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Gender Advocacy Adviser
Fundasaun Esperansa Enclave Oecussi (FEEO)
Based in Pantai Makassar, Oecussi,[1]Timor-Leste[2]
Two-year placement
Please note that the selected applicant will be required to take up the placement by February 2011 at the latest.
Based in Oecussi, and aspart of the Raising Women’s Voices Project, the Gender Advocacy Adviser will work in conjunction with Fundasaun Esperansa Enclave Oecussi (FEEO) in strengthening their economic empowerment programme and gender mainstreaming. The development workerwill work closely with the partner organisation and community groups and have strong links with the national umbrella organisation Rede Feto, in Dili, andanotherProgressio Gender Advocacy Adviser placed there as part of the same project.The placement has a clear aim to link national level policy making with grassroots realities, especially as experienced by poor and marginalised women and children.
BACKGROUND – TIMOR-LESTE
After four centuries of Portuguese colonial rule, Timor-Leste was illegally occupied by the Indonesian army between 1975 and 1999. In 1999, the people of Timor-Leste, voted overwhelmingly for independence during a United Nations (UN) supervised consultation, but paid a high price when militia went on a rampage, forcibly displacing 250,000 people and killing over a thousand. Moreover, the country’s infrastructure was almost totally destroyed. An international military intervention was necessary to stop the violence and the country was under UN administration until 2002.
In 2006, violence flared up and resulted in the attempted assassination of the President and Prime Minister in early 2008, leading to a renewal of a significant UN presence,which forced better coordinated stabilisation of the country. Since mid 2008, the security situation in Timor-Leste has gradually improved but root causes of instability – widespread poverty and unemployment as well as a traumatic past – continue to have an impact. Timor-Leste is at a critical moment in its development as a new nation. The country is still in need of building sustainable structures of governance. A real transfer of knowledge and skills is the most critical factor in this painstaking and lengthy process. The transfer of knowledge is essential to achieve substantial participation of the local population in the process of nation building. Foreign assistance is temporary, therefore there is a need to ensure that Timor-Leste becomes a self-confident and autonomous nation.
PROGRESSIO
Progressio is a UK-based charity working internationally to enable people in developing countries to challenge and change the situations that keep them poor. We currently work in 10 countries and have a long history of working in fragile, post-conflict and authoritarian states.
We develop long-term partnerships with local organisations and community groups in the global South, providing practical support through skilled development workers, mostly from the global South, who share skills, know-how and training.
Because poverty is about unequal power relations and a lack of human rights, we work with a wide range of people who are poor and marginalised to change the structures that keep them in poverty. We support them in their calls for policy change. With our supporters, we stand alongside them in demanding that decision-makers around the world sit up and listen to them.
Inspired by our Catholic roots, we believe that experiencing ‘life in all its fullness’ includes freedom and control over one’s life and future. It means challenging inequalities and power imbalances. We see every person as sacred, having inherent dignity, so we stand in solidarity with poor people in achieving their rights.
In Timor-Leste, Progressio currently has six thematic projects:
InstitutionalCapacityBuilding: dedicated organisational development support to selected partners.
Raising Women’s Voices: protecting and promoting women’s rights and gender equality.
Supporting Inclusive Local Governance: enhancing citizens’ involvement in local decision-making processes.
Pathways to Justice: better understanding of legislation and judicial processes, and better access to formal justice.
HAFORMA: promotion of sustainable farming and climate change adaptation.
Strengthening HIV prevention and support: supporting a People Living with HIV-led prevention and support mechanism.
This placement in Oecussi works on the same gender advocacy areas as an existing placement within the Raising Women Voices projectin Dili, with Rede Feto, the umbrella network for women’s organisations in Timor-Leste. FEEO’sAdvocacy Gender Adviser will support Rede Feto through working closely with theirAdvocacy Programme Officer and Advocacy Adviser(both based in Dili) to identify issues and to support effective advocacy strategy implementation at district level. Coordination between the different actors will be essential to maximise the resources, knowledge, impact and lessons learnt.
CONTEXT OF THE PLACEMENT
Since the events of 1999, some prominent East Timorese women’s activists have been working vigorously to ensure that the newly independent nation recognises the equal status of Timorese women, and enshrines their full rights in the new constitution. Timorese women activists, through a National Congressheld in 1998 and2000,lobbiedto have a Gender Affairs Unit in the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). Through the national Women’s Congress 2004, and followed up by Rede Feto and different member organisations, they also lobbied to ensure that women were elected to the Constituent Assembly during elections held in August 2007. After losing a campaign for a 30 per cent quota, they changed strategy and ensured that women candidates were placed high enough on party lists to be included in the assembly. They succeeded, with 26 per cent of the elected assembly being women.
