Kalawati: The woman who electrified a village and took on a mafia

Kalawati Devi Rawat is known as the woman who brought electricity to her remote village in the hills of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, writes BBC Hindi's Salman Ravi.

It was the early 1980s and she had just been married and moved to Bacher village to live with her husband.

The village had no electricity and she found life tough once it got dark in the hills.

One day, she led a group of village women to meet government officials at the district headquarters in Gopeshwar to demand that their village be electrified. But the authorities were unmoved.

While trekking back to the village, the women came across some electricity poles by the foothills, apparently to be used to provide light for an official programme.

Mrs Rawat persuaded the women to carry the electricity poles and wires to their village, situated at a height of some 500 metres, on their shoulders.

The officials were furious and threatened to lodge a criminal case against the women.

But more and more women came forward, asking the police to send them to jail.

Taken aback, the officials decided to connect the village to the power grid.

That was Mrs Rawat's first victory.

But she did not rest on her laurels and over the past three decades, has taken on the timber mafia in the nearby forests and also campaigned against alcoholism among the men in her village.

"Many men in and around my husband's village were alcoholics and they were being exploited by the timber mafia gangs that operated in the area. One morning, I went into the forest along with the other women to fetch cattle fodder when I saw that all the trees were marked with a chalk to be felled later.

"We felt that something needed to be done to save the trees and the Taantri forest - the only source of sustenance for the hill villages," Mrs Rawat told the BBC.

She mobilised the women and drawing inspiration from the "chipko movement" of the 1970s - the green movement where protesters hugged trees in the hills of Uttarakhand to stop them from being cut - they clung to the trees to prevent them from being felled.

"They first tried to bribe us and when that failed, they threatened us. We also protested before the district authorities, held sit-in demonstrations and finally the officials passed an order not to fell the trees," she says.

Soon, Mrs Rawat formed small groups of village women - known as the Mahila Mangal Dal (Women Welfare Group) - that patrolled the woods on foot to check the movement of the timber mafia. The groups also demolished local illicit breweries.

For preserving the trees and the forest, the women decided to contest elections to the male-dominated local panchayat (the village council).

"But this was not an easy task," says Mrs Rawat.

"We faced stiff resistance from the society as well as the administration. They wanted women to stay indoors and look after household chores. Even my husband opposed me. He asked me one day as to why I was doing all this. I tried to convince him that whatever we were doing was for the benefit of our own people.

"But he was not convinced. We had reached a point when we decided to even part ways," she says.

It was not long before women had a sizeable representation in panchayats and Mrs Rawat's struggle to empower rural women won her the Indian government's Indira Priyadarshini Award in 1986. Over the years, she's won other awards too.

But for her, the biggest reward is the recognition she gets from her fellow villagers.

"Now we take decisions that are accepted by everyone," says Radha Devi, a member of the village council.

"We've managed to get rid of alcoholism and many families have been saved. No one fells the trees now and people living in the forest have access to plenty of produce from the woods like spices and fruits."

For a woman who's had no formal education, Mrs Rawat has become a role model for many women in her village and over the years, she has also won respect from men.

"Today we are benefiting from the forest produce. It has also become a major source of income for many living on the hills," says Gautam Panwar.

"Had it not been for her efforts, the society here would have disintegrated with forests depleted and men falling prey to alcohol," says Vinod Kaparwan.

Enjoy your Easter Celebrations!

Source: BBC

Petroleum Technology Development Fund Scholarship Scheme

Source: http://ptdf.esms.cinfores.com

Paying attention to words not just images leads to better image captions

A team of University and Adobe researchers is outperforming other approaches to creating computer-generated image captions in an international competition. The key to their winning approach? Thinking about words - what they mean and how they fit in a sentence structure - just as much as thinking about the image itself.

The Rochester/Adobe model mixes the two approaches that are often used in image captioning: the "top-down" approach, which starts from the "gist" of the image and then converts it into words, and the "bottom-up" approach, which first assigns words to different aspects of the image and then combines them together to form a sentence.

