Senior Mediation Advisor - National Consultant - Home-Based

The Senior Mediation Advisor will provide strategic and technical expertise in designing, facilitating, and documenting a Track 1.5 dialogue process to support women's meaningful participation in political dialogue and peacebuilding in Lebanon. The role involves advising on mediation methodologies, facilitating high-level discussions, producing analytical outputs, and ensuring the dialogue process is conflict-sensitive and gender-responsive.

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic advice to the UN Women Representative on the design, positioning and implementation of the Track 1.5 dialogue process, ensuring alignment with the Women, Peace and Security agenda, UN Women's strategic priorities and the evolving political context in Lebanon.
• Lead the design of the dialogue architecture and methodology, including defining strategic objectives, sequencing dialogue sessions, identifying priority thematic areas, developing facilitation approaches, and proposing strategies to strengthen confidence-building and consensus among participants.
• Conduct political and stakeholder analysis to identify emerging risks, opportunities and entry points for dialogue, and provide timely recommendations to support adaptive programming and informed decision-making.
• Design, facilitate and moderate high-level dialogue sessions and retreats, applying conflict-sensitive and gender-responsive mediation approaches that foster constructive engagement, trust and meaningful participation among participants.
• Prepare and deliver high-quality technical and analytical products, including dialogue strategies, concept notes, facilitation plans, agendas, briefing notes, background papers, analytical briefs, talking points, meeting summaries, outcome documents, strategic recommendations and final reports.
• Draft and review substantive knowledge products in both English and Arabic, ensuring technical accuracy, political relevance, coherence and consistency with United Nations standards and UN Women's strategic objectives.
• Advise on engagement strategies with political actors, national institutions, civil society representatives and international partners to strengthen the effectiveness, inclusivity and sustainability of the dialogue process.
• Capture, analyse and synthesize lessons learned, emerging trends and good practices throughout the dialogue process, and develop recommendations to inform future dialogue, mediation and peacebuilding initiatives.
• Maintain close coordination with the UN Women team throughout implementation, providing regular strategic updates, identifying implementation challenges, proposing corrective measures where necessary, and ensuring the timely delivery of all agreed outputs.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in social science, peace studies, business or related degree is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• At least 10 years of progressively responsible experience at the national or international level, in international affairs and conflict resolution is required.
• Experience in gender and/or women, peace and security issues in Lebanon is desirable.
• Experience engaging different tracks of dialogue across the Middle East is required.
• Experience in facilitation of high-level political dialogue is required.
• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (MS Word, Excel, etc.) is required.
• Fluency in English and Arabic is required.
• Knowledge of French is desirable.

Skills

• Conflict Resolution
• Mediation Methodologies
• National Dialogue Facilitation
• Track 1.5 Dialogue Facilitation
• Gender and Peace Security
• Peacebuilding Processes
• International Affairs
• High-level Dialogue Facilitation
• Strategic Advisory
• Analytical Reporting
• Conflict-Sensitive Programming
• Gender-Responsive Programming
• Office Applications
• MS Word
• Excel

Languages

English, Arabic, French