UN Women: Promoting Women’s Participation and Leadership in Governance, Peace and Security (Zimbabwe)

Deadline: 11-Aug-23

UN Women Zimbabwe seeks to engage a Non Governmental Organization to support the implementation of activities under the Governance and Peace building portfolio.

Under the frame of the project, work undertaken will contribute towards women’ political participation, governance and movement building to realize an environment for women’s full, equal and meaningful leadership where women can lead, participate and influence national development processes as well as foster peace and social cohesion.

United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women (UN Women), under the governance and peacebuilding portfolio is supporting women’s political participation, leadership, and women, peace and security programming and the work of the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN) in Zimbabwe.

The governance and peacebuilding portfolio contributes to the UN Women global Flagship Projects on Women’s Political Empowerment and Leadership and Women Peace and Security, the Sustainable Development Goals, 5 and 16 and UN Security Council Resolution 1325 specifically the participation pillar. Previous work in these areas have shown the importance of sustained engagement with national stakeholders on the implementation of international, regional and national gender equality frameworks, which is supported by knowledge generation and dissemination.

Strategic Priorities

Governance and participation in public life
- Before, during and after elections, women are supported in all their diversity to participate fully and equally in leadership and decision-making
- Galvanize women around gender equality through movement building on the gender agenda
- Increase gender balance and sensitivity in women’s representation, coverage, and portrayal in the media
- Support the national implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda
- Support gender-responsive institutional strengthening to ensure women’s equal participation in peacebuilding, rule of law, transitional justice, security sector reform, and conflict prevention and mediation and related areas
- Institutional Strengthening to deliver respective mandates that ensure women’s participation and leadership.

Funding Information

The budget range for this proposal should be USD 60, 000 to 70, 000
Duration of Partnership agreement: The duration of the partnership agreement from October 2023 – June 2024

