Child Protection Officer (Emergencies)

Contract

This is a UNV International Specialist contract. This kind of contract is known as International UN Volunteer. It is normally internationally recruited only. More about UNV International Specialist contracts.

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. UNICEF Kenya Country Office (KCO) 2022-2026 Country Programme under Outcome 3 aims to ensure that:

By 2026, more children, including adolescents, particularly in deprived areas, are safer and better protected from violence, exploitation abuse, neglect, harm and HIV, including in emergencies

More specifically, UNICEF has committed to enhance the capacity of government and non-governmental partners to adopt risk-informed approaches to emergency preparedness, planning, and response to humanitarian needs for child protection.

UNICEF is providing technical support to the Government to strengthen its capacity for child protection in emergencies, including preparedness and response planning as well as mainstreaming disaster risk reduction and resilience building in emergency response. With recurrent emergencies (floods and drought) in the country, support for the emergency preparedness and response capacity at the national and county level is essential. UNICEF is also implementing child protection programmes in refugee hosting areas, with a view to increasingly work towards bridging the humanitarian-development nexus, and shift towards inclusion of refugee children in national child protection systems and services. This also includes work towards ensuring that UNICEF’s child protection systems strengthening initiatives are also informing child protection programmes in the refugee operation.

As the COVID-19 remains an important element of the current programming environment, Child protection will continue to build in stronger preparedness and resilience focusing its system strengthening. Anchored in a resolute prevention focus, this will include, strengthened GBV risk mitigation and psychological and mental health lenses.

UNICEF KCO works very closely with government and non-governmental partners to raise awareness and build the capacity of relevant actors in these areas. The specific needs of adolescents in general and the adolescent girl, in particular, represent a strategic area of focus to build collective impact across the child protection, health, and education sectors to address the Triple Threat of adolescent vulnerability to HIV/ AIDS, teenage pregnancies, and GBV.

Social and behavior change strategies leveraging behavioral insights along with community mobilization approaches are key change strategies of the current country programme. UNICEF strives to mobilize SBC strategies at scale in a way that better understands belief and value

systems, milestone behavior shifts, leverages local experience knowledge, and amplifies local voices and agency.

Overall, this position will contribute towards the implementation of UNICEF’s core commitments for children in emergencies. The position will provide the International UNV with a unique opportunity to gain experience in child protection in emergencies and at the same time work on longer-term child protection systems strengthening initiatives.

Under the direct supervision of the Child Protection Specialist (Humanitarian Situations & MHPSS), the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:

Support programme planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting

· Contribute to the planning of child protection programmes including emergency pro-gramming, GBV, MHPSS, and Public Health emergencies components. · Formulate, design, and prepare programme/project proposals, ensuring alignment with UNICEF’s overall Strategic Plans and the Country Programme, as well as coherence and integration with the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF), regional strategies, and national priorities, plans, and competencies. · Monitor programmes/projects through field visits and exchange of information with partners to assess progress, identify bottlenecks, potential problems, and child protection risks. Make recommendations accordingly to resolve issues and/or refer to relevant officials for timely resolution. · Collaborate with inter-agency partners and UNICEF zonal offices on planning and im-plementation of activities. Ensure organizational priorities are fully considered and integrated in development planning and agenda setting. · Monitor and verify the optimal and appropriate use of programme resources (financial, administrative, and other assets) in compliance with organizational rules, regulations, procedures, donor commitments, as well as standards of accountability and integrity. Ensure timely reporting and liquidation of funds advanced to implementing partners. · Support the implementation of the Child Protection Section annual work plan and the office Annual Management Plan. This will also entail mobilizing funding in support of planned activities, promoting visibility and advocacy for the protection and well-being of children in humanitarian context · Contribute to integrating Child protection in emergencies with other sectors such as Health, Nutrition, WASH, Education and Social Policy and protection including cross-cutting issues i.e. gender, communication for development, PSEA, advocacy as well as enhancing cross-sectoral coordination and collaboration