The Rochester/Adobe model is currently beating Google, Microsoft, Baidu/UCLA, Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, University of Toronto/Montreal, and others to top the leaderboard in an image captioning competition run by Microsoft, called the Microsoft COCO Image Captioning Challenge. While the winner of the year-long competition is still to be determined, the Rochester "Attention" system - or ATT on the leaderboard - has been leading the field since last November.

Other groups have also tried to combine these two methods by having a feedback mechanism that allows a system to improve on what just one of the approaches would be able to do. However, several systems that tried to blend these two approaches focused on "visual attention," which tries to take into account which parts of an image are visually more important to describe the image better.

The Rochester/Adobe system focuses on what the researchers describe as "semantic attention." In a paper accepted by the 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), entitled "Image Captioning with Semantic Attention," computer science professor Jiebo Luo and his colleagues define semantic attention as "the ability to provide a detailed, coherent description of semantically important objects that are needed exactly when they are needed."

"To describe an image you need to decide what to pay more attention to," said Luo. "It is not only about what is in the center of the image or a bigger object, it's also about coming up with a way of deciding on the importance of specific words." For example, take an image that shows a table and seated people. The table might be at the center of the image but a better caption might be "a group of people sitting around a table" instead of "a table with people seated." Both are correct, but the former one also tries to take into account what might be of interest to readers and viewers.

Computer image captioning brings together two key areas in artificial intelligence: computer vision and natural language processing. For the computer vision side, researchers train their systems on a massive dataset of images, so they learn to identify objects in images. Language models can then be used to put these words together. For the algorithm that Luo and his team used in their system, they also trained their system on many texts. The objective was not only to understand sentence structure but also the meanings of individual words, what words often get used together with these words, and what words might be semantically more important.

Source: phys.org

Google's Go victory shows AI thinking can be unpredictable

Humans have been taking a beating from computers lately. The 4-1 defeat of Go grandmaster Lee Se-Dol by Google's AlphaGo artificial intelligence (AI) is only the latest in a string of pursuits in which technology has triumphed over humanity.

Self-driving cars are already less accident-prone than human drivers, the TV quiz show Jeopardy! is a lost cause, and in chess humans have fallen so woefully behind computers that a recent international tournament was won by a mobile phone.

There is a real sense that this month's human vs AI Go match marks a turning point. Go has long been held up as requiring levels of human intuition and pattern recognition that should be beyond the powers of number-crunching computers.

AlphaGo's win over one of the world's best players has reignited fears over the pervasive application of deep learning and AI in our future – fears famously expressed by Elon Musk as "our greatest existential threat".

We should consider AI a threat for two reasons, but there are approaches we can take to minimise that threat.

The first problem is that AI is often trained using a combination of logic and heuristics, and reinforcement learning.

The logic and heuristics part has reasonably predictable results: we program the rules of the game or problem into the computer, as well as some human-expert guidelines, and then use the computer's number-crunching power to think further ahead than humans can.

This is how the early chess programs worked. While they played ugly chess, it was sufficient to win.

The problem of reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning, on the other hand, is more opaque.

We have the computer perform the task – playing Go, for example – repetitively. It tweaks its strategy each time and learns the best moves from the outcomes of its play. In order not to have to play humans exhaustively, this is done by playing the computer against itself. AlphaGo has played millions of games of Go – far more than any human ever has.

The problem is the AI will explore the entire space of possible moves and strategies in a way humans never would, and we have no insight into the methods it will derive from that exploration.

In the second game between Lee Se-Dol and AlphaGo, the AI made a move so surprising – "not a human move" in the words of a commentator – that Lee Se-Dol had to leave the room for 15 minutes to recover his composure.

This is a characteristic of machine learning. The machine is not constrained by human experience or expectations.

Until we see an AI do the utterly unexpected, we don't even realise that we had a limited view of the possibilities. AIs move effortlessly beyond the limits of human imagination.

In real-world applications, the scope for AI surprises is much wider. A stock-trading AI, for example, will re-invent every single method known to us for maximising return on investment. It will find several that are not yet known to us.

Unfortunately, many methods for maximising stock returns – bid support, co-ordinated trading, and so on – are regarded as illegal and unethical price manipulation.

