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.

Established by UN General Assembly Resolution 50/166 in 1996, the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls (UN Trust Fund) is the first and remains the only global UN funding mechanism dedicated exclusively to providing direct grants to civil society organizations working to prevent and end all forms of violence against women and girls (EVAW/G). Since 2010, UN Women has administered the UN Trust Fund on behalf of the UN system, providing a strong institutional foundation and field support through a global infrastructure of country and regional offices.

With nearly three decades of experience, the UN Trust Fund is a key global mechanism for funding initiatives that aim to eliminate violence against women and girls. Under its Strategic Plan 2026–2030, the UN Trust Fund advances survivor-centered, feminist and demand-driven grant-making, prioritizing organizations working with women and girls who face intersecting forms of discrimination, including women and girls with disabilities, Indigenous women, rural women and those affected by crisis and conflict. To date, the UN Trust Fund has supported 725 initiatives across 140 countries and territories, contributing to sustainable, locally led efforts to end violence against women and girls.

Under the guidance and direct supervision of the UN Trust Fund Global Grants Manager, the EVAW Regional Portfolio Specialist manages a portfolio of grants across the Africa region and contributes to the implementation of the UN Trust Fund’s global grant-making, accompaniment, monitoring, capacity development, learning and partnership functions. The Specialist provides strategic and technical support to grantee partners throughout the grant lifecycle, ensuring high-quality feminist-informed EVAW/G programming, effective risk management, institutional strengthening, and compliance with UN Women and UN Trust Fund requirements and also provides regular strategic portfolio analysis and recommendations to inform decision-making by UNTF senior management, based on portfolio performance, risks, and emerging trends.

The Regional EVAW/G Portfolio Specialist works closely with UN Women Regional and Country Offices, civil society organizations, women’s rights organizations, feminist movements, UN entities, and other strategic stakeholders to strengthen portfolio coherence, generate practice-based knowledge, and ensure that lessons and evidence from grantee partners contribute to broader UN Women and UN system learning, advocacy, and programming on EVAW/G.

Functions:

1.     Lead comprehensive support to grantees on the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of EVAW programmes and initiatives

  • Provide tailored programmatic advice to grantees on feminist-informed and survivor-centered EVAW/G programming approaches, safeguarding, ethical data collection, partnership strategies, and adaptive implementation.
  • Promote feminist learning, adaptive management, and partner-centered accompaniment approaches that strengthen grantee sustainability and organizational resilience.
  • Support grantee partners in strengthening institutional systems and practices related to programme management, monitoring and reporting, financial management, safeguarding, governance, procurement, partnership management, and operational compliance.
  • Contribute to the design, delivery, and facilitation of regional and global grantee capacity development initiatives, workshops, webinars, learning exchanges, onboarding sessions, and peer-learning opportunities.
  • Support the identification of institutional capacity gaps, operational risks, and resilience challenges across the portfolio and contribute to tailored accompaniment plans.
  • Support and monitor grantee compliance with mandatory UN requirements, including safeguarding, PSEA, anti-fraud, and accountability mechanisms.
  • Contribute to the development of guidance notes tools, templates, and learning resources to support high-quality EVAW/G grant implementation and institutional strengthening.
  • Undertake missions to support programme development, verify principled project implementation and foster partnership building on EVAW/G thematic areas.
  • Uphold standards for EVAWG programming across the portfolio, ensuring interventions are survivor-centered, gender-transformative, and grounded in international norms and evidence driven practice on prevention and response.
  • Identify gaps in grantee programme design and implementation and provide technical guidance across the grant cycle to address them.
  • Lead targeted technical support to partners facing complex challenges, strengthening quality of services, coordination mechanisms, and institutional responses to violence against women and girls.
  • Integrate an analysis of EVAWG trends, risks, practice-based knowledge into UN Trust fund support to programming at CSO, country and regional levels, ensuring relevance to regional contexts and evolving challenges.

2.     Manage and monitor a portfolio of UN Trust Fund grants in the Africa region across the full grant cycle, ensuring high-quality programme implementation, compliance, monitoring, and adaptive accompaniment throughout the grant lifecycle.

  • Provide substantive technical review and feedback on concept notes, full-fledged proposals, budgets, theories of change, risk mitigation measures, monitoring frameworks, and implementation strategies.
  • Coordinate and manage all operational and programmatic processes related to assigned grants, including project revisions, budget modifications, no-cost extensions, disbursement processes, partner agreement amendments, asset transfers, and project closure.
  • Monitor and assess grantee performance through systematic review of narrative and financial reports, partner check-ins, monitoring missions, risk assessments, and portfolio analysis and maintain a centralized portfolio of all active and closed grants in the region.
  • Support grantees in identifying and mitigating operational, fiduciary, contextual, and programmatic risks, particularly in fragile, conflict-affected, humanitarian, and shrinking civic space contexts, in close collaboration with finance and operations colleagues.
  • Ensure grant implementation aligns with UN Trust Fund policies, UN Women procedures, safeguarding standards, and the Fund’s strategic priorities, including Leave No One Behind commitments.
  • Proactively identify and escalate significant risks or issues that could affect multiple grants within the region, ensuring timely resolution and minimizing potential impacts on grant objectives.
  • Coordinate closely with Programme and Finance Associates and relevant UN Women focal points to ensure integrated portfolio oversight and quality assurance.

