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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, hope

Integrated and inclusive social protection is essential for preventing vulnerabilities and fostering social development. Its effects extend to achieving economic diversification, higher productivity, and equity by investing in human capital and ensuring equitable access to opportunities. This approach fosters a more inclusive society and enhances economic resilience, leading to sustained social and economic development. By supporting an economically active society, it contributes to national development and sustainability while promoting human well-being in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Omanis benefit from free healthcare and education, housing support, substantial pensions, and various social welfare benefits. However, until 2023, social assistance in Oman remained minimal, and job creation is not keeping pace with the surplus labor supply. The Sultanate of Oman identifies social protection as a cornerstone of Oman’s Vision 2040. Under the priority of ‘wellbeing and social protection,’ it emphasizes that social justice is essential for ensuring a strong and cohesive society. The government aims to ensure a decent living standard for all, with a special focus on women, persons with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups. Oman’s Five-Year Plan also aims to enhance welfare and social benefits through social protection, economic diversification, private sector development, and social welfare enhancement.

The endorsement of the Social Protection Law number 52/2023 by His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tariq in July 2023 marks a milestone in developing a comprehensive and rights-based social protection system aligned with international standards and best practices. The law includes non-contributory benefits such as universal child benefits, support for orphans, widows, the elderly, household income, and people with disabilities, as well as social insurance programs such as maternity and paternity leave benefits. With these provisions, the Social Protection Law represents a paradigm shift by putting the focus on families and enabling them to advance children's rights as well as support vulnerable groups of society.

The Government of Oman, with support from ILO Regional Office of the Arab States (ROAS) and UNICEF Oman, has approved a new comprehensive social protection system. A unified legal framework for all social protection benefits has been established, along with an integrated administration through the Social Protection Fund. The merging of 11 funds into a single national scheme aims to improve equity and sustainability. This new social protection system serves as a model in the region. A summary of the most salient features of the new system can be found here. An upcoming report prepared by the ILO and SPF titled “Inclusive, Lifecycle Social Protection in a Multi-tiered Framework in Oman - Summary report on the comprehensive reform of the social security system” will highlight key aspects of the process and outcome of the reforms.

This assignment will complement previous work of documentation of the Oman reform by focusing on lessons learned through the implementation of the social protection law and highlighting the relevant reforms from a child and family perspective. The assignment will focus as well on identifying emerging priorities including shock-responsive social protection and integrated care service delivery model to deliver on Oman’s vision to position social protection as a key driver to child and human development and to foster disability inclusion.

How can you make a difference? 

Scope of Work

The scope of this consultancy is three-fold:

(1) Review and document reflections on lessons learned specifically on the implementation of the child and disability benefits, maternity and paternity leave benefits, housewives’ optional insurance and identify areas for enhancement on design, benefit adequacy, coverage, enrolment criteria, linkages to services and other implementation parameters.

(2) Conduct a Shock Responsive Readiness Assessment of the social protection framework with a specific focus on climate, social and health risks for Oman.

(3) Develop an integrated social care model for connecting critical social services with child and disability benefits.

The consultant will provide critical insights into enhancing the policy, design, and administration of child and disability benefits as well as the maternity and paternity benefits along with proposing pathways for making SP more shock responsive and embedded within a broader package of social care support for beneficiaries.

For the first deliverable on documentation, the consultant will build on existing assessments through direct stakeholder engagement, as well as interviews/focus group discussions with beneficiaries and review of global best practices around child and disability benefits as well as maternity and paternity leave and contextualize any recommendations around programme enhancements to Oman’s context (keeping in mind fiscal considerations). This deliverable on documentation will be supervised jointly with ILO.

For the second deliverable on shock responsiveness, the consultant can use an adapted version of UNICEF’s Shock Responsiveness Readiness toolkit to review the national social protection system in Oman and identify key bottlenecks and interventions to improve shock responsiveness.

For the third deliverable on integrated care models, the consultant would need to conduct a service mapping at a local level to better understand how to build linkages between maternity and paternity benefits, child and disability benefits to the broader social services package (which are administered through different government agencies and departments). The data collection would need to include sharing of best practices and models from other OECD countries and propose a design that would work best for Oman for integrating child and disability benefit with care services (it is likely to be 2 stand-alone deliverables – one on childcare model, and the other one on disability support).

To undertake this assignment, the consultant is expected to work on the following:

• Understand the GoO social inclusion vision of 2040 and policies in prioritizing child and disability support within the broader social protection system, including the national framework, policy, administrative levels and implementation.

• Review the processes and activities undertaken in the SP reform to understand the ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘why’, to ‘whom’ and with what ‘results’ with specific focus on child and disability features of the reforms.

• Identify the key ‘factors’, ‘benchmarks and milestones’ that contributed to the success of the intervention design and implementation.

• Highlight lessons learned and best practices from other OECD countries.

