POLICY ANALYST (ACCESS TO JUSTICE) (3 POSITIONS)
Location: Baucau, Oe-Cusse, Suai, Timor Leste
Application Deadline:12-Oct-09
Additional Category: Democratic Governance
Type of Contract: FTA International
Languages Required: English
Starting Date: (date when the selected canditate is expected to start)15-Dec-2009
Duration of Initial Contract: 1 Year extendable (extendable)
Background
The Justice System Programme (JSP) in Timor-Leste is a comprehensive capacity development initiative for the justice sector, implemented by UNDP under the guidance of the national Council of Coordination (CoC) for the justice sector, consisting of the Chief Justice, Prosecutor-General and Minister of Justice. The JSP provides support to the CoC and respective judiciary institutions, including the Courts, Prosecution, and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and its subsidiary institutions (
The overall goal of the JSP is to develop the capacity of national justice institutions and actors in order to promote access to justice for the citizens of Timor-Leste. The JSP was recently reformulated in order to expand its scope of intervention to new areas and to extend its lifecycle. Among the new programme areas is a specific component on Access to Justice and Conflict Prevention, which will design and implement interventions aimed at enhancing access to justice for the poor and disadvantaged, including women. An Access to Justice Programme Support Unit (PSU) is being established for implementation of the component. The PSU will seek to support the decentralization of the national justice system, enhance legal aid services and legal awareness, harmonize customary conflict resolution mechanisms and the formal system of justice, and promote confidence-building and reconciliation at the community level. Special attention will be paid to the strengthening of local networks in charge of establishing and following up an agenda for the improvement of access to justice at the local level.
The Policy Analysts (Access to Justice) will be located in the districts of Baucau, Oe-cusse and Suai, extending their areas of responsibility at a later stage. The incumbents will work as international project officers at district level in a team of four people.
Duties and Responsibilities
1. The Policy Analyst (Access to Justice) ensures effective implementation of action plans, focusing on achievement of the following areas:
- Develop workplans and ensure coordination of activities designed and related to the UNDP Justice System Programme workplan;
- Provide support and assist the local counterparts in the Justice sector, in establishing and enhancing access to justice at the district, sub-district and suco/village levels;
- Implement activities related to national strategies and policies for access to justice and conflict prevention, including access to justice for women, juveniles/children, IDPs, and other vulnerable groups in society;
- Coordinate the implementation of activities in the area of responsibility including inter alia: legal aid; legal awareness; increase effectiveness of community-level dispute resolution mechanisms, and confidence-building measures;
- Provide support to Justice Sector actors at local level to ensure effective implementation at district-level and linkages to central level and strengthen district courts, prosecutor offices and public defendant offices;
- Build national capacity for activities implementation in the Justice Sector, ensuring coordination and linkages between local and national level;
- Liaise with staff at central level, and issuing payment requests and budget for activities implementation and support of local counterparts.
2. Ensures active knowledge management focusing on achievement of the following tasks:
- Elaborate assessments of the situation of access to justice at local level, considering the social demand for justice of, and the supply of justice services by the courts, customary and alternative conflict resolution mechanisms;
- Analyze the impact of the actions implemented and monitor progress of the situation of access to justice at local level in order to introduce corrections to the form of intervention;
- Systematize and provide lessons learnt from the practice (in documented form) to the Access to Justice Specialist and the Decentralization Adviser at Program Office Level;
- Develop and implement a capacity development programme;
- Facilitate the use of regional and global knowledge networks in the field;
- Report regularly and provide inputs to the Programme publications.
3. Ensures capacity building of national justice institutions and strengthen of networks in the following areas:
- Undertake capacity assessment of counterpart institutions and staff;
- Develop and implement a capacity development programme;
- Support the development of appropriate networks and linkages between national actors/stakeholders, such as the Courts, Prosecution, Public Defender’s Office, Private Lawyers; customary authorities and Civil Society Organizations at local level, and the coordination with other actors involved in supporting access to justice at the field level;
- Serve as interlocutor between the local authorities and UNDP on Access to Justice and Decentralization of Justice Services issues;
- Support capacity development of national actors considering linguistic, cultural and gender particularities;
- Promote people’s participation, consultation processes and other forms of national ownership.
Competencies
1. Corporate Competencies:
- Demonstrates integrity and professionalism by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards.
- Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP.
- Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.
- Treats all people fairly without favoritism.
2. Functional Competencies:
Technical and substantive capacity:
- Knowledge in the area of access to justice and rule of law in post-conflict and crisis settings, at national and community level.
- Practical knowledge of institutional capacity development, preferably within the justice sector.
- Knowledge of customary tribunals or alternative conflict resolution mechanisms.
- Practical knowledge of inter-disciplinary development issues.
- Practical knowledge of capacity building of civil society and grass roots organizations.
Coordination and implementation capacities
- Ability to program, organize work-plans and coordinate implementation of activities at local level according to programmatic work-plans and strategies.
- Ability to lead interdisciplinary and multicultural teams to work effectively and achieve goals.
- Ability to monitor and evaluate results.
- Ability to deal and coordinate with different social sectors and counterparts, in multilingual and multicultural environments.
- Ability to build strong relationships with counterparts, focusing on impact and result for the target group and ability to positively to feedback.
- Consistent capacity to approach work with energy and positive attitude.
- Strong oral and written communication skills.
- Openness to change and ability to manage complexities and stressful situations, respecting deadlines and requests.
- Conflict resolution skills.
Required Skills and Experience
- Master’s Degree or equivalent in law (strongly preferable), political science, international studies, development studies, public administration or any other related field.
- Minimum of 2 years of work experience on access to justice and rule of law, including experience of conflict/post-conflict settings.
- Understanding of the working procedures of justice sector institutions in post-conflict countries/ emerging societies.
- Experience with district and community-level access to justice engagement and/or experience in relation with civil society.
- Experience related to legal pluralism, customary law, local justice or alternative conflict resolution mechanisms and/or experience in processes of consultation, draft legislation or institutional building of the justice sector is an asset.
- Experience with the United Nations system and/or familiarity with UNDP programmes/projects.
- Excellent communication skills in written and spoken English.
- Knowledge of Portuguese, Tetum or Bahasa Indonesian is an asset.
- Incumbent will receive Tetum language training upon assumption of the post.
UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.
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