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 invasion by the Russian Federation of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 has resulted in the loss of life, injuries, and mass displacement of the civilian population, both internally and to neighboring countries. The ongoing violence has also resulted in widespread destruction and damage to residential housing stock and civilian infrastructure, including health centers and schools, and the consequent disruption to essential lifesaving services across Ukraine. This escalation in fighting has exacerbated the existing humanitarian crisis—already present for the past eight years in conflict-affected Oblasts in Eastern Ukraine—and amplifies pre-existing gender inequalities as well as creating new ones.

Ukraine has become one of the world’s most complex emergencies and the crisis presents severe gendered challenges,1 including worsening inequalities and discrimination, compounded vulnerabilities, and disproportionate violence affecting women and girls—such as sexual and gender-based violence, conflict-related sexual violence, and domestic violence, among others. Adding to this, pervasive limitations to women’s representation in decision-making, despite their key engagement in humanitarian response, are compromising the efficiency of response programs. With women constituting the majority of refugees from Ukraine and those displaced within the country, they face significantly increased safety and protection risks, including multiple forms of gender-based violence (GBV), particularly domestic violence and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), including human trafficking.2 The recognition of the gendered effects of the war are essential for states, international agencies, and civil society to develop holistic humanitarian responses that address the differential experiences of conflict.3

In response to the gender impact of war in Ukraine, UN Women Ukraine developed a Transitional Strategic Note 2023 (SN). The UN Women SN developed in line with the United Nations in Ukraine Transitional Framework (UNTF) and supporting the implementation of international and national commitments of Ukraine on GEWE. UN Women will leverage its normative support to the Government of Ukraine at all levels (national, regional and local) to advance normative frameworks and GEWE opportunities. Specifically, the CO will continue supporting the governmental institutions and civil society to proceed with the EU accession process, develop and implement National Recovery Plan (as a follow-up on the Lugano Recovery conference 2022), implement and monitor the National Action Plan on the Implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (NAP 1325) (updated in 2022) and contribute to the implementation of the Framework of cooperation between the Government of Ukraine and the UN on the prevention and response to CRSV as part of WPS agenda. The SN will further support the development and implementation of the National Gender Equality Strategy by 2030, ensure compliance of the national legislation with the Istanbul Convention (ratified by Ukraine in July 2022) and support the national review of CEDAW Committee observation.4 Through its operational mandate, UN Women will support the government, women’s organizations and self-help groups to continue providing critical services and support to improve women’s resilience, as well as focusing on women’s representation and meaningful participation in decision-making, including in in peace and security processes at all levels in Ukraine. In full compliance with the UN Women Strategic Plan, the SN scales up coordination work across the HDP nexus and put women’s needs and voices at the center of humanitarian response and recovery.

Through its coordination mandate, UN Women Ukraine provides support to the coordination mechanism- through the Gender in Humanitarian Actions (GiHA Sub-Group) and works in the Humanitarian- Development- Peace Nexus (HDP) as articulated in the UN Transitional Framework for Ukraine. At the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, which brought together donors, CSOs, crisis-affected States, and others, strengthening the humanitarian-peace-development nexus was identified by the majority of stakeholders as a top priority.5 Nexus programming recognizes that humanitarian relief, development programmes and peacebuilding are not serial processes, but “three sides of the same triangle”6 that must work simultaneously and interdependently to effectively address people’s vulnerability before, during and after crises. The implementation of a nexus approach provides opportunities to promote gender equality through long-term support to women’s rights organizations, as well as through ensuring that women’s rights are integral to both immediate humanitarian responses and early recovery and development outcomes.

In 2023 UN Women Ukraine continues the implementation of three projects based on the long-term partnership launched during the previous Strategic Note timeline (2018-2022):

The project “Advancing GEWE through decentralisation Reform in Ukraine” (2019-2023) is funded by the Global Affairs of Canada. The purpose of the project is to support the national stakeholders with gender mainstreaming of the flagship decentralisation reform. The project provides policy, technical and capacity-building support to the national mechanism on gender equality, the Ministry of Communities, Territorial and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine, pilot regional and local administration to strengthen the implementation of the national government policy commitments and programs that advance GEWE at national, oblast and local levels. The project facilitates the participation of diverse women’s groups and CSOs in decision-making about decentralized governance and service delivery and their demand for accountability for GEWE commitments. The project was re-programmed to address the gender impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented humanitarian crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The project has to submit the final report to the donor by 31 March 2023.