How do you prevent an AI from using such methods when you don't actually know what its methods are? Especially when the method it's using, while unethical, may be undiscovered by human traders – literally, unknown to humankind?

It's farcical to think that we will be able to predict or manage the worst-case behaviour of AIs when we can't actually imagine their probable behaviour.

The problem of ethics

This leads us to the second problem. Even quite simple AIs will need to behave ethically and morally, if only to keep their operators out of jail.

Unfortunately, ethics and morality are not reducible to heuristics or rules.

Source: phys.org

Eye Lenses Regenerated Using Infants' Own Stem Cells

Stem cells could help treat people with cataracts and even some who are blind by regenerating eye tissue and replacing flawed lenses, according to new experiments in children and rabbits.

In order for people to see properly, both the lens of the eye and the cornea — the layer of tissue that covers the eye in front of the lens — must be transparent. Current treatments for people who have clouding in the lens or cornea involve artificial implants or donor transplants, respectively, but these surgical procedures can be risky, researchers said.

In the new research, scientists performed minimally invasive surgeries on 12 infants under age 2 who all had congenital cataracts — a major cause of childhood blindness. They removed the children's cataracts, but carefully spared certain cells in their eyes, called lens epithelial stem/progenitor cells (LECs), which could then go on to regenerate lenses.

They found that the infants' incisions healed within one month, and the transparency of their line of vision was more than 20 times better, compared to infants with congenital cataracts who received the current, standard treatment. [5 Amazing Technologies That Are Revolutionizing Biotech]

The finding shows that "we can harness our own stem cells to regenerate a tissue or organ," Dr. Kang Zhang, who led the study and is an ophthalmologist at the University of California, San Diego, told Live Science.

Researchers had not previously shown that LECs could be used to regenerate human lenses.

Cataracts involve clouding of the lens, and are the leading cause of blindness worldwide. The current treatment for cataracts involves surgically removing the clouded lens of the eye from its supporting capsule and replacing it with an artificial lens. More than 20 million cataract patients worldwide now undergo this procedure each year.

Zhang noted that only 4 in 10,000 cataract patients are infants. Still, "in principle, this approach should work for any age, because lens stem cells are present through life," he said. The stem cells of older patients may need a bit of a boost to regenerate lenses, he added.

The current treatment for cataracts is artificial lens implantation, which requires a cut about 6 millimeters wide to the lens capsule. The treatment can lead to inflammation and the destruction of the LECs, which normally help protect the lens from damage. Moreover, this surgery can lead to scars or the abnormal growth of lens cells — either of which can result in cloudiness in a patient's line of vision.

In early experiments, Zhang and his colleagues showed they could isolate LECs from mice, and that these cells could form transparent, lenslike structures. The scientists reasoned that minimally invasive surgeries, involving cuts of only 1 to 1.5 millimeters wide, could remove cataracts while also preserving LECs that could then go on to regenerate lenses, Zhang said. They achieved successful lens regeneration in rabbits and monkeys, before attempting the procedure in children.

In the study, the infants' surgical wounds were only about 4.3 percent the size of those created by the current method. The scientists also moved the site of the incision to the periphery of the lens rather than its center, according to the findings published online March 9 in the journal Nature. 

The researchers noted that they only tested a small number of patients with their new method. They will need "much larger and longer-term clinical trials to show its safety and efficacy," Zhang said.

When it comes to treating blindness due to problems with the cornea, the gold-standard treatment involves corneal transplants from donors. However, the immune systems of recipients can reject a transplanted cornea.

In a separate finding, also published March 9 in Nature, researchers tested out a promising strategy for avoiding such rejection that involves growing corneas from the cells of patients.

Researcher Kohji Nishida at Osaka University in Japan and his colleagues used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are mature cells that are chemically reprogrammed with the ability to become any tissue in the body, to grow new corneas.

