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 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.
In Mozambique, this role is exercised in the context of the overall support provided by the UN system under the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) 2017-2020. UN Women’s Strategic Note for Mozambique covering the period 2017-2020 focuses on providing financial and technical support to the Government of Mozambique across four thematic areas: Eliminating Violence against Women and Girls (EVAW); Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE), Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and as cross cutting Leadership and Participation, institutional strengthening around gender mainstreaming and gender responsive budgeting. Additionally, it favors 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.
Young people are the fastest growing segment of the population in both poor and middle-income developing countries, and their welfare is fundamental to achieving key economic and social objectives. Fully engaged, educated, healthy and productive young people can help break multi-generational poverty, are resilient in the face of personal and societal threats and, as skilled and informed citizens, they can contribute effectively to the strengthening of their communities and nations. On the contrary, if subjected to violence and harmful practices, discrimination or deprived of resources and services, the consequences for young people are almost always evident in the status of their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and rights as well as in the general economic progress.
Despite the progress achieved at policy and governance level, women (and girls) are still subject to gender discrimination. The economic deprivations of families, as well as girls and women’s lack of access to economic opportunities and resources affect their SRHR; a recent small-scale qualitative research showed that girls’ and young women’s poverty and their poor bargaining power within society exposes them to greater risk of unsafe sex. This appears to be driven by a combination of lack of economic alternatives and existing social norms and cultural practices, lack of information and awareness, as well as lack of access to or power to use contraceptives – with adolescent girls particularly at risk.
Based in the premise that the multifaceted nature of violence against women necessitates intersecting strategies to respond to the diverse manifestations of violence and the various settings in which it occurs in both private and public life, with the financial support from European Union, the United Nations and the Government of Mozambique is implementing the joint programme Spotlight Initiative aiming at: “Accelerating the Prevention and Response to SGBV and Early Marriage for Adolescent Girls and Young Women (ages 10 – 24) in Mozambique”. The programmatic framework for the Spotlight Initiative’s investment in Mozambique in legislative and policy reform, institutional capacity-building and policy coherence, prevention and transformation of social norms, access to quality essential services, data availability for problem identification, preventive action, monitoring and evaluation of results, and ensuring CSOs’ an active role and an effective capacity to respond.
There will also be special focus on accelerating results for ending child marriage, through a combination of approaches uniting different strategies such as: analyzing sub-national data to determine pockets of high child marriage; empowering girls; mobilizing families and communities; promoting community, private sector and government engagement and linking provision of comprehensive SRHR to HP and broader SGBV efforts, Economic empowerment, which will help to provide alternatives to early marriage, will be linked to these efforts via investments.
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. Because 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, Spotlight Initiative 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.
The study is aligned with the UN Women Africa Strategy (2018 – 2021) that intends to ensure that «No Woman and Girl is left Behind» as Africa implements and strives to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – particularly Goal 5: “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. It further allows UN Women to coordinate its actions in achievement of the Africa’s Agenda 2063 Goals and Aspirations striving for «An Africa whose development is people-driven, relying on the potential of African people, especially its women and youth, and caring for children» (Aspiration 6). UN Women strategy underscores not only the immense benefits of empowering women and girls, but the inherent value of women’s rights, and empowerment as a women’s human rights imperative.
In this context, UN Women is seeking to hire a National Consultant to assist in conducting a scoping study on strategies, opportunities for economic empowerment of young women and girls in selected districts of Gaza (Xai-Xai City, Chongoene and Chicualacuala) and Manica (Chimoio City, Mussorize and Tambara). The exploratory study will collect relevant information, develop and accompany the functioning of experiments/pilot investments on young women entrepreneurship development as well as, design a strategy and an action plan and define the interventions based in the local context. The National Consultant will work under the overall coordination of the UN Women Country Representative and direct supervision by the Spotlight Initiative Programme Officer and Programme Officer for Women’s Economic Empowerment Portfolio.
Under the overall guidance and direction of the supervisors, SLI Programme Officer and WEE Programme Officer, the Consultant will work closely with the programme team, Provincial Government, UN Agencies involved in the Spotlight Initiative (UN Women, UNFPA, UNICEF and UNDP), private sector and civil society to ensure the technical direction and best results from the study and key outputs are achieved in a cost effective and timely manner. The Consultant will be responsible for conducting the scoping study that will provide baseline data for achievement of the Spotlight Initiative Output 4.2: on “Women and girls’ survivors of VAWG, including SGBV/HP, and their families are informed of and can access quality essential services, including longer term recovery services and opportunities”. Drawing on lessons learned from on-going efforts in the provinces of Nampula and Zambézia to ensure girls and young women economic empowerment opportunities, UN Women seeks to ensure that tailor-made activities are implemented for the local contexts of the two provinces, above mentioned.
UN Habitat Mozambique Urban Profile, 2012
The study aims to shed light on the status on employability and entrepreneurship development for young women in the selected districts of the provinces of Gaza and Manica and serve as an advocacy tool and policy recommendation guideline with national stakeholders including the private sector.
Guiding normative frameworks and reference documents: Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique (CRM); UN Women Flagship Programming Initiative; UN Women Africa Strategy (2018 – 2021); CEDAW (article 14); Beijing Platform for Action; Programme Document “Accelerating the Prevention and Response to SGBV and Early Marriage for Adolescent Girls and Young Women (ages 10 – 24) in Mozambique”; Sustainable Development Goals; Policy of National Employment; Strategic Provincial and District Development Plans; Provincial Development Strategic Plans (PED) and Economic and Social Plans (PES); Government Five-Year Program 2015-2019; Report of Mozambique on the Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action; International Labour Organization (ILO) knowledge products and methodology on women’s entrepreneurship development; the UN Women and UN Global Compact Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs); the Power of Procurement: How to buy from women-owned businesses; among others.
Draft a Report on the demand and market analysis to identify opportunities and challenges for the economic empowerment of girls and young women in the Provinces of Gaza and Manica
Design an experiment on young women’s business development/pilot enterprises
Facilitate a Validation Seminar
Post-graduate (Masters) in business administration, rural development/agronomy, development studies, economics, gender studies, and related fields.
Fluency in Portuguese and English both spoken and written. Fluency in the local languages spoken in selected provinces is desirable.
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment.
UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives....
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