Re-advertised: Programme Coordinator on Women’s Human Rights (For Moldova Nationals or Legally Authorized to Work in Moldova)

Background

UN Women is operational in Moldova since 2010. Currently, it is implementing its Strategic Note for 2014-2017. UN-Women closely cooperates with the government, civil society, and private sector to advance social, economic and political rights and opportunities for women and girls, placing special focus on those from marginalized groups. These include, but not limited to rural women, Romani women, women with disabilities, young women, women living with or affected by HIV, women survivors of violence and trafficking, women migrants, elderly women and women in Transnistria and Gagauzia. We work with them to challenge the stereotypical image of women. We apply new tools to ensure women’s proactive engagement in designing, prototyping and implementing the state policies and plans. Thus, UN-Women’s operation in Moldova focuses on bringing about concrete change in the lives of women and the society as a whole through the following three key areas.

Eliminating Violence Against Women. UN-Women employs adaptive solutions by empowering survivors of violence from various backgrounds to speak up and advocate for concrete actions with their peers as well as with authorities and the media. This approach so far has led to changing perceptions of survivors by the authorities, media and other women, so they are acknowledged and involved as the key experts in eliminating VAW in legislative, policy, institutional and community level initiatives. Lately, UN-Women has started to mobilize other actors of society including youth, religious leaders, former perpetrators, judicial staff, police, members of the artistic community, so that under the leadership of the survivors of violence, the ‘whole of society’ can produce long-overdue results for women. Apart from these, UN-Women has continued the conventional technical interventions/solutions, such as support to government authorities and civil society partners to implement provisions of the Domestic Violence Law (2008) and strengthening the legislative framework by further aligning it to international norms and standards. UN-Women’s next Strategic Note for 2018-2022 in Moldova will build on these results and further inform support to the country in this area of work at all levels.

Women in Politics and Leadership. Women’s opportunities to hold elected office in Moldova are still low, with women from marginalized groups virtually absent from decision-making positions. In response to these challenges, UN-Women is leading a comprehensive UN joint programme on promoting women in politics, implemented together with UNDP and two civil society organizations. Partnerships are forged with legislators, institutions and community leaders to empower them to increasingly work with women, especially those who are marginalized from the decision-making, thus enabling the women to lead the required changes. This is being done through community level mentoring and role modeling, exchange of good practices and establishment of self-support networks, especially among women elected for the first time in Parliament and local councils or appointed as mayors. UN-Women will work further to strengthen the networks between women from all levels and continue legislative and policy work in order to ensure women’s fair access to politics and real influence in a sustainable manner.

Women’s Economic Empowerment. UN-Women has initiated a number of strategic actions in this area. The first state strategy for women’s entrepreneurship was jointly created with women in business and currently being considered by the Government. Additionally, the government launched a process of re-engineering public services (as part of the Public Services Modernization Reform agenda) by taking over a successful public services provision model through one-stop shop piloted by UN-Women. For over two years, more than 100 girls, including Romani girls, girls with disabilities, girls who experienced violence and girls who are left behind by their migrant parents, benefited from an initiative on information and communication technologies (ICTs) as one of the promising employment and self-employment opportunities. UN Women also works closely with policy makers to adopt state programmes that empower women in technology and entrepreneurship.

Together with Government and national counterparts, the organization has fully embraced the call for exploring innovative ideas to find sustainable and transformative solutions as envisaged by Agenda 2030. The operational support is designed in a way that it allows to proactively embark on new opportunities and assist our partners to deal with the emerging challenges within the scope of the set priorities in an innovative manner.

UN-Women’s presence has evolved from being a project-based office in 2010 to a Country Office with full delegated authority as of 2015. During these years, UN-Women’s role has also evolved gradually, both from the technical and strategic standpoints. At the start, our mind was set around ‘working for women’, which later evolved into ‘working with women’. In the immediate future, we are seeing our path towards increasingly acting as a ‘facilitator’ for the creation of an environment, whereby ‘women-to-women’ serve as a vehicle for sustainable change towards greater equality in partnership with men and boys. UN-Women’s successful engagement in Moldova today is owed in large part to the openness and cooperation of the Parliament, government and judicial authorities, as well as to the civil society organizations at the grassroots as well as central level. The proactive support and partnership of the Swedish Government enables UN-Women in Moldova to operate with confidence and to experiment and share ‘what works’ in challenging development areas. The cooperation of other development partners has helped to open new avenues of collaboration for greater equality in the country. UN-Women as part of the 12 resident agencies in Moldova is actively promoting the Delivering as One modality.

