International Consultant for External Light Review Exercise - Trafficking i

at  United Nations Development Programme UNDP

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 supports UN Member States as they set global standards for achieving gender equality and works with governments and civil society to design laws, policies, programmes and services needed to ensure that the standards are effectively implemented and benefit women and girls worldwide. Against this background, and in response to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’s call to leave no one behind, UN Women works to promote peace and security by supporting women of all backgrounds and ages to participate in processes to prevent conflict and build and sustain peace and security. In this regard, UN Women is guided by ten UN Security Council resolutions, bolstered by a number of related normative frameworks, which make up the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda.
The cross-border peace and security landscape in South-East Asia has evolved dramatically in recent years. The Mekong region, in particular, is experiencing a rapid transformation in human trafficking dynamics as criminal operations increasingly shift online. The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda identifies trafficking in women for forced criminality as a critical security concern, particularly in conflict and crisis-affected settings. The nature of conflict and its drivers has shifted. The gender dimensions of non-traditional security risks, including trafficking in persons and cyber security, pose new challenges that require innovative responses and solutions. These emerging security issues in South-East Asia have significant adverse impacts on women’s rights, stability and security across the region.
Within this context, UN Women in partnership with the Government of Japan, is undertaking a project to provide immediate support to survivors and mitigate and prevent the surge in trafficking in women and other cyber-enabled harms along this border area, leveraging the WPS agenda.
The project focuses on 1) Providing survivor-centered support and reintegration services to women affected by trafficking and/or cyber-enabled harms; 2) Providing a package of support to build resilience and mitigate the surge in trafficking in women for forced criminality and cyber-enabled harms in the Thailand-Myanmar border area; and 3) Leveraging existing anti-trafficking mechanisms to combat trafficking. As the project is now coming to an end on 30 March 2025, UN Women is seeking to conduct an external light review exercise of the project focusing on the relevance, effectiveness and efficiency of key processes and outputs, which will foster reflection on this new area of work of UN Women and will inform possible future development on the same thematic area. In this context, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific will hire an International Consultant to support the Regional Office and the Thailand Project by conducting a light review of the project.
The consultant will be reporting to the Programme Coordinator – Governance, Peace and Security.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in International Development Studies, Social Sciences, Politics, Law, Human Rights, Gender, Women Studies, Economics, Monitoring and Evaluation or related field.

• 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:

• A minimum of 7 years’ relevant experience undertaking evaluations, assessments or reviews is required.
• Substantive experience in assessing similar development projects in the area of Women Peace and Security is required.
• Previous experience in the field of trafficking in persons and/or cybersecurity would be considered an asset.
• Substantive experience in evaluating or assessing projects with a strong gender focus is preferred.
• Experience working in Asia and the Pacific is preferred.
• Previous experience in Thailand and Myanmar would be considered as an asset.
• Experience working on gender, particularly having expertise in undertaking gender-sensitive evaluations is preferred.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONSIBILITIES/ SCOPE OF WORK

The International Consultant for the advertised External Light Review Exercise will be working under the supervision of the Programme Coordinator - Governance, Peace and Security of UN Women’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific to ensure the following:
NO.

The consultant will be responsible for the following costs:

• The professional fee must be quoted in the lump sum amount per deliverable. The lump-sum amount must be detailed on how the professional fee of each team member is calculated.
• Indirect costs such as printing, stationeries, communications concerning the scope of work of services must be included in the financial proposal.
• All costs related to survey administration including logistics arrangements for data collection, online interviews, etc.All costs related to quality assurance, data entry, data cleaning, and data processing