Normative and Coordination Specialist

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. Support for gender mainstreaming within the UN System through its coordination mandate remains integral to the work of UN Women as mandated in its founding resolution (GA 64/289, para.58).

In line with its triple mandate, substantive gender coordination contributes to women and girls playing a more important role and benefiting from development efforts, recovery, and humanitarian response in compliance with national and international norms and standards.

 UN SWAP has identified critical areas for improvement, including enhancing the Gender Analysis of the Common Country Analysis (CCA), establishing gender-sensitive indicators to better monitor the UNSDCF’s impact on gender equality, and improving the monitoring of gender financial investments. These priorities are integrated into the new UN planning cycle. Sustained and systematic coordination on GEWE remains a challenge, including through the Technical Working Group on gender. National and district gender coordination mechanisms lack strategies and financial support to effectively coordinate initiatives addressing GEWE and SGBV.

Under its strategic note 2025-2029, UN Women will enhance its coordination role within the UN system to improve accountability for gender equality. This includes increasing women’s participation in humanitarian response plans, improving the capacity of national institutions and civil society to promote and implement women’s rights, and reinforcing the Women’s Economic Empowerment Principles (WEPs) in the private sector. The organization efforts will include important engagements with various forums such as the GCP, GTG, OCHA, and the Nexus Committee to ensure message is effectively communicated and aspects related to the mandate of UN Women are thoroughly considered.

By fostering strategic alliances and ensuring coordinated efforts with partners such as UN agencies, government bodies, and the private sector, UNWOMEN aims to advance gender-responsive actions across all sectors and improve outcomes for women and girls in the DRC.

Strategic actions will encompass supporting humanitarian coordination, integrating gender-responsive budgeting into the UNSDCF, conducting rapid gender analyses of humanitarian needs, and developing communication tools to promote a gender approach in humanitarian sectors.

The organization will also strengthen the UN Country Team’s capacities for gender mainstreaming, lead resource mobilization efforts to ensure sufficient resources for gender mainstreaming and support the Resident Coordinator’s Office (RCO) in monitoring gender financial resources.

UN Women, in coordination with UN partners, will develop an age or life cycle perspective in the gender analysis of the common country analysis (CCA), create gender and age-sensitive indicators to better monitor the UNSDCF, and establish joint strategies and financial support to effectively coordinate initiatives addressing GEWE and SGBV. Additionally, UN Women will define and concretize strategic alliances, coordinated efforts, and shared responsibilities with UNFPA to integrate gender and youth perspectives in UN support to WPS and YPS.

Under the guidance and direct supervision of Country Representative, the Normative and coordination specialist is responsible for oversight of the effective implementation of the outcome 5 of the SN 2025-2029 “Outcome #5. Coordination, Normative Progress and Humanitarian Action “Gender coordination contributes to women and girls playing a more important role and benefiting from development efforts, recovery and humanitarian response in compliance with national and international norms and standards” through the following specific outputs (i) Women and women’s rights organizations have increased leadership and participation in the implementation of the humanitarian response plan and in humanitarian coordination mechanisms (5.1 Gender and humanitarian coordination); (ii)Gender coordination within the United Nations System is strengthened, in order to increase accountability on gender equality (5.2 UN GENDER COORDINATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY); (iii) National institutions, civil society, women’s rights organizations, and the media have a greater capacity to promote the implementation of women’s fundamental rights in accordance with national and international normative frameworks (5.3 NORMATIVE ADVANCEMENT) and (iv) The Women’s Economic Empowerment Principles (WEPS) are reinforced in the private sector of the DRC in order to increase their accountability on gender equality. (5.4 PRIVATE SECTOR ACCOUNTABILITY / WEPS).

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Support gender and humanitarian substantive coordination to relevant stakeholders.

• Work closely with and provide advice to national bodies and interagency groups that influence national policies related to humanitarian action and where necessary represent UN Women.
• Support the country representative effective participation in the Humanitarian country team, and coordination groups.
• Lead specific efforts in mainstreaming gender and protection in disaster preparedness, response and recovery efforts of other clusters and relevant working groups, including inclusion and participation of under-represented groups in accordance with Commitments on Accountability to Affected Populations.
• Advocate for the engagement and participation of local organizations and civil society networks in humanitarian coordination mechanisms.
• Build capacities of local women organization Provide technical support to local women organization to integrate gender in humanitarian action
• Oversee the technical aspects of the implementation and coordination of humanitarian programs, (localization, LEAP Provide advice on contextualizing/ localizing program documents, country strategies, and knowledge products

• Coordinate proper monitoring and reporting for humanitarian action in collaboration with program teams.
• Provide strategic direction, leadership and overall technical management of humanitarian programming in country in line with the Strategic Action Plan outcomes.
• Ensure that all interventions follow local laws as well as relevant international laws including Humanitarian law.
• Liaise regularly with the relevant humanitarian regional and HQ technical units.

