Programme Advisor, PSEAH

Background

UNDP’s mission as part of the UN system is to achieve sustainable development and fight poverty wherever it is greatest. This requires the very best of us, world-class collaboration, innovative thinking, resilient-based strategies, and continuous learning. UNDP’s competitive advantage as a development partner of choice comes from having the trust of developing countries, owing to our impartial character, transparency, and longstanding presence and commitment to the poorest and most vulnerable. We offer opportunities to make a lasting difference to the more than 170 countries where we commit our support and expertise.

UNDP is strongly committed to upholding UN values and, as such, prohibits all forms of harassment, sexual harassment, discrimination and abuse of authority in its workplace as well as any sexual misconduct with regards to the populations we serve, either by our personnel or by partners we work with in our policy and programme work. UNDP’s 2024-25 corporate Strategy and Action Plan on PSEAH, has a focus on the four priority areas of Prevention; Reporting and Response; Support to Victims/Survivors and Accountability. A UNDP corporate Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Harassment (PSEAH) Task Force led by the Special Adviser on Corporate Initiatives drives the implementation of the Strategy and Action Plan to further advance a UNDP working environment based on respect, openness, trust and free from any kinds of harassment, discrimination, bias, abuse of authority and misconduct, including sexual harassment and sexual exploitation and abuse. 

Position Purpose

Under the overall supervision of the Special Advisor on Corporate Initiatives, and as part of the PSEAH team situated in the Executive Office of the Administrator, the Programme Advisor on PSEAH is responsible for leading the implementation of the UNDP Strategy and Action Plan on PSEAH in UNDP. The post holder will collaborate closely with UNDP’s Office of Audit and Investigations (OAI), Ethics Office, Office of Legal Services, and Office of Human Resources, all of which play critical roles in addressing and managing incidents of sexual misconduct. The post holder reports to the Special Advisor on Corporate Initiatives and supervises the P4 Victim Support Officer as well as a number of consultants as part of the core PSEAH team. The post holder will undertake duty travel as required.

UNDP adopts a portfolio approach to accommodate changing business needs and leverage linkages across interventions to achieve its strategic goals. This is a recognition of interconnected nature of development risks & crises that the world is facing and that call for assembling of multidisciplinary teams for an integrated & systemic response. Therefore, UNDP personnel are expected to work across issues, units, functions, teams and projects in multidisciplinary teams in order to enhance and enable horizontal collaboration.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

Lead the design and development of organizational policies, strategies, and guidelines related to PSEAH

• Lead the review and continual improvement of PSEAH strategy, policies, and practices in line with best practice, ensuring PSEAH principles and standards are mainstreamed into corporate policy, procedures, frameworks, and guidelines as well as programme activities in Country Offices working closely with other Bureaus and Offices as required 
• Lead on updating UNDP’s corporate PSEAH Strategy and Action Plan, in consultation with the PSEAH Taskforce and other stakeholders as needed, for discussion and approval by the Executive Group annually.
• Working closely with Office of Human Resources (OHR) and other relevant offices, support the implementation of UNDP’s policy on Harassment, Sexual Harassment, Discrimination and Abuse of Authority, ensuring that this policy remains up to date and relevant. 
• Lead on the design and implementation of initiatives to raise awareness of UNDP’s PSEAH policies, strategies and action plans both internally and externally 
• Lead the design, roll out and detailed analysis of results of UNDP’s PSEAH annual Country Office survey and other related surveys to inform key monitoring and progress reports including the Integrated Results and Resources Framework of the UNDP Strategic Plan
• Lead on the provision of guidelines on key corporate priority areas including a) conducting risk SEAH assessments, b) working on SEAH with implementing partners and c) providing victim/survivor reporting mechanisms and support services 
• Lead on the provision of guidelines to offices on the design of PSEAH action plans to effectively implement UNDP’s corporate strategy and action plan and address gaps that have been identified. 
• Lead the design of mechanisms to track performance as well as for