The project “Building Democratic, Peaceful and Gender Equal Society in Ukraine – phase II” supports the localization, implementation and monitoring of the Ukrainian National Action Plan for the Implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security until 2025 (hereinafter NAP 1325), and incorporates lessons learned from UN Women’s cross-cutting support in strengthening policy, institutions and civil society at all levels, to advance the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda in Ukraine. The project will work with women and their organizations at the grassroots, regional and national levels to ensure their meaningful participation in peace processes. The project will also work in close collaboration with government institutions at the national, regional and local levels, responsible for implementing gender equality and WPS commitments. The project supports the institutionalization of dialogue between the duty bearers and the rights holders about the inclusion of women to meaningfully participate in decisions related to the WPS agenda. To support a gender- sensitive response to the implications of war the project has been re-programmed under two of its output areas. The project will conduct a mid-term review to support the CO and the project’s strategic learning and decision-making for the ongoing project implementation and enhanced accountability for development effectiveness.

The project “Transformative Approaches to Achieving Gender Equality in Ukraine”, funded by Sweden, aims to employ transformative approaches to the advancement of gender equality and women’s empowerment by removing the root causes, structural barriers, and restrictive social norms, that underpin the persistence of gender inequalities in various areas of life. The project partners with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and engages the following key institutions at the same time: the government, the parliament, women’s organizations, the media and the private sector. The duration of the project is from 1 March 2022 to 28 February 2026. As the project started just at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine the re-programming was made to address the urgent war-affected needs of vulnerable groups of women as well as to support the operation of the women CSOs in Ukraine. The project has to submit the annual report to the donor by 30 June 2023.

In order to engage women’s CSOs in humanitarian response to address the needs of the most vulnerable groups, in 2022 UN Women launched a number of projects funded by The Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) which is a global partnership re-energizing action and accelerating support for women’s participation, leadership, and empowerment in humanitarian response and peace and security settings. Guided by a range of civil society, government, and UN actors, WPHF is a multi-partner trust fund mobilizing urgently needed financing for local organizations led by and working alongside women on the front lines to build lasting peace. In direct and rapid response to the war in Ukraine, the WPHF activated an emergency regional response to the crisis, supporting women’s organizations’ responses in Ukraine and in Moldova. In March and April 2022, WPHF launched two emergency targeted calls for proposals. Following this, WPHF opened a 3rd and 4th Call for Proposals (CfP) targeting local organizations working all over the country within two funding streams: 1) Institutional funding to reinforce institutional capacities of CSOs working with women and girls in forced displacement and 2) Programmatic funding to support women and girls in humanitarian response, enhance protection of women and girls against SGBV, and promote improved socio-economic recovery and political participation of displaced women and girls in peacebuilding context. By the end of 2022, 11 Ukrainian CSOs were contracted. In 2023, as the result of the 3rd CfP, 11 Ukrainian CSOs and INGOs will be supported, and after the finalization of the 4th Call for Proposals, an additional number of partners will be selected.

In order to achieve the results framework of the new SN and ensure the implementation of the HDP nexus in a changed country context, the Country Office will continue to strive for good monitoring, evaluation, and reporting practices in line with corporate requirements and best practices on Results-Based Management (RBM). Each project has performance monitoring frameworks (PMFs) which are regularly updated and used as a key monitoring and reporting tool for measuring progress. UN Women also invests a lot of effort in strengthening the RBM capacity of national stakeholders and implementing partners. Various templates and tools have been developed and trainings are to be conducted for national and local partners to ensure high-quality monitoring and reporting in line with RBM standards.

To support the robust monitoring framework in HDP Nexus programmatic context, UN Women seeks to hire an International Consultant on Monitoring and Evaluation with extensive experience in monitoring and evaluations, result-based management and reporting.

