Consultant Roster Technical Specialist

**Organizational Setting**:
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency dedicated to eradicating rural poverty and hunger. It does so by investing in rural people. IFAD finances programmes and projects that increase agricultural productivity and raise rural incomes. It advocates at the local, national and international level for policies that contribute to rural transformation.

ECG takes the lead in mainstreaming cross-cutting themes of environmental sustainability and climate change resilience, nutrition-sensitivity, gender equality and women’s empowerment and inclusion of rural youth and indigenous peoples through an integrated approach.

The Technical Specialist works under the overall strategic, policy and management advice, and supervision of the Lead Technical Specialist.

**Job Role**:
Consultancies play a critical role in the execution of IFAD’s mandate and our impact on the ground. Rosters are designed for junior and senior experts whose skills are required for specific project assignments. Given the different technical and time-duration nature of assignments, IFAD is looking for consultants of varying ability and experience.

Responsibilities and complexities of the assignment
The degree of specialization required
Consultants are not considered staff of IFAD. Consultancy assignments do not carry any expectation of employment, extension or conversion to another type of contract with the Fund. Consultants can be recruited for a maximum of 240 days in 1 calendar year and 960 days in 5 calendar years.

**Key Functions and Results**:
Reporting to the Lead or Senior Technical Specialist - Gender and Social Inclusion - the consultant will conduct the following activities where and when applicable to the specific assignment:

- Join design, supervision, mid-term review, or completion missions and conduct tasks related to Gender, Targeting and Social Inclusion as indicated in the mission TORs

At design:

- Review the country context (legal, political, institutional, social, cultural and sector policies) relevant to targeting in relation to the project thematic focus;
- Conduct a participatory gender-sensitive rural poverty and livelihoods analysis in the proposed project area(s) and consult potential target groups and key stakeholders to identify and better understand the needs, priorities and expectations of poor rural people (including their livelihood strategies and outcomes, vulnerabilities and coping mechanisms, local poverty processes and rural institutions).
- Develop tables and figures showing poverty incidence and trends in the project’s area and combine data on the socio-demographic structures of the target area with data on poverty in its multiple dimensions.
- Define the target group classification, elaborate a criteria for geographic and beneficiary targeting (see the guidelines in the targeting toolkit), especially for the most vulnerable people (displaced, women, youth, ethnic minorities, PWDs while keeping poverty and inequalities in mind.
- Analyse people’s livelihoods and address climate vulnerability in the analysis.
- Design the project targeting and social inclusion strategies, develop ToCs to set out the pathways for reaching and benefiting the poorest, the poor and the vulnerable, and shows how the poorest will benefit in projects that are directly targeted at them.
- Provide technical support, as required, during budget allocation of the all relevant targeting, gender, social inclusion activities.
- Provide inputs to the SECAP development, including the assessment of opportunities of enhancing social impacts, potential social risks and ensure that mitigation measures are integrated into the risk matrix and into the Environment, social and management plan. Update the social and economic assessment, target group profiles, institutional analysis, recommendations for project design and implementation.

At implementation, mid-term and completion:

- Assess poverty outreach and targeting performance of the project, especially the extent to which the poorest and most vulnerable are benefitting.
- Review the targeting strategy, including targeting and implementation mechanisms, to ensure that project accommodates the needs and priorities of the target group and facilitates its participation in project interventions, and that the special concerns of vulnerable groups are taken into account (advise on areas of improvement).
- Identify and describe factors and constraints that have influenced project implementation, including technical, bureaucratic, managerial, organizational, institutional and socio-economic policy issues, in addition to other external factors unforeseen during design, and how these have affected the project in terms of implementation delays and shortfalls, and impact on the beneficiaries engagement and empowerment.
- Review targeting sensitivity of the M&E framework, p