       2. Support UN Gender coordination and accountability.

• Provide advice and inputs on the UNSDCF Roadmap to ensure that the UNSDCF development process will ensure strong integration of GEWE, in line with the UNCT-SWAP requirements, and facilitate active engagement of women’s CSOs and women’s machineries.
• Provide substantive support in the development of a rigorous gender analysis in the Common Country Analysis (CCA) to explain immediate, underlying and root causes of gender inequalities and gender-based discrimination, and differentiated impacts.
• Provide technical advice to RCs/UNCTs for national GEWE policy and legal framework development 
• Provide support to the effective implementation of the gender score card action plan
• Preside over the different meetings of the One UN gender team
• Coordinative the contribution of different agencies for a joint coordinated support to the Government and CSOs ( national forums of gender ministers, national forum of women movements etc)
• Coordinate the organization of the different retreat of the One UN gender team.
• Provide substantive inputs to the different reports of the RCOs with gender perspectives.
• Coordinate the production of the UN gender parity report.

       3. Support National authorities and CSOs for the advancement of normative policies and strategies.

• Provide substantive contribution to the development and formulation processes of the GEWE national policy and strategies, coordination and reporting mechanisms.
• Ensure substantive technical support to the different gender coordination mechanisms at national and provincial levels (GTG)
• Provide substantive contribution to the organization of the national forum of Ministers in charge of gender and provincial divisions.
• Provide substantive contribution to the organization of the national forum of women movement in DRC
• Support the effective implementation of the capacity building programme of CSOs
• Ensure the follow up of the implementation status of the recommendations of the different forums
• Support national authorities for the production of mandatory reports (Beijing + etc, regional commitments).

       4. Support the effective implementation of the Women Economic Empowerment Principle with the private sector

• Provide substantive support to private sector actors partners for the effective implementation of WEPS principles.
• Engage private sector actors in the various campaigns for the promotion and protection of GEWE
• Support the development and implementation of tailored training package to partner private sector compagnies
• Participate in the different regular meetings global pack private sector actors
• Contribute to the development and implementation of private sector engagement in DRC with UN WOMEN
• Document and share best practices of private sector actors engagement in GEWE.

         5. Provide technical support and guidance to the development of partnerships and resource mobilization as it relates to        

             coordination efforts

• Provide technical support and guidance to the country office on managing activities and other promotional events to engage bilateral and multilateral institutions/donors, private sector and civil society to expand and/or sustain interest and resources for UN Women programmes and joint UN system programmes;
• As part of strategic planning, provide support and advice to the country office in forging and implementing strategic partnerships to increase UN Women’s positioning in country;
• Liaise with key stakeholders from Government, academia, civil society, the private sector and key international actors to build and strengthen strategic alliances and partnerships on women’s rights and gender equality initiatives.

        6. Facilitate knowledge building and sharing

• As part of UN Women strategic planning exercise, and in close collaboration with the country office representative support and oversee the reporting on outcome 5 and produce national and regional analysis including global trends and identifying challenges.
• Lead the development and dissemination of good practices and lessons learned on coordination and gender mainstreaming at the UNCT and regional levels; ensure they are incorporated into programme development.
• Provide capacity development support to country level colleagues on coordination mandate and gender mainstreaming.
• Develop capacity development initiatives on gender-related issues and priorities as needed.

        7. Lead and manage personnel under their supervision. 

• Manage the performance of personnel under their supervision by provide managerial direction, guidance and leadership as well as performance feedback and coaching.
• Ensure performance assessment are completed on time and identify learning and development opportunities to support personnel’s engagement.
• Ensure all personnel under their supervision are fully aware of UN Women’s workplace relations policies. 

      8. The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the

          Office and the Organization.

Supervisory/Managerial Responsibilities:

The incumbent will have under his/her direct supervision five (5) staffs respectively responsible for (i) gender and humanitarian coordination/localization; (ii) UN gender coordination; (iii) National gender coordination mechanisms; (iv) Women Movement coordination and (v) private sector WEPS specialist.

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

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies:

https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment/application-process#_Values

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES:

• Excellent knowledge of gender equality and women’s empowerment issues
• Excellent knowledge of UN system and understanding of inter-agency coordination processes
• Excellent knowledge on UNDS reform content and its implementation at the country level
• Ability to promote and monitor inclusion of gender-specific objectives, indicators, targets and activities in the UN Entities’ programmes

Required Skills and Experience

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in international development, public administration, public policy, or other relevant social science 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:

• At least 7 years of progressively responsible experience working with inter-agency coordination is required.
• Experience in supporting or developing UNCT-SWAP Gender Equality Scorecard and its action plan or other system wide processes on Gender equality such as UN System-wide Strategy on Gender Parity, CEDAW UNCT report, GTG and UNCT GEM is required.
• Experience in delivering capacity building activities is required.
• Experience working in gender equality and women’s rights at the international level is desirable.
• Experience working in developing countries within the UN system, Agencies, Funds or Programs is desirable.

• Experience leading and coaching staff in international settings is required.
• Experience in the use of computers, office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc.), spreadsheet and database packages is required.
• Experience in the use of a modern web-based ERP System, preferably Oracle Cloud, is desirable.

Languages:

• Fluency in English and French is required.
• Knowledge of another official UN language is desirable

Application:

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from: . Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

Note:

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.