1 UN Women and CARE International, “Rapid Gender Analysis of Ukraine”, 2022, https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital- library/publications/2022/05/rapid-gender-analysis-of-ukraine

2 Santoire, B., “A Feminist Reality-Check on the Ukraine Crisis,” 2022, https://www.mcgill.ca/rnwps/article/our-blog/feminist- reality-check-ukraine-crisis

3 European Parliament, “Russia's war on Ukraine: A gender-sensitive humanitarian response”, 2022, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2022/729328/EPRS_ATA(2022)729328_EN.pdf

4 CEDAW Committee will review the 9th periodic report of Ukraine during its 83th session in October 2022.

5 https://www.un.org/ecosoc/en/node/14973644

6 Secretary-General-designate António Guterres’ remarks to the General Assembly on taking the oath of office | United Nations Secretary-General

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the overall guidance of the UN Women Representative in Ukraine and the direct day-to-day supervision of the UN Women National Programme Coordinator, International Consultant on Gender- Responsive Monitoring and Evaluation in Humanitarian, Development and Peace Nexus Programmatic Context will implement a set of tasks, including, but not limited to:

Review the UN in Ukraine Transitional Framework and UN Women Ukraine Strategic Note and develop the action plan for UN Women’s review and approval.
Provide expert support to UN Women Ukraine on monitoring and reviewing activities of Strategic Note 2023, by setting up a clear monitoring framework for the Country Office (CO), ensuring alignment with project indicators, new SN/SP indicators, and UN in Ukraine Transitional Framework indicators.
Provide support to data collection and analysis of outcomes and outputs indicators against Strategic Note, in line with the Monitoring, Research and Evaluation Plan (MERP) and Performance Monitoring Framework (PMF) of Ukraine CO.
Provide a briefing/training and written recommendations for how to set up PMFs for new UN Women projects, to ensure alignment with CO and corporate requirements.
Provide a briefing for the CO staff to ensure the effective use of the UN Women Results Management System (RMS) for monitoring purposes.
Provide expert support in setting up a monitoring plan/PMF for UN Women responsible partners, including up to 40 CSOs working within projects of the Women, Peace and Security Fund.
Facilitate updating the CO’s internal (short-term indicators) to meet evolving needs for data. Provide training on timely data entry and update of monitoring data against outcomes and outputs, corresponding indicators and activities.
Provide ongoing support to programme team on the usage of updated PMF. Provide support in the facilitation of mid-term assessment of UN Women project “Building Democratic, Peaceful and Gender Equal Society in Ukraine – phase II” aims to assess the progress made towards the achievement of the set outcomes and objectives, analyze the results achieved and challenges encountered, adjust implementation modalities as needed and incorporate changes throughout program components for the remaining implementation period. Develop a report including key findings, good practices, lessons learned and recommendations to inform future work of the project and more broadly under UN Women Country Office approach. Provide an expert review of draft donor reports of the following projects: 1) “Advancing GEWE through Decentralisation Reform in Ukraine”; 2) “Transformative approaches to achieve gender equality in Ukraine”; 3) “Building Democratic, Peaceful and Gender Equal Society in Ukraine – phase II”.
Conduct a minimum of two online RBM training sessions for UN Women’s responsible partners and national consultants based on needs.
Develop and submit the final report on the activities undertaken, including the identification of good practices, lessons learned and recommendations on the strengthening M&E framework.

Assignment Deliverables:

#

Deliverables

The approximate

number of days

Deadlines

1.

Action plan developed and approved by UN Women.
Donor report of the project “Advancing

GEWE within the decentralization reform in

9

By 15 March

Ukraine” reviewed and submitted to UN Women.

2.

The CO Monitoring Framework updated.
Training and written recommendations for how to set up PMFs for new projects, to ensure alignment with CO and corporate requirements provided.
A monitoring plan/PMF for WPHF projects and partners developed.

12

By 1 April 2023

3.

A mid-term assessment of the “Building democratic, peaceful and gender equal society in Ukraine – Phase II” conducted, the report submitted and approved by UN Women.

15

By 1 May 2023

4.

• Donor report of the “Transformative approaches to achieve gender equality in Ukraine” project reviewed and submitted to UN Women.

7

By 5 June 2023

5.

• Donor reports of the project “Building democratic, peaceful and gender equal society in Ukraine – Phase II” reviewed and comments provided.

7

By 30 June 2023

6.

Ongoing support to programme staff on usage of PMF provided and training for selected staff/partners provided.
Final report on the progress and achievements, lessons learned, and recommendations submitted

6

By 30 September

2023

TOTAL

54

Inputs

UN Women will provide the Consultant with background materials related to the assignment.
The consultant is expected to work using her/his own computer.

Performance evaluation:

Contractor’s performance will be evaluated against such criteria as: timeliness, responsibility, initiative, communication, efficiency, accuracy, and quality of the products delivered. The evaluation will be carried out and cleared by the hiring manager which will also be the basis for payment on a delivery basis to the consultant.

