Bank on Human Rights is looking for a short-term technical consultant on human rights impact assessment. Bank on Human Rights is a newly formed global coalition of social movements, civil society organizations, and grassroots groups working to ensure that all development finance institutions respect, protect, and fulfill human rights.
Development activities can have a profound impact on the realization of human rights. In many instances, however, the human rights implications of development activities are not obvious or immediately apparent. Standard development planning, screening, assessment and monitoring tools are not designed to fully capture human rights impacts. Because of this, opportunities to contribute to the realization of human rights through development finance, or to mitigate negative human rights impacts associated with development initiatives, are frequently missed.
Over the past year, Bank on Human Rights has been working to contribute to fill this gap by developing a best practice toolkit for incorporating human rights risk and impact assessment within the standard social and environmental assessment frameworks of development finance institutions. The toolkit is designed to fit within the policy framework and systems of the World Bank, which is currently undergoing a revision of its social and environmental framework. The basic methodologies that underlay the toolkit, however, are applicable to development finance institutions generally, including national development banks and bilateral development agencies.
Technical Consultant
The consultant will adapt and finalize two pieces of a sample assessment tool, designed for use by borrower countries and bank staff in assessing ex-ante project impacts. The Consultant will lead the process of developing the below mentioned work products, drawing on expert advice from Coalition members and other issue experts, including an Expert Advisory Group (EAG) consisting of human rights and development experts and practitioners. The Consultant will be overseen by the Bank on Human Rights Coordinator.
Specific responsibilities include:
1) Based on an existing draft, revise and produce a final draft registry of standards for the assessment tool. These are standards against which project-related impacts can be assessed. The standards should be based on international law, human rights norms and best practice among development finance institutions across various issue areas, such as health, labor, and poverty reduction.
2) Based on an existing draft, revise and finalize a final draft set of risk indicator questions for each issue area, including common reference sources for answering each question. When possible, draw on existing tools to develop these questions.
3) Present the tool and the rationale for all completed work to the BHRC human rights due diligence working group.
4) Incorporate feedback from BHRC membership, Expert Advisory Group members, and development practitioners to produce a finished version of the work products described above.
Qualifications:
The ideal candidate will have substantial knowledge of and demonstrated experience working on human rights and international development finance. The candidate should have strong analytical and writing skills, a fine attention to detail, work well in collaborative processes, have a track record of meeting challenging deadlines and a commitment to meet the deadlines established for this consultancy.
Candidates must possess the following qualifications (required):
Law degree or other graduate degree in relevant field;
Eight to ten years of experience in the field of human rights, including practical experience with human rights due diligence and standards, including using HRIA tools and methodologies;
Exceptional research, writing and communication skills; demonstrated ability to write clearly and compellingly for a variety of audiences, including policymakers and the general public; and
Fluency in oral and written English.
In addition to the qualifications noted above, the following skills and experiences are highly desirable:
Experience conducting a human rights impact assessment or developing an HRIA policy
Experience with development finance institutions
Duration: The project should take approximately 100 hours over a one-month period.
Location: The Consultant may work from anywhere.
Compensation: Compensation is based on a non-profit, not a corporate, scale. Candidates should indicate their salary requirement. The Consultant will be responsible for his/her taxes, benefits, and administrative costs.
Start Date: April 14, 2015 or as agreed.
How to apply
Please send a resume, letter of interest, a sample of relevant work product, and contact information for three references to Bank on Human Rights at: contact@BankonHumanRights.org using “Technical Consultant” as the subject of your email. Interested candidates are encouraged to apply as soon as possible as applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.