Programme Officer: Gender and Social Norms - Female Genital Mutilation

Details

Mission and objectives

UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. UNFPA’s strategic plan (2022-2025), reaffirms the relevance of the current strategic direction of UNFPA and focuses on three transformative results: to end preventable maternal deaths; end unmet need for family planning; and end gender-based violence and harmful practices. These results capture our strategic commitments on accelerating progress towards realizing the ICPD and SDGs in the Decade of Action leading up to 2030. Our strategic plan calls upon UN Member States, organizations and individuals to “build forward better”, while addressing the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women’s and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, recover lost gains and realize our goals. The country programme of UNFPA has three major components: (i) Improved comprehensive sexual and reproductive health (SRH) service provision and uptake in all setting (ii) Adolescents and Youth Outcome Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (iii) Population Dynamic and Data collection and management UNFPA in Ethiopia is led by a Country Representative accredited to the Government of Ethiopia. It has a programme team led by a Deputy Representative, International Humanitarian Coordinator, Assistant Representative and an Operations’ team led by an International Operations Manager as well as M&E team. UNFPA Ethiopia has presence in most part of the country including Benishangul Gumuz region.

Context

The Global programmes on FGM focuses on areas that are critical for the empowerment of women, girls, and youth, protection of the most vulnerable women and children from violence, including harmful practices, exploitation, and discrimination, and to be rehabilitated to enjoy and fully exercise their human rights. About 65 percent of women aged 15-49 are circumcised, with the highest rate at 99 percent in Somali region. The median age of marriage is 16.5 years, with 40 percent of women in their early 20s married before age 18, and 20 percent before 15 (EDHS 2016). The program aims at empowering Girls and women to exercise and express their rights by transforming social and gender norms in communities to eliminate FGM. The UNV is expected to provide support and contribute to the elimination of harmful practices focusing on FGM. The UN Volunteer will support the UNFPA CO in overall activities related to Gender and Social Norms. He/she will liaise directly with the Country Office team of professionals for quality assurance, policy application, and effective and sound resources. He/she will work with the Country office's main partners in this field and assist in Gender equality and Social Norm coordination and partnerships, strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation, capacity development, and contribute to the development of relevant advocacy documents to address, harmful practices ( Ending Child Marriage and FGM), support the donor mapping exercise of the UNFPA CO Gender team to identify new donors and to sustain partnership with existing ones by contributing for the development of concept notes and proposals focusing on Gender and social norm interventions.

Task description

Under the overall supervision of the Gender and Social Norm Specialist and the direct supervision of the National Programme Analyst- Gender and Harmful Practices, the UN Volunteer will be responsible for the following duties and responsibilities: • Effective management of UNFPA activities in the areas of the component, analyze and assess relevant social and economic trends and provides substantive inputs to project formulation and evaluation, joint programming initiatives and national development frameworks. • Provision of specific inputs in gender mainstreaming to various Government agencies, NGOs, UN Agencies, development partners and other international organizations rep-resented in Ethiopia with which UNFPA has established collaborative arrangements. This will include Women’s empowerment including sexual and reproductive health and rights and fight against Child Marriage, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Gender Based violence (GBV • Formulation and design of the annual work plans on Gender and Social Norms in line with Government priorities and according to UNFPA programme policies and procedures. • Contributes to quality programme/project design incorporating lessons learned, newly developed policies and best practices and establishing appropriate execution and monitoring mechanisms and systems. • Keeps abreast of new policy developments and strategies analyzing policy papers, strategy documents, national plans and development frameworks. • Create and document knowledge about current and emerging gender and human rights issues, use in knowledge sharing and planning future strategies. • Play pivotal role in advocacy and resource mobilization efforts of the Country Office by preparing relevant documentation, i.e. project summaries, conference papers, speeches, donor profiles and participating in donor meetings and public information events