United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Gender and Conflict Adviser

The Stabilisation Unit (SU) is seeking a Gender & Conflict Adviser to lead the delivery of the SU’s cross-cutting objective on gender, peace and security. The post reflects increased recognition in our conflict, stabilisation, security and justice work of the need to integrate gender as a priority area to assure the effectiveness of HMG interventions. The Gender & Conflict Adviser will lead the SU’s work on gender including on Women, Peace and Security and as part of the FCO Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI). The Adviser must work across all teams in the SU, as well as across HMG and internationally. The Adviser will support the integration of gender across conflict, stabilisation, security and justice work within the Unit and across HMG, including integrating gender into conflict analysis and broader work on conflict, stabilisation, security and justice. The Adviser will also task manage the PSVI Team of Experts Function Manager. The Gender & Conflict Adviser must be willing and able to work both across Whitehall on policy and in the field. This is an exciting, challenging and stimulating job which offers the opportunity to shape HMG’s efforts to prevent and respond to conflict in and across priority regions.

****ABOUT THE TEAM****

The Conflict and Stabilisation Team (CST), along with the Unit’s Security and Justice and Lessons teams is home to the Unit's subject matter experts. These teams undertake a wide range of assignment work related to conflict issues on behalf of the Unit’s key departmental clients.

The SU supports the UK’s engagement in conflict-affected environments by supplying high quality personnel in the right place at the right time. In order to ensure that the Unit can meet the demands of its key departmental clients, the SU invests in the acquisition and management of the knowledge and skills that are essential to delivering HMG's Building Stability Overseas Strategy (BSOS).

CST responds to requests for support from the key departmental clients covering conflict analysis, programme design, programme reviews, evaluation and other activities relating to HMG’s work in preventing or stabilising violent conflict. The team is a centre of expertise which brings a whole of government approach to bear, applying lessons formally captured by the Unit and ensuring that HMG interventions are consistent with BSOS and NSC strategies. The Team includes a number of subject matter experts in conflict, governance and community engagement and includes a cadre of senior Deployable Civilian Experts (DCEs) – contractors identified through a recruitment process and available on a call-down basis to complement the skills available within the core team and provide a surge capacity, including as part of the Unit’s response to crises. The Team is seeking an individual with significant experience of working for HMG on gender in a conflict context to strengthen the Unit's ability to provide practical conflict advice and programmatic support in line with BSOS objectives and deliver the Unit’s objectives on gender and conflct. The team is keen to reflect the skills and experience of staff from FCO, DFID and MoD and applications from staff in those departments with a strong track record of relevant work on conflict will be welcome.

The post-holder will be allocated a geographic as well as a thematic area of responsibility to lead on the SU's behalf. This role entails close working with other teams in the Unit and S/he should be prepared to undergo Hostile Environments Awareness Training (HEAT) and to deploy at short notice to insecure environments.

All SU deployments follow strict standard operating procedures, including appropriate training, medical checks, equipment, in-country and back-office support, and comply with all HMG security protocols in country.

****KEY RESPONSIBILITIES****

The Gender and Conflict Adviser will be responsible for leading the delivery of the SU’s thematic cross-cutting commitment on gender, peace and security. This will include:

· Supporting SU key departmental clients with the implementation of the UK National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security;

· Ensuring SU meets its commitments in the NAP on UNSCR 1325;

· Providing technical support to the FCO’s Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), including supporting the design and delivery of country work and deployments associated with the PSVI;

· Task managing the PSVI Team of Experts Function Manager;

· Supporting the integration of gender into conflict, stabilisation, security and justice work including gender analysis in conflict analysis and stabilisation planning and the design, delivery and evaluation of country work;

· Developing the gender and conflict expertise on the Civilian Stabilisation Group (CSG) to ensure experts are available and capacity built to support country operations where requested;

· Capturing, analysing and sharing lessons on integrating gender in conflict, stabilisation, security and justice work to inform policy and practice;

· Leading the design and delivery of cross-Whitehall training on women, peace and security;

· Building capacity on gender within the Unit and across HMG, including ensuring gender is effectively integrated in stabilisation and conflict, and security and justice training;

· Liaising with MOD and the military to support the integration of gender into military doctrine, training and operations;

· Developing and maintaining cross-HMG and external relationships.

PLEASE NOTE: due to the dynamic nature of our work, aspects of this post may change over time. The post-holder will need to be flexible and willing to adapt to evolving responsibilities.

****SKILLS & EXPERIENCE****

****Essential Skills / Experience****

· Significant understanding of and experience working on gender issues in the field, with demonstrated experience at the national level on policy and capacity;

· Experience of working in and on conflict and delivering effectively within the HMG conflict architecture;

· Understanding of the relationship between gender, conflict, stabilisation, security and justice;

· Strong analytical skills with demonstrated experience of analysing conflict, particularly through a gender lens;

· Experience in policy analysis, and implementation in a fragile or conflict situation;

· Understanding of International Law; specifically International Humanitarian Law (IHL) but also human rights law;

· Experience of cross-government working, ideally at both strategic and operational levels, and a demonstrated capacity to operate effectively and in a politically-savvy way with a range of Whitehall actors;

· Familiarity/current knowledge of conflict-affected environments, ideally in one or more of SU’s key priority countries (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, S Sudan, Yemen etc)****.****

****Highly Desirable Skills / Experience****

· Working knowledge and/or experience of one or more international organisations (e.g. UN, EU, AU, NATO) involved in conflict;

· A good understanding of HMG strategic interests and how HMG operates across the political, development and security spheres, especially its various departmental research, cross-cutting issues, multi-lateral liaison and analysis teams;

· Experience of working with the military and civilians, ideally in integrated civilian-military structures;

· Experience of budget management.

· Experience of designing and delivering a strategy to time and positive effect.

****THE STABILISATION UNIT****

The Stabilisation Unit is an operational agency supporting government efforts to tackle instability overseas.

We support integrated coordination of government work in fragile and conflict-affected states, acting as a centre of expertise on conflict, stabilisation, security and justice. We also support government responses on crises like the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, by focusing on conflict, instability and security aspects caused by this situation. As a part of this work, we train and deploy qualified and experienced civilian experts to support government work in conflict situations, and to multilateral missions on behalf of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. We are responsible for safety and security of all staff deployed through us.

Who we are

We’re a civil-military operational unit based in London. We are funded through the Conflict Stability and Security Fund which is governed through the National Security Council. We currently have core staff members from ten government departments as well as serving military and police officers.

The Unit is also home to the Civilian Stabilisation Group, a pool of over 1000 civilian experts drawn from the public and private sectors plus an additional pool of serving police officers. Members of the CSG have expertise in key areas applicable to stabilisation contexts including governance, security sector reform, rule of law, strategic communications, economic recovery, policing, border control and public finance.

Civilian experts and police are deployed alongside and integrated with UK and allied military or as civilian only teams, or as part of EU, NATO, UN and OSCE missions and work with local partners to build stability. In a crisis, the Stabilisation Unit can deploy people to difficult locations within 48 hours, and have deployed in the past in as little as 12 hours.

For information on the Stabilisation Unit, please visit our website www.gov.uk/stabilisation-unit

****FURTHER INFORMATION****

For general information contact SUHR@stabilisationunit.gov.uk. For specific information about the post, please contact Rosy Cave on r-cave@dfid.gov.uk or 0207 008 6938.

Please apply via Civil Service Jobs - https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cgi and search for vacancy reference 1459321.