Technical Expert Consultant – Migration Capacity Building

Background

Background/Context:

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women works to eliminate discrimination against women and girls, empower women, and achieve equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action, and peace and security. UN Women’s triple mandate to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women focuses to: (1) advance normative change through supporting to intergovernmental bodies to assist Member States to implement global norms; (2) lead and coordinate the UN system’s work in gender equality and (3) implement programmes. All of which is underpinned by ensuring the representation of women, making women’s voices heard, and supporting civil society to participate in the formulation of policy, and to support the effective partnership between governments and civil society to implement gender-responsive policies and practices.  

Within this framework, the Migration unit under the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) is implementing the “Enhancing Engagement of Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs) in Labour Migration Governance” project. This initiative, funded by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), runs from May 2024 to October 2025 and aims to strengthen the capacity of WROs to advocate for gender-responsive labour migration policies across Southeast Asia. The project focuses on empowering WROs to engage more effectively in policy discussions within intergovernmental mechanisms and regional platforms on migration.

The objective of the project is to build the advocacy capacity of WROs working on migration issues in South East Asia, enabling them to collectively influence labour migration policies through key platforms such as the ASEAN Forum on Migrant Labour (AFML) and the Regional UN Network on Migration for Asia and the Pacific. By fostering greater engagement of WROs in these dialogues, the project aims to ensure that gender considerations are central to labour migration governance. The project involves developing and implementing an advocacy capacity-building program for WROs in close consultation with prominent regional civil society organizations and networks.

The primary beneficiaries of this project are approximately 20 staff members from around a dozen Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs) across Southeast Asia. This project is enabling them to actively engage with various intergovernmental mechanisms and regional platforms in coordination with regional migration CSOs. The project involves staff members from national WROs in ASEAN countries and aims to strengthen collaboration and coordination between these WROs and regional migration CSOs. This enhanced partnership seeks to increase collective efforts towards achieving inclusive and gender-responsive migration governance in the region. 

Key activities under this project include: 

• Technical Policy Meetings: Reviewing key regional and national labour migration policies to identify areas for improvement from a gender perspective. 
• Advocacy Skills Workshops: Facilitating the exchange of advocacy skills and experiences among regional CSOs and WROs, focusing on policy influencing and campaigning. 
• Training of Trainers (ToT): Providing on gender sensitization, human rights, and international standards in the migration context. 
• Regional Exchange Meeting: Offering a platform for WROs to exchange experience and enable them to develop a joint advocacy and coordination framework. 

Through these activities, the project seeks to enhance a robust and coordinated initiatives between WROs and regional CSOs and between WROs, ensuring that gender-responsive labour migration governance becomes a reality across South East Asia. In relation to this, UN Women is recruiting a consultant with expertise in the areas related to gender and migration governance to help developing and delivering comprehensive advocacy capacity building activities. 

Duties and Responsibilities

Description of Responsibilities/ Scope of Work:

The primary objective of recruiting 1 consultant as Technical Expert is to support the development and delivering advocacy capacity-building program activities that are crucial to the project’s success. The expert will: 

• Improve the existing design of the advocacy capacity building program activities ensuring that the contents are comprehensive and useful for the target groups.
• Consolidate and adapt knowledge products/tools, and advocacy materials that can be useful for the advocacy capacity building activities from project partners and participants. 
• Lead the facilitation of meetings and advocacy capacity building activities in collaboration with UN Women, other UN agencies and relevant CSOs/WROs, focusing on identifying promising practices. This includes designing the training agenda, delivering sessions, evaluating participant engagement and learning, and focusing on identifying and promoting promising practices.
• Provide technical guidance to WROs to enhance their capacity to engage effectively in intergovernmental mechanisms and regional platforms on migration governance, including supporting WROs in developing strategic communications efforts to raise awareness about gender issues in labour migration. 

Format:

• The work will be conducted through a combination of remote and in-person modalities. The expert will be responsible for supporting UN Women of these activities and sessions, ensuring smooth logistics and event facilitation. 
• Meetings will involve a diverse group of CSOs, WROs, and other relevant stakeholders, focused on sharing best practices and developing joint advocacy strategies. 

Duration of Assignment and Duty Station   

From 20 November 2024 to 15 October 2025 ; The consultant will be home-based with travels to Bangkok, Thailand to attend meetings and facilitating activities as indicated above. 

The activities are expected to start from November and be completed by October 2025. Key milestones include the facilitation of the following activities: 

• 1 ToT: 25-27 Nov 2024 
• 1 online workshop: July 2025 (tbc)
• 2 Regional Exchange meetings: 30-31 Jan 2025 ; Sep 2025 (tbc) 
• Consolidation of existing tools and materials: Ensuring that all relevant tools and materials are consolidated and adapted in a timely manner to support project activities, to be completed within the project timeline. 

Under the supervision of the Migration team at UN Women Regional Office for Asia and Pacific, the consultant will be responsible for the following deliverables:

Deliverables

Consultant’s Workplace and Official Travel:

Travel to Bangkok is required for in-person workshops and events. Lumpsum travel expenses will be provided by UN Women.

Payment:

Payments will be made in three tranches, based on the successful completion of the mentioned 3 deliverables.

Competencies

Required Skills and Experience

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits employ, 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.