Job Title: EU Project Inception Consultant
No of Positions: 1 position
Type of Contract: Individual Consultant
Duty Station: Kathmandu
Deadline: 20 February 2023 by 5 pm Nepal time

UNFPA Nepal’s Country Program mandate has, at its core, a focus on realizing expanded access to reproductive health and rights. In order to achieve this, the country office works both upstream and downstream within four outcome areas:

• Reproductive health
• Adolescents and youth
• Gender equality and reproductive rights
• Population data

The UNFPA Gender Equality Strategy 2018–2021 focuses on empowering women and adolescent girls and reaffirming UNFPA’s commitments to supporting the realization of international commitments and resolutions, including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), ICPD Beyond 2014 Review, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action +20 review, Rio+20, the UN General Assembly (GA) resolutions addressing gender equality issues including the UN System-Wide Action Plan on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (SWAP), Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVAW), UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) and its subsequent resolutions on women, peace and security and on sexual violence in armed conflict. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and adolescent girls is at the heart of UNFPA’s work – both as a stand-alone dedicated area of work and form an Integrated/mainstreaming approach. 

The UNFPA Nepal Country Office manages a portfolio of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) programmes, focused both on multi sectoral essential services and prevention. Recently a new UN Joint Program with UNICEF, UNWOMEN and ILO has been developed, supported by EU, which will focus on strengthening women’s political participation, economic empowerment and the elimination of gender based violence. This position will support the management and implementation of activities of UNFPA’s multi-sectoral new EU funded joint program titled ‘Empowered Women and Prosperous Nepal’. This will include the provision of high quality technical, advocacy and coordination support in order to ensure compliance with international standards across the areas of UNFPA mandated areas of work. 

Scope of work: (Description of services, activities, or outputs)

The consultant will serve as the UNFPA focal point, engage with the UN agencies (UNICEF, UNWOMEN and ILO) and implementing partners to implement the activities and overall coordination as required for the effective management of the program. 

S/he will support the inception phase of the program where the IP identification, geographical coverage identification, log frame finalization etc will be conducted. S/he shall: 

• Liaison with UNFPA Brussels office for obtaining clearance on the all project related strategic and legal document and follow up pending pillar assessment of UNFPA.
• Ensure timely MoU signing with the Administrative Agent of the Project.
• Organize internal briefing to unpack the project details among internal stakeholder
• Draft ToRs for the project personnel and follow up timely recruitment
• Ensure successful completion of all inception activities of EU GBV joint project including timely planning, budgeting, monitoring and assurance.
• Provide overall project implementation support -including monitoring and reporting - by liaising and communicating with UNOs, IPs and relevant team members as required. 
• Lead the organization and documentation of project oversight meetings with the implementation partners, for progress update, identification and mitigation of challenges. 
• In coordination with the M&E team, lead the finalization of the logframe of the project 
• Coordinate with the M&E Team to ensure the uptake and institutionalization of project tools, guidelines and reporting templates for new IPs. 

Duration and working schedule: The work will be spread over the period of 1 March to 30 June 2023.

Place where services are to be delivered: UNFPA CO in person. 

Monitoring and progress control, including reporting requirements:

• Provision of weekly updates on progress against the assigned tasks as outlined in the Scope of Work
• Submission of assigned tasks to agreed timelines and deadlines 
• Properly maintained document trail on the oversight meetings

Supervisory arrangements: The consultant will work in close coordination with the UNFPA Gender Team in close coordination with the GBV Program Specialist.

Expected travel: Some expected travel outside of Kathmandu. 

Required expertise, qualifications and competencies, including language requirements:

• Master’s Degree in Project Management, Gender, Social Work, Social Sciences, Development Studies, Public Health or related field; 
• Over 5 years of professional experience in project and programme management of complex, multi-year donor-funded programs 
• Experience of working in UNFPA, and understanding of UNFPA systems is an added advantage 
• Experience of working on GBV an added advantage
• Excellent proficiency in written and spoken English
• Excellent facilitation, presentation and analytical skills.

Other relevant information or special conditions, if any: The consultant will work based in the UNFPA Country Office in Kathmandu but will be required to travel to the provinces where the project interventions are taking place.