Gender, Conflict and Stability Experts
Job ID: #2006519
Career Categories: Program/Project Management
Theme: Gender
Years of experience: 0-3 years
Job type: Consultancy
The Stabilisation Unit (SU) requires Gender, Conflict & Stability experts to support the work of Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) in fragile and conflict affected states.
What is the Stabilisation Unit?
SU is a cross government unit which provides advice and technical support to HMG departments undertaking work in fragile and conflict-affected states. As well as being a centre of expertise for HMG on conflict, stability, security and justice, SU recruits, prepares, trains and deploys experts to tasks across the globe. These vary in nature and length and can either be bilateral engagements or multilateral missions with the European Union (EU), United Nations (UN), or the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Typically, SU has around 130 Deployable Civilian Experts (DCEs) deployed in the field across a range of locations (Afghanistan, Kosovo, Sudan, Libya, DRC) at any one time and has the capability and resources to respond rapidly to crises.
What is the Civilian Stabilisation Group?
In order to ensure that it retains the necessary capability to respond to HMG priorities quickly and effectively, SU co-ordinates the Civilian Stabilisation Group (CSG). The CSG is a flexible pool of consultants, civil servants and serving UK police officers. These consist of DCEs drawn from the private and voluntary sectors, a Civil Service Stabilisation Cadre (CSSC), and Serving Police Officers drawn from across Whitehall.
Person Specification
Candidates will need knowledge & understanding of:
- the international conflict architecture, multilateral organisations, and key partner institutions in Whitehall (e.g. FCO, DFID, MOD, CSSF); and
- working/facilitating communication with a range of partners (e.g. national and subnational governments, security sector, NGOs, and hard to reach populations).
Essential Skills & Experience
- addressing the gendered causes/consequences of conflict and fragility;
- carrying out and applying gender analysis to conflict contexts and recommending programme and policy options;
- promoting, monitoring and reporting against national/international protocols and commitments on Women, Peace & Security;
- best practice in approaches to analysis, prevention and response to conflict related sexual and gender based violence;
- gender-sensitive approaches/tools for conflict response and mitigation; and
- Monitoring and evaluation to ensure integration of gender considerations into programming.
Programming experience of integrating gender at all stages of the programme cycle through conception, analysis, design, implementation and evaluation is also desirable.
Security clearance
Applicants should be aware that joining the CSG is dependent on obtaining Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS).
Please also note that some CSG Tasks undertaken by CSG members may require Security Check (SC) clearance. If you are a foreign/dual national, or a British Citizen who has not resided in the UK continuously for the past 5 years, this level of clearance may be difficult to obtain.
Examples of SU work on Gender, Conflict & Stability
Gender Audit, CSSF Sub-Saharan Africa
The SU recently conducted a Gender Audit of all Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa. A team of three CSG members carried out in-country assessments and presented findings to senior policy makers in Whitehall. A programme of work to implement the recommendations and make CSSF gender sensitive is underway.
SU Gender & Conflict Adviser
Gender & Conflict Analysis and Training, Pakistan
My deployment to Pakistan included developing and running a 2- day training on Gender, Conflict & Stability for around 30 HMG staff, followed by gender analysis and advice on specific CSSF programmes. The mix of training and tailored support on a broad range of programmes that covered security and justice, rule of Law, peacebuilding and social norm change initiatives, was a great way to support colleagues to think through why and how to meet UK priorities and integrate gender into their ongoing work.
Senior Gender, Conflict & Stability Advisor
PSVI Capacity Assessment, Iraq
I led a capacity assessment and mapping of responses to conflict related sexual violence in Northern Iraq. While the focus was on justice actors, a broader assessment of survivor support and the gender context was vital for a holistic understanding of the situation. This assessment led to briefings for the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative team, on Da’esh justice and on conflict related sexual violence (CRSV) humanitarian response for Mosul, as well as in-house training and mentoring for mandated justice actors in Northern Iraq who are building prosecution files on CRSV.
Senior Gender, Conflict & Stability Advisor
How to apply?
The CSG operates on a ‘two-stage’ recruitment basis; SU initially recruits individuals to become members of the CSG roster, and then recruits from that pool as and when capability is required for individual tasks. If you are successful in your application to join the CSG, you will then be invited to apply for stabilisation related opportunities. Please note that acceptance into the CSG does not guarantee employment, international deployment, or training. CSG members are not HMG employees.
To apply to join the CSG, candidates should submit an application to the Gender, Conflict & Stability Category of the CSG Core and send the following three completed documents directly to applications@stabilisationunit.gov.uk:**
- A completed CSG application form for the Gender, Conflict & Stability CSG Category
- A completed CSG Diversity Monitoring Form
- An up-to-date CV, of a maximum of 2 pages
Application forms and guidance also can be found on our website,
Applicants will be assessed against the general and technical requirements of their Category, as well as the Civil Service competencies at the relevant grade (using the Civil Service Competency Framework and the International Competencies). This will be followed by an in-person interview.
If you are successful during the competency and technical assessments, you will be invited to an interview at SU within 8 weeks.
We do not conduct interviews via Skype, telephone or Virtual Tele-Conference (VTC) and all travel and accommodation arrangements for interviews are made at the applicant’s own expense. For this reason, please ensure that you are able to make yourself available for an interview in London, UK within the next 3 months. In exceptional circumstances, SU will consider applicants for interview outside the 3-month window.