Individual International Consultant – Risk Information and Early Warning System

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.

The Fiji Multi Country Office (MCO) covers 14 Pacific countries, with field offices/presence in 6 countries, and five ‘focus countries’ (Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Samoa). Each field presence is led by a National Country Programme Coordinator. UN Women, in partnership with Pacific Islands Governments, regional organizations, CSOs, donors and UN agencies, focuses on delivering within four interlinked programme areas:

• Ending Violence against Women and Girls (EVAWG);
• Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE);
• Gender and Protection in Humanitarian Action; and
• Governance and Participation in Public Life (GPPL)

UN Women Fiji MCO is implementing the Women’s Resilience to Disasters (WRD) Programme in the Pacific. UN Women promotes gender-responsive disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience across its triple mandate through technical and policy support, provision of gender expertise to DRR mechanisms and processes (local, International, regional and global), advocacy and knowledge management, and by implementing programmes and projects for gender-responsive DRR and resilience building, including the Women’s Resilience to Disasters (WRD) programme, which is UN Women’s signature DRR initiative. The WRD Programme aims to reduce the loss of lives and livelihoods from disasters and threats, including COVID 19 and climate change, and to contribute to sustainable, secure and thriving communities and countries through addressing critical gender gaps in disaster and climate resilience. UN Women’s key partners include the 50 UN entities related to the UN Plan of Action on Disaster Risk Reduction for Resilience, all stakeholders working on disaster and climate resilience including the Early Warnings for All Initiative, the Loss and Damage collaboration and national financial institutions, and various gender, DRR and climate platforms at the global, regional and national levels.

UN Women’s WRD programme proposes a comprehensive package for building women’s resilience to disasters, climate change and threats. The aim of the WRD Programme is to render women’s and girls’ lives and livelihoods disaster-resilient, contributing to sustainable and secure communities, by promoting gender responsive prevention, preparedness, and recovery systems, plans and tools; and by enabling targeted action to help women and girls withstand hazards and threats, recover fully from disasters, and increase their resilience to future risks.

Together with UNDRR, the WRD Programme is supporting national disaster management authorities to strengthen the collection and analysis of risk information and disaster damage and loss data and ensure that data is disaggregated and can contribute to evidenced based decision making that is gender responsive and inclusive.

UN Women Fiji MCO is looking for an individual consultant to support the Kiribati International Disaster Management Office (NDMO) to strengthen collection, management and analysis of inter-connected risk data, as well as the collection and analysis of sex, age and disability disaggregated data. The consultant will also support mainstreaming of gender and disability into existing International early warning systems in line with the UN Secretary General’s Early Warning for All Initiative.

For this purpose, the selected consultant will work under the leadership of the Director of the Kiribati International Disaster Management Office (NDMO) with technical support from UN Women and UNDRR. He/ She will report to and be supervised by the UN Women Gender and Resilience Programme Specialist in close consultation with the Director of NDMO Kiribati.

Duties and Responsibilities

The International Risk Information and Early Warning System Consultant will be seconded to the Kiribati International Disaster Management Office (Office of the President) and is expected to perform the following:

Review of the existing systems to identify gaps and recommend actions for improvement:

• Advise on disaggregated risk data and information collection, application and governance of risk information including but not limited to multi hazard exposure, vulnerability and climate information and analyses, loss and damage data, and Sendai Framework indicators.
• Review the decision-making and planning processes and recommend improvement to ensure decision making processes are evidence-based and draw on risk information.
• Produce a report of mapping of what risk information is available; an analysis of gender gaps in data and recommend ways for improvement pf collection of disaggregated data.

Provide support to collect, analyze and use of data pertaining to climate and disaster risk and vulnerabilities:

• Prepare a preliminary list of nationally generated risk information (on hazards, vulnerability, exposure) – of priority to national stakeholders.
• Review the storage and management of the disaggregated data at OB.
• Collect meta-data about applicable information management systems in the country (software, models, storage, sharing, information management strategies, etc.).

Review Disaster Assessment mechanisms:

• Review of current disaster impacts assessment forms for their gender responsiveness.
• Assess the gaps and develop guidelines/checklist on developing a standardized gender responsive disaster impacts assessment forms such as initial damage assessment, rapid assessment, sector detailed assessment, and post disaster needs assessment.

Review of EWS messages:

• Review existing early warning system and messages and identify gaps for mainstreaming gender and disability issues in the EW messages.
• Support OB NDMO to establish community feedback mechanism on disaster response actions and EWS.

Capacity Building:

• Organize /conduct orientations on use of data collection tools (e.g., kobo toolbox, fulcrum, use of GPS as well as analysis tools for analyzing data and making data visualized, readily available online and accessible by the users) as per the needs agreed upon for selected stakeholder.
• Organize training on key concepts of Gender and DRR in EWS.

The consultant will work in close collaboration with NDMO (and relevant government agencies) to enhance the collection and management of disaster loss data. The consultant will also support the NDMO in reporting on the disaster loss data (DesInventar and Sendai Framework Monitor). Strong engagement with the Kiribati National Expert Group (KNEG) for CC and DRM, particularly members of the KNEG Gender and Protection WG will be required.

