Child Protection Officer (NOB), Osh, Kyrgyzstan, for 364 days. Open to Nationals of Kyrgyzstan only

Contract

This is a NO-2 contract. This kind of contract is known as National Professional Officers. It is normally only for nationals. It's a staff contract. More about NO-2 contracts.

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, protection

The long-term vision for change in the child protection area is that, by 2027, children, adolescents, and their families, including children and adolescents from disadvantaged and low-income families, and those with disabilities, benefit from prevention and response to violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect, and access to justice. This result will directly contribute to UNSDCF Priority One and Priority Four (just, accountable, and inclusive institutions and a civil society for peace, cohesion, and human rights.)

To achieve this, UNICEF will support the Government and CSO partners to:

1. strengthen policies, legal and normative frameworks, coordination mechanisms and evidence to effectively contribute to preventing and responding to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and access to justice of girls, boys and women by supporting social service planning and development, data collection/management, social service workforce capacity-building, and transition from residential institutions to local social welfare services;
2. strengthen statutory systems to provide gender-sensitive protection services for vulnerable children, adolescents and women by modelling integrated social services, strengthening probation and diversion to promote rehabilitation over punitive measures, and building service provision capacities at the local level, including in humanitarian response situations;
3. address harmful social and gender norms and practices and strengthen prevention mechanisms to protect vulnerable children, adolescents and their families, with a particular focus on girls by fostering positive and gender-responsive parenting practices, establishing safe and effective violence reporting mechanisms, increasing help-seeking behaviour, raising awareness on available support services and amplifying the voice of adolescents who have experienced first-hand living with a disability, institutional care and violence to influence reforms.

How can you make a difference?

The Child Protection Officer is based in Osh Field Office and responsible for leading the Child Protection programme output on social and behaviour change. This output is a gender principle output, requiring strong collaboration with the gender specialist to ensure gender responsive and transformative work. The officer is responsible for supporting the co-development (with community members, religious leaders, adolescents, social welfare workers including LSG specialists, social pedagogues, FCSD social workers and others) and implementation of community-based approaches for participation and social and behaviour change supporting child and family welfare.

Key Results Expected:

• Builds partnerships with civil society, Local Self Government and community leaders to support human-centred design approaches for community participation including for identification of protection issues and reporting and supporting and amplifying adolescent voices in issues affecting them.
• Manages the co-development (jointly with civil society, adolescents, community members, religious leaders) of a core package of approaches to address social and gender norms underpinning child marriage; violence against Girls, Boys and Women (VaGBW); and to support empowerment through localising skills in PSS and self-help approaches and localizing monitoring of interventions including by community.
• Supports involvement of adolescents in the programme cycle.
• Manages consultants and implementing partners working to co-develop and implement the community-led approaches.
• Supports development of guidance documents / curriculum of community-led approaches to support scale up of approaches.
• Provides quality reports for donors and internally describing progress in community participation, and changes in gendered attitudes and behaviours.

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

• A University Degree in international development, human rights, psychology, sociology, international law or other social science field is required.

• A minimum of 2 years of professional experience in social development planning and management in child protection and/other related areas at the international and/or in a developing country is required.

• Programme/project development and management in child protection in a UN system agency or organization is an asset.
• At least 2 years’ experience working on social and behaviour change and community-led interventions and community-level child protection/social welfare
• Strong understanding of gender equality programming, or exposure to such programmes.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English and Russian is required. Knowledge of Kyrgyz and Uzbek is an asset

For every Child, you demonstrate...

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships (2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness (3) Drive to achieve results for impact (4) Innovates and embraces change (5) Manages ambiguity and complexity (6) Thinks and acts strategically (7) Works collaboratively with others.

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

This position has been assessed as an elevated risk role for Child Safeguarding purposes as it is a role with direct contact with children. Additional vetting and assessment for elevated risk roles in child safeguarding (potentially including additional criminal background checks) applies.

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

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Appointments are also 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.

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