Gender Equality Specialist - Social Inclusion

**Job Highlight**
Provide expert, crosscutting advisory support on gender equality, social inclusion, and safeguards to ensure the consistent and contextually grounded integration of gender-responsive approaches across all EU4BARMM tri-justice work packages, in alignment with international human rights standards, applicable safeguard frameworks, and the socio-cultural and political realities of the Bangsamoro.

**About the Region**
The Asia Pacific Regional Office, based in Bangkok, Thailand, provides strategic leadership and oversight for UNOPS operations across 17 countries, ensuring high performance, operational excellence, and alignment with organizational goals. Operations currently span Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Pacific Islands. Across these countries, we work closely with key stakeholders to strengthen partnerships and maximize impact through five main operating units: Afghanistan (AFCO), Myanmar (MMCO), South Asia Multi-Country Office (SAMCO), East Asia and Pacific Multi-Country Office (EAPMCO), and the Asia Regional Health Cluster (ARHC). Through these entities, we provide agile, client-focused service delivery across diverse sectors - including infrastructure, health, procurement, and project management - supporting the implementation of sustainable development solutions across the region.

**About the Country/Multi-Country Office**
The East Asia and Pacific Multi-Country Office (EAPMCO), headquartered in Bangkok, supports UNOPS operations across 24 countries in Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and the Pacific. Established in January 2023, EAPMCO provides strategic direction, operational support, and quality assurance to ensure the efficient and effective delivery of projects across its portfolio. EAPMCO implements initiatives in priority areas such as energy transition, climate change, and sustainable development, drawing on UNOPS' core expertise in human resources, procurement, infrastructure, fund management, and programme management.

**Job Specific Context**
The Partnership for Peace and Development in Mindanao (PPDM) Programme, known as EU4BARMM, is a European Union-funded initiative supporting peacebuilding, institutional strengthening, and inclusive governance in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). The programme operates across multiple thematic work packages addressing the tri-justice system — encompassing formal, Shari'ah, and customary justice systems — reflecting the region's socio-cultural, historical, and constitutional identity under the Bangsamoro Organic Law.

Gender equality and social inclusion are not peripheral concerns within this programme context — they are central to the legitimacy, effectiveness, and sustainability of justice sector reform in BARMM. Women, girls, Indigenous Peoples, and other marginalized groups face compounded barriers to accessing justice within each of the three justice systems. The intersection of plural legal frameworks with deeply embedded patriarchal norms, socio-economic inequality, and post-conflict vulnerabilities creates specific and acute risks of rights violations, exclusion, and harm if gender and inclusion considerations are not systematically integrated from the outset of programme design.

At the same time, gender and inclusion initiatives must be carefully contextualized within the local socio-cultural, economic, and political realities of the Bangsamoro, including the specific legal and normative frameworks of the Shari'ah system and customary practices of Indigenous Peoples' communities. Approaches that are not grounded in this context risk being inappropriate, ineffective, or counterproductive. Accordingly, the programme requires a Gender and Inclusion Specialist who can navigate this complexity with cultural competence, technical rigor, and a deep commitment to rights-based approaches.

The Gender and Inclusion Specialist will serve as the programme's crosscutting technical resource on gender mainstreaming, social inclusion, and safeguards, ensuring coherent and consistent integration of gender-responsive approaches across all work packages and at all levels of programme intervention.

**Role Purpose**
The Gender and Inclusion Specialist provides targeted, on-demand high-level technical advisory support to ensure the systematic, coherent, and context-sensitive integration of gender equality, social inclusion, and safeguards across all programme work packages, spanning legal, institutional, and community-level interventions. The incumbent operates as part of the programme's crosscutting advisory and quality assurance layer, functioning under the overall supervision of the Programme Manager.

The Specialist supports the integration of gender and inclusion considerations in programme design, implementation, and reporting, including in terms of reference (TOR) development, a