The First Congress of Women of Timor-Lestewas held in June 2000. This set out a platform of action, which women have been working to implement and monitor ever since. A follow up conference took place in July 2004, and a third national Congress was held in September 2008. The Third National Women’s Congress had three fulfilled objectives in ensuring stakeholders and key decision makers commit themselves to the new Platform of Action(POA): a) a POA based on consolidated conference outputs from the 13 districts of Timor-Leste; b) a monitoring team to conduct a mid-term assessment and final evaluation of the POA implementation; and c) a memorandum of agreement between Rede Feto and the government and other stakeholders committing to help implement the POA. These three actions should ensure that key decision makers - mostly men - will commit to the POA and its statement of the reforms needed.
Rede Feto[3] is a women’s network that was formed following the First Congress of Women of Timor-Lestein June 2000. It encompasses 24 women’s organisations and has provided a forum for networking and exchange. It has tried to promote its POA, based on the Beijing Platform for Action, which emerged from the UN Conference on Women in 1995. The network fielded three independent women candidates that it nominated to stand in the constituent assembly elections. While Rede Feto has chalked up a number of successes, and has been a focus for women’s lobbying, the network needs further programmatic strengthening in order to fully represent the needs of women’s networking in the post-independence state. Rede Feto remains largely Dili-based, and is hampered by very real communications limitations given the mountainous terrain, the destruction of the communications infrastructure in the 1999 mayhem, and also political divisions between the various groups. There has been a further problem in that skilled and capable staff, with time to dedicate to building up the network, have been in short supply.
One of the findings inthe monitoring of results on the implementation of the POA, conducted by Rede Feto in 2010, stated that the root cause of gender disparity in Timor-Leste is gender-biased cultural habits and work practices, which have resulted in the continuation of unequal power relations between women and men and girls and boys. Economically, women mainly depend on their male partner/family member, which affects their autonomy in decision-making in many aspects of life. Accessibility to information by women and girls in rural areas is limited compared to their male counterparts. Most women experience a lack of family support to facilitate their participation in workshops, trainings and meetings. This is because women are still expected to work in the private sphere while men are expected to work in the public sphere.
Many women are involved in local home-industries but receive little support from the government to improve their skills or to get their products marketed. Women still face challenging cultural, legal and practical obstacles in generating economic rewards for themselves and their family. In addition to this, in many cases women become targets of domestic violence,with economic pressure and cultural systems - including dowry practices know asbarlake - havingbeen identified as aggravating factors by several women’s organisations in Timor-Leste.
The capacity of most district-based women’s organisations in the country to engage in advocacy needs to be strengthened further. This includes the ability to access power and to decide whether, how and when to engage in the opportunities for participation and engagement that arise.
THE PROJECT
The overall objective of the programme is to promote and protect women’s human rights and gender equality in the development process in Timor-Leste. The project works at two levels: strengthening Rede Feto and its Advocacy Working Group, and strengthening Rede Feto members and like-minded organisations - and will principally be accomplished through on-the-job coaching, mentoring, support and advice, as well as specific training workshops. Collaboration with relevant government officials and international agencies on gender mainstreaming efforts are envisaged throughout the programme.
As part of a three-year development project entitled Raising Women’s Voices: Advocating for Women’s Rights in Timor-Leste, funded by the European Commission and Progressio and which is now entering its second year, we aim to place a second development worker to work directly with FEEO, a Rede Feto member organisation operating at local level.
The duration of this project is 36 months, which started in February 2010, and is expected to achieve the following results:
- More effective implementation of the advocacy programme of Rede Feto and member organisations through stronger strategic approaches, policy research and analysis, legislation analysis and monitoring and improved advocacy and lobbying skills, monitoring and evaluation and documentation of best practice:
- To be achieved through on-the-job training, mentoring and coaching, day-to-day advice and support in advocacy, lobbying skills and policy analysis, through training workshops, strategic planning workshops, and policy and legislation monitoring training workshops.
- Legislation in place and implemented to protect women from domestic, sexual and gender- based violence and abandonment:
- To be achieved through the implementation and monitoring of an agreed strategy of the Advocacy Working Group, which will convene regularly to construct submissions to the government on proposed legislation, quarterly coordination with the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Watch Group, carefully defined lobbying activities based on identified issues, participation in government committee meetings, and the formulation of targeted information and education campaigns on specific laws.
- Greater opportunities for women’s economic empowerment through pro-poor legislation that gives women equal access to markets, and land and property rights:
- To be achieved through the mobilisation of the women’s micro-enterprise sectorby Rede Feto members to develop more coordinatedbusiness systems and cooperatives, and by lobbying for legislation on strengthening women’s access to markets, and lobbying for land and property rights legislation.