Currently, Moldova Country Office is in its final stage of implementation of its strategic plan covering the period 2014-2017. This entails number of key momentums, including the completion of current and starting of new programs, raising funds for the new areas of engagement and focus, and implementing new programs, including innovative programs on eliminating violence against women and girls and engaging men and boys for this purpose.

UN Women is therefore looking for a Programme Analyst on Women’s Human Rights (WHR Programme Analyst), who will also act as a WHR Lawyer in the team to focus on the recommendations from the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), UPR and other treaty body and charter based bodies’ at the country level. WHR analyst will contribute to the fulfillment of UN Women’s normative mandate in the Republic of Moldova.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the overall guidance and direct supervision of the National Programme Officer/Programme Specialist and in close collaboration with UN Women Moldova programme and operations staff, WHR Programme Analyst will be responsible to support timely and synergetic implementation of the UN Women Strategic Note and its action plans in the area of Eliminating Violence Against Women (EVAW) as well as ensuring coordination of implementation of UN Women Normative mandate in line with the corporate guidelines, rules and regulations.

SUMMARY OF KEY FUNCTIONS:

• Provision of top quality advisory and programme development services UN Women Normative mandate area;
• Management of the EVAW portfolio and supervision of the program initiatives;
• Coordination Support and Strategic partnerships building;
• Advocacy support and Knowledge building and management.

Provision of top quality advisory and programme development services UN Women Normative mandate area:

• Assist the UN Women Country Office in making use of the recommendations of UPR, CEDAW, the special procedures and other mechanisms and subsidiary bodies to improve country level programmes through Women’s Human Rights (WHR) lens;
• Assist the work of UN Women in mainstreaming international WHR norms and standards into normative, operational and coordination initiatives;
• Provide support to UN Women in developing and implementing a strategy to address risks and violations of WHR, especially in situations of risk or actual serious violations;
• Keep abreast of the latest global, regional and national developments in the field of women’s human rights and provide substantive inputs to governmental, non-governmental, UN partners to help shape national strategies, policies, programmes and norms and standards in the area of women’s human rights;
• Timely preparation of relevant substantive reports, briefs and required documents on Women’s Human Rights.

Management of the EVAW portfolio and supervision of the program initiatives:

• Oversee the implementation of the country Strategic Note in the area of EVAW and oversight of programme implementation in the country, to ensure delivery of results as planned in UN Women’s Strategic Plan in line with UN Women guidelines and strategies and accountability frameworks;
• Assist the Country Office (CO) in identifying promising practice, technical expertise and strategic opportunities for eliminating EVAW and gender issues, including through innovative approaches, and feed this practices back to the normative mandate of UN Women;
• Work closely with the Programme Specialist and other UN Women team members at the country level to provide program support to develop and implement programs and projects to enhance capacities of women survivor of violence and women living with HIV, including their economic empowerment;
• Provide support to partners (Government, NGOs, etc.) in applying innovation for EVAW in their work;
• Assist NGO partners working in EVAW and HIV innovation area to link their practical work with the global/national normative area;
• Ensure documentation of the EVAW and HIV innovation process to reflect best practices and lessons learnt;
• Develop concept notes, prepare project documents and reports upon the request of the Program Specialist;
• Provide tangible inputs to the preparation of donor proposals and reports to ensure quality, compliance with requirements as per established rules, regulations, including the commitments under relevant UNDAFs and the UN Women Strategic Plans in EVAW and gender equality areas.

Coordination Support and Strategic partnerships building:

• Assist UN Women country office in coordinating efforts on capacity building on WHR of its partners, including UN, Government, development partners;
• Assist with building national capacity (duty bearers, watch dogs, including media) to implement WHR and gender equality norms and standards, primarily in the priority areas of UN Women;
• Build capacities of the rights holders to demand their rights fulfillment with the primary focus on the disadvantaged and excluded groups, including their capacity to prepare and submit reports to Human Rights instruments;
• Provide substantive support to CO on inter-agency coordination related to EVAW and WHR;
• Prepare analytical and regular progress reports on UN Women’s EVAW programme experiences in support of UN women inter-agency coordination role.