Provide technical and operational support for programme implementation

· Provide technical guidance and operational support to government counterparts, NGO partners, UN system partners on child protection in emergencies and the understand-ing of UNICEF policies, strategies, processes, best practices, and approaches on child protection, GBV, MHPSS, and related issues to support delivery of results for children. · Seek opportunities to bridge humanitarian and development work by linking UNICEF’s long-term child protection systems strengthening work with child protection in emergencies in order to promote more sustainable interventions and risk informed pro-grammes. · Participate in child protection programme meetings, including programme development and contingency planning discussions on emergency preparedness in the country counties, to provide technical and operational information, advice, and support. · Coordinate monitoring, evaluation, and reporting on programme results for the section and develop harmonized tools for data collection, consolidation, manipulation, and vis-ualization. Collect and consolidate data for humanitarian and donor proposals and re-ports and internal bi-annual reporting exercises. · Work with the Child Protection Specialist in strengthening national and county level child protection in emergency working groups for effective coordination and leverag-ing of resources. · Support the Child Protection Specialist in strengthening UNICEF’s resilience-building initiatives in order to achieve sustainable and resilient child protection systems including child-friendly communities through continuous engagement with county govern-ments.

Support child protection capacity building including in emergencies

· Facilitate the designing of evidence-based, integrated programmes that enable UNICEF to be more community responsive at scale. · Work with UNICEF staff, government counterparts, and partners to coordinate and de-velop projects and identify opportunities within UNICEF for cross-sectoral information sharing, programming, and technical support · Support capacity building of relevant stakeholders and service providers on CP, GBV, and MHPSS by developing and/or contextualizing training materials and implementing relevant training sessions. Support implementation of procedures to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation (PSEA) · Support the mainstreaming of Children Rights into the county governments DRR strat-egies and response plans. · Keep abreast, research, benchmark, and implement best practices in child protection management and information systems. Assess, institutionalize, and share best prac-tices and knowledge learned.

Results/Expected Outputs

· Evidence-based child protection programmes in emergencies are implemented in a timely fashion. · Data on programme results regularly consolidated in harmonized monitoring and reporting tool. · Capacity of staff and partners on CP enhanced. · Coordination with partners is strengthened.

Accountability Adaptability and Flexibility Commitment and Motivation Commitment to Continuous Learning Communication Integrity Planning and Organizing Professionalism Respect for Diversity Technological Awareness Working in Teams

one or more of the following areas is required: program management, social work, child protection, GBV, mental health and psychosocial support, adolescent programming, public health emergencies programming, development and/or humanitarian work, programme planning and management or any other related field.

Prior experience in child protection, GBV, community development, or social work in a developing country is an advantage.

Experience Description:

o Experience in child protection, GBV, social work programming (or other areas mentioned above) o Good understanding of the humanitarian response especially in displacement/refugee contexts o Demonstrated experience in program management including program quality, results tracking, program documentation, knowledge management o Good analytical skills and understanding and experience in manipulating data, generating visual tools, and analyzing information. o Excellent interpersonal and communication skills. o Good communication skills (written, and oral) in English. Knowledge of Swahili and other languages are spoken in Kenya welcome

The Republic of Kenya is an equatorial nation on the coast of East Africa, neighboring Somalia, Ethi-opia, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, and the Indian Ocean. Kenya has two levels of Government; Na-tional Government and 47 sub-national Governments called Counties. Counties are further divided into sub-counties. Kenya is a multi-party state with Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. Kenya’s population of more than 40 million is growing at an annual rate of 2.2%. The country’s GNP per capita estimated at purchasing power parity (PPP) is $975, and the GNP is growing at an average rate of 0.1% annually. More than 26% of Kenya’s people live below the international poverty line of $1 per day. Kenya’s main food crops are “maize, wheat, pulses, roots and tubers.” (FAO). Nairobi is a modern metropolitan city where most basic goods and services, health facilities, public transport, telecommunication and banking services and educational facilities are readily available. The city is widely connected through its main airport, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and the smaller Wilson Airport. Air transport is also available to many up-country destinations. The city is home to some 3,000 UN personnel mainly attributed to the fact that it serves as the headquarters for both the UN HABITAT and UNEP. The socio-economic and cultural background of the immediate society the UNV would be living and working in is diverse and prevailing security conditions at the place of assignment is modest. The topographic and climatic features of the assignment location is highland cool and warm tropical climate. Inclusivity statement: United Nations Volunteers is an equal opportunity programme that welcomes applications from qualified professionals. We are committed to achieving diversity in terms of gender, care protected characteristics. As part of their adherence to the values of UNV, all UN Volunteers commit themselves to combat any form of discrimination, and to promoting respect for human rights and individual dignity, without distinction of a person’s race, sex, gender identity, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, age, language, social origin or other status.