- Increased awareness and knowledge at community level of addressing domestic, sexual and gender-based violence and other key gender issues, including new legislation to protect and empower women:
- This will be achieved by gender awareness programmes in villages and schools, monthly interactive TV and radio programmes on gender equality and women’s rights, and the production of gender awareness advocacy materials and other media programmes.
- Increased networking, collaboration and partnership development amongst key stakeholders at government, NGO and community level:
- This will be achieved by regular dialogue between assigned gender focal point staff coordinating district gender activities and other stakeholders from government and civil society, as well as coordinated gender related national activities, such as International Women’s Day, Rural Women’s day and the 16 day campaign against violence. Now in its 20thyear at the global level, the 16 day campaign takes place from 25 November(International Day Against Violence Against Women) to 10December (International Human Rights Day), and calls for the elimination of all forms of gender-based violence through raising awareness that such violence is a violation of human rights.
THE PARTNER
The Progressiodevelopment worker (DW) will closely work with and be based in a local partner organisation called Fundasaun Esperansa Enclave Oecussi (FEEO). FEEO was established in 2008 in Oecussi. It supports 100 self-help community groups spread out in 18 villages of Oecussi, working on micro credit activities, as well as food security and income generating activities such as weaving, kiosks selling retail products in small quantities, and growing vegetables. Each group consists of around 12 families.
Originally, these self-help groups were established as target groups for a programme of the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS). The programme was titled Oecussi Ambeno Community Activation Programme (OCAP). This programme was funded by the European Commission, and it focused on building local capacity to deliver basic social services and sustainable incomes, create employment opportunities and ensure food security. One of the main aims was to empower women to play a wider role in their communities.Although the programme had its weaknesses,[4] in 2008, when the OCAP project ended, many groups remained active, organised themselves in FEEO and have been operating since then. FEEO provides support on group management and programming, as well as donor negotiations.
FEEO,like many other local organisations in Timor-Leste, is struggling with a lack of knowledge and skilled staff on programming, especially relating to the economic empowerment of women. This includes identifying needs, project plan development, fundraising, marketing, monitoring and evaluation on progress and impact, as well as reporting. In addition to this, a lack of capacity and skills to undertake effective advocacy on women’s needs and issues is another barrier to women’s productivity and participation in economic development.
THE PLACEMENT WITH FEEO
Progressio will provide technical assistance through the placement of a DW to work as a Gender Advocacy Adviser, skilled in the identification and prioritisation of local development issues, development of advocacy and communication strategies, as well as experienced in, and committed to, the promotion of the rights of poor and marginalised people, particularly women.
The duration of the placement is for 24 months. The DW will be based in FEEO and work alongside its staff, as well as directly with community groups. FEEO activities needing support from the DW roughly fall into three categories: 1)strengthening FEEO’ssupport to the self-help groups, 2)FEEO’s organisational development, and3)the establishment of FEEO as a key Rede Feto liaison organisation in relation to women’s economic empowerment. Activities will entail district-based and national meetings, workshops, accompaniment, mentoring, and logistical support in relation to the determination and implementation of the POA as per National Women’s Congress, especially in relation to the establishment of economic developmentsupport mechanisms.
- Objectives of the placement
- Strengthen the capacity of FEEO to plan, facilitate and coordinate women’s economic empowerment initiatives at the local level.
- Strengthen the capacity of FEEO and its constituency to advocate for and participate in the formulation and implementation of gender responsive district development plans and budgets.
- Together with the staff of FEEO, developa stronger two-way linkage between FEEO’s local programming and the programming of Rede Feto and the POA developed from the National Women’s Congress.
- Specific responsibilities of the DW
- Capacity building and mentoring
Facilitate the fine-tuning of gender mainstreaming and advocacy for women’s economic empowerment components in FEEO’s annual plans and activities in participative consultation with a wide cross-section of stakeholders working in Oecussi as well as from national level.
Organise and implement workshops, trainings, coaching sessions and general mentoring on developing activities and advocacy around women’s economic empowerment.
Build the capacity of FEEO staff and its community groups in understanding the various aspects, opportunities and pitfalls, of business opportunities and women’s economic empowerment.
Strengthen the knowledge and skills ofFEEO staff and its community groups for meaningful engagement with and monitoring of the public and private sector, within a framework of women’s economic empowerment, at localand at national level, in cooperation with Rede Feto.
Assist in creating mechanisms for meaningful participation in local economic development by poor and marginalised women, in the form of public-private dialogue platforms, or through other means, that involve marginalised people, private sector and business associations, government, media, religious institutions, and other CSOs.
Assist FEEO in developing methods to better inform and engage its community groups and other stakeholders regarding its programmes and campaigns, specifically in relation to economic development and gender mainstreaming, through information and education, and the production of useful information and educational materials and media production which will facilitate this.