Consultant to support the development of a Strategic Plan for 2021-2025 for Zimbabwe Republic Police Women’s Network: UN Women

Deadline: 11 November 2020 (Midnight New York, USA)

Location: Harare

Background

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.

UN Women Zimbabwe Country Office is implementing a UN Secretary General PeaceBuilding Fund (PBF) project. The project seeks to build peace in Zimbabwe’s transition through three broad based and interlinked output areas namely promote citizen engagement under the Transitional Stabilization Programme, with emphasis on promoting meaningful participation of women and youth; improving dispute resolution services and social protection mechanisms design in marginalized and at risk communities; and advancing national healing and reconciliation efforts. The goal is to contribute to the creation of an environment conducive to peaceful co-existence, trust and citizen participation in development processes. The importance of recognizing women as equal partners in development and peace processes is critical.

This therefore calls for strong institutions that can facilitate access to justice with strong capacities in service delivery, participatory planning, gender and conflict sensitive development, strategic foresight, risk assessment and scenario planning with emphasis on promotion of women’s leadership and participation. Hence the drive towards institutional strengthening of justice sectors through support of initiatives such as the ZRP Women Network on gender sensitive peace and security for improved safety and development in Zimbabwe.

Rationale

The police is a key state institution that has a crucial role to play in prevention and response to violence against women and girls in all spheres. In 2012, the ZRP Women Network launched its first Strategic Plan, which was followed by the next edition in 2015. The Strategic Plan seeks to consolidate gains previously achieved by the ZRP Women Network in its determined effort to enhance cooperation, coordination, sharing of best practices, as well as expert knowledge in the implementation of the ZRP Women Network Strategic Plan. The Plan also seeks to expose challenges anticipated in executing the Women Network mandate and proffer possible solutions there to.

Most importantly, the Women Network’s thrust is to promote harmonious working relations between male and female members of the service, an important component in fostering quality service delivery. Since the launching of the Plan, the Zimbabwean Police Service has made some positive advancements towards gender mainstreaming, but further efforts are needed. In this regard an evaluation and revision of the Strategic Plan is needed before the current one expires by the end of this year 2020.

Duties and Responsibilities

The overall objective of the consultancy is to undertake an evaluation of the implementation of the 2015 ZRP Women Network Strategic Plan, including achievements, challenges and gaps; review current Plan and context developments; and revise and update the Plan. The consultancy will have a deliberate focus on identifying lessons learnt, good practice, and implementation gaps from the first five years of the Plan’s existence to inform and improve a revised Plan.

The review and revision process should address both the internal practices of ZRP relating to personal and administrative questions – recruitment, retention and promotion of women as well as issues of gender harassment etc.; and the external policing practices that relate to interaction with the population, including in the context of regional/international peacekeeping or peace support operations.