Three Social Workers to Support the Commission of Reduction of Sentences

VA No.: UNDP/LBN/VA26/130

Position Title: National Consultant - Three Social Workers to Support the Commission of Reduction of Sentences

Duty Station: Home-based, with attendance at meetings at the Commission of Reduction of Sentences' headquarters and visits to prisons as required to assess inmates.

Duration: 4 months (without exceeding 5 working days per month)

Vacancy Date of Issue: 03 August 2026

Vacancy Closure Date: 10 August 2026

National or International consultancy: National consultancy

To review the full Terms of Reference (TOR), please follow link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tgq75Nlk0osLdxjGjYs3c6kwHu8006n9/view?usp=drive_link

Background

UNDP has been actively supporting efforts to alleviate prison overcrowding and enhance access to justice through various initiatives. In Lebanon, Law No. 463/2002 established a framework for sentence reduction and entrusted this task to the Sentence Reduction Commission. Each of the two sub-commissions consists of a judge appointed by the Minister of Justice, the head of the prison's central directorate, a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry, and a social worker, with both specialists designated by the Minister of Justice. The director of the relevant prison or facility serves as an ad hoc member, depending on the case under review. To address the increasing workload, the Minister of Justice also appointed an additional social worker to support both sub-commissions.

However, the Commission's operations have been quasi-paralyzed for over two years due to a lack of support for the medical doctors and social workers, who are essential for providing the necessary assessments for each case. This has hindered the Commission's ability to fulfill its critical role in addressing prison overcrowding.

In this context, and as part of its ongoing commitment to improving access to justice, UNDP seeks to recruit three (3) Social Workers to support the Commission in processing the cases of prisoners seeking sentence reduction, with each Social Worker covering different governorates according to the Commission's geographic distribution of files.

Scope of work, responsibilities and description of the proposed analytical work

Under the overall guidance of the project's Chief Technical Advisor or Project Officer, and in close coordination with the Commission of Reduction of Sentences, the Social Workers will support the Commission across the different governorates, according to the Commission's geographic distribution of files, by assessing prisoners' psycho-social condition to inform sentence-reduction decisions.

To achieve this objective, the Consultants are expected to:

Assess prisoners' files from a psycho-social perspective.

Draft and submit scientific reports to the Commission to inform its sentence-reduction decisions.

Provide the necessary scientific opinion regarding the reduction of a prisoner's sentence based on their psycho-social condition.

Provide expert opinion during deliberations on the impact and relevance of psycho-social factors in specific cases.

Collaborate with the Commission on any other required tasks.

Expected outputs and deliverables

The