Current vacancies

Scope of Work:

The individual consultant is required to apply their knowledge, international standards, best practices, and previous experiences, supplemented by relevant data and studies, to the task. In collaboration with UNICEF teams, the consultants will provide support in select countries as requested. The consultant will carry out the following activities as well as any other activities deemed necessary to successfully complete the task:

1. Finance Strategy Development

• Desk Review: Analyze existing financial flows, government budget frameworks, and donor investment trends in WASH.
• Stakeholder Consultations: Engage with Ministries (Finance, Water, Health, Education, Environment), donors, private sector, and civil society.
• Costing of current and desired services and identification of finance gaps: By analyzing the current expenditures and costing analysis, the financing gap toward the achievement of sector targets will be determined.
• Climate & Blended Finance Assessment: Identify entry points for climate funds, PPPs, concessional finance, and private sector partnerships.
• Draft WASH Finance Strategy: Develop a structured strategy document with financing options, implementation roadmap, and monitoring framework.
• Validation & Finalization: Present findings to sector stakeholders and incorporate feedback into a final strategy.

2. Financial Leveraging

• Project identification and pipeline development: Review  National finance strategies and other relevant documents/studies available to prepare a pipeline of proposed water and/or sanitation programs. Consideration should be given to programs that are commercially attractive to private investors.
• Structuring blended finance initiatives: using concessional capital and risk mitigation tools, design programs that strategically use grants, below-market interest loans, or flexible repayment terms to lower a project's overall cost of capital. The initiative should consider climate finance options.
• Recommendation on strategic partnerships among public, private, and development finance institutions: Provide recommendations on public sector authorities to engage, development finance institutions, climate finance institutions, private sector (national financing institutions), institutional investors to facilitate next steps towards implementation.
• Recommendations for technical assistance, enabling environment and policy improvements: Detail any policy improvement measures, policy frameworks and institutional capacity to unlock and sustain private sector investment and technical assistance requirements for implementation

RESPONSIBILITY OF CONSULTANT:

1. The consultant will use their own equipment; laptops, software and other accessories that may be required for this task.
2. The consultant will not give the content/material or any part thereof to any third party without the written permission of UNICEF. All components will be the property of UNICEF, and the consultant will not share the same with anyone else.
3. The consultant will not put their own name or logo/emblem on the content / final product. The only organization branding will be UNICEF, if required.
4. Individuals engaged under a consultancy will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.
5. The selected candidate is solely responsible for ensuring that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF UNICEF:

1. UNICEF will provide all available details pertaining to the activity and the requirements.
2. UNICEF will orient the consultant on UNICEF’s branding guidelines.

DELIVERABLES

 To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have… 

Minimum requirements:

Category 1: Development of WASH finance strategies

• Advanced degree in Investment, Finance, Economics, Business Administration or related field.
• This is a mid-level position; consultants should have a minimum of five years’ experience in development of analytical reports and policy documents related to development finance or public finance, preferably experience with preparation of financing assessment and strategy.
• Experience in analysis of WASH sector development, financial and economic modelling
• Experience working in development contexts (UN, MDBs, government or NGO entity)
• Fluency in English or French (ability to communicate in other language would be an added advantage)
• Knowledge in aspects related to climate resilience
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Excellent analytical and management skills
• Ability to multi-task in a dynamic environment.
• Experience in fragile and conflict settings is desirable

Category 2: Development of Financial Leveraging programs/initiatives

• Advanced degree in Investment, Finance, Economics, Business Administration, Engineering or related field.
• This is a mid-level position; consultants should have a minimum of five years’ experience in Project finance structuring complex, non-recourse project financing deals, blended finance structuring with good appreciation on how to combine (grants, subsidies, or first-loss capital etc) commercial private financing to mitigate risk and improve the project's financial viability for private investors, structuring public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives.
• Knowledge of various financial instruments, such as guarantees, insurance, concessional debt, and equity
• Experience in financial modelling and risk assessment preferably for WASH projects
• Experience working in development contexts (UN, MDBs, government or NGO entity)
• Fluency in English or French (ability to communicate in other language would be an added advantage)
• Knowledge in climate resilience
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Excellent analytical and management skills
• Ability to multi-task in a dynamic environment.

Note: Candidates are free to apply to any category based on their qualifications and experience. They can also apply for multiple categories/all of them. UNICEF will award LTA to top 5-10 ranked candidates under each category and based on language needs. A candidate may be awarded LTA for one or more than one category.

 The selection of consultants for the LTA will be based on technical evaluation and financial offers in the ratio of 80:20. The criteria for technical evaluation will be as follows:

Financial Proposal Template: 

Please use the below template (please add all deliverables) for Fianncial proposal.

HOW TO APPLY: 

The application to be submitted through the online portal should contain three separate attachments: 

• A Cover letter explaining the motivation for applying and explaining the qualifications and skillset of the candidate (to be uploaded online). 
• Curriculum Vitae (CV) (to be uploaded online). 
• A financial proposal indicating professional fee as per the template provided. Please do not forget to specify your name in the file while saving. (To be uploaded under other supporting documents).
• Copy of educational qualifications (to be uploaded online)

Important Note:

Courses will be required for the successful LTA holders: Certificates of mandatory courses (Ethics and Integrity at UNICEF (2020 version); Prevention of Sexual Harassment and Abuse of Authority (2021 version) & Sexual Exploitation Abuse (PSEA) (2021 version) consolidated in one single pdf. For LTAs which include travel assignments, BSAFE will be a mandatory course requirement to be added to the list of certificates to be uploaded.

Please do not indicate financials anywhere else in the online application form 

Without all the above documents your application will be considered incomplete and invalid and will not be considered further. 

Any attempt to unduly influence UNICEF’s selection process will lead to automatic disqualification of the applicant. 

• Joint applications of two or more individuals are not accepted. 

• Please note, UNICEF does not charge any fee during any stage of the process. 
• Female candidates meeting the requirements are strongly encouraged to apply

• UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion and encourages qualified candidates from all backgrounds including persons living with disabilities to apply. 

• Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.
• The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. 
• UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

Humanitarian action is a cross-cutting priority within UNICEF’s Strategic Plan. UNICEF is committed to stay and deliver in humanitarian contexts. Therefore, all staff and consultants, at all levels across all functional areas, can be called upon to be deployed to support humanitarian response, contributing to both strengthening resilience of communities and capacity of national authorities.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Remarks:  

As per Article 101, paragraph 3, of the Charter of the United Nations, the paramount consideration in the employment of the staff is the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity.

UNICEF does not charge a processing fee at any stage of its recruitment, selection, and hiring processes (i.e., application stage, interview stage, validation stage, or appointment and training). UNICEF will not ask for applicants’ bank account information.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.