Health Sectors Response to GBV Consultant 33 views

The Position:

The purpose of the International Consultant is to support strengthening of country office capacity on health sector response to GBV in line with international standards and guidelines.

The Health Sector Response to GBV consultant will report to the UNFPA APRO GBV Technical Advisor.

How you can make a difference:

UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.  UNFPA’s strategic plan (2022-2025), reaffirms the relevance of the current strategic direction of UNFPA and focuses on three transformative results: to end preventable maternal deaths; end unmet need for family planning; and end gender-based violence and harmful practices. These results capture our strategic commitments on accelerating progress towards realizing the ICPD and SDGs in the Decade of Action leading up to 2030. Our strategic plan calls upon UN Member States, organizations and individuals to “build forward better”, while addressing the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women’s and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, recover lost gains and realize our goals.

In a world where fundamental human rights are at risk, we need principled and ethical staff, who embody these international norms and standards, and who will defend them courageously and with full conviction.

UNFPA is seeking candidates that transform, inspire and deliver high impact and sustained results; we need staff who are transparent, exceptional in how they manage the resources entrusted to them and who commit to deliver excellence in programme results.

Scope of work:

Despite growing awareness of GBV and extensive work done by governments, women’s organizations and other partners, many women and girls who are subjected to violence still lack access to essential services that support their safety, health, and access to justice. Lack of a survivor-centered approach to GBV service provision – ensuring that service provision is tailored to the unique needs and wishes of each individual survivor-  is a key challenge in the delivery of GBV response services in the region.

While preventing and responding to violence against women requires a multi-sectoral approach, the health sector has an important role to play. Health-care providers (such as nurses, midwives, doctors and others) are often the first professional contact for women who have been subjected to GBV. Women and girls often seek health services, including for their injuries, even if they do not disclose the associated abuse or violence. For many women, a visit to a health facility may be her first effort to seek help and the only chance to receive support and care, as well as to escape a situation of abuse.

It is, therefore, crucial that all health-care providers are equipped with adequate knowledge and skills to effectively identify and treat survivors of violence, including through clinical interventions, provision of emotional and psycho-social support and referral to other specific services that the survivor may wish to access.

Although GBV has been accepted as a critical public health and clinical care issue, the critical role that the health system and health-care providers can play in terms of identification, assessment, treatment, crisis-intervention, documentation, referral and follow up is poorly understood or accepted within national health programmes and policies in various countries.

In this context, it is a key priority for UNFPA APRO to strengthen the health sector response to GBV in the Asia Pacific Region. In 2022, APRO conducted a series of online capacity building sessions to strengthen CO capacity on health sector response to GBV, and provided technical guidance and support to country offices. Building on the long-standing partnership with WHO SEARO and UNFPA, the two agencies organised a series of virtual workshops and one in-person training  for health facility managers on the recent WHO manual on Strengthening Health Systems to response to Women Subjected to Intimate Partner Violence. APRO also partnered with Humanitarian Response Division to conduct a regional training on the updated guidelines on Clinical Management of Rape and Intimate Partner Violence.

UNFPA APRO has mobilised dedicated resources from Zonta International to strengthen GBV multi-sectoral response, with a particular focus on health sector strengthening in Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste. Through this funding, APRO has support the two Country Offices to adapt global guidelines on health sector response to GBV in national context and build capacity of frontline health care providers. In 2023, APRO will continue the technical support to the two COs through this dedicated investment as well as conducting an implementation research on effective means to strengthen the health sector’s capacity to provide survivor-centered care.

In 2023, APRO intends to continue this investment in strengthening regional capacity in the health sector in response to GBV programming across humanitarian and development contexts across Asia and the Pacific region.

Under the overall supervision of UNFPA APRO GBV Technical Advisor, the consultant will support the following:

Technical Support to COs:

●   Provide dedicated technical support to Zonta funded Country Offices to ensure high quality implementation of outputs on health sector response to GBV

●   Support APRO GBV team to provide timely, quality technical assistance to COs on health sector response to GBV through delivery of virtual training on  key resources

●   Support review of CO guidelines, training manuals, national curriculum etc to ensure alignment with international standards.

●   Support the conduct of learning sessions to all COs on Health Sector Response to GBV

Knowledge Generation and Management:

●   Document promising practices and innovative approaches on health sector response to GBV programming including by producing learning papers, advocacy or policy briefs and other analysis at regional and country level.

●   Support research initiatives, including the implementation research in multiple countries to determine barriers and challenges for providing survivor-centred services to survivors of GBV as well as on mandatory reporting (with a focus on the health sector component).

Duration and working schedule:

The total duration of the consultancy will be 100 working days from the starting date of the contract to December 2023.  The selected consultant will develop a workplan in consultation with UNFPA APRO GBV Advisor and the GBV team.

Delivery dates and how work will be delivered:

While the type of deliverables is mentioned below, the exact number are not possible to be quantified at this stage given the majority of the work will be demand driven from UNFPA Country Offices.

Expected deliverables include, among others:

1. Technical support in implementation of regional capacity building initiative on health sector response to GBV (with particular focus on Zonta funded countries – Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste)
2. Support for technical review of CO documents, guidelines, training curricula and other relevant material for Country Offices
3. Documentation of promising practices and innovative approaches on health sector response to GBV in Asia and the Pacific region
4. Development of relevant policy and advocacy briefs and other research papers.

Monitoring and progress control, including reporting requirements, periodicity format and deadline:

A work plan/delivery monitoring schedules will be determined by APRO and the Consultant at the outset of the consultancy. A tracking sheet will be used to note progress against the TOR deliverables and deadlines.

Expected travel:

Travel om mission to the Regional Office in Bangkok (UNFPA APRO) and/or UNFPA country ofifces or other venues are expected, with exact dates and duration to be determined based on the need and the time of deployment.

Expected travel (tentative):

• Timor Leste for 5 days to support implementation research
• Papua New Guinea for 5 days

Qualifications and Experience: 

Education

• Master’s degree with specialisation in areas such as gender, GBV, or public Health.

Professional Experience and Required Skills

• At least seven years of specialised experience in public health and/or GBV programming in an international level
• Demonstrated experience in capacity building on health sector response to GBV

• Proficiency in English required
• Working experience in the Asia Pacific Region and previous experience with UNFPA
• Strong writing and documentation skills

• Ability to work within a team structure or in isolation, flexible, and can cope with stressful workloads and working with limited resources.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work within different cultural environments\

Inputs / services to be provided by UNFPA

The consultant will use their personal laptop/computer.

UNFPA APRO will link the consultant to Country Office Gender focal points where necessary.

Disclaimer: 

UNFPA does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process. Fraudulent notices, letters or offers may be submitted to the UNFPA fraud hotline http://www.unfpa.org/help/hotline.cfm

In accordance with the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations, persons applying to posts in the international Professional category, who hold permanent resident status in a country other than their country of nationality, may be required to renounce such status upon their appointment.