Closing date: 27 May 2022
Duty Station: Remotely (as to be mutually agreed between UNFPA and the consultant)
Purpose of consultancy:
UNFPA East and Southern Africa (ESA) Regional Office (ESARO) to achieve the ambition of the UNFPA 2022-2025 strategic plan, wishes to expand and strengthen its work with men and boys to achieve UNFPA three transformative results by promoting positive masculinity. UNFPA ESARO seeks the services of an individual consultant to develop an internal strategy for enhancing meaningful engagement of men and boys to deliver its three transformative results in the ESA countries and region. The strategy should adopt a life cycle approach in line with women's rights principles, looking at engaging among others, men and boys in their role and capacity as partners and /or spouse, clients of SRHR services and community members. It should critically look at gender, power and privilege as core elements of masculinity in line with the ecological framework to transform harmful masculinities to accelerate progress towards elimination of harmful practices, violence against women and girls and universal access to SRHR information and services.. The strategy should propose a set of objectively measurable indicators for UNFPA country and regional offices to assess their work with men and boys.
Among other things the strategy development exercise should cover the following elements:
Internally
• Review UNFPA interventions to date engaging with men and boys in the ESA region across a wide range of regional and global programmes and interventions (i.e., Safeguarding Youth Programme, 2 gether 4 SRHR programme, Spotlight Initiative, Joint Programme on FGM, Global Programme on Child Marriage, Husbands’ schools, Men Engage Alliances) to assess their impacts, limitations and lessons.
• Fully consider the pathways identified by the UNFPA Strategic Plan 2022-2025
Externally
• Consider the findings of UNFPA ESARO supported secondary literature review of literature to identify what works in East and Southern Africa to promote positive masculinity and meaningful engagement with men and boys to advance the SRHR agenda, focusing on issues such as VAWG, maternal health and family planning (i.e, the three transformative results).
• Identify UNFPA’s approaches to develop and support interventions at various levels (policy, advocacy, financing, delivery and measurement by adopting a life cycle approach that contributes to transform masculinities and work with men and boys to reduce/eliminate harmful practices and violence against women and girls, promote SRHR and gender equality and equitable wellbeing in East and Southern Africa with a focus on UNFPA three transformative results. It should position how the interventions fit within broader prevention programmes (social and gender norms transformation more broadly, CSE...) and what are the linkages with response and services.
• Identify what kinds of policy, institutional and structural changes have led to or could lead to large-scale change in men and masculinity.
• Identify what is required for programmes and interventions to be able to scale up and sustain efforts, looking at common factors, conditions or operating strategies of the programmes that have been able to scale up or sustain themselves.
• Propose key recommendations for and principles to ensure ongoing accountability of the proposed interventions in engaging men and boys to feminist movements.
The individual consultant will provide high quality services to UNFPA ESARO to conduct a secondary research and strategic consultation with stakeholders to explore opportunities and concerns around the engagement of men and boys towards securing gender equality and ending VAWG and harmful practices against women and girls and promoting uptake of SRHR information and services. The secondary research will include identification of documents and reports that might contribute to the understanding of the gaps and bottlenecks to address the problem, including lessons learned from previous initiatives to implement and enforce existing provisions. The findings of the secondary research should be included in the inception report that could be elaborated further by strategic consultation. Findings of the secondary research and strategic consultation should inform the development of the draft strategy on engaging men and boys to deliver the UNFPA three transformative results in East and Southern Africa.
Methodology
Interested service providers are requested to submit a technical proposal that outlines the methodology to be used to develop a strategy to guide UNFPA ESARO and UNFPA ESA country offices in 23 countries to transform harmful masculinities by enhancing engagement of men and boys to reduce/eliminate harmful practices and violence against women and girls, policy, administrative, social barriers to access SRHR information and services for promoting gender equality and equitable wellbeing in East and Southern Africa.
• The service provider’s methodology could include but not limited to desk review of existing evidence; noting that the service provider will be requested to use and complement if needed the UNFPA ESARO supported secondary literature review of literature to identify what works in East and Southern Africa to promote positive masculinity and meaningful engagement with men and boys to advance the SRHR agenda that was carried out in 2020.
• Sampling and data collection plan
• Data collection tools to be used in the collection of data
• Data analysis plan
• Data quality assurance
• Mechanism to validate findings with regional and country offices as well as with key stakeholders.
Deliverables
The individual consultant will be required to undertake the following tasks:
• Inception report with key findings from the secondary research
• Carry out consultation with UNFPA CO and external stakeholders to prepare and submit a report outlining which interventions are the most effective; What are their critical characteristics; Can the identified interventions be transferable to other cultures/contexts; In which cultural settings do they work; How much do they cost; Which are the most cost-effective interventions; and, What are the risks with the identified interventions including any potentially negative impact on women’s empowerment.
• A UNFPA draft strategy on meaningful engagement with men and boys to achieve UNFPA three transformative results in the 23 ESA countries. The proposed strategies should look at interventions at both country and regional levels.
• Comprehensive power point presentation outlining the strategy.
All documents generated for the purpose of this assignment are to be submitted to UNFPA ESARO in electronic copies.
Duration and working schedule: A maximum of 27 days.
Work will be delivered electronically. Delivery dates will be agreed with the consultant upon contract starting date.
Regular meeting will be organised with the Regional Gender Programme Specialist and the Regional ISRHR Coordinator to provide an update on progress.
The consultant will report to the Regional Gender Programme Specialist and Regional ISRHR Coordinator.
Qualifications, background and experience
The consultant is expected to bring the following expertise, qualifications and competencies:
• The individual consultant should have a minimum 10 years of experience with a Master or a Bachelor degree with 12 years of experience in relation to gender and male engagement to advance gender equality and SRHR. Knowledge and experience in developing strategic and policy documents.
• Working in East and Southern Africa is an asset.
• Knowledge and capacity to provide high quality reports.
• Strong analytical skills
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of French and/or Portuguese is an asset.
• The company/individual should have experience in working with other UN agencies with similar assignments, specifically in developing strategies.
• The company/individual should provide examples of past experience for similar assignments
Other specifications
• The consultant is expected to create, share with UNFPA ESARO and maintain a Google Drive folder with all relevant documents and materials prepared for this assignment.
• The assignment shall commence on the day of contract signature and end
• The consultant is expected to complete the assignment within the set deadlines as indicated in this terms of reference.
The deadline for applications is 27 May 2022.
• Interested applicants should send a short letter of motivation and a detailed CV with the subject clearly stated "Consultancy: Strategy – Men & Boys Engagement" to jobs.esaro@unfpa.org.
• UNFPA will only respond to those applicants in whom we have further interest.
The United Nations does not charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process (application, interview, processing, training) or other fee, or request information on applicants’ bank accounts or HIV status.
We are no longer accepting applications for this position.
