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). UN Women is the IASC-endorsed lead for the Pacific Humanitarian Team (PHT)’s Pacific Humanitarian Protection Cluster (PHPC). The situation varies by country, with national clusters led by government, which are typically Women’s Ministries. During disaster response, UN Women leverages its existing programmes to support local development partners to respond to the needs, for example, of people with disabilities, GBV survivors, and general provision of psychological first aid and gender and protection integration in key humanitarian sectors. Through the combination of coordinator and responder roles, UN Women promotes gender- and protection-sensitive disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.
During the preparedness phase, UN Women supports national protection coordination structures to develop SOPs, guidelines and programming tools as well as provides capacity building. The range of preparedness actions are diverse given the range of emergencies in the Pacific region. The Pacific experience emergencies including natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruption, cyclones, storm surges and droughts. There have been also environmental and public health emergencies.
Within the UN Women Fiji MCO, the Climate Action/Humanitarian Action and Resilience work, comes under the SN Impact Area 4, Women, Peace, Security (WPS), Humanitarian Action & Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). UN Women Fiji MCO is engaged in supporting the region’s efforts to respond to the climate crisis, and disaster risk management.
One of the major programmes being implemented under this Impact 4 level is the Women’s Resilience to Disasters (WRD) Programme. 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.
Reporting to the UN Women Fiji MCO Representative, the Climate Action and Humanitarian Specialist International Consultant, will lead, guide, and provide substantive technical support to selected national countries protection committees/ clusters to mainstream gender and protection in humanitarian preparedness action. The Humanitarian International Consultant will support the Fiji MCO Humanitarian Team with the PHT Protection Cluster coordination and strengthen partnerships with governments, humanitarian clusters, including other UN agencies and partners; and through regional and national coordination mechanisms to promote the substantive incorporation of gender and protection in humanitarian action.
Objectives of the Assignment:
For this purpose, the selected Climate Action and Humanitarian Specialist International Consultant will work under the overall guidance of the UN Women Pacific Multi Country Office Representative, direct supervision of the Deputy Representative and in close collaboration with UN Women Programme Specialist for Humanitarian & Resilience programme.
Reporting to the Fiji MCO Deputy Representative, the International Consultant will oversee the development of Climate Action/Humanitarian and Resilience programmes, provide capacity building to Fiji Multi Country Office (MCO) and Field Offices presence in the six countries, establish, and strengthen partnerships, and develop relevant knowledge products on climate resilience, gender, protection, and humanitarian action].
The Humanitarian and Resilience Unit is looking for an individual international consultant to support the climate action and humanitarian action portfolio and the implementation of selected activities under the work plan of the Humanitarian & Resilience programme.
Duties and Responsibilities:
The International Consultant will:
Oversee the design of gender-responsive climate action and humanitarian action in the region and the development of relevant knowledge products.
Provide policy recommendations and guidance to strategic planning and positioning on climate action and humanitarian action;
Identify promising practices, technical expertise, and strategic opportunities in the climate action and humanitarian action.
Provide technical and capacity building trainings to national protection coordination mechanism in the Pacific.
Provide substantive technical and policy advisory support to the Fiji Multi-country office and its programme presence programme teams in developing and strengthening projects/ programmes in this area;
Develop, implement and monitor capacity building initiatives;
Provide technical support to partners on implementation of interventions to advance gender-responsive climate action and humanitarian action;
Provide technical policy advice to programme/ project managers/ specialists in the Fiji MCO, Country Offices, programme presence countries.
Establish and strengthen strategic partnerships with stakeholders, regional/ international actors and development partners.
Build on partnerships with national protection coordination structures and national disaster response agency/ organization;
Link and maintain alliances and strategic partnerships for the advancement of gender responsive climate action, disaster prevention, preparedness and humanitarian action, response and recovery;
Maintain close liaisons with relevant donors and other actors supporting efforts towards climate action and humanitarian action;
Produce periodic updates and briefs on regional/country development situation to be used by stakeholders, CO and HQ.
Support advocacy for gender responsive climate resilience/humanitarian action through inter-agency coordination.
Coordinate and provide advisory role to regional/ national bodies and interagency groups that influence national policies related to climate action and humanitarian action and where necessary represent UN Women;
Lead the regional Humanitarian Protection Cluster and provide support to the Global Protection Cluster when required;
Provision of technical support to the UN Women Representative for the Pacific Humanitarian Team (PHT) coordination meetings as and when required;
During emergency response, develop and implement communication and advocacy messages and strategies on key gender and protection concerns;
Develop information, education and communication (IEC) materials, press releases, situation reports, alerts and contribute gender and protection-related inputs to documents prepared by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Support resource mobilization for gender-responsive climate resilience programming, humanitarian response, and humanitarian action in the region.
Lead and mobilize resources to support gender-responsive climate action and humanitarian action for MCO;
Lead and maintain close liaisons with relevant donors and other actors supporting efforts towards climate action and humanitarian action, as delegated;
Provide substantive technical support to field-based presences in the region in mobilizing resources for the implementation of climate action and humanitarian action.
Required Skills and Experience:
Education and certification:
Master’s degree or equivalent in Climate / Environmental Studies, Humanitarian, Gender Studies, Human Rights, International Development or a 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.
Experience and Skills:
At least 7 years (with Master’s degree), or minimum of 9 years (with Bachelor’s degree) of progressively responsible work experience in the area of climate change, environment, disaster risk reduction, human rights, gender equality and women's empowerment, preferably at the international level
Experience in designing and managing humanitarian programmes, with a particular focus on gender and protection in emergencies.
Substantive and technical experience in inter-agency coordination, preferably protection cluster coordination, and/or ProCap / GenCap in a natural disaster setting;
Experience in policy analysis and strategic planning;
Experience working with, and building partnerships with governments, donors and civil society organizations internationally and in the field;
Ability to work efficiently and responsively within a multicultural team, while demonstrating strong initiative and high degree of personal motivation needed to carry out tasks independently with sound judgement, good coordination, communication and analytical skills as well as professionalism and maturity;
Experience leading and coaching staff in international settings is required;
Experience in the UN system related to climate change, disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness, humanitarian-development-peace collaboration, response, and recovery is desirable;
Working experience in Asia-Pacific region is desirable.
Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc.) and spreadsheet and database packages, experience in handling of web-based management systems is required.
Language and other skills:
Fluency in English is required.
Knowledge of another official UN language is desirable (French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian or Spanish).
