Consultant: Support for the development of UN Women Regional Office Strategic Note-2026-2029 for the Asia and the Pacific Region.

Background:

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works to eliminate discrimination against women and girls, empower women, and achieve 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 coordination to ensure global commitments to gender equality are translated into concrete actions. It provides strong and coherent leadership while supporting Member States' priorities and fostering effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.
The UN Women Regional Office for the Asia-Pacific (ROAP) is located in a region that includes 42 UN Member States. It oversees and supports 20 countries across the region. The office focuses on several key areas: UN Coordination, Inter-governmental support, Women’s Economic Empowerment (including Migration), Ending Violence Against Women, Women, Peace and Security, Leadership and Governance, Gender Statistics, Climate Change, and Disaster Risk Reduction and Humanitarian Action. 
In accordance with UN Women’s Planning, Monitoring, and Reporting (PMR) Policy, ROAP is required to develop a coherent and forward-looking Strategic Note (SN), which is a multi-year business plan of a UN Women field office. This SN must align with the organization’s triple mandate, the UN Women corporate Strategic Plan (SP), and the principles of Results-Based Management (RBM), which include accountability, inclusiveness, adaptive management, and learning. To ensure its relevance and effectiveness, the SN must be informed by comprehensive regional context analysis, independent assessments including audits and evaluations, and thorough stakeholder consultations.

The consultant will report to the Head of Planning, Monitoring and Reporting Unit, UN Women ROAP.

Description of Responsibilities /Scope of Work

Under the guidance and supervision of the Head of Planning, Monitoring and Reporting Unit (PMRU), the consultant will provide support in developing high-quality documents for the UN Women ROAP SN (2026-2029). The consultant will closely work with the Regional Director (RD), Deputy Regional Director (DRD), PMRU staff, Coordination Unit and other ROAP units. The development of the SN should adhere to the corporate procedures and guidelines of UN Women, ensuring alignment with the organization’s global SP. 

Key responsibilities include: 

 

• The consultant will be responsible for conducting a comprehensive desk review of UN Women’s policies and procedures, as preparation, ensuring that the ROAP SN is developed in accordance with corporate requirements and guidance. 
• Finalize a detailed methodology and roadmap with clearly defined actions, timelines, and processes for the SN development, based on the inception meeting with the PMRU and RD/DRD.
• Conduct a socio-economic and political context analysis for the Asia Pacific region from a gender perspective, ensuring that the analysis accurately represents the region. The consultant will use updated statistics, analytical reports, and input from relevant internal and external stakeholders, including thematic units of the ROAP. 
• Facilitate workshops and conduct interviews with key stakeholders, in close collaboration with ROAP PMRU. 
• The consultant will be responsible for collecting information, data, and analytical pieces from the regional context analysis, findings from the regional workshops and interviews, informed by key statistics.  
• After collecting the required information and statistics from the context analysis and consultations, the consultant will be responsible for compiling a ROAP SN package with input from ROAP thematic units and functions. A ROAP SN Integrated Results and Resource Framework (IRRF) will adopt impact/outcome statements and their indicators from the corporate Strategic Plan. Outputs and their indicators and key activities as well as additional outcome/output indicators will/could be proposed by ROAP units. Result-Based Management (RBM) standards need to be applied and realistic, yet ambitious baselines, milestones and targets (BMTs) should be in place. Where necessary, methodological notes should be drafted. This package will include the SN narrative section, IRRF, Partnership, Communications and Visibility Plan, and Social and Environmental Scan with support from relevant colleagues of the Regional Office. Additionally, the consultant might support relevant units of ROAP in developing the SN Risk Register, Human Resource plan, and Evaluation plan.     

 

Support to SN quality assurance process:     
 

• The consultant will support quality assurance process for the SN by drafting presentations,