Afghanistan: Counter-Trafficking in Persons Consultant--Afg

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SUMMARY:
The Afghan Civic Engagement Program (ACEP) is a five-year program, funded by USAID and implemented by Counterpart International in partnership with The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), The Internews Network, and The International Center for Not-For-Profit Law (ICNL). The program promotes Civil Society and Media Engagement to enable Afghan citizens to influence policy, monitor government accountability, and serve as advocates for political reform. The program aims to achieve this goal through five program areas: (1) regular CSO engagement with government; (2) increased CSO and media thematic expertise in democracy and governance; (3) expanded civic engagement; (4) improved access to independent news and public affairs information; and (5) increased CSO organizational capacity.
In program year three, ACEP as part of its civic education training to citizens of Afghanistan will also focus on prevailing phenomenon of Trafficking in Persons (TIPs). In the recent report of Department of State, Afghanistan was rated in the Tier 2 countries’ list – the countries whose governments do not fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA’s) minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.
We believe that Afghan civil society organizations can play a significant role in prevention, protection, advocacy and research on the issue of human trafficking. ACEP team in Afghanistan would like to have a consultant on board to help the team to design series of practical and pragmatic program interventions to tackle TIPs in Afghanistan through Civil Society Organizations.
ACEP is working with three different layers of partners that are known as Key Kabul-based partners (which mostly do advocacy at the national level, almost 7 CSOs), Key Regional CSO partners (which mentor, coach and train provincial CSO partners, almost 7 partners in 7 regions) and 34 Provincial CSO partners that work with communities directly. ACEP first would like to train all its CSO partners on the very concept of TiP and develop an inclusive working strategy for CSOs on Countering Trafficking in Person (CTiP), strategy on CTiP shall be designed for the context of Afghanistan. Soon, when the strategy is developed and CSOs are equipped with required knowledge and skills on the concept of trafficking in person, ACEP provincial CSO partners shall carry-on a nation-wide community awareness program on TIPs. Awareness on TiP would be part of civic education package of ACEP which already applied by ACEP partners for the last two years. To further link our work on TiP which happens at the community level, ACEP key Kabul-based partners will do advocacy at the national level with the support of key regional CSO partners on CTiP.
In order to increase our intervention, ACEP will support its capacity building efforts to CSOs by issuing grants on TiP. ACEP will encourage and provide Afghan CSOs to come up with special initiative to tackle trafficking in person, CSOs intervention can be around prevention, advocacy, protection, research and awareness- raising.
To do all of this ACEP is seeking a qualified and experienced either national/ international consultant to work on CTIPs with ACEP for a period of six months. Consultant should be based in Kabul and will work closely with the civic engagement team and may have several missions to the field in various parts of Afghanistan.
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
• To carry out a comprehensive desk study and research on the prevalence phenomenon of Human Trafficking in Afghanistan. Provide a summary report indicating different forms of TiP in various parts of Afghanistan. This study will help us to mobilize our resources appropriately and probably design different types of interventions for various parts of Afghanistan. For instance, child labor might be an issue in border areas, women forced marriage in other parts and etc.
• Define the role of Civil Society and media in tackling human trafficking specially at national level, how CSOs can together play a vital advocacy role to reinforce laws and policies for prevention and protection of victims of TIPs. Consultant should point out some good practices and examples of CSOs and civil society interventions in other countries on CTiP.
• To design new interventions including SMART activities to address TIPs and Human Trafficking in accordance to ACEP goal and objectives. The interventions should address TIPs at different levels including:
a. Provide TOT training on TiP to ACEP key Kabul-based partners as well as to key regional CSO partners.
b. Help ACEP/Civic Engagement Team and key regional CSO partners to cascade the training to provincial CSO partners.
c. Help ACEP partners to design proper national and local social multi-media campaigns on TiP in high risk provinces in Afghanistan.
d. To design an inclusive training materials package to be included in civic education manual, address the situation of children and women specifically in TiP practices.
e. To design an inclusive training of trainers TOT manual on TiP for ACEP team in Afghanistan to be applied for training of ACEP partners.
Requirements• Master’s Degree in Human Rights, Law, global security and development and or human security with relevant experience in conducting research; study and program design in human trafficking;
• Demonstrated experience working with a wide variety of stakeholders including government officials, local level government administrations, and local organizations and communities.
• Proven effectiveness in building and maintaining relationships with government counterparts (both at the central and local levels), local partners and beneficiaries.
• She/he must have a minimum of five years of anti-trafficking, safe migration, gender-based violence or other human rights related project implementation experience preferably in Afghanistan or Southeast Asia.
• Knowledgeable in democracy, governance and human rights approaches and how they can be applied through counter trafficking activities.
• High level of interpersonal and communication skills and excellent computer skills (Microsoft Word, Database management, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Fluency in business English with excellent English writing skills. Pashto/Dari a plus.