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’s engagement in humanitarian action and DRR is to ensure consistency and sustainability in addressing gender equality concerns across the humanitarian-development nexus. The importance of gender integration in Humanitarian and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is embedded in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, that acknowledges the impact of conflict and disasters on women, recognizing the importance of utilizing women’s contribution and active participation in conflict prevention, peacebuilding and relief and recovery. In addition, gender mainstreaming has also been included in the Sendai Framework for DRR (SFDRR) and was one of the key commitments from the World Humanitarian Summit held in Turkey in 2016. UN Women seeks to achieve inclusive and gender responsive humanitarian responses and resilience building by working with governments, INGOs, other UN agencies as well as CBOs, particularly women led CBOs.
The East and Southern Africa region (ESAR) region is regularly faced with a combination of cyclic natural and human induced disasters that often translate into humanitarian crises such as drought, floods and displacements with severe consequences on the poor particularly women and girls. Currently the Horn of Africa is faced with significant drought affecting over 20 million people, while the Southern regional has been experiencing drought, regular cyclones and flooding affecting the poor communities who rely on rainfed livelihood systems especially those in marginal areas, IDP and refugee camps
Climate related disasters are compounded by conflict affecting several countries in the region with large populations displaced into IDP and refugee camps. Currently, ESAR is host to 67% of refugees on the continent and 20% of the global refugee population, estimated at 4,773,393 refugees, 50% of these are hosted in Kenya, Uganda and Somalia. Of the total number of refugees in the continent, Uganda hosts 31% (1.4 million majority of S. Sudan) of whom at least 82% are women and girls. COVID 19 has exacerbated the humanitarian situation for women and girls but more so refugees, IDPs women, girls & far-to-reach communities, threatening to erode the gains on women’s empowerment.
Objectives of the Assignment
UN Women funded by the Government of Japan is implementing the Leadership Empowerment Access and Protection (LEAP) Programme titled Prevention of COVID-19 infections among women and girls displaced into IDP and refugee camps in ESAR in Somalia and Uganda. The overall objective of the project is to support women and girls to effectively participate and influence COVID 19 prevention and recovery measures as well build their resilience to future shocks. The main objective of this consultancy is to provide technical support at the Regional Office in monitoring and reporting through capacity development of the Country Offices and implementing partners on results-based monitoring and reporting during implementation of the LEAP programme.