Advocacy support and Knowledge building and management:

• Assist UN Women and its partners make use of knowledge and experience on international WHR norms and standards;
• Facilitating Engagement with UN Human Rights Bodies by supporting UN and national partners in their engagement with international human rights mechanisms;
• Provide guidance for collecting data and undertaking analysis of principal concerns on WHR violations, including through non-traditional data sources;
• Develop a repository of knowledge of WHR in the Republic of Moldova and share this knowledge with the CSOs, media and other partners in an organized manner;
• Facilitate the exchange of experiences among partners and stakeholders towards achievement of the planned results for the realization of women’s human rights in the country, based on the identified positive experiences;
• Provide advice and inputs to UN Women communication efforts in the context of SDGs;
• Synthesis of lessons learnt and best practices in programmes from WHR perspective;
• Sound contributions to knowledge networks and communities of practice on WHR;
• Contribute to design of advocacy materials and promote initiatives for advocacy and policy dialogue.

Perform any other duties as may be assigned by the management of the CO.

IMPACT OF RESULTS:

The key results have an impact on the overall UN Women CO efficiency in programme and success in implementation of Strategic Note. Accurate analysis and presentation of information enhances UN Women position as a strong development partner. The information provided facilitates decision making of the management.

Competencies

CORE VALUES / GUIDING PRINCIPLES:

• Integrity: Demonstrating consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct.
• Professionalism: Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work.
• Cultural Sensitivity/Valuing Diversity: Demonstrating an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrating an international outlook, appreciating differences in values and learning from cultural diversity.

CORE COMPETENCIES:

• Ethics and Values: Promoting Ethics and Integrity / Creating Organizational Precedents.
• Organizational Awareness: Building support and political acumen.
• Development and Innovation: Take charge of self-development and take initiative
• Working in Teams: Building and promoting effective teams. Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.
• Communicating Information and Ideas: Creating and promoting an enabling environment for open communication.
• Self-management and Emotional intelligence: Creating an emotionally intelligent organization.
• Conflict Management /Negotiating and Resolving Disagreements: Leveraging conflict in the interest of the organization and setting standards.
• Knowledge Sharing / Continuous Learning: Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning.
• Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making: Demonstrate informed and transparent decision making

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES

• Ability to advocate and provide policy advice;
• Focuses on impact and result for the partners and responds positively to feedback;
• Ability to provide input to business process re-engineering, elaboration and implementation of new data management systems;
• Creates, edits and presents information in clear and presentable formats, using appropriate IT functionality;
• Demonstrates good oral and written communication skills;
• 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 manage data, documents, correspondence and reports information and workflow;

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master degree in Law, International Development, Human Rights or related sciences.

Experience:

• Minimum of 5 years of relevant experience related to protecting and promoting women’s human rights, or related experience with development partners or projects;
• Solid academic and practical experience on human rights;
• Related experience and/or knowledge of UN Charter based and Treaty Bodies and their recommendations to member states;
• Strong concept development, presentation and reporting skills;
• Experience in data analysis is a strong asset;
• Experience in the UN system, agencies and international organizations is an asset;
• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc.) and advance knowledge of spreadsheet and database packages, experience in handling of web based management systems.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in Romanian, Russian and English (written and spoken) is required;

Working knowledge of one or more additional languages relevant for Moldova, including Bulgarian, Gagauzian, Romani, Ukrainian or sign language would be an asset.

The United Nations in Moldova is committed to workforce diversity. Women, persons with disabilities, Roma and other ethnic or religious minorities, persons living with HIV, as well as refugees and other non-citizens legally entitled to work in the Republic of Moldova, are particularly encouraged to apply.

This is a local position, therefore only citizens of the Republic of Moldova are eligible to apply. Applications should be submitted on line and include fully completed UN Women Personal History Form as attachment instead of CV/resume, with the mark “WHR Programme Coordinator” by 03 of July, 2017, COB.

Failure to disclose prior employment or making false representations on this form will be grounds for withdrawal of further consideration of his/her application or termination, where the appointment or contract has been issued.

Note:

The system will only allow one attachment, hence all supporting document e.g. P11, CV and Cover letter must be scanned as one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment. Only qualified, shortlisted candidates will be contacted for test and interview.

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.