UNICEF works in some of the world's toughest places, to reach the world's most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

 

For every child, a champion….

 

The fundamental mission of UNICEF is to promote the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything the Organization does — in programmes, in advocacy and in operations. The equity strategy, emphasizing the most disadvantaged and excluded children and families, translates this commitment to children’s rights into action.

 

How can you make a difference?

 French version  VA fr.pdf

Purpose of the job

 

The Social Policy-PME Specialist reports to the Deputy Representative and is responsible for:

- Providing technical support to the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of all stages of social policy programing and related advocacy from strategic planning and formulation to delivery of concrete and sustainable results. This includes programmes aimed at improving (a) public policies to reduce child poverty; (b) social protection coverage and impact on children; (c) the transparency, adequacy, equity and efficiency of child-focused public investments and financial management; and (d) governance, decentralization and accountability measures to increase public participation and the quality, equity and coverage of social services. This encompasses both direct programme work with government and civil society partners as well as linkages and support to teams working on education, health, child protection and WASH.

- Providing professional technical, operational and administrative assistance throughout the planning, monitoring, and evaluation process preparing, executing, managing and implementing a variety of technical and administrative tasks to contribute to evaluation planning, implementation, oversight and reporting to ensure that evaluations are carried out according to schedule and that results and recommendations are implemented and followed up.

 

Summary of key functions/accountabilities:

 

1. Improving data on child poverty & vulnerability and increased use for policy and programme action

▪ Supports the collection, analysis and user-friendly presentation of data on multidimensional and monetary child poverty, including strengthening national capacity to collect routinely, report and use data for policy decision-making.

▪ Provides timely, regular data-driven analysis for effective prioritization, planning, and development; facilitates results-based management for planning, adjusting, and scaling-up specific social policy initiatives to reduce child poverty.

 

2. Strengthening social protection coverage and impact for children

▪ Supports the development of social protection policies, legislation and programmes with attention to increasing coverage of and impact on children, with special attention the most marginalized. Identifies, generates and presents evidence to support this goal in collaboration with partners.

 

3. Improving the use of public financial resources for children

▪ Undertakes budget analysis to inform UNICEF’s advocacy and technical assistance to Ministries of Finance, planning commissions and social sector ministries to improve equitable allocations for essential services for children. Works with sector colleagues to build capacity to undertake costing and cost effectiveness analysis on priority interventions to help inform policy decisions on child-focused investments.

▪ Supports the identification of policy options for improved domestic financing of child-sensitive social protection interventions.

▪ Undertakes, and builds capacity of partners for, improved monitoring and tracking of public expenditure to support transparency, accountability and effective financial flows for essential service delivery, including through support to district level planning, budgeting and public financial management as well as facilitating community participation

 

4. Strengthening capacity of local governments to plan, budget, consult on and monitor child-focused social services.

▪ Where national decentralization processes are taking place, collaborates with central and local authorities to improve policies, planning, budgeting, consultation and accountability processes so that decisions and child-focused service delivery more closely respond to the needs of local communities.

▪ Collaborates with the central and local authorities to strengthen capacity on quality data collection, analysis for policy development, planning, implementation, coordination, monitoring of essential social services, with emphasis on community participation and accountability.

 

5. UNICEF Programme Management

▪ Manages and coordinates technical support around child poverty, social protection, public finance and governance ensuring it is well planned, monitored, and implemented in a timely fashion to adequately support scale-up and delivery.

▪ Supports and contributes to effective and efficient planning, management, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the country programme. Ensures that the social planning project enhances policy dialogue, planning, supervision, technical advice, management, training, research and support; and that the monitoring and evaluation component strengthens monitoring and evaluation of the social sectors and provides support to sectoral and decentralized information systems.

 

6. Setting Standards for Programme performance planning and monitoring

▪ Provide technical support as necessary to the process of developing and monitoring Country Programme Document, Annual Work Plans, including reporting on progress of the equity and gender marker as outlined in the Programme Policy and Procedures Guidance

▪ Provide technical support as necessary in organizing and managing annual/mid-year/mid-term/end term country programme reviews ensuring consistency with objectives and goals set out in the CPD and contribute to the Annual Management Plan.

▪ Monitor follow-up actions based on management decisions resulting from Country Office performance monitoring and evaluation.

▪ Support the programme components to effectively monitor and report on the intersectoral programme results, cross-sectoral programme component results and field office results to facilitate programme coherence and convergence where appropriate.

▪ Contribute to development of programme monitoring framework for the learning zones including technical backstopping to the field team for convergent programming.

 

7. Networking and partnership building

▪ Provide technical and operational support to a wide range of stakeholders and evaluators on UNICEF and UNEG policies, practices, standards and norms.

• Build and sustain effective close working partnerships with government counterparts and national stakeholders through active sharing of information and knowledge to facilitate evaluation and build their capacity for evaluation planning and implementation.

• Participate in appropriate inter-agency (UNCT) meetings/events to collaborate with inter-agency partners/colleagues on UNSDCF operational planning and preparation and to integrate and harmonize UNICEF position and strategies with the UNSDC development and planning process.

 

8. Innovation, knowledge management and capacity building

• Identify, capture, synthesize and share lessons learned from evaluations for integration into broader knowledge development planning and management efforts.

• Research and report on best and cutting-edge practices for development planning of knowledge products and systems for evaluations.

• Participate as resource person in capacity building initiatives to enhance the competencies of clients/stakeholders.

 

To qualify as an advocate for every child you should have:

 

Education

Advanced university degree in Economics, Public Policy, Social Sciences, International Relations, Political Science, Monitoring and Evaluation or other relevant disciplines.

 

Work Experience and Requirements:

A minimum of five years of relevant professional work experience is required.

Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered a strong asset.

 

Language Proficiency

Fluency in both French and English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language or a local language is an asset.

 

Female candidates are highly encouraged.

 

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS). Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: https://uni.cf/UNICEFValues  

 

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

• Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (1)
• Works Collaboratively with others (1)
• Builds and Maintains Partnerships (1)
• Innovates and Embraces Change (1)
• Thinks and Acts Strategically (1)
• Drive to achieve impactful results (1)
• Manages ambiguity and complexity (1)

 

Functional Competencies:

▪ Formulating strategies and concepts (II)

▪ Analyzing (III)

▪ Applying technical expertise (II)

▪ Learning and researching (II)

▪ Planning & Organizing (III)

▪ Relating and networking (II)

▪ Persuading & Influencing (II)

 

During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: here.

 

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements. 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 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.

 

Remarks:

All UNICEF positions are advertised, and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. An internal candidate performing at the level of the post in the relevant functional area, or an internal/external candidate in the corresponding Talent Group, may be selected, if suitable for the post, without assessment of other candidates.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.

UNICEF’s active commitment towards diversity and inclusion is critical to deliver the best results for children. For this position, eligible and suitable Congolese national professionals are encouraged to apply.

Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.