International Consultant on Gender Equality in Parliamentary and Electoral Development Issues, Home-based with 3 missions to Chisinau, Moldova

Background

UNDP Moldova Programme 'Improving the Quality of Moldovan Democracy through Electoral and Parliamentary Support' (further referred to as 'Programme') is a multi-year institutional development project that aims to support the institutional consolidation of the Moldovan Parliament and Moldovan Central Electoral Commission (CEC) towards their increased transparency, accountability and efficiency.

As regards Parliamentary component, the Programme is focusing on improving of the legislative, oversight and representation functions of the Parliament. The Programme also assists the Parliament to increase the participation of civil society and citizens in policy making and oversight processes. It also builds the capacities of Members of Parliament in budget understanding, development and monitoring of its implementation.

In relation to the Electoral support, the overarching goal of the electoral component of the Programme is improvement of the democratic and governance processes in the Republic of Moldova through organization and conduct of democratic elections, conducted in line with best international standards and practices, fully representing the will of Moldovan people. Among the Programme objectives is to support the CEC and the electoral administration at regional and local levels to deliver inclusive and professional elections, gender and human rights mainstreamed.

 

Duties and Responsibilities

The assignment shall be implemented under auspices of the programme identifying synergies between Parliamentary and Electoral components wherever possible. At the same time the assignment shall include specific objectives for each of programme's components.

 

Joint issues for Democracy Programme

The consultant will be required to provide recommendations to the Programme on further improvement of gender mainstreaming in programme document, LogFrame and Programme work plan.

 

Parliamentary Component

In relation to the parliamentary development, during the last three years the Parliament of Moldova has been very active in reforming its institutional structure and ensuring the capacity building of its staff. With support of the Programme, the Members of Parliament and parliamentary staff were trained in different areas like regulatory impact assessment, communication, performance appraisal and gender equality etc.

The Law on Gender Equality states that the Parliament will (a) adopt gender sensitive laws and regulations, (b) monitor gender impact of the adopted regulation and (c) will hold other state institutions accountable to promote and implement gender equality in their activity. In order to increase its efficiency and effectiveness, the Parliament requires a combination of greater numbers of women, stronger gender-sensitive infrastructure and stronger policy and legislation on gender equality. It is also important that parliament has the ability to consider and address how its work - especially in terms of legislation and national budget - affect women in society. Placing gender equality issues at the heart of policy decisions, institutional structures and resource allocation through a process of gender mainstreaming can address these issues.

For its further development and modernization, parliament needs to assess how it responds to the needs and interests of both men and women in its own structures, operations, methods and in its work as a core legislative institution. Therefore, the first step is to carry out the internal assessment of parliament's capacity to mainstream gender issue. This process will take the shape of an internal audit, which is an exercise aimed at providing evidence on the status of gender mainstreaming efforts, thus allowing the Parliament to plan accurately and effectively to fill capacity gaps with regard to gender mainstreaming.

The expected output for the consultant' assignment is to carry out an internal assessment of parliament's capacity to mainstream gender, conducting an auditing on how it responds to the needs and interests of both men and women in the Parliament's structures, operations, methods and in its work as a core legislative institution. The consultant will gather primary information and provide recommendations on the ways in which parliament can best become a gender-sensitive institution and effectively mainstream gender into its work.

 

In order to achieve the stated objective, the consultant will have the following responsibilities

Undertake a Gender Audit of the Parliament:

Undertake a comprehensive desk review of the relevant national legal framework, relevant studies, researches, reports, parliamentary role;

Perform a capacity and needs assessment of Parliament, in terms of its operational and institutional culture (i.e. parliamentary facilities, sitting times, budget allocations and services available, unwritten rules, norms and mores adopted over time) from gender perspectives;

For this,

Design a Questionnaires for the qualitative assessment of the parliamentary departments/staff, parliamentary groups and individual members of Parliament to reveal the practices and gaps for gender perspectives;

Conduct face to face interviews with the parliamentarians from different political parties, involving both women and men;

Develop a Report on the Gender Audit of Parliament with the specific focuses on the followings:

-analyses on the capacities of Parliament to scrutinize the legislative initiatives from gender and human rights perspective;

-suggest possible improvements to be made to the current Rules of Procedure and other internal regulations and relevant policies of the Parliament in increasing the consideration of gender issues and non-discrimination based on gender;

i-dentify critical gaps, challenges, and provide recommendations to address them.

