Call for Applications - UN Women Roster: Human Rights Due Diligence Policy on United Nations support to non-United Nations Security Forces (HRDDP) Risk Assessments

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.

UN Women’s Policy, Programme, and Intergovernmental Division (PPID) provides intellectual and strategic leadership on normative support and the delivery of integrated policy and program advice, including through policy analysis and gender mainstreaming. The Division leverages innovation, knowledge management and innovative technical expertise to support UN Women programs and to build the capacity of partners to deliver results on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Peace Security and Resilience Section (PS&R) is responsible for providing technical support to UN Women Country Offices in key areas including conflict prevention and peacebuilding, justice, and security sector reform, promoting women's political participation and mainstreaming gender issues into governance reforms.

The Elsie Initiative Fund for Uniformed Women in Peace Operations (EIF) (https://elsiefund.org/) is hosted by UN Women – PS&R, PPID, New York. The EIF aims to support and incentivize efforts to increase the meaningful participation of uniformed women in United Nations peace operations through the provision of financial assistance or financial incentives to Troop and Police Contributing Countries (T/PCCs), and financial support to projects submitted by United Nations organizations. 

The EIF seeks to accelerate progress towards achieving the United Nations Security Council’s declared mandate to double the rate of women’s participation within police and military contingents by 2020 compared to 2015, as well as supporting targets to increase the proportion of women serving as military observers, staff officers and individual police officers as per the United Nations Uniformed Gender Parity Strategy 2018-2028.

Adequate due diligence of all project proposals is fundamental to managing the programmatic risks of the EIF. The EIF Terms of Reference (English; French; Spanish) require that countries contributing military and police officers to peace operations – known as Troop and Police Contributing Countries (T/PCCs), that are being considered for funding, are assessed against the United NationsHuman Rights Due Diligence Policy on United Nations support to non-United Nations Security Forces (HRDDP) before funds being disbursed. (Policy Links: HRDDP: English and French; and HRDDP Guidance Note: English and French. 

The HRDDP, issued by the United Nations Secretary-General on 13 July 2011, is intended to serve as a risk management mechanism to ensure that any support provided by United Nations entities to non-United Nations security forces is consistent with the purposes and principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations and with its obligations under international law to respect, promote and encourage respect for international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law. One of the key components of implementing the HRDDP is the risk assessment. This provides a baseline analysis of risks for providing or not providing support to security institutions; it also identifies appropriate mitigating measures that can reduce these risks to acceptable levels. Based on the risk assessment, the project management, in consultation with internal and external partners as appropriate, decides whether support can be provided, and, when support is provided, ensures that mitigation measures are implemented and the conduct of the recipient receiving support is monitored in terms of their human rights obligations.

The EIF will conduct human rights risk assessments for projects under consideration in future programming roun