During embryonic development, eye tissue is formed from three layers, and the cornea and lens emerge from the topmost layer. In the experiments, the scientists grew human iPSCs with a chemical that promoted the creation of a structure that resembled the developing eye. The researchers harvested stem cells from this structure, which generated molecules one might expect of the cornea. They grew sheets of corneal tissue from these cells, and found they could restore vision in rabbits that had corneal blindness.

Source: Livescience.com

Vacancy: Programme Management Officer

Job Code Title:	Programme Management Officer
Department/Office:	UNITED NATIONS ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME
Duty Station:	NAIROBI
Posting Period:	08 March 2016 - 06 May 2016
Job Opening Number:	56184
Staffing Exercise	N/A

United Nations Core Values: Integrity, Professionalism, Respect for Diversity

Appointment against this post is for an initial period of one year and may be subject to extension. Staff members are subject to the authority of the Secretary-General and to assignment by him

or her. In this context, all staff are expected to move periodically to new functions in their careers in accordance with established rules and procedures.
All applicants are strongly encouraged to apply on-line as soon as possible after the job opening has been posted and well before the deadline stated in the job opening. On-line applications will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided.
If you do not receive an e-mail acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received.

Org. Setting and Reporting

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes the coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment. This post is located in Evaluation Office; a part of Office of the Executive Director, at the Nairobi duty station. Under the supervision of the Director of the UNEP Evaluation Office the incumbent will perform the following duties.

Responsibilities

• Participate in the development, implementation and evaluation of assigned programmes/projects, etc.; monitors and analyzes programme/project development and implementation; review relevant documents and reports; identify problems and issues to be addressed and proposes corrective actions; liaise with relevant parties; identify and track follow-up actions.
•Perform consulting assignments, in collaboration with the client, by planning facilitating workshops, through other interactive sessions and assisting in developing the action plan the client will use to manage the change.
•Research, analyze and present information gathered from diverse sources.
•Assist in policy development, including the review and analysis of issues and trends, preparation of evaluations or other research activities and studies.
•Undertake survey initiatives; design data collection tools; review, analyze and interpret responses, identify problems/issues and prepare conclusions.
•Prepare various written outputs, e.g. draft background papers, analysis, sections of reports and studies, input to publications, etc.
•Provide substantive support to consultative and other meetings, conferences, etc., to include proposing agenda topics, identifying participants, preparation of documents and presentations, etc.
•Undertake outreach activities; conduct training workshops, seminars, etc.; make presentations on assigned topics/activities. 
•Participate in lead field missions, including provision of guidance to external consultants, government officials and other parties and drafting mission summaries.
•Coordinate activities related to budget and funding (programme/project preparation and submissions, progress reports, financial statements, etc.) and prepare related documents/reports (pledging, work programme, programme budget, etc.).

Competencies

Professionalism:
Demonstrates in-depth knowledge of all aspects of evaluation. Proven conceptual and analytical skills and the ability to understand technical documents and write evaluation reports. Shows pride in work and in achievements; demonstrates professional competence and mastery of subject matter; is conscientious and efficient in meeting commitments, observing deadlines and achieving results; is motivated by professional rather than personal concerns; shows persistence when faced with difficult problems or challenges; remains calm in stressful situations.

Communication:
Speaks and writes clearly and effectively; listens to other, correctly interprets messages from others and responds appropriately; asks questions to clarify, and exhibits interest in having two way communication; tailors language, tone, style and format to match audience; demonstrates openness in sharing information keeping people informed. 

Planning & Organization: 
Develops clear goals that are consistent with agreed strategies; identifies priority activities and assignments; adjusts priorities as required; allocates appropriate amount of time and resources for completing work; foresees risks and allows for contingencies when planning; monitors and adjusts plans and action as necessary; uses time efficiently. 

Teamwork:
Works collaboratively with colleagues to achieve organizational goals; solicits input by genuinely valuing others' ideas and expertise; is willing to learn from others; places team agenda before personal agenda; supports and acts in accordance with final group decision, even when such decisions may not entirely reflect own position; shares credit for team accomplishments and accepts joint responsibility for team shortcomings.

Education

Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in business administration, management, economics or a related field. A first-level university degree in combination with qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Work Experience

A minimum of five years of progressively responsible experience in project or programme management, administration or related area.

