Deadline: 02-May-2024
The UN Women Lebanon Office welcomes proposals for partnerships to achieve results under its Women’s Political Participation Programme, with a specific focus on targeted actions that ensure women’s equal leadership and representation at all levels of political decision-making.
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (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 are translated into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts while building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.
UN Women in Lebanon works across the humanitarian‐development‐peace nexus in support of national efforts for achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. To create an enabling environment for the realization of gender equality and women’s empowerment, UN Women advocates and supports social mobilization for gender-responsive legislative reform, works with partner organizations to build gender responsive institutions, and delivers essential humanitarian and development services to women and girls in need, both host government nationals and refugees. This is complemented by work that seeks to engage communities, women and men, on issues of gender equality with the objective of addressing discriminatory gender norms.
Women’s political participation is a fundamental prerequisite for gender equality and inclusive democracies. Despite a vibrant feminist movement and the fact that Lebanon was one of the first countries in the Arab region to grant women the right to vote in 1952, Lebanon lags behind its Arab peers in representation of female parliamentarians. Globally, Lebanon ranks 173 out of 186 countries when it comes to women’s representation in Parliaments. Overall, women in Lebanon are subject to structural discrimination. Women’s under-representation in public and political life is due to a myriad of factors, including the country’s challenging electoral framework, patriarchal political parties, the sectarian system, high cost of election campaigning, media bias and entrenched social norms, all which put barriers on women to fully realize their potential to become political actors or leaders on equal footing as their male peers. These figures are replicated across the political spectrum.
Focus Areas
- This work is done through the following focus areas:
Funding Information
- Output 1: Women political candidates running for the upcoming municipal and parliamentary elections experience less political violence.
- The budget range for output 1 is Between USD 80,000 and USD 90,000.
- Output 2: Increased awareness, knowledge, skills, and linkages of current and aspiring Members of Parliament to obtain and succeed in elected office.
- The budget range for output 2 is between USD 90,000 and USD 100,000
- Output 3: Political parties have increased capacity to include women on their lists and to develop gender-inclusive policies in their programs.
- The budget range for output 3 is between USD 70,000 and USD 85,000
- Output 4: Media professionals acknowledge and challenge societal norms perpetuating gender inequalities
- The budget range for output 4 is between USD 60,000 and USD 70,000
- Output 5: Gender norms are widely addressed, resulting in increased awareness of women’s capabilities in politics and other sectors.
- The budget range for output 5 is between USD 50,000 and USD 60,000
Outputs
- Output 1: Women political candidates running for the upcoming municipal and parliamentary elections experience less political violence.
- Activity 1.1: Develop and implement multi-stakeholder initiatives to raise awareness of women politicians on violence in public spaces, including online space.
- Sub-activities can include:
- Monitor incidents of online violence against women in politics and issue advocacy reports highlighting findings.
- Strengthen existing reporting pathways for women who experience violence and abuse in public life, including through developing material (online and offline) to reach women in politics and in public life to inform them of available reporting pathways.
- Conduct awareness raising events and/or campaigns (min. 2) targeting women in politics and in public life to raise their awareness on violence, harassment and hate speech and how to stay safe in digital spaces.
- Develop a curriculum on digital security for women and conduct a training-of-trainers workshop for CSOs working on gender equality and women’s rights
- Output 2: Increased awareness, knowledge, skills, and linkages of current and aspiring Members of Parliament to obtain and succeed in elected office.
- Activity 2.1: Support potential women leaders and political candidates who are seeking to run in the 2026 parliamentary elections and link them to elected female leaders.
- Sub-activities can include:
- Deliver training program for 300 qualified women political candidates willing to run a campaign, win and serve in Parliament to enhance their knowledge and skills, based on the UN Women Manual for Trainers of Political Leadership and Candidate Training.
- Develop a training tool kit for women political candidates on the timetable for elections and the electoral procedures and regulations.
- Support women political candidates and/or women MPs to conduct awareness sessions for the community on gender equality issues that are a priority in their respective community.
- Output 3: Political parties have increased capacity to include women on their lists and to develop gender-inclusive policies in their programs.
- Activities can include:
- Develop and implement targeted activities to strengthen capacities of political parties to adopt gender-inclusive policies and practices that aim at increasing women’s political representation in elected bodies. This includes adoption of policies on Temporary Special Measures (TSM), including quotas, to increase women’s representation in elected bodies as well as internal party policies to address areas of gender inequality as identified by the political party leadership.
- Activities can include:
- Output 4: Media professionals acknowledge and challenge societal norms perpetuating gender inequalities.
- Activities can include:
- Conduct workshop to 40 journalists on gender sensitive reporting.
- Develop an online course on gender-sensitive reporting for journalists and media professionals.
- Featuring 20 articles in different media outlets highlighting women’s political leadership achievements and issues.
- Conduct training on Effective Communication for women active in public life to better understanding media and information space.
- Activities can include:
- Output 5: Gender norms are widely addressed, resulting in increased awareness of women’s capabilities in politics and other sectors.
- Organize campaigns to raise awareness about harmful notions of masculinities and challenge gender stereotypes and unequal gendered power relations.
- Engage with universities to educate youth on violence against women and how to respond to and report incidence of violence against women in collaboration with the police.
- Organize 6 community initiatives involving youth to combat harmful gender norms.
Outcome
- Increased participation of women who assume leadership positions and promote gender justice in political and civic spaces.
Eligibility Criteria
- In the selection of partners, the following competencies will be considered:
- Soundness of technical competency described in the approach to the output as described in the Terms of Reference for the Call for Proposals.
- Organizations with a track record of working on advancing women’s rights and women`s political participation, have a proven experience in working with women in the field of elections and women’s rights.
- Capacity to deliver expected results: governance and management competency, 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 said results. Do no harm approach that aims to identify and mitigate the unintended negative effects of the humanitarian interventions.
- The project adopts an approach that is sustainable and builds on local knowledge and institutional experiences.
Language
- The proposal prepared by the proponent and all correspondence and documents relating to the proposal exchanged between the proponent and UN Women, shall be written in English.
For more information UN Women.