 

Undertake follow up actions based on the Gender Audit findings and recommendations, including:

 -Develop an Action Plan that outlines the parliament's commitment to gender equality and details a clear set of objectives and processes that are set to achieve that commitment;

-Conduct a Roundtable discussion with Members of Parliament, Parliament of Moldova Secretariat staff on the results of gender audit;

-Support for possible amendment(s) of individual job descriptions of parliamentary staff responsible for promotion of equality between women and men within the Parliament;

-Support the Secretariat of Parliament to integrate its Gender Action Plan in the Strategic Development Plan;

-Provide two day workshops for parliamentary staff on scrutiny of legislation from gender and human rights perspective;

-Develop a list of continuing training programmes for parliamentary staff in order to increase their knowledge and capacities in the field of promoting gender equality and gender mainstreaming;

-Formulate and submit to the Project manager the final report on the training.

 

Support to the functioning of Women's Caucus in the Parliament of Moldova:

 -Conduct face to face interviews with the parliamentarians from all political parties, including faction leaders and women organizations' leaders to identify the Women's Caucus needs;

-Develop a Road Map for efficient functioning of Women's Caucus within the Parliament of Moldova.

-Electoral Component

 

CEC has been one of the first public institutions in Moldova to conduct a gender audit and adopt gender Action Plan. Implementation of this action plan has started in 2013 and has allowed CEC to amend and improve some of the key internal policies in regards to gender equality on, inter alia, human resources management. Further CEC required the programme assistance in implementation of the Action Plan through, among others, support in increasing CEC staff capacity on completion of the mid-term gender assessment and mainstreaming of further internal policies in line with gender equality principles.

 

At the CEC the consultant is expected to provide support in mainstreaming gender in electoral processes through delivery of the following consultancy services:

-Advise on formulation of amendments to the existing national legal framework with the view to enhance the gender equality at the decisional level in the electoral management bodies in Republic of Moldova (at both central and regional);

-Support the CEC in conducting gender audit follow-up analysis using the data from 2014 Parliamentary Elections;

-Support the CEC in evaluation of the CEC Gender mainstreaming action and development of the draft CEC Action Plan on gender mainstreaming for the 2016-2018 period;

-Advise on gender mainstreaming of the CEC communication campaign for 2015 general local elections including but not limited to messages to be addressed to general public, political parties, other stakeholders, preparation of gender sensitive awareness/education materials;

-Advise on implementation of the Programme activities related to collection, processing and analysis of sex disaggregated electoral data (collected in the framework of the 2014 Parliamentary and 2015 general local elections).

Undertake 3 missions to Chisinau, Moldova, as per schedule below:

-1st Mission to Chisinau: 11 May - 12 June, 2015;

-2nd Mission to Chisinau: 29 June - 17 July, 2015;

-3rd Mission to Chisinau: 5-9 October, 2015.

 

Deliverables:

-A detailed Work Plan for undertaking the assignment developed and coordinated with the Programme;

-A Report on Gender Audit of Parliament developed and submitted for approval*;

-Written recommendations for amending existing legal framework with the view to enhance gender equality at the decisional level within the central and regional electoral management bodies in Republic of Moldova drafted and submitted for approval;

-Report on implementation of the CEC Gender mainstreaming Action Plan 2013 -2015 developed;

-Written recommendations for gender mainstreaming of the CEC 2015 general local elections communication campaign provided

-Two day workshop for parliamentary staff on scrutiny of legislation from gender and human rights perspective delivered;

-Action Plan on Gender Mainstreaming of Parliament developed and submitted for approval;

-A list of recommended training programs on gender equality for further development of parliamentary staff developed;

-Road Map for efficient functioning of Women's Caucus within the Parliament of Moldova developed;

-Draft CEC gender mainstreaming Action Plan for the period 2016-2018 developed and submitted for approval.