Expected Outputs

The International Consultant is expected to deliver, specifically, the following major tasks or outputs:

No.	Description of Responsibilities/Scope of Work	Approximate No. of days	Timeline
1.	Conduct a desk review of national risk data and disaster loss information collection, management, and use and submit a report. The desk review will assess methodologies, collaboration with the national stakeholders, and approaches to analysis and dissemination of risk information.	Up to 10 days	September 2024
2.	Identify the gaps from the desk review and develop a joint workplan in consultation with NDMO, UNDRR and UN Women.	Up to 4 days	September 2024
3.	Prepare a preliminary list of Internationally generated risk information (on hazards, vulnerability, exposure) – of priority to national stakeholders.	Up to 4 days	October 2024
4.	Support national partners to collect, analyse and use sex, age and disability desegregated data.	Up to 16 days	October – November 2024
5.	Advise on disaggregated risk data and information collection, application and governance of risk information which includes but not limited to multi hazard exposure, vulnerability and climate information and analyses, loss and damage data, and Sendai Framework indicators.	Up to 16 days	November 2024
6.	Collect meta-data about applicable information management systems in the country (software, models, storage, sharing, information management strategies, etc.).	Up to 20 days	December 2024
7.	Undertake a capacity needs assessment and support preparation of a training program and materials to engage and train International and local stakeholders in multi-hazard disaster risk analyses, methodology of probabilistic risk profiles modelling and assessments.	Up to 20 days	January 2025
8.	Support International and local stakeholders to mainstream gender and disability into their existing early warning system.	Up to 20 days	January – February 2025
9.	Support International authorities and stakeholders through training on key concepts of gender and disability inclusive DRR and EWS.	Up to 20 days	January – February 2025
10.	Review current disaster impacts assessment forms for their gender responsiveness; assess the gaps and develop guidelines/checklist on developing a standardized gender responsive disaster impacts assessment forms such as initial damage assessment, rapid assessment, sector detailed assessment, and post disaster needs assessment.	Up to 20 days	February – March 2025
11.	Provide support to the enhancement of climate and disaster risk and vulnerability data and information storage and management at OB. This include providing capacity building on use of data collection tools such as kobo toolbox, fulcrum, use of GPS as well as analysis tools for analysing data and making data visualized, readily available online and accessible by the users.	Up to 20 days	March 2025
12.	Support OB NDMO to establish community feedback mechanism on disaster response actions and EWS	Up to 10 days	April 2025
	TOTAL	Up  to 180 days

Institutional Arrangement

The assignment should be carried out within a period of 8 months, not exceeding 180 working days, with the incumbent being responsible for delivering the following outputs:

• Monthly reports on major tasks performed and the results, including related to support provided to the NDMO, inputs collection etc., as per above description of tasks.
• Monthly time sheet.
• Final report on carried out activities, achievements, and challenges.
• Information management relevant to the assignment.
• Supporting documents of the month’s activities including any minutes, workplans, briefs, analytical work papers etc.

All the deliverables should be agreed with the UN Women’s Humanitarian & Resilience Programme Team provided in English electronic copy.

Note that all materials, including any video footage and images, will remain property of UN Women and cannot be used without UN Women’s permission.

Upon receipt of the final deliverables and prior to the payment of the instalment, the deliverables, related reports, and documents will be reviewed and approved by UN Women at least within 10 business days of submission.

All the documents and materials utilized need to be returned to UN Women in electronic format. Any printed materials utilized to be referenced and returned.

Input

The NDMO, UN Women and UNDRR will provide the International Consultant with background materials. UN Women will only cover Consultant’s travel and within Tarawa should the need arises and upon prior approval by the NDMO and UN Women.

The International Consultant is expected to be working remotely based at the NDMO with frequent meetings with UN Women and UNDRR for technical inputs. The International Consultant may access either the NDMO or the UN Women Office for printing of relevant documents or should he/she be required to work on-site at any point during the assignment.

Duration of the Work

The duration of this assignment will be to up 180 working days over 8 months.

Travel

UN Women will cover the cost of travel of the individual to the duty station, as well as their return to their home upon completion of their services. Travel costs are covered only in the event that the function will be undertaken physically in the duty station and excludes working from home arrangements.

Travel costs outside Tarawa, Kiribati are not envisaged and if needed will be covered separately by UN Women with prior approval. During the consultancy assignment’s related missions, UN Women will cover travel cost for the International Consultant for the agreed upon routing and in conformity with UN Women applicable rules and regulations.

The IC will be responsible for all administrative and travel expenses associated with undertaking this assignment and be based in Kiribati.

In the case of unforeseeable travel, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between NDMO and UN Women and the International Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

Management Arrangements

The International Consultant will work under the direct supervision of the UN Women, Gender, and Resilience Programme Specialist and overall coordination of the Director of NDMO. The International Consultant workspace will be provided by the NDMO with the necessary information, materials, and logistics, as well as office space. The selected candidate will be provided with a laptop, while NDMO will provide access to other equipment for the fulfilment of his/her tasks (such as printer, copier).

