Public Finances for Children, Social Protection and Poverty Senior International Consultant-Home based with UNICEF Iraq

Contract

This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy 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, inclusion

Purpose of Activity/Assignment:

UNICEF works in Iraq to save children's lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential by supporting the Government of Iraq in realizing the rights of all Iraq's children to survival, development, protection, and participation, and the creation of an enabling environment to ensure strengthened accountabilities for children with an equity approach.

The UNICEF Iraq Country Programme, 2020-2024, is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and contributes to achieving Sustainable Development Goals. The vision of this country programme is that "by 2024, children, adolescents, and women in Iraq are better protected and have more equitable and inclusive access to quality basic services." To address the long-term impact of conflict and exposure to violence, the UNICEF Social Inclusion and Policy programme will work to strengthen national statistical, public financial management, and social protection systems and coverage, in addition to building decentralized capacities for the effective, equitable and integrated provision of services, especially in geographic areas with pockets of higher vulnerability and more significant disparities. Therefore, to ensure evidence-based planning, implementation, and improvement of social services delivery, UNICEF Iraq is looking for an international consultant to provide technical support and assistance in social policy programming and related advocacy, from strategic planning and formulation to delivery of concrete, inclusive and sustainable results.

Under the general guidance and direction of the Chief Social Policy, the consultant will work to improve (a) evidence generation, policy and practice on child poverty; (b) social protection coverage and impact on children; and (c) the transparency, adequacy, equity and efficiency of child-focused public investments and financial management. This encompasses both direct programme work with government at federal and local levels and development partners as well as linkages and support to teams working on education, health, child protection, humanitarian response, nutrition, water and sanitation

Scope of Work:

1. Improving data on child poverty & vulnerability for 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.
• Analyzes the macroeconomic context and its impact on social development, emerging issues and social policy concerns, as well as implications for children, and proposes and promotes appropriate responses in respect of such issues and concerns, including government resource allocation policies and the effects of social welfare policies on the rights of children.
• Generation of governorate child poverty profiles and maps to guide local planning as well as generation of governorate costed action plans to address child poverty.
• Play a statistical quality control roll in the development of poverty estimations across programmes and sections with a social protection lens

2. Strengthening social protection coverage and impact for children

• Undertakes improved monitoring and research around social protection impact on child outcomes, and use of data and research findings for strengthening programme results.
• Promotes strengthening of integrated social protection systems by mapping assessment and development of the social protection strategy, development of the social protection reform road maps as well as institutionalise training to social workers.

3. Improving use of public financial resources for children

• 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 in the budget process.

4. Strengthening Programme Management

• Develops concept notes for project(s) implementation, including partner coordination around specific Social Policy Section projects.
• Supports improved monitoring and research around social protection, impact on child outcomes and use of data and research findings.
• Effectively support the delivery of other social policy work as planned in the RWP and as instructed by the Chief of Section

Tasks/Milestone/ Deliverables/Outputs/ Timeline

1. Co-writing and providing technical support and coordination follow up and content development for the Development of a monetary child poverty report or analysis to lead to a national report and for the Generation of governorate child poverty profiles and maps to guide local planning .

- Final report is written and disseminated

- Key governorate child profiles developed and disseminated

2. Co-writing and providing technical support and coordination follow up and content development for the Generation of governorate costed action plans to address child poverty

- Final governorate costed action plans are written and disseminated

3. Co-writing and providing technical support and coordination follow up and content development for the Development of the adolescent index

- Final report is written and disseminated

4. Quality control, technical support and coordination follow up and content development for the Mapping assessment and the roll out of the social protection strategy

- Timely and effective technical support is provided for the roll out of the social policy strategy is provided

5. Quality control, technical support and coordination follow up and content development for the Development of the social protection reform road maps

- Final road map is written and disseminated

6. Co-writing and providing technical support and coordination follow up and content development for the Social Protection Baseline and enplane assessment: social protection

- Final assessment reports are written and disseminated

7. Co-writing and providing technical support Quality control, coordination follow-up and content development for the public expenditure analysis on risk crises management for children in child related sectors

- Final PEA report is written and disseminated

8. Internal ICO’s Training on public financing for children in coordination with NYHQs and MENARO