3.     Contribute to regional grant selection, appraisal, and portfolio quality assurance processes

  • Contribute to the grant selection process including in the review of the Call for Proposals and related guidance documents and templates.
  • Provide substantive programmatic analysis and recommendations on applicant proposals, including assessments of technical quality, feasibility, contextual relevance, innovation, intersectionality, and organizational capacity.
  • Undertake or review implementing partner assessments and contribute to institutional risk analysis to support informed grant-making decisions.
  • Contribute to quality assurance processes related to grant selection, including technical oversight and follow up on the implementation of audit recommendations, in close collaboration with the Operations team.
  • Provide end-to-end project management support to CSOs and WROs, including in the project planning, inception and implementation phases, based on demand and need.
  • Support engagement with Regional Programme Advisory Committees (RPACs), UN Women Regional and Country Offices, and inter-agency stakeholders during grant selection and portfolio oversight processes.

4.    Contribute to knowledge generation, monitoring and strategic learning across the EVAW/G regional grants portfolio

  • Analyze grantee reports, monitoring findings, and portfolio data to identify emerging trends, lessons learned, promising practices, operational risks, and evidence gaps across the Africa portfolio.
  • Contribute to regional and thematic analyses, portfolio reviews, strategic reporting, donor reporting inputs, briefing notes, and communications materials.
  • Support monitoring missions, partner feedback mechanisms, and portfolio-level learning exercises.
  • Contribute to the generation of portfolio intelligence that informs strategic planning, adaptive grant-making, advocacy, and evidence-based decision-making.
  • Support the documentation of grantee experiences, innovations, and practice-based knowledge to strengthen learning uptake across the UN Trust Fund, UN Women, and broader EVAW/G ecosystem.
  • Maintain accurate portfolio tracking systems, records, and grant management data in relevant systems and platforms.

5.     Strengthen regional coordination, partnerships, and engagement with UN Women offices and stakeholders

  • Act as the primary liaison between regional stakeholders and the UN Trust Fund headquarters.
  • Maintain strong working relationships with UN Women Regional, Multi-Country, and Country Offices to support portfolio coherence, coordinated accompaniment, and alignment with broader EVAW/G priorities and programming.
  • Coordinate regularly with UN Women focal points and regional stakeholders to strengthen collaboration, visibility, learning, and integration of UN Trust Fund-supported initiatives.
  • Support strategic engagement with civil society networks, women’s rights organizations, feminist movements, UN entities, and regional actors working to end violence against women and girls.
  • Support regional portfolio reviews, thematic consultations, learning exchanges, and convenings to strengthen collaboration and cross-regional learning.
  • Represent the UN Trust Fund in relevant regional meetings, consultations, technical discussions, and stakeholder engagement opportunities as required.
  • Performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization.

Supervisory/Managerial Responsibilities: Management of one Programme and Finance Associate (NPSA) in the region.

Competencies :

Core Values:

  • Integrity;
  • Professionalism;
  • Respect for Diversity.

Core Competencies:

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

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Values and Competencies Framework: 

Functional Competencies:

  • In-depth knowledge of gender equality, women’s rights, feminist movements, and ending violence against women and girls programming.
  • Familiarity with the socio-political context and EVAW/G landscape across the Africa region.
  • Strong knowledge of feminist grant-making, programme management, results-based management, and monitoring and evaluation approaches.
  • Ability to provide high-quality technical advice on EVAW/G programme design, implementation, safeguarding, monitoring, and adaptive management.
  • Familiarity with budget planning, review and monitoring.
  • Strong analytical skills and ability to synthesize complex programmatic, operational, and contextual information into actionable recommendations.
  • Ability to manage complex grant portfolios across multiple countries and operational contexts.
  • Strong relationship management and partnership-building skills with civil society organizations, UN entities, donors, and regional stakeholders.
  • Strong written and oral communication skills, including drafting analytical reports and briefing notes, and knowledge products.
  • Ability to work effectively and independently in a decentralized structure, managing relationships across multiple locations and time zones.
  • Proficient in the use of MS Office Suite of Applications.
  • Good knowledge of UN programme management systems.
  • Familiarity in Quantum or another ERP system is an asset.

Recruitment Qualifications:

Education and certification:

  • Master’s degree or equivalent in Social Sciences, Political Science, Development, Public Administration, Gender Studies or related field 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.
  • A project/programme management certification would be an added advantage.

Experience:

  • At least 5 years of progressively responsible experience in programme management, including programme design, coordination, monitoring and evaluation, donor reporting and capacity building in the area of ending violence against women is required.
  • Experience in working directly with civil society and women’s organizations, in the area of ending violence against women and girls in Africa is required.
  • Experience setting priorities, budgets, work plans, participating in programme development and programme monitoring is required.
  • Experience in programme design, monitoring, reporting, and results-based management is required.
  • Experience managing complex multi-country portfolios and working across diverse operational contexts, including crisis-affected or fragile settings, is desirable.
  • Experience providing technical assistance and institutional strengthening support to civil society organizations is highly desirable.
  • Experience in grant-making, proposal appraisal, due diligence, and risk management processes is desirable.
  • Experience coordinating with UN Women offices, UN agencies, donors, and inter-agency stakeholders is desirable.
  • Experience contributing to knowledge generation, evaluation, learning, or evidence synthesis processes is desirable.

Language Requirements:

  • Fluency in English is required.
  • Fluency in French and other UN Languages is desirable.

Statements :

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.

Diversity and 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.)

Note: Applicants must ensure that all sections of the application form, including the sections on education and employment history, are completed. If all sections are not completed the application may be disqualified from the recruitment and selection process.

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Before applying, please make sure that you have read the requirements for the position and that you qualify. Applications from non-qualifying applicants will most likely be discarded by the recruiting manager.