Deadline: 28-Oct-23
To support and scale protection services provided by civil society organizations for women and girls who act to promote or protect human rights and people of all genders and/or work to advance rights related to gender equality – collectively known as “women human rights defenders” (WHRDs), UN Women is seeking to map women-led and/or gender focused organizations working in the space. This mapping will be used to identify ways to expand support to organizations providing protection services for WHRDs.
The aim of the Expression of Interest is to map the current landscape and identify potential women-led and/or gender-focused organizations at the provincial or national level that have the capacity to directly provide protection services and/or safe houses for women human rights defenders.
The Expression of Interest (EOI) is accepting profiles of women-led and/or gender-focused organizations at the provincial or national-level that have the capacity to provide the following types of services (but not necessarily limited to):
- Identifying WHRDs at-risk via assessing and documenting their risk/threat factors.
- Providing safe houses to WHRDs at-risk and their dependents.
- Providing a range of support services for WHRDs at-risk, including but not limited to, legal, health, psycho-social support, and counselling.
- Providing safety (rapid response and digital security) training to help mitigate risks facing at-risk WHRDs.
Priorities
- UN Women will prioritize Expressions of Interest:
- Submitted by civil society organizations legally established and operating in Afghanistan.
- Submitted by women-led and/or gender focused organizations.
- Directly benefitting vulnerable Afghan women who act to promote or protect human rights and people of all genders or work to advance rights related to gender equality.
- Submitted by Afghan organizations with proven expertise and experience in advancing women’s rights and promoting gender equality in Afghanistan.
Areas
- The applicants are expected to cover at least one of the following areas of programming (but not limited to this):
- Provide immediate support and protection to WHRDs.
- Provide emergency internal relocation funds and/or emergency safety net funds to support WHRDs.
- Provide psychosocial, handling distress, and digital security training to support continuation of advocacy for human rights in Afghanistan.
- Provide Afghan WHRDs and their dependents in Afghanistan with financial and diplomatic support through referral mechanisms for internal relocation.
- Support in reaching out to the community of WHRDs to collect their views, needs and perspectives on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan to develop strategies/learnings to navigate through existing and emerging challenges and thereby facilitate advancement of women’s rights in Afghanistan.
- Build the capacity of other women-led and/or gender focused CSOs that are supporting WHRDs.
Timeframe
- Start date and end date for completion of required services/results
- January 2024 –June 2025
Competencies
- Technical/functional competencies required
- Demonstrated experience supporting WHRDs in Afghanistan.
- Ability to manage and mitigate risks related to sensitive areas of programming.
- Ability to undertake regular monitoring, including collection of baseline and end line data to measure impact.
- Organizational capacity to deliver expected results in current context (governance and management competencies, and financial and administrative competency).
- Relevance of the mandate and the role of the organization to implement expected results and to contribute to the sustainability of intended results.
- Partners must demonstrate commitment to ethical and safe programming and clearly dedicated to advancing women’s rights and gender equality in Afghanistan.
- Other competencies, which while not required, can be an asset for the performance of services.
For more information, visit UN Women.