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For every child, Hope.
Despite the large young demographic, adolescents especially girls in Bangladesh are still largely invisible and voiceless. At the crossroads between childhood and adulthood, adolescents typically face many changes and uncertainties in their lives. UNICEF BCO have targeted adolescent girls and their issues through various sectoral programmes. Adolescents, especially girls continue to face tremendous barriers to accessing the information, services, and support they need to achieve their agency, voice and full potential. Adolescent voice and meaningful participation through various adolescent led platforms remain critical for their empowerment and holistic well-being yet challenging. Girls tend to face more limitations on their ability to move freely and to make decisions affecting their work, education, marriage, health and social relationships. These constraints deny them the ability to make informed decisions and choices for themselves, their capacity to claim their rights, to care for their health and bodily autonomy, and to be treated as equals.
Girls’ education and development is not prioritized in many instances which impacts on them later in terms of employment options. Adolescent girls from vulnerable and excluded groups, including girls with disabilities or from ethnic minorities, face considerably more challenges to find decent work in the formal sector. Adolescent girls continue to face greater risk of violence and its wide-ranging consequences and are significantly more likely to marry before the age of 18 than their male peers. In the informal sector the chances of them being exploited are more as they are likely to be paid low wages, progress less and may face increased gender-based violence.
Due to deeply embedded gender norms progress on human development indicators for girls lag behind and demonstrate sluggish progress in many indicators. The completion rates for girls are low at upper secondary level at 39.2 percent. Inequality within the household leads to lesser investment on girls by families particularly around the areas of health and nutrition. In Bangladesh, 12% of girls and women of reproductive age (15-49 years) are underweight. Socio-culturally sexual and reproductive health and rights is a taboo which impacts both access to information and services on SRHR for adolescent girls. Young married women often face challenges in accessing contraceptive methods due to societal pressures of proving her fertility while unmarried girls face challenges in accessing information and services due to fears of families that the knowledge will make them sexually active. The prevalence of early pregnancy amongst girls is high. 24% women age 15–19 have ever been pregnant and 18% have had a live birth. National Adolescent Strategy (NAS) sets out the Government’s agenda and priorities in relation to all adolescents 10-19 years old prioritizing five areas- health, nutrition and wellbeing, learning and skills development, safety and protection, transition to work, and participation and civic engagement. While several other strategies and laws address issues of adolescent girls most of them are yet to be translated into actions.
UNICEF is committed to promoting Gender Equality and empowerment of adolescent girls – across all sectors. UNICEF made several ambitious commitments by adopting its most progressive and forward-looking strategic plan, Gender Policy and Gender Action Plan 2022-2025 and the new Gender Action Plan recognizing adolescent girls as an accelerator. UNICEF is committed to advance bold, transformative change towards a more gender equal world and a world where an adolescent girl is empowered to realize her full potential in life.
These plans recognize that, to achieve success, gender equality must be integral into all UNICEF programmatic work, even as the agency undertakes new, targeted, and transformative action for adolescent girls. They commit UNICEF to placing the rights, well-being, and leadership of adolescent girls at the very core of what we do, with actions that promote girl’s health, nutrition, learning and skills, participation, as well as protection against violence, exploitation, abuse and harmful practices.
To operationalize the strategic directions of the new GAP and UNICEF’s global commitment to advance the rights of ‘adolescent girls with a focus on the most marginalized’ a comprehensive strategy and framework for UNICEF BCO for adolescent girls will be developed that allows its programs to address emerging priorities, ensures consistency of girl led and girl centric approaches, guides future resource mobilization strategies and optimizes UNICEF’s capacity to impact girls at scale. The framework will also seek to address underlying gender norms which deprive the most marginalised adolescent girls of their basic human rights. This will be achieved through investment in intentional interventions for girls' and multi-sectoral and integrated programs focusing on their overall empowerment and wellbeing for holistic development as outlined in key UNICEF Strategies, frameworks and vision for its programme for power4girls.
UNICEF BCO requires an individual consultant for technical assistance to work with the Gender and other relevant Advisers to design a comprehensive framework outlining broad strategies and approaches and articulate a plan for accelerating results - with and for adolescent girls- leveraging UNICEF’s existing work and comparative advantage to promote more multisectoral, context-specific, girl-driven girl-centric and rights based support that meets the interconnected needs of girls.
How can you make a difference?
Purpose of Activity/Assignment:
Under the guidance of the Gender Advisor in collaboration with the Regional Advisor and other sector experts, the Adolescent Girls consultant will lead the development of a comprehensive adolescent girl programming framework and strategy with key result areas and a costed plan. The Adolescent Girls’ strategy with clearly defined priorities- that will mirror the key programming areas and address emerging issues of girls to ensure relevant and effective programming for girls. The framework will clearly define the domains and approaches to support implementation of the strategy.
Under the guidance of the Gender Advisor in collaboration with the Regional Advisor and other sector experts, the Adolescent Girls consultant will lead the development of a comprehensive adolescent girl programming framework and strategy with key result areas and a costed plan. The Adolescent Girls’ strategy with clearly defined priorities- that will mirror the key programming areas and address emerging issues of girls to ensure relevant and effective programming for girls. The framework will clearly define the domains and approaches to support implementation of the strategy.
Key Assignments/Tasks:
- Adolescent girls’ strategy and framework: to accelerate change and to deliver at scale
- Lead consultations with section experts and CO level and selected partners (CSOs on key priorities for Adolescent Girls that could accelerate results
- Consultations with adolescents and young people, particularly girls from most marginalized groups particularly for addressing inclusion
- Draft the Adolescent Girls Framework and Strategy with defined priorities as accelerator of impact and delivering at scale
- Develop a brief outline of costed plan with a view to achieving impact at scale
- Present the draft to Core group
- Present the draft to Country teams for feedback before finalization
- Finalize and submit the Adolescent girls with clear result matrix- which will act as a road map for adolescent girls programming for BCO
If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Job Description here: 
TOR_Comprehensive Strategy and Framework Development for Adolescent Girl Programming.pdf
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According to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments which, in interaction with various barriers, may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. In its Disability Inclusion Policy and Strategy 2022-2030, UNICEF has committed to increase the number of employees with disabilities by 2030. At UNICEF, we provide reasonable accommodation for work-related support requirements of candidates and employees with disabilities. Also, UNICEF has launched a Global Accessibility Helpdesk to strengthen physical and digital accessibility. If you are an applicant with a disability who needs digital accessibility support in completing the online application, please submit your request through the accessibility email button on the UNICEF Careers webpage Accessibility | UNICEF.
UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). 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 based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. 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, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.
Remarks:
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.
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. 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.