By 
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 center of all its efforts, UN Women will lead and coordinate United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.
UN Women South Sudan has developed a Strategic Note for the period 2019-2021 which is aligned with the South Sudan Development Plan and the United Nations Cooperation Framework (2019-2021). Within this plan, targeted gender equality and women’s empowerment interventions are undertaken to increase development effectiveness. To this end, UN Women supports an integrated community aimed at consolidating response particularly at state level. The integrated model combines for example, functional literacy with economic empowerment and capacity building; and functional literacy and economic empowerment for peace building and ending violence against women. The integration of gender equality is intended to ensure that mainstreaming takes place in all areas of operations and programming, and real progress is made in supporting South Sudan in reducing gender inequalities and improving the lives of women.
The key programmatic areas for UN Women South Sudan elaborated in the Strategic Note and annual work plan are as follows:
- Increase women’s leadership and participation;
- Increase women’s access to economic empowerment and opportunities;
- Prevent VAWG and expand access to services; and
- Increase women’s leadership in peace, security and humanitarian response.
Since 2014, UN Women have been implementing a humanitarian assistance programme aimed at addressing critical gender gaps in humanitarian response and enhancing resilience and wellbeing among women and girls in IDP settlements and their host communities. The programme components include improving access to livelihood opportunities, preventing/ reducing violence against women and girls in the target communities and building and sustaining peace. The Programme also strengthened the capacity of the Ministry of Gender and Humanitarian Affairs, and other international and national humanitarian actors, including the coordination system (especially the HCT and the Cluster system).
Reporting to the Deputy Country Representative, the International Consultant on Women’s Economic Empowerment will work closely with the Programme Specialist on Women’s Economic Empowerment to support the implementation of key interventions on women’s economic empowerment and women peace and security and humanitarian action.
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