Languages

English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat. For this position fluency in oral and written English is required. Working knowledge of another UN language is desirable.

Assessment

Evaluation of qualified candidates may include an assessment exercise which may be followed by competency-based interview.

United Nations Considerations

Candidates will be required to meet the requirements of Article 101, paragraph 3, of the Charter as well as the requirements of the position. The United Nations is committed to the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity for all its human resources, including but not limited to respect for international human rights and humanitarian law. Candidates may be subject to screening against these standards, including but not limited to whether they have committed, or are alleged to have committed criminal offences and/or violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. 

The United Nations shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs. (Charter of the United Nations - Chapter 3, article 8). The United Nations Secretariat is a non-smoking environment.

Applicants are urged to follow carefully all instructions available in the online recruitment platform, inspira. For more detailed guidance, applicants may refer to the At-a-Glance on "The Application Process" and the Instructional Manual for the Applicants, which can be accessed by clicking on “Manuals” hyper-link on the upper right side of inspira account-holder homepage.

Applications are pre-screened by the system according to the published requirements of the job opening on the basis of the information provided in the application. In relation to the requirements of the job opening, applicants must provide complete and accurate information pertaining to their qualifications, including their education, work experience, and language skills. Each applicant must bear in mind that submission of incomplete or inaccurate applications may render that applicant ineligible for consideration for the job opening. Initial screening and evaluation of applications will be conducted on the basis of the information submitted. Applications cannot be amended following submission. Candidates under serious consideration for selection will be subject to a reference-checking process to verify the information provided in the application.

Job openings advertised on the Careers Portal will be removed at midnight (New York time) on the deadline date.

No Fee

THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.

Source: careers.un.org

Vacancy: Programme Specialist, Ending Violence Against Women

Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Under the overall guidance and leadership of the Country Representative, and under the direct supervision of the Deputy Representative, the Programme Specialist, Ending Violence Against Women (EVAW) is responsible for the formulation, management and implementation of programmes under his/her portfolio. She/he provides technical expertise on gender equality and women’s empowerment with a holistic approach to address opportunities and challenges in women’s political participation and leadership in Uganda. The Programme Specialist analyses political, social and economic trends provides policy advisory services to partners in government, UN, development partners, CSOs and academia; she/he works closely with UN Women thematic advisors at regional office and at headquarters, ensuring successful implementation of the UN Women Uganda Strategic Framework 2016 -2020, under his/her portfolio. The Programme Specialist provides regular analysis of policies and practices to senior management and compiles lessons learned for formulation of strategic interventions, including support on resource mobilization.

