Support for Development of UN Women Country Strategic Notes in Europe and Central Asia Region, Homebased, International 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.By placing women’s rights at the center of its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates UN system efforts to ensure that global commitments on gender equality are translated into concrete actions. It provides coherent leadership while supporting Member States' priorities and building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

In 2023, UN Women adopted the Planning, Monitoring, and Reporting (PMR) Procedure to ensure coherent and focused programming aligned with the principles of Results-Based Management. This procedure, developed under the PMR Policy, simplifies, harmonizes, and streamlines business processes. It provides clear guidance on the development and amendment of Country Office Strategic Notes (SNs) and Work Plans (WPs) and ensures effective monitoring and reporting on their results. The PMR Procedure aligns UN Women’s country strategies with national priorities and the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) while integrating qualitative and quantitative gender analysis, independent assessments, audits, and evaluations.

High-quality SNs are essential for UN Women to deliver on its triple mandate of normative support, UN system coordination, and operational activities. These SNs must propose innovative programmatic strategies and approaches, address current contexts, build on lessons learned, and focus on high-impact Development Results (DR) and Organizational Effectiveness and Efficiency (OEE).

In line with the PMR Procedure, ECARO provides technical and operational assistance to four Country Offices (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Türkiye) in developing their SNs and supports Uzbekistan in designing a country programme to establish a Programme Presence. This support ensures that all country strategies adhere to UN Women’s PMR guiding principles of accountability, inclusiveness, adaptive management, and learning. The ECARO Strategic Planning, Monitoring and Reporting Team plays a pivotal role by offering expert guidance, facilitating technical support from HQ and RO thematic teams, and building CO capacity to operationalize the PMR Procedure successfully. This ensures the delivery of coherent, strategic programmes aligned with UN Women’s corporate standards, advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment across the region.

Given the complexity and importance of these efforts, UN Women seeks to engage an International Consultant (IC) to support ECARO in facilitating the development of high-quality, forward-looking SNs for COs. The IC will provide specialized expertise, ensuring compliance with corporate standards and contributing to the strategic positioning of UN Women in the region.

Description of Responsibilities/Scope of Work

Under the supervision of the Regional Strategic Planning Specialist, the consultant will be responsible for:

Support the Strategic Note development of four Country Offices (COs) and one NRA:

1. Review UN Women corporate guidelines and ECARO’s work on the development of Country Strategic Notes (SNs).
2. Develop a methodology of the assignment and a work plan with clear tasks, timelines, and deliverables for ECARO approval.
3. Follow up on and review materials from Headquarters (HQ) regarding the likely future direction of the next Strategic Plan (SP) to ensure alignment and enhance synergies between the Global SP and the CO SNs.
4. Provide technical input for SN Roadmaps submitted by COs and ensure alignment with corporate standards and timelines.
5. Deliver tailored capacity development support to COs, in line with UN Women corporate tools and guidance, on applying innovative strategic planning methods in the development of their SNs for 2026-2029. This may include training sessions, practice-sharing events, or additional follow-up sessions as needed.
6. Provide support to ECARO in organizing Early Thinking sessions for each CO, involving ECARO thematic teams and HQ Divisions by: - Reviewing and guiding CO presentations on situation analysis, strategic prioritization, results framework formulation, and data quality. - Documenting discussions and capturing key decisions and action points.
7. Review COs' SN drafts and the following mandatory annexes from RBM, gender, and data quality perspectives:
8. SN narrative
9. SN Results and Resources Framework (RRF)
10. Evaluation plan
11. HR Planning Tool
12. Partnerships, Communications, and Visibility annex
13. Risk register
14. Social and Environmental Scan annex
15. Support ECARO in organizing and facilitating the regional peer review process, including compiling the SN review checklist and ensuring timely feedback to COs.
16. Assist ECARO in conducting a lessons-learned session post-SN approval with the participation of COs, ECARO, and HQ teams to document key insights for future strategic planning processes.
17. Create and maintain a repository on the ECARO SharePoint site for best practices and tools related to SN development, ensuring easy access for COs and thematic teams.
18. Prepare periodic progress updates and a final consultancy report, summarizing achievements, challenges, and recommendations for improving future SN development processes.

List of key reference documents

The key reference documents that will be provided by UN Women to the Consultant for the assignment are listed below (including but not limited to): 

1. UN Women Planning, Monitoring, Reporting Policy.
2. CO Programme Planning, Monitoring and Reporting Procedure.
3. Documentation (reviews, assessments, reports, evaluations) related to the current COs Strategic Note.
4. UN Women Strategic Planning and RBM methodological materials. 

Deliverables

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel

This is a home-based consultancy with one 3-days mission to Istanbul, Türkiye.

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:

• Excellent analytical, writing and synthesis skills; 
• Demonstrated experience in planning, results-based management and/or evaluation; 
• Demonstrate responsiveness, objectivity, organization and have a good methodology in carrying out the work; 
• Demonstrate an ability to produce quality results on time and to work under pressure; 

Education: 

• A minimum Master’s degree in international relations, gender, sociology, business administration, economics, law or other related disciplines.  

Experience: 

• At least 7 years of international experience in analytical work, strategic planning, and results-based management in the areas of human rights and gender equality.
• Proven expertise in working with gender data and conducting complex gender analyses across various thematic areas.
• Demonstrated experience in producing high-quality analytical reports and strategic documents for international organizations, meeting UN quality standards.
• Previous experience with UN Women or the UN system; experience in the Europe and Central Asia region is considered an asset.
• Excellent facilitation skills to lead diverse teams in forward-looking strategic planning and innovation processes, ensuring inclusive and collaborative engagement. 

Languages: 

Fluency in English is required. 

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.)