81306728-Facilitation of the Social Protection for Women Innovation Lab

As a service provider in the field of international cooperation for sustainable development and international education work, the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) dedicated to shaping a future worth living around the world. We have over 50 years of experience in a wide variety of areas, including economic development and employment promotion, energy and the environment, and peace and security. The diverse expertise of our federal enterprise is in demand around the globe - from the German Government, European Union institutions, the United Nations, the private sector, and governments of other countries. We work with businesses, civil society actors and research institutions, fostering successful interaction between development policy and other policy fields and areas of activity. Our main commissioning party is the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).? The commissioning parties and cooperation partners all place their trust in GIZ, and we work with them to generate ideas for political, social and economic change, to develop these into concrete plans and to implement them. Since we are a public-benefit federal enterprise, German and European values are central to our work. Together with our partners in national governments worldwide and cooperation partners from the worlds of business, research and civil society, we work flexibly to deliver effective solutions that offer people better prospects and sustainably improve their living conditions.? The registered offices of GIZ are in Bonn and Eschborn. In 2022, we generated a business volume of around EUR?4 billion. Our 25,422 employees, almost 70 per cent of whom are national staff, work in around 120 countries. As a recognised development service provider, we currently have 353 development workers in action in partner countries. Furthermore, in 2022, the Centre for International Migration and Development (CIM), which is run jointly by GIZ and the German Federal Employment Agency, placed 143 integrated experts and 257 returning experts with local employers in our partner countries, or provided them with financial support, advice or other services.? German development cooperation supports the development of universal and inclusive social protection systems which provide equal access to women and men. Many women in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have no or insufficient access to social protection systems. This means that they are not protected against risks such as illness, unemployment, accidents or poverty in old age. One of the reasons for this is that women are more likely than men to work in precarious informal employment, earn less, take on more unpaid care work and thus acquire fewer entitlements to social security benefits. Furthermore, gender-specific needs and access barriers are usually not taken into account when social security systems are planned and implemented. To contribute to improve access of women to social protection systems, the regional project "Social Protection for Women in the MENA-Region", implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), promotes collaboration between various national and regional partners to advance the access of women to social protection systems in the MENA region. The project is implemented in four partner countries (Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia) and works in the following key areas: Raising awareness among policy makers of the need to design and implement gender responsive and gender transformative approaches in social protection; Strengthening regional exchange between the four partner countries to discuss challenges and develop innovative ideas on how to promote access to social protection for women; Support to intermediary organisations working with women to sensitize women on their right to social protection and to facilitate access to existing social protection systems The project specifically targets women working in the informal sector (the "missing middle") and aims to improve their access to (contributory) social security programmes. It runs from 02/2024 - 01/2027.