Performance Evaluation

The Consultant’s performance will be evaluated based on timeliness, responsibility, initiative, communication, and quality of the products delivered.

Financial Arrangements

Payments will be disbursed to the consultant on a monthly basis upon submission of major outputs or functions set forth in Section ‘Description of Responsibilities ‘above , timesheets with actual days worked and certification by the UN Women Programme Specialist for the Humanitarian & Resilience Programme as satisfactorily performed.

Competencies

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Leading by Example

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Core Values and Competencies:

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES:

• Technical capacity/credibility in information system/data management
• Analytical and problem solving.
• Networking skills/Partnerships building.
• Teamwork and cooperation
• Excellent negotiation skills
• Risk Management

Required Skills and Experience

The International Consultant should fulfil the following requirements:

Education:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in Social Sciences, International Development, Disaster Risk and Climate Change, Environment, Programme Management, Data Analysis, or other related areas is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience and Skills:

• At least 2 years (with Master’s degree) or 4 years (with first-level university degree) of progressively responsible experience related to information management, data science, development, adaptation and resilience capacity building, disaster risk reduction, climate resilience or other closely related fields.
• Minimum of 2 years’ relevant international/regional/national experience both in the field and headquarters in disaster response, recovery, or development work response, recovery, or development work.
• Experience in data conversion, management of quantitative and qualitative data systems, integration and projection, mapping/GIS software is required.
• Experience in disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness and/or response and recovery is required.
• Excellent analytical, writing and consultation skills with the ability to gather, analyze and synthesize information, and present it in a clear, concise format, is required.
• Familiarity with government knowledge management resources (sector, macro, sub-International) is an advantage.
• Experience with quantitative risk assessment and disaster risk metrics is an advantage.
• Experience in Geographical Information System is an asset.
• Experience in the UN system related to disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness, humanitarian-development- peace collaboration, response, and recovery is desirable.
• Experience in training and building capacity of both government and UN representatives is desirable.

Language and other skills:

• Excellent skills and fluency in verbal and written English is required.

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Diversity and inclusion:

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)

Technical Evaluation

Initially, individual consultants will be short-listed based on the following minimum qualification criteria:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in Social Sciences, International Development, Disaster Risk and Climate Change, Environment, Programme Management, Data Analysis, or other related areas is required. A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced University degree.
• At least 2 years (with Master’s degree) or 4 years (with first-level university degree) of progressively responsible experience related to information management, data science, development, adaptation and resilience capacity building, disaster risk reduction, climate resilience or other closely related fields.

Technical evaluation of shortlisted candidates will be done through desk review of applications on the basis of responsiveness to the Terms of Reference (TOR) as per table below.

Interviews and/or written tests will be organized if needed only, depending on the short-listed candidates’ qualifications.

Technical Evaluation Table:

No.	Criteria		Maximum points
1.	Master’s degree or equivalent in Social Sciences, International Development, Disaster Risk and Climate Change, Environment, Programme Management, Data Analysis, or other related areas is required. A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.	First-level university degree – 5 pts.   Masters’ s qualification – of 10 pts.	10
2.	At least 2 years (with Master’s degree) or 4 years (with first- level university degree) of progressively responsible experience related to information management, data science, development, adaptation and resilience capacity building, disaster risk reduction, climate resilience or other closely related fields.	2 years with a Master degree or 4 years with a first-level university degree – 10 pts   Each year over 2 (or 4) years – 2 pts each up to a max 20 pts.	20
3.	Minimum of 2 years’ relevant international/regional/national experience both in the field and headquarters in disaster response, recovery, or development work.		10
4.	Experience in disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness and/or response and recovery is required.		10
5.	Excellent analytical, writing and consultation skills with the ability to gather, analyse and synthesize information, and present it in a clear, concise format, is required.		10
6.	Experience in data conversion, management of quantitative and qualitative data systems, integration and projection, mapping/GIS software is required.		5
7.	Familiarity with government knowledge management resources (sector, macro, sub-national) is an advantage.		5
8.	Experience with quantitative risk assessment and disaster risk metrics is an advantage.		5
9.	Experience in Geographical Information System is an asset.		5
10.	Experience in the UN system related to disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness, humanitarian- development-peace collaboration, response, and recovery is desirable.		5
11.	Experience in training and building capacity of both government and UN representatives is desirable.		5
12.	Fluency in written and spoken English is required.		5
13.	Computer literacy and ability to effectively use office technology equipment, IT tools, the internet and email.		5
	Maximum Total Technical Scoring		100

The consultancy recruitment process will be governed by the rules and regulations of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

How To Apply:

• Personal CV or P11 (P11 can be downloaded from: )
• A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page).
• UN Women Managers may ask (ad hoc) for any other materials relevant to pre-assessing the relevance of their experience, such as reports, presentations, publications, campaigns, or other materials.