National Gender Responsive Budgeting Expert – Local Government Units

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. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

Over the past years, UN Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina has provided support to national and local stakeholders in strengthening democratic governance and advancing women’s rights through initiatives aimed at mainstreaming gender in policy planning and budgeting. Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) has been identified as an approach for advancing gender equality in key national documents, in accordance with the existing BiH national policy documents on social inclusion and gender equality. In accordance with government priorities stated in the national and local plans and strategies, UN Women has been supporting government efforts in using GRB as an approach to advance gender equality and ensure that women’s needs are incorporated in policies and related budgets. The expected long-term result of these initiatives is the incorporation of gender equality principles, perspectives and priorities not only in policy making, but also in budgeting at the national and local levels, leading to greater accountability and transparency of public finances. 

In order to strengthen the work hitherto done and ensure sustainability of the interventions on GRB, UN Women is implementing a regional programme with participation of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Serbia and North Macedonia on “Transformative Financing for Gender Equality towards more Transparent, Inclusive and Accountable Governance in the Western Balkans” (2020-2024) funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation. The main programme approach is transformative financing as an enabling factor for policy and financing actions to accelerate implementation of existing national and international commitments on gender equality and women’s empowerment. 

The local level component of this programme covers a total of 12 partnering local self-government units in BiH, that have already piloted and implemented gender responsive budgeting initiatives. The cooperation with those LGUs will continue, focused on upscaling the proven approaches in mainstreaming gender in sectoral programmes through gender analysis, introduction of gender specific objectives and measures, and monitoring progress and impact on lives of women and men. To support these LGUs to mainstream gender in sectoral programmes and to introduce gender specific objectives and measures that help the monitoring process and impact at local level, UN Women is seeking to recruit a Local Gender Responsive Budgeting Expert that will provide gender responsive budgeting capacity development and mentoring support to the selected LGUs.

Application instruction:

Apply online through this website and submit following documents:

• Personal CV or P11 (P11 can be downloaded from: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-P11-Personal-History-Form.doc)
• A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page)

Duties and Responsibilities

The objective of the assignment is to strengthen the capacities of the local administration and municipal/city council members on gender responsive programme planning and budgeting. More specifically, the aim is to further strengthen the capacities of local administration of the 12 LGUs that have already been exposed to GRB capacity development and have implemented GRB initiatives and undertaken specific measures to engender their local programming and budgeting. UN Women will support this by assisting selected local administrations to engender specific local programmes and budgets by developing gender specific measures and indicators, as well as by mentoring the local councillors to review local policies from a gender perspective. 

The selected consultant will be responsible for delivering one expert training to 12 partnering municipalities/cities that have already piloted GRB initiatives and have the basic capacities and skills to mainstream gender in policies and programmes. In parallel, the consultant will be responsible for providing mentoring support to selected 5 LGUs.

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel
This is a home-based consultancy. As part of this assignment, the selected consultant is expected to travel to 5 selected municipalities and cities to facilitate consultations with local administrations, councilors and other stakeholders. All travel costs will be processed and covered separately by UN Women.

Deliverables

Under the supervision of the UN Women Governance Coordinator, overall supervision of UN Women Programme Specialist, and in consultation with the Regional GRB Programme Specialist, the selected consultant is expected to deliver the following results:

• Develop a detailed workplan with timeline, outline and methodology to conduct the tasks outlined in this TOR, and revise the workplan in early 2025 by also outlining challenges and opportunities in implementation of the tasks;
• Based on existing local gender analyses, provide mentoring support to 5 selected LGUs that have implemented GRB initiatives and have undertaken specific measures to engender their local budget circulars, programmes and budgets through tailored interventions based on the needs and capacities of each municipality;
• Deliver one training in gender responsive programme planning and budgeting to public officials from targeted departments of the 12 partner LGUs, local commissions for equal opportunities between women and men/gender equality commissions, and commissions for budget and finance; Facilitate ex-ante and ex-post training evaluation aligned with measurable indicators in consultations with the Governance Coordinator;
• Submit brief monthly progress reports via email summarizing results (changes in capacities, engendered local programmes and budgets, lessons learned, recommendations);
• Provide technical support in defining future GRB interventions in BiH through UN Women programming;
• Provide regular updates, reports and social media messages (in English) to UN Women on the implementation of activities as it will be specified in the consultancy workplan;

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:  

https://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/employment/application-process#_Values  

FUNCTIONAL COMPETENCIES: 

• Sound expertise in gender equality, gender responsive budgeting, public finance management
• Sound knowledge of training techniques and tools and expertise in training curriculum design and development
• Demonstrated leadership and personal examples of promoting knowledge management and professional learning environment
• Outstanding networking, team building, organizational and communication skills
• Ability to work effectively and harmoniously with people from varied cultures and professional backgrounds
• Ability to produce well-written documents demonstrating excellent interpersonal communication skills
• Fluent in Microsoft Word, Excel, e-mail, web-based applications, and databases

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree in economics, public finance or other relevant field – pass/fail

Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years of relevant professional experience with public finance management – 30 points
• Specific expertise related to government public finance policies and processes – including budgetary process and gender responsive budgeting methodologies and approaches, and familiarity with program-based budgeting and budget laws (demonstrated through at least 4 similar assignments) – 40 points
• Demonstrated interest and/or experience in gender equality and gender mainstreaming (demonstrated through at least 2 relevant assignments)  – 20 points
• Working/consulting experience with local governments and international organizations/projects will be considered an asset – 10 points

Languages:

• Fluency in English and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian is required. – pass/fail