| Overview : In spite of significant progress, Sub-Saharan Africa still accounts for 69% of the 34 million people living with HIV globally, with more than 13.5 million people living with HIV in SADC Member States alone. For a variety of reasons, women and girls are most heavily affected by HIV in Africa where almost 60% of those living with HIV are women and with 3.1% of young women aged 15–24 living with HIV (versus 1.3% of young men). Recognizing that the EA process can provide a proactive opportunity for up-scaling HIV prevention efforts, governments from 8 African countries, with the support of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) started an initiative in 2010, aimed at strengthening the Integration of health (particularly HIV) and gender issues in the administration and management of Environmental Assessment processes for large capital projects, initially in Eastern and Southern Africa. The initiative is built around policy and legislative reviews, advocacy, and the development of stronger health and social impact assessment capacity within government regulatory authorities, proponents, and environmental assessment practitioners.The overall goal of the consultant’s work will be to provide technical support to EA stakeholders – Governments, national environmental management authorities, developers, EA practitioners, CSOs to strengthen their EA legislation, EA policy environment EA practice including monitoring and evaluation in selected countries as may be requested by the countries. This is intended to promote the needed synergies required to scale up HIV prevention, treatment and care as well as gender empowerment interventions in both phase 1 countries: (Namibia, Lesotho, South Africa, Zambia, Uganda, Malawi and Mozambique), as well as phase 2 countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, DRC, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Angola, Congo Brazzaville, Swaziland, Seychelles and Kenya). |