• Identify key needs and sectors where social protection can foster access to services or respond to needs and how (e.g., health and nutrition, ECE, disability inclusion, family friendly policies, etc).

Identify key impact pathways for maternity and paternity benefits as well as child and disability benefits that need to be reflected within the monitoring and evaluation plan to document return on investment.

• Assess beneficiaries’ experiences as well as perceptions on ways to strengthen the benefit schemes and their delivery.

• Assess existing system and data vis-à-vis the requirement to inform strengthening social protection systems and its role to child development and addressing vulnerability.

• Examine the role of social workers and coordination across social protection and social services.

• Provide recommendations to strengthen the existing system, including targeting, a single registry for optimal coverage, ensuring a continuum of childcare related leave and services to guarantee the best early start for children and income security for families, etc.

Deliverables

The consultancy has the following key deliverables:

(1) Inception Report – outlining methodology, timelines, and approach

(2) Reflections on the journey of child and disability benefit in Oman with insights for further enhancements

(3) Documentation Report on Maternity and Paternity Benefits: Assessment of Accessibility and insured Experience for Nationals and Non-Nationals, with Recommendations for Improvement (awareness of entitlement, registration and claim processes, grievances mechanisms, etc.)

(4) Report on Shock Responsive Readiness Assessment of SP system in Oman with a summary of interventions to improve SRSP.

(5) Develop an integrated social care model for child benefit incorporating linkages to key social services for recipients of child benefits and integrated administration of benefits across the continuum.

(6) Developed an integrated disability support model incorporating linkages between disability benefit and support to other assistive services at a local level.

At the end of the consultancy assignment, the consultant will be expected to do an in-person training on the integrated social care models for child and disability benefits as well. There will also be 2 webinars to share the learnings from the documentation exercise and SRSP readiness assessments with key stakeholders.

 

 

Methodology

 

The consultant is expected to include a mixed-methods approach with both in-person qualitative data collection and literature review. It is expected that there will be 2 in-country missions to complete the assignment. While there are standalone deliverables, it is important to combine data collection for them given that the stakeholders are largely the same. The desk review would include documents provided by the GoO, ILO and UNICEF, along with other external literature available. Additionally, in-country qualitative information will be collected through Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) and Focus Group Discussions with government officials, international agencies, other relevant stakeholders, and beneficiaries.

 

Key Stakeholders:

 

Social Protection Fund

Istidama (Ministry of Finance)

UNICEF

ILO

 

Secondary stakeholders:

 

Ministry of Social Development

Ministry of Education

Ministry of Health

 

Timeframe (the stakeholders’ review timeframe will be added): Task	Number of working days	Deliverable
Deliverable 1: Submit an inception report which includes a desk review, proposed methodology, list of interviews, documentation questions, stakeholder mapping, report structure, timeframe, etc.	7 days	Draft inception report
Submit the draft report to technical committee for review and Incorporate feedback	2 days	Final inception report
Deliverable 2: Data Collection & Analysis (incl. remote and in-country visit)	14 days	PPT on the Preliminary Findings
Deliverable 3: Drafting of Review Documentation, SRSP Readiness Assessment and Integrated Care documents in separate reports 1	20 days	Draft report
Submit the draft reports to the technical committee for review and Incorporate feedback	2 days	--
Deliverable 4: Submit the final reports	5 days	Final report
Deliverable 5: Conduct in-person training on the integrated social care models for child and disability benefits	3 days	Conduct in-person training
Deliverable 6: Conduct 2 webinars to share the learnings from the documentation exercise and SRSP readiness assessments with key stakeholders.	1 day	Provide 2 webinars
TOTAL	54 days	--

 

 

Travel International (if applicable)	10 days (2 planned missions to Muscat) –  1 mission to be covered by ILO
Travel Local (please include travel plan)	NA
DSA (if applicable)	10 days – 1 mission to be covered by ILO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

• University degree (preferably advanced) in one of the social sciences, covering at least one of the following domains: economics, political science, sociology or related area social sciences or related discipline
• A minimum of 10 years of extensive professional knowledge and experience in social protection, social policy and social science disciplines
• Fluency in English and Arabic is required

 

Applications review:

All applicants must submit the following:

• CV.
• Technical proposal.
• Financial proposal.
• Sample of work in English (and in Arabic if available).

 

Technical review for the deliverables:

A joint technical committee will be formed between UNICEF and ILO to oversee all phases of the documentation assignment, which is co-financed by both agencies, other deliverables to be overseed by UNICEF. All consultancy deliverables must be approved by SPF, ILO and UNICEF before payment is made.

• For every Child, you demonstrate… 

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS). 

  

To view our competency framework, please visit  here. 

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic background, and persons with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization. To create a more inclusive workplace, UNICEF offers paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks, and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements. Click here to learn more about flexible work arrangements, well-being, and benefits.

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.