 

-The report should include, but is not limited to the following:

-An overview of Parliament of Moldova needs and capacities to mainstream gender, in terms of its operational and institutional culture, strengths, good practices, weaknesses, gaps and challenges;

-The extent to which women's full participation is reflected in decision making levels;

-Parliament's actions as institution to encourage and foster gender equality;

-The capacities of Parliament to scrutinize the legislative initiatives from gender and human rights perspective;

-The level of awareness on gender and the degree of adherence to set gender responsiveness standards;

-Identification of current policies supporting gender equality efforts and the level of gender-sensitiveness of parliament's institutional structures;

-A set of recommendations on how to strengthen the Parliament's capacity for gender mainstreaming.

-All communications and documentation related to the assignment will be in English or Romanian. The Parliament and CEC will provide consultant with working space, access to Internet, printer and telephone line.

 

The timeframe for the work of the Consultant is tentatively planned through May - October 2015. The consultancy should involve about 46 working days of work in Moldova. The remaining 9 working days are home-based.

The Parliament will provide consultant with working space, access to Internet, a printer and a telephone line.

 

Management Arrangements

 The Consultant will work under the overall supervision from Programme Manager (UNDP Democracy Programme) and guidance from Parliamentary and Electoral Specialists and Senior Programme Officers of Democracy Programme.

The Consultant will be supported by a National Consultant who will facilitate the process of organizing and conducting required activities with UNDP Programme, the Parliament, CEC and other required stakeholders. The Consultant will also receive technical support from National Consultant for the efficient delivery of activities.

 

In relations with the Parliament of Moldova and the Central Electoral Commission the Consultant will coordinate with Programme's counterparts at the Parliament and CEC, respectively.

 

Financial arrangements

 Payment will be disbursed in four installments upon submission, approval and certification by the UNDP staff that the services have been satisfactorily performed as follows:

-1st installment at the rate of 20% of total amount after approval of deliverable No. 1;

-2nd installment at the rate of 30% of total amount after approval of deliverables No. 2-5,

-3rd installment at the rate of 30% of total amount after approval of deliverables No. 6-9; and

-final payment at the rate of 20% upon complete delivery of all products and services.

 

Documents to be included when submitting the proposals

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

Proposal explaining why they are the most suitable candidate for the work including past experience in similar Projects (please provide brief information on each of the above qualifications, item by item);

Financial proposal (in USD), specifying a fee per day and total requested amount including all related costs, e.g. fees, per diems, travel costs, phone calls etc.;

Duly completed and signed P11 Form and at least 3 reference persons.

Since technical possibilities allow uploading only 1 (one) file, please ensure that the above listed documents are saved in a single file.

 

Functional Competencies: 

Extensive knowledge of international gender standards and experience in best practices in promoting women's rights;

Solid knowledge and understanding of conducting participatory gender audits;

Strong analytical and drafting skills;

Ability to adapt to different environments (cultural, economic, political and social);

Availability to work with the Programme during the indicated /approved period;

Demonstrated interpersonal and diplomatic skills, as well as the ability to communicate effectively with all stakeholders and to present ideas clearly and effectively;

Computer literacy and ability to effectively use office technology equipment, IT tools.

Corporate competencies: 

Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;

Highest standards of integrity, discretion and loyalty.

 

Required Skills and Experience

 

Education: 

Master's degree in humanities, law or any other relevant field; Ph.D. degree is a strong advantage

 

Experience: 

At least 7 years of relevant professional experience in the field of gender equality and women's rights;

At least 3 years of proven experience in organizing, facilitating and conducting seminars, trainings and round tables with state institutions/agencies/organizations, on gender related issues;

Experience of advisory work on parliamentary development or practical experience as Member of Parliament or parliamentary staffer is a strong advantage;

Previous experience in conducting gender audits is an asset;

Practical experience in mainstreaming gender in electoral field;

Working experience with the international inter-governmental organizations is a strong advantage.

 

Languages:

Fluency in English. Knowledge of Romanian and/or Russian will be considered as an asset.

 

Note

For complete information about this vacancy, including detailed tasks and responsibilities, full and detailed description of the evaluation procedure which will be applied, as well as the UNDP General Conditions of Individual Contract, please refer to the Terms of Reference, the Individual Consultant Procurement Notice published at the UNDP Moldova website, Jobs Section: http://www.undp.md/jobs/current_jobs/.