GENDER EQUALITY AND SOCIAL INCLUSION (GESI) POLICY AND ACTION PLAN CONSULTANT (Extended)

 GENDER EQUALITY AND SOCIAL INCLUSION (GESI) POLICY

AND ACTION PLAN CONSULTANT

Location                                   : Coral Triangle Region

Application Deadline               : 18^th May 2020; by 5:00pm Manado, Indonesia time. (5.00 pm

                                                  Indonesia Central Standard Time, UTC + 07.00) (Extended)

Type of Contract                      : Individual Time Specific Contract (“Working Agreement for

                                                  Specified Time)

Language                                 : English

Start & End Date                      : 2 June  & end of Nov 2020

Duration of Contract                : ca. 6 months

A.       BACKGROUND

The Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries, and Food Security (CTI-CFF), also known as the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI), is a multilateral partnership of six countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste. These countries work together to sustain extraordinary marine and coastal resources by addressing crucial issues such as food security, climate change, and marine biodiversity. The Coral Triangle (CT) is sometimes referred to as the “Amazon of the seas”, is the epicenter of marine life abundance and diversity on the planet with over 75% of all known coral species, 53% of the world’s coral reefs, over 3,000 fish species the greatest extent of mangrove forests of any region in the world and spawning and juvenile growth areas for what is the largest tuna fishery in the world.

At the CTI-CFF Leader's Summit in 2009, these governments agreed to adopt a 10-year Regional Plan of Action (CTI RPOA) to safeguard the region’s marine and coastal biological resources. Through the CTI-CFF, the Coral Triangle countries have agreed to support people-centered biodiversity conservation, sustainable development, poverty reduction, and equitable benefit sharing. The CTI-CFF seeks to address both poverty reduction through economic development, food security, sustainable livelihoods for coastal communities and biodiversity conservation through the protection of species, habitats and ecosystems.

The CTI-CFF is administered and managed through Headquarters of CTI-CFF Regional Secretariat located in Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Women Leaders’ Forum (WLF)

The Women Leaders’ Forum (WLF) was recognized and launched during the 5^th CTI-CFF Ministerial Meeting in Manado, 2014. It successfully paved the way for the CT6 countries to support activities that actively benefit women, such as through capacity building and leadership development, as well as to spearhead the movement towards gender integration across the overall CTI-CFF.

At the 13^th Senior Officials’ Meeting (November 2017), the Committee of Senior Officials agreed to:

Initiate the development of a CTI-CFF Gender Policy with the support from partners and collaborators; undertake a stock-take of existing gender policies within CT6 Member Parties; and urged the Regional Secretariat to work with partners to ensure gender measures are embedded in all phases of programming, budgeting, and in the CTI M&E Operations Manual.

In 2019, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) supported the WLF in completing an initial Baseline Matrix and  Stocktake on Gender-Related Policies and Legal Framework in the Coral Triangle  Report (Stocktake Report)^[1] of existing gender-related policies and legal frameworks from the CT6 countries and identified implementation challenges and gaps from a gender perspective. It also outlined relevant gender-related policies for various CTI-CFF partners and other relevant stakeholders. This Report is further reviewed by the CT6 with additional input and produced a revised matrix of the policies and legal frameworks^[2]. This exercise is a precursor to the development of a CTI-CFF Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Policy.

The Stocktake Report was accepted by the Committee of Senior Officials (CSO) at the 15^th Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM-15) to be used as reference during the planned GESI Policy development. It was at this SOM-15 that the CSO also tasked the Regional Secretariat to ensure the completion of the GESI Policy in accordance with the approved WLF 2020 Workplan^[3].

B.        OBJECTIVES

It is the intention of the CTI-CFF Regional Secretariat to ensure that the decision made at the 15^th Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM-15) is met and follows the approved WLF 2020 Workplan.

1. The CSOs have tasked the Regional Secretariat to work with the WLF to ensure the completion of the GESI Policy through provision of funds and other resources (Decision 12.1.9); and that by January 2021, a GESI Policy for CTI-CFF is developed for implementation, and by mid-2020, GESI principles and indicators are incorporated into the CTI M&E Framework and into the Coral Triangle Atlas (CT Atlas)^[4].
2. Additionally, in October 2019, USAID and the Department of Interior (DOI) supported an “Aligning Cross-Cutting Initiatives to the CTI-CFF Regional Plan of Action 2.0 Workshop” where key members of the WLF developed a five-years (2020-2025) roadmap that includes the development of the GESI Policy.
3. It is envisioned that the CTI-CFF GESI Policy shall also include an Action Plan, where the current roadmap shall be refined and completed with appropriate strategies/actions and indicators to operationalize the GESI Policy.

Through the completion and eventual approval of the GESI Policy and Action Plan, the CTI-CFF seeks to improve gender equality and accelerate social inclusion more broadly, while taking intersectionality into account, in order to achieve equitable and sustainable coastal and marine resource management across the Coral Triangle.

[1] A Stocktake on Gender Related Policies and Legal Framework in the Coral Triangle shall be provided upon request.

[2] A Revised Baseline Information Matrix of CT6 is prepared based on comments from the NCCs and is available upon request.

[3] Available upon request.

[4] Subject to the readiness of the M&E Framework and CT Atlas.

[5] The WLF aims, amongst other things, to help address the current situation as reported in by the United Nations where “While women represented 39 per cent of world employment, only 27 per cent of managerial positions in the world were occupied by women in 2018, up only marginally from 26 per cent in 2015.” through the provision of capacity building opportunities, both in technical and leaderships skills

[6] Available upon request.

The CTI-CFF GESI Policy and Action Plan are also envisaged to contribute to the CT6 countries’ effort towards fulfilling its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG5 on achieving gender equality and to empower all women and girls^[5].

For full information, please download the pdf document below.