Senegal: Gender in Disaster Risk Reduction and Risk-Informed Development

Feb 13, 2021 | UN Women
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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.

Background

Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women works for the elimination of the 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. In pursuit of this vision and guided by global norms and standards, the UN Women's Humanitarian Strategy aims to promote gender equality and women's empowerment in humanitarian efforts including in disaster risk reduction, response, and recovery.

The Sahel region of Africa is blessed with abundant human, cultural and natural resources. Yet there are deep-rooted challenges environmental, political, and security—that affect its prosperity. Countries in the Sahel have been dealing with successive political and humanitarian crises for years. The situation has left the Sahelian countries increasingly vulnerable to disasters, with a weak ability of households to withstand repeated and increasingly frequent shocks. In this situation, due to the gendered dimensions of disaster risk, women and girls face greater vulnerability and exposure to disasters. Yet they remain poorly involved in conventional disaster risk reduction processes.

As part of its Disaster Risk and Reduction work, the UN Women Regional Office for West and Central Africa, focus on prevention and resilience building by ensuring that new and existing disaster risks are mitigated by putting women at the center of disaster risk reduction. UN Women facilitates and promotes the integration of gender equality and women's empowerment through Coordination and Leadership; Capacity Development; Mainstreaming Gender into Data, Analysis, and Advocacy, and Targeted programming. UNWOMEN collaborates closely with UN system partners, national institutions, and civil society organizations.

The project: "Strengthening capacities for disaster risk reduction and adaptation for Resilience in the Sahel Region: fostering risk-informed solutions for sustainable development - Sahel DRR/CCA Regional Project, 2019- 2021" is a multi-partners project implemented in the west Sahel countries namely: Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. It is a regional initiative with the aim to achieve that regional institutions and national governments have institutionalized and domesticated risk-informed development planning, programming, and investment for resilience building.

As part of its Disaster Risk and Reduction work, the UN Women Regional Office for West and Central Africa UN Women will play a critical role within the Sahel DRR/CCA Regional Project. UN Women will contribute to bringing the understanding of gender dimensions of disasters and climate change in the Sahel Region, as well as proposing means of reducing the vulnerabilities of women and men to disasters through their participation and leadership. The focus will be under:

• Output 1 in ensuring the collection and analysis of sex, age, and disability disaggregated data as part of strengthening national damage and loss accounting systems.?
• And Output 2, support ECOWAS in ensuring the mainstreaming of gender into national DRR Strategies and policies and ensure the participation of women in national and regional DRR Platforms under Output 2 and 5.

The expected outcome at the end of the project for UN Women is that gender is mainstreamed into national DRR Strategies and policies in the Sahel. Three key outputs will be achieved:

• Increase capacities of DRR actors and women’s organizations on integrating gender into DRR.
• Collection of SADD and gender-sensitive DRR assessments.?
• Improvement of participation of women in DRR planning and dialogue.

UN Women will capitalize the project findings within the bigger frameworks of its other ongoing programs and initiatives in the Sahel such as the G-5 Sahel, the LCBC, and other resilient and peace-building initiatives.

Duties and Responsibilities

Purpose and Objectives

UN Women is looking for a consultant to provide short-term technical support for the inception phase deliverables of the Sahel DRR/CCA Regional Project. The overall objective of this consultancy is to support UN Women DRR programming by achieving the output 1 of the Sahel DRR/CCA Regional Project

The Project has 5 main outputs:

• Increased capacity of tracking and monitoring progress on SFDRR and AU Program of Action implementation in the Sahel region through enhanced data collection, analysis, and reporting systems;
• Strengthened regional and multi-country regulatory, policy, and budgetary frameworks for translating disaster and climate data into risk-informed development;
• ?Enhanced regional recovery and resilience-building processes that address underlying disaster and climate change risks and restore pathways to sustainable development in the Sahel countries;
• Enhanced Regional capacities for urban risk management;
• Enhanced innovations and knowledge on risk-informed development through Regional Dialogue and South-South exchange

The output 1 of the project aims to: Increase capacity on tracking and monitoring progress on SFDRR and AU Program of Action implementation in the Sahel through enhanced data collection, analysis and reporting systems. It is aligned with the Sendai Framework DRR Priority Area 1 - Understanding Disaster Risk

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the direct supervision of the Regional Policy Adviser on Peace, Security and Humanitarian Action, the Consultant will perform the following key activities:

Contract period and work location

The consultant will be in Dakar, with frequent travel to project areas. The contract period is from March 15th – September 15th, 2021. Additionally, UN Women will require an estimated lead time of 10 working days to review outputs.

Competencies

Core Values

• Integrity
• Professionalism
• Respect for Diversity

Core Competencies

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Technology Awareness
• Working in Teams

Required Skills and Experience

• Master’s degree in gender studies, human rights, international affairs, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, humanitarian action, social science, public policy, and/or any relevant field directly related to gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls;
• Minimum seven years of relevant work experience at national or international level in gender in humanitarian action and DRR programming;
• Relevant professional experience delivering capacity building training to government and non-government actors on gender equality, women’s empowerment, and DRR;
• Technical experience in gender-responsive disaster risk reduction, humanitarian action or/and climate change adaptation, with demonstrated experience in data management in the concerned domain;
• Research and guideline/training development with a strong technical focus on collection of SADD disaster data;
• Excellent writing skills, with a track record in writing and reports (in English) related to gender and humanitarian issues;
• Experience working in the UN System, in particular, UN Women is an asset;
• Working experience in gender in DRR & resilience in the Sahel region is an asset;

Language Requirements

• Fluency in written and spoken English and French is required

Computer Skills

• High level of proficiency in computer systems, internet navigation, and various applications including research databases and data analysis software.

Submission of application

Submission package includes:

• Letter of Motivation
• Personal History Form(P11) https://www.unwomen.org/fr/about-us/employment 
• Writing sample on Gender and Disaster Risk Reduction domain
• Technical proposal of no more than 5 pages describing the methodology, work plan and time frame to achieve the project deliverables.

Payments

• Payments for this consultancy will be based on the achievement of each deliverable and certification that each has been satisfactorily completed. Payments will not be based on the number of days worked but on the completion of each stated deliverable within the indicated timeframes.