The World Humanitarian Summit was organized in May 2016 to address the scale of human suffering greater than at any time since the Second World War. The Summit generated more than 3,000 commitments to action and launched more than a dozen new partnerships and initiatives to turn the Agenda for Humanity into meaningful change for the world's most vulnerable people.

Leading up to the Summit, consultations with more than 900 companies called for more strategic private sector engagement across disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness, response and recovery. They also called for networks and a mechanism to be created to facilitate coordinated private sector engagement. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a number of partners launched the Connecting Business initiative (CBi) as a response to this demand. CBi is a multi-stakeholder initiative that provides a mechanism for the private sector to engage with the United Nations system, national governments and civil society in a coordinated manner across all stages of disaster management.

CBi is supported by OCHA’s Emergency Response Section in Geneva and UNDP Istanbul International Center for Private Sector in Development (IICPSD). These units collaborate with multiple other global units, as well as regional and country offices of OCHA and UNDP, as well as with many other private sector organizations, UN Agencies, NGOs and governments.

The overall objective of the consultancy is to support CBi’s engagement with key partners and advice on organizing activities for the workstream on fragile situations and conflict affected areas. The Consultant will support the CBi Secretariat in curating and developing new content, raising awareness and building the capacity of private sector networks.

The Connecting Business initiative Fragile Situations and Conflict Affected Areas Consultant position is home-based. The Consultant will report to the CBi Programme Coordinator in Geneva and UNDP IICPSD Director. The activities will be carried out in collaboration with CBi Member Networks, Executive Committee Members, OCHA and UNDP colleagues and other partners.

Read more about CBi at www.connectingbusiness.org, follow CBi Twitter @Connecting_biz and learn more through CBi YouTube videos.