Current vacancies

Vacancy Announcement: Consultant 

Consultancy Title: Digital Informed Consent Portal Consultant

Section/Division/Duty Station: Content Strategy, DGCA, NYHQ

Duration: 30 December 2025 – 31 December 2026

Home/ Office Based: NYHQ / Remote

About UNICEF 

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world's leading children's rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND

Background and Rationale

UNICEF’s global communication and advocacy efforts rely heavily on photography and videography to tell stories of children and communities worldwide. In alignment with UNICEF’s ethical standards and child protection policies, all visual content must be accompanied by informed consent from subjects and, when children are involved, their parents or legal guardians.

Currently, consent is obtained using paper-based forms that are signed, scanned, and stored locally at country offices. This method presents major challenges:

• Difficulty in retrieving or verifying consent documentation;
• Inconsistent storage, metadata, and linkage to image/video assets;
• Limited auditability and compliance tracking;
• Limited ability to track imagery and withdraw consent with ease
• High risk of data loss or misuse.

To address these issues, UNICEF seeks to design and implement a secure, custom-built Digital Informed Consent Portal that meets the highest standards of data protection, ethical storytelling, and operational efficiency. Existing third-party solutions were reviewed but did not meet UNICEF’s security and data-sovereignty requirements.

This initiative is central to UNICEF’s Digital Transformation Agenda, advancing modern, ethical, and efficient workflows for communications and safeguarding compliance.

UNICEF’s Commitment to Ethics and Child Safeguarding

UNICEF is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and is committed to ensuring the safety, privacy, and dignity of all children whose images or voices appear in UNICEF materials.

This digital consent platform is a foundational investment in upholding those principles in the digital era — enabling transparency, accountability, and ethical integrity across all communications.

The consultancy is critical to strengthening UNICEF’s visual storytelling capacity by providing imagery support to the photo team, including:

• Ensuring adherence to imagery guidelines and quality assurance standards
• Supporting Digital Asset Management (DAM) workflows, including caption writing and metadata accuracy
• Preparing video shot lists and uploading multimedia assets
• Curating imagery for campaigns and publications
• Maintaining ethical and technical compliance across all visual content

By integrating these responsibilities, the consultant ensures that UNICEF’s multimedia assets are managed efficiently, ethically, and in alignment with global standards — reinforcing the organization’s commitment to high-quality, rights-based communication

Purpose of Activity/ Assignment:

To work together with our in-house teams to guide the advancement design, development, and deployment of a secure online and offline Digital Informed Consent platform and Portal that enables producers, photographers, videographers, and communication officers to:

• Obtain, store, and retrieve informed consent using digitized forms via on location data capture via portable devices (Phones, Tablets or Laptops) in multiple languages;
• Ensure consent is linked to corresponding images/videos in UNICEF’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) system;
• Protect personal and sensitive data of children and communities in line with UNICEF’s data protection policies on safeguarding, ethics, and personal data protection, ensuring confidentiality and adherence to global standards.
• Enable centralized oversight and audit readiness

Scope of Work:

Key Objectives

1. Establish a Proof of Concept to migrate from paper-based forms to an informed consent capture with a digital, centralized, and secure system;
2. Facilitate production and implementation of visual infographics integrated into the design, ensuring informed consent across languages;
3. Ensure full compliance with UNICEF Data Protection, Child Safeguarding, and Ethical Guidelines;
4. Enable field operability including the establishment of advanced production processes used in both online/offline multilingual consent capture;
5. Design a comprehensive roadmap for phased implementation in tandem with UNICEF’s in house Technology and Digital Core-Solution team, incorporating an advanced production workflow designed for automation and seamless integration between the Consent platform/portal and UNICEF’s DAM system.
6. Build internal capacity and ensure smooth organizational adoption globally.
7.  Support with imagery guidelines quality assurance, DAM asset management workflow including caption writing, video shotlists, uploading multimedia assets, and imagery curations.

The consultant will:

• Conduct stakeholder consultations across Communication, Child Protection, Legal, and ICT divisions;
• Facilitate requirements gathering and workflow mapping;
• Design and oversee the development of the portal architecture (front-end, back-end, database, authentication, APIs);
• Ensure compliance with UNICEF’s IT security and data governance policies and legal compliance standards;
• Work in tandem with the senior photo editor to establish/implement the platform in selected country offices;
• Support development of training, documentation, and workplan  guided by the Senior Photo Editor to be rolled out across regions;
• Develop maintenance, support, and governance plan.

8. Support imagery quality assurance, DAM asset management workflow, metadata inputs and imagery curations.

Terms of Reference / Key Deliverables:

Travel: Not Applicable

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelors/University degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Digital Product Management, Photography Online Ethics or a related field.

Work experience:

• Minimum 7 years of experience implementing/overseeing/managing secure digital platforms or portals, ideally in large international or humanitarian organizations.

Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required *:

• Proven experience with data protection frameworks (GDPR, UN data policies).
• Demonstrated understanding of ethical multimedia practices, particularly regarding children.
• Experience managing technical vendors, conducting user testing, and leading digital transformation initiatives.
• Strong cross-cultural communication and project management skills.

Technical Requirements:

• Knowledge of cloud security, encryption, and role-based access control.
• Knowledge of Web/mobile platform architecture and database management.
• Knowledge of UX/UI design for multilingual and low-bandwidth environments.
• Knowledge of API integration with existing UNICEF systems (e.g., DAM, CRM)

Requirements:

Completed profile in UNICEF's e-Recruitment system and

- Upload copy of academic credentials

- Financial proposal that will include/ reflect :

• • the costs per each deliverable and the total lump-sum for the whole assignment (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference.
  • travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
  • Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
  • Indicate your availability

- Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.

- At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.

- Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

U.S. Visa information:

With the exception of the US Citizens, G4 Visa and Green Card holders, should the selected candidate and his/her household members reside in the United States under a different visa, the consultant and his/her household members are required to change their visa status to G4, and the consultant’s household members (spouse) will require an Employment Authorization Card (EAD) to be able to work, even if he/she was authorized to work under the visa held prior to switching to G4.  

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

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at: Here

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors 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. 

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check. 

Remarks:  

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. 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. 

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. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.