (with Master’s degree) or 4 years (with first-level university degree) of progressively responsible experience related to information management, data science, development, adaptation and resilience capacity building, disaster risk reduction, climate resilience or other closely related fields.
• Minimum of 2 years’ relevant national/regional/international experience both in the field and headquarters in disaster response, recovery, or development work.
• Experience in data conversion, management of quantitative and qualitative data systems, integration and projection, mapping/GIS software is required.
• Experience in disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness and/or response and recovery is required.
• Excellent analytical, writing and consultation skills with the ability to gather, analyse and synthesize information, and present it in a clear, concise format, is required.
• Familiarity with government knowledge management resources (sector, macro, sub-national) is an advantage.
• Experience with quantitative risk assessment and disaster risk metrics is an advantage.
• Experience in the UN system related to disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness, humanitarian-development-peace collaboration, response, and recovery is desirable.
• Experience in training and building capacity of both government and UN representatives is desirable.

Language and other skills:

• Excellent skills and fluency in verbal and written English is required. 
• Fluency in Solomon Islands pidgin language is an asset.

Additional Information:

UN Women Statement on Diversity Inclusion

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law.  All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.  If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.  

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination.  

All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check).

Evaluation

Initially, individual consultants will be short-listed based on the following minimum qualification criteria:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in Social Sciences, International Development, Disaster Risk and Climate Change, Environment, Programme Management, Data Analysis, or other related areas is required.  A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• At least 2 years (with Master’s degree) or 4 years (with first-level university degree) of progressively responsible experience related to information management, data science, development, adaptation and resilience capacity building, disaster risk reduction, climate resilience or other closely related fields.

Technical evaluation of shortlisted candidates will be done through desk review of applications on the basis of responsiveness to the Terms of Reference (TOR) as per table below.  Interviews and/or written tests will be organized if needed only, depending on the short-listed candidates’ qualifications.

Technical Evaluation Table:

The consultancy recruitment process will be governed by the rules and regulations of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

Submission of application

Interested candidates are requested to submit fully completed application on the UNDP Vacancy Site. 

Submission Package:

1. Cover letter explaining the suitability of the consultant: applicants are encouraged to address experience and qualifications listed in the ‘criteria for technical evaluation’.
2. Duly filled Personal History Form (P11) and/or Curriculum Vitae (CV) of consultant including records of past experience in similar assignments and specific outputs obtained; P11 can be downloaded at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment

Failure of candidates to submit a duly completed P11 form, as well as false representations on this form, shall constitute sufficient grounds for withdrawal of further consideration of the application. Information provided in the P11 form will be treated with confidentiality.  Applications without a complete set of the required documentations will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment. UN Women reserves the right to accept or reject any bid.