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 Mozambique focuses its interventions on women’s economic empowerment, participation and democratic governance, combating violence against women, among others. In this context, it puts a strong focus on young women’s economic empowerment as part of the strategy to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights. Additionally, it favours girls and young women in the development of high-profit initiatives and labour market opportunities at district and provincial levels.
Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.
Under the overall guidance and direction of the supervisor, the Programme Officer will work closely with the programme and operations team, Provincial Government, UN Agencies involved in the Rapariga BIZ (e.g. UNFPA, UNICEF and UNESCO) and civil society to ensure the technical direction and implementation of the project are maintained and key outputs are achieved in a cost effective and timely manner.
Programme officer will be responsible for achievement of the Rapariga Biz result on: “Girls and Young Women in safe Spaces in Zambézia Province are economically empowered.” Drawing on the lessons learned from on-going efforts in Nampula to ensure girls and young women, as well as mentors are offered economic empowerment opportunities, UN Women seeks to ensure that tailor-made activities are implemented for the local context in Zambézia.
Evidence show the positive effect of girls and young women’s economic empowerment on their agency, and consequently on their health, uptake of health care services, number of children, health of their children etc. Based on the fact that young women’s capacity to bring about economic change for themselves is increasingly viewed as the most important contributing factor to achieving equality between women and men, Rapariga Biz anticipates that a stronger emphasis on providing economic opportunities for the target group will assist in addressing the inequalities present in the geographic areas fueling the vulnerabilities and marginalization of girls and young women.