Communications and Advocacy Consultant

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 Policy, Programme and Intergovernmental Division (PPID) provides intellectual and strategic leadership on normative support and the delivery of integrated policy and program advice, including through policy analysis and gender mainstreaming. The Division leverages innovation, knowledge management, and cutting-edge technical expertise to support UN Women programmes and to build the capacity of partners to deliver results on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Women Peace, Security and Humanitarian Action Section (WPSHA) is responsible for providing technical support to UN Women Country Offices in several key areas including conflict prevention and peacebuilding, justice sector and security sector reform, promoting women's political participation and mainstreaming gender issues into governance reforms.

The Elsie Initiative Fund for Uniformed Women in Peace Operations (EIF) (https://elsiefund.org/), is hosted by UN Women under the WPSHA section in  PPID in the Headquarters based in New York, USA. The EIF aims to support and incentivize efforts to increase the meaningful participation of uniformed women in United Nations peace operations through financial assistance or financial incentives. It seeks to accelerate progress towards achieving the United Nations Security Council’s declared target of doubling the rate of women’s participation within police and military contingents by 2020 compared to 2015, as well as supporting targets to increase the proportion of women serving as military observers, staff officers and individual police officers.

Duties and Responsibilities

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Under the overall supervision of the Communications and Knowledge Management specialist, the consultant will contribute to developing multi-media products for the launch of the EIF second programming round. The consultant will also assist in the overall development, management, and execution of the EIF’s external and internal strategic communications and media outreach efforts.

The incumbent will be expected to perform the following duties and responsibilities:

• Contribute to the development of the EIF advocacy and strategic communications strategies and activities.
• Contribute to the development of visibility, outreach, and communications materials (print, video, TV, radio, social media, photo) including researching, compiling, drafting, and editing information.
• Support and organize outreach and advocacy initiatives such as briefing sessions, interviews, and launches.
• Contribute to the preparation of advocacy materials including, video tutorials, briefs, presentations, fact sheets, brochures.
• Draft and prepare written documents for various purposes (e.g. meeting notes, background material, correspondence, reports, stories/articles, storyboards, or scripts for video production).
• Assist with drafting communications products based on quantitative and qualitative research and analysis.
• Monitor and analyze statistics related to websites and communications products.
• Organize and analyze data related to the communications products.
• Assist in organizing and setting up for special events, meetings, training courses or focus group webinars and draft meeting minutes.
• Take on other special projects as assigned.

Competencies

Required Skills and Experience

Education: 

• Master's Degree in Communications, Social Sciences, Public Administration, International Relations, Gender Studies, Economics or related field.
• A first-level university degree in combination with 2 additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience: 

• At least 2 years of proven relevant experience at the international level in communications.
• Experience in the field of peacekeeping and promoting gender equality in the security sector in a multilateral or international organization;
• Experience with writing storyboards and scripts, video production, design and layout of documents, print materials, and web content;
• Familiarity with and/or interest in taking and/or editing digital photographs or videos.
• Knowledge of using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
• Familiarity with graphic design or video editing tools (Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Adobe Premiere Pro other graphic design programs or video editing tools) is a plus.
• Familiarity with data visualization tools (e.g. Power BI) is a plus.

LANGUAGES:

• Fluency in English (written and oral);
• Fluency in French (written and oral) is a plus.