Financial arrangements:

Payment will be disbursed upon receipt of the deliverables and their certification by UN Women Country Representative, or relevant delegated staff that the services have been satisfactorily performed.

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

Functional Competencies:

Strong knowledge and experience related to current policies and practices in the fields of gender equality, protection and humanitarian action, including humanitarian coordination;
Strong knowledge of the region
Strong networking skills
Ability to interact with donors, identify and analyze trends, opportunities and threats to fundraising
Ability to perform qualitative and quantitative policy research
Ability to advocate and provide policy advice
Strong analytical skills;
Ability to write policy papers, speeches, briefings;
Strong knowledge of programme development, implementation, results-based management and reporting

Required Skills and Experience

Education and certification:

Master’s degree or equivalent in human rights, gender, international relations, international development, international law or other social science fields 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:

At least 3 years of progressively responsible experience in developing and managing monitoring and evaluation framework and results-based management systems.
At least 3 years of practical experience in working with data management systems.
Experience in working with gender equality and women’s empowerment mainstreaming and human-rights-based approach in development programmes/projects.
Experience in conducting trainings on M&E and RBM for different types of stakeholders.
Experience working with the UN is an asset;

Language requirements:

Fluency in English is required;
Knowledge of the other UN official working language is an asset

Evaluation of Applicants:

Applications will be evaluated based on the cumulative analysis taking into consideration the combination of their qualifications and financial proposal. A two-stage procedure is utilized in evaluating the proposals, with evaluation of the technical proposal being completed prior to any price proposal being compared. The award of the contract should be made to the individuals whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

Responsive/compliant/acceptable.
Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation.

Technical criteria - 70% of total evaluation. Total max 70 points:

The total number of points allocated for the technical qualification component is 70. The technical qualification of the individual is evaluated based on desk review and following technical qualification evaluation criteria:

Technical Evaluation Criteria

Maximum

obtainable Points

Criterion A – Relevant education

Master’s degree or equivalent in human rights, gender, international relations, international development, international law or other social science fields 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.

5

Criterion B – Language skills

Fluency in English is required;
Knowledge of the other UN official working language is an asset

5

Criterion C – Relevant Experience with total for all of the following criteria

60 including:

At least 3 years of progressively responsible experience in developing and managing monitoring and evaluation framework and results-based management systems.

25

At least 3 years of practical experience in working with data management systems.

10

Experience of working with gender equality and women’s empowerment mainstreaming and human-rights-based approach in development programmes/projects.

10

Experience in conducting trainings on M&E and RBM for different types of stakeholders.

10

Experience working with the UN is an asset;

5

Total Obtainable Score

70

Financial/Price Proposal evaluation:

Only the financial proposal of candidates who have attained a minimum of 49 points in the technical evaluation will be further considered and evaluated.
The total number of points allocated for the financial/price component is 30.
The maximum number of points will be allotted to the lowest price proposal that is opened/ evaluated and compared among those technical qualified candidates who have attained a minimum of 49 points in the technical evaluation. All other price proposals will receive points in inverse proportion to the lowest price.
Evaluation of submitted financial offers will be done based on the following formula: S = Fmin / F * 30
(S - score received on financial evaluation; F min - the lowest financial offer out of all the submitted offers qualified over the technical evaluation round; F - financial offer under the consideration).

Application and submission package:

All applications must include as one attachment:

1. Completed and signed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded

from https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unwomen.org%2 Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2FHeadquarters%2FAttachments%2FSections%2FAbout%2520Us%2FE mployment%2FUN-Women-P11-Personal-History-Form.doc&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK

2. Financial proposal (sample is provided below) completed and signed: The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount with a breakdown of a daily professional rate per number of anticipated working days to include all costs (e.g. tele-communication, etc).

Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment.

Cost Breakdown per Deliverables*

Deliverables

# of days and Percentage of Total Price (Weight for payment)

Price, USD

(Lump Sum, All Inclusive)

1

2

3

4

Total

max. # of working days (100%)

USD ……

Interested candidates are requested to apply no later than 23:59 EEST 21 February 2023 by submitting online applications.

Applications without P11 and financial proposal may be treated as incomplete and may not be considered for further assessment.

UN Women applies fair and transparent selection process that would take into account the competencies/skills of the applicants as well as their financial proposals.

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).