Outputs & Activities

The project will have the following main outputs:
- Movement Building
  - Output 1.1: Strengthened capacity of Networks to build a movement on gender equality and women’s rights through galvanizing women leaders and young women in diverse sectors of the country
  - Main activities:
    - Support to the national Steering Committee, Youth Caucus and the AWLN National Chapter
    - Annual retreat and Steering Committee meetings
    - AWLN Global Forum Participation
    - Support AWLN advocacy and programming by women leaders and civil society, including convening and coordinating key stakeholders in key women’s rights processes and commemorations
- Strengthened capacities of women to participate in governance and public life
  - Output 2.1: Strengthened capacities of women to participate in governance
  - Main activities:
    - Monitor the experiences of the women who have participated in the WRiP initiative and their preparations for the 2023 elections, in partnership with ZGC.
    - Capacity building and networking for women politicians elected in the 2023 elections
    - Carry out a baseline study of the obstacles, needs and opportunities for elected women politicians.
  - Output 2.2 Increased promotion and implementation of gender responsive electoral processes
  - Main Activities:
    - Support the mechanism to monitor, gather and document women’s experiences throughout the electoral cycle (Activate and maintain the Gender Observatory on Elections) in partnership with the Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC) and relevant stakeholders.
      - Media Engagement
      - Documentation meetings
    - Advocate for women’s political participation through communication strategies (including media campaigns, dissemination of the Women’s Manifesto) and stakeholder engagements (political parties, traditional leaders, and Faith Based Organisations among others)
      - Stakeholder meetings
- Gender-responsive Media Coverage on Women’s Political Participation
  - Output 3.1: Gender-responsive Media
- Normative Engagement on Women/Youth Peace and Security Agendas
  - Output 4.1: Strengthened capacity of decision-makers and the security sector to formulate, review, and implement gender-sensitive policies, and protocols that promote women’s rights in line with the Women, Peace and Security and Youth, Peace, and Security agendas.
  - Main Activities:
    - Provide Technical and financial support to the Ministry of Defence and Women Affairs Community, Small and Medium Enterprises to develop and adopt a National Action Plan (NAP) on UNSCR1325 in partnership with stakeholders
    - Validation meetings
    - National Steering Committee meetings
    - Provide technical and financial support to the Ministry of Youth and relevant stakeholders for Advocacy on adoption of NAP on Youth, Peace and Security
- Strengthened capacity of Parliament and decision-makers and the security sector to formulate, review, and implement gender-sensitive policies
  - Main Activities:
    - Conduct awareness raising on UNSCR1325 a) at community and provincial level in collaboration with peace infrastructure actors at the local level b) Among Parliamentarians using the Parliamentarians Handbook”
    - Conduct Provincial and community meetings in collaboration with peace infrastructure actors at the local level
- Addressing violence against women in elections/politics- VAWE
  - Main Activities:
    - Awareness raising and trainings
    - Knowledge building and Survey on VAWE
    - IEC material development
  - Scope of work
  - The work shall be undertaken by a CSO, with the ability to mobilize women’s rights groups, gender advocates and women’s organizations around a common cause.
  - The CSO is expected to: –
    - Support the establishment of provincial chapters of the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN) Zimbabwe in provinces to galvanize the women’s movements and civil society organisations at community level around gender equality and women’s leadership in line with the theme “Peace and Social Cohesion for Zimbabwe’s Sustainable Development.”
    - Support the roll out of the second cohort of a nationwide AWLN intergenerational mentorship programme
    - Support technical and committee steering meetings held under the AWLN Zimbabwe Chapter initiative as well as advocacy efforts on women’s leadership and meaningful participation in nation-building
    - Support pre and post election work under the Women Rise in Politics initiative in partnership with ZGC.
    - Support the convening of local and provincial stakeholders on gender and development, women’s political representation and leadership in peacebuilding
    - Support efforts towards implement gender-sensitive policies, and protocols that promote women’s rights in line with the Women, Peace and Security and Youth, Peace, and Security agendas.
    - Support Gender-responsive Media Reporting on Women’s political participation
    - Support programming on gender responsive conflict prevention on collaboration with stakeholders to address violence against women and women in elections.

Competencies

Technical/functional competencies required;
- The organisation must have professionals with proven records:
  - In-depth technical knowledge and understanding of gender and development with some knowledge of government socio economic policies including the recently adopted National Development Strategy, international and regional gender equality frameworks
  - Knowledge and experience in facilitating, conducting trainings and development of programme management tools to measure impact
  - Experience managing and facilitating national consultative processes working with diverse groups
  - Experience working with or engaging state actors in gender equality, women’s leadership and empowerment
  - Programme staff with Graduate degrees in the areas of Development Studies, Social Sciences, Gender, Women’s Law, Law or any other relevant field

CSO Criteria

The eligible CSOs should also meet the legal, programmatic and technical criteria defined:
- Duly registered under the laws of Zimbabwe
- Demonstrates relevant programmatic experience for at least 5 years in specific ALWN priority areas identified (in the introduction)
- Knowledge and experience in programme design and management, community mobilization, organizational development
- Clear understanding of community contexts and the needs of women and girls with respect to leadership, political participation, peacebuilding, development, mentorship and gender-based violence.
- Substantive knowledge and understanding of social accountability, movement building and campaigns
- Technical expertise on gender equality issues and more broadly, women’s meaningful participation in decision-making and leadership, women, peace and security and ending violence against women and girls.
- Have a proven track record of advocacy work on gender or related issues in Zimbabwe
- An established organizational culture of accountability and commitment to delivery of results
- Administrative and financial capacity to manage budgets of more than $50,000 annually supported with a track record of quality and timely project results and unqualified audit reports in the preceding 2 years.
- Demonstrates experience in facilitating constructive and inclusive engagement, dialogue and peacebuilding processes with the goal of contributing to socio-economic development
- Demonstrable capacity – human, financial and technical to deliver results at national and sub-national levels.