Duties and Responsibilities

Provide advisory and programme development services to the EVAW Portfolio: Draft country strategy documents, briefs, policy dialogue and other documents related to EVAW in Uganda; Draft the design and formulation of programme/ project proposals and initiatives; Translate the priorities of the Strategic Note in EVAW into programme interventions; Participate in meetings and policy dialogues on issues related to EVAW on behalf of UN Women, as necessary; Identify areas for support and interventions within the EVAW Portfolio; Provide programme advisory support to the Office Management, as necessary. Oversee the implementation and management of the EVAW Portfolio: Finalize the annual workplan and budget and oversee implementation; Finalize reports on activities, outputs and outcomes; as well as donor and UN Women reports; Ensure adherence to standard UN Women procedures in planning and implementation of programmes/ project; Ensure synergies within and with other programme/ project teams; Oversee the technical implementation andconceptualization of the programme/project; Manage the submission of implementing partner financial and narrative reports; Provide guidance to staff and partners on RBM tools and performance indicators. Oversee technical assistance and capacity development to project/programme partners: Build and manage relationships with national partners to support implementation and expansion of the EVAW Portfolio; respond to any potential problems; Identify capacity building needs of stakeholders; Provide partners with technical assistance, mentoring, training and capacity development initiatives. Oversee monitoring and reporting of the EVAW Portfolio: Oversee the monitoring of implementation of activities and finances using the results based management tools; Oversee field missions and write reports on monitoring missions; Write quarterly reports and donor reports. Manage people and financial resources of the EVAW Portfolio: Responsible for overall programme budget; Draft financial reports; Supervise team; Write terms of reference for new staff, consultants and contractors and oversee the recruitment process, as necessary. Contribute to inter-agency coordination: Provide technical support on inter-agency coordination related activities by attending meetings, events, and participating in groups and committees as needed; Coordinate with other UN agencies, government departments, donors and NGOs to ensure the projects’ capacity development programme is harmonized and aligned with other in-country efforts; Participate in country level Comprehensive Country Assessment (CCA)/UNDAF processes and similar exercises related to the RC system; Prepare inputs to CCA/ UNDAF and other documents; Write analytical and regular progress reports on UN Women’s programme experiences in support of UN Women inter-agency coordination role. Build partnerships and support in developing resource mobilization strategies: Develop and implement partnerships and resource mobilization strategies; Finalize relevant documentation on donors and potential opportunities for resource mobilization; Analyze and research information on donors, prepare substantive briefs on possible areas of cooperation, identification of opportunities for cost sharing; Determine programmatic areas of cooperation, based on strategic goals of UN Women, country needs and donors’ priorities and develop the relevant partnerships. Lead advocacy, knowledge building and communication efforts: Develop advocacy strategies and oversee their implementation; Develop and expand knowledge management strategies, products and methodologies on EVAW; Manage the process of identifying and synthesizing of best practices and lessons learned that are directly linked to the implementation of the programme and contribute to their global dissemination. Perform any other job related duties assigned by supervisor and the Country Representative.

Competencies

Core values: Integrity: Demonstrate consistency in upholding and promoting the values of UN Women in actions and decisions, in line with the UN Code of Conduct. Professionalism: Demonstrate professional competence and expert knowledge of the pertinent substantive areas of work. Respect for Diversity: Demonstrate an appreciation of the multicultural nature of the organization and the diversity of its staff. Demonstrate an international outlook, appreciating difference in values and learning from cultural diversity. Core Competencies: Ethics and Values: Demonstrate and promote ethics and integrity by creating organizational precedents. Organizational Awareness: Build support for the organization and ensure political acumen. Development and Innovation: Support staff competence development, and contribute to an environment of creativity and innovation. Work in teams: Build and promote effective teams. Demonstrate ability to work in a multicultural, multi ethnic environment and to maintain effective working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds. Communication and Information Sharing: Create and promote an environment for open and effective communication Self-management and Emotional Intelligence: Stay composed and positive even in difficult moments, handle tense situations with diplomacy and tact, and have a consistent behavior towards others. Conflict Management: Surface conflicts and address them proactively acknowledging different feelings and views and directing energy towards a mutually acceptable solution. Continuous Learning and Knowledge Sharing: Share knowledge across the organization and build a culture of knowledge sharing and learning. Appropriate and Transparent Decision Making: Ensure fair and transparent decision making processes and manage risk. Functional Competencies: Ability to lead the formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development programmes and projects; Ability to establish and maintain broad strategic networks and partnerships; Ability to advocate and provide policy advice; Ability to formulate and manage budgets; Strong interpersonal skills; Strong leadership skills; Strong IT skills; Strong analytical skills; Strong conflict resolution and negotiation skills; Very strong oral and written communication skills; Strong knowledge of RBM; Knowledge of Ending Violence Against Women.

Required Skills and Experience

Education: Master’s Degree in law, international development studies, Gender and Human Rights or related field. Experience: 5 of more years of relevant experience at the national or international level in programmes to advance ending violence against women, with responsibility for the design, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of projects; Strong knowledge of international, regional and national instruments, resolutions, policies and conventions that protect women’s human rights, including Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); Strong links with national networks, actors and partners in government, civil society, traditional leaders, parliament, media, academia, private sector, including experience in strengthening capacities of national and local partners; Demonstrated skills in resource mobilization on ending violence against women programming and familiarity with donor priorities in Uganda. Language: Fluency in written and spoken English; Working knowledge in any of the official UN languages is an asset. Source: undp jobs