UN Women : Consultant to facilitate the DRR workshop and develop a project proposal on resilience and disaster risk management in the Sahel

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. 

UNWOMEN through its West and Central Africa Region Office is participating in the implementation of the project "Building Disaster Risk Reduction and Adaptation Capacity for Resilience in the Sahel Region: Fostering Risk-Informed Solutions for Sustainable Development - Sahel Resilience Project ", a multi-partner’s project implemented in countries of the Western Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin, namely: Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Chad. It is funded by the government of Sweden.The Sahel Resilience Project’s UN Women’s component focused on integrating gender and social inclusion into disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). 

The project is an initiative at national and regional levels, with the aim of ensuring that women's civil society organizations, regional institutions, and governmental entities of the Sahel countries have institutionalized and domesticated development planning that considers gender-responsive disaster risk reduction, and risk-informed programming and investing for resilience building. 

Since 2022, UN Women has worked with women CSOs from the Sahel countries to develop their capacities and put in practice some of the skills acquired. UNWOMEN has developed tools and guidance on gender and DRR and built capacities of key DRR actors in the region. 

Besides these achievements, as women, girls and persons with disabilities are more vulnerable and prone to disasters due to the gender dimensions of disaster risk, there is also a need to build gender mainstreaming capacity of all actors and stakeholders to ensure a better integration of gender equality and women's empowerment in all aspects of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), including in coordination and leadership, capacity development, data, analysis and advocacy, and targeted programming. To be able to mainstream gender sensitive risk information into development processes, there is a need to build capacities at national level for collecting Sex Age Disaggregated Data, as well as capacities for gender sensitive risk assessment. 

Significant results have been achieved through this project, and for the first time in the region, greater emphasis has been placed on gender-responsive policies and women’s participation in disaster risk reduction (DRR) efforts. It is therefore essential to plan for the project’s phase-out, ensure the sustainability of its outcomes, and identify priority actions for the next steps.

UN Women, in collaboration with UNDP, is organizing a regional workshop for the dissemination of the developed tools, share good practices and lessons learned and identify priorities and recommendations for the next phase or new programs.   

In this perspective, UN Women Regional Office for West and Central Africa wishes to recruit an international consultant to facilitate the workshop and analyze the experiences of women's organizations, implementing partners and beneficiaries of project funding, in order to make a new project proposal. 

The consultant will be reporting to the Regional Advisor for Peace, Security and Humanitarian Action/DRR, and will be supported by Gender and Humanitarian Regional Specialist as acting as the DRR project coordinator, who will be the point of contact on the contract and payment issues.

 

Description of Responsibilities/ Scope of Work

 

Deliverables

The expected deliverables to be produced by the consultant are the following:

 

1. Facilitate the regional workshop and produce a summary report based on CSO’s expectations

 

The consultant will ensure to achieve at the end of the workshop, the following key results: 

• Women CSOs and DRR actors are familiar with the tools for collecting Sex Age and Disaggregated Data, and how to manage such a process, working together with various government institutions.
• Women CSOs and DRR actors are familiar with all the tools and necessary steps to establish a governance, a strategy and a plan of action for conducting a natural hazard risk assessment to help them better plan CCA/DRR activities at community and national levels.
• Key results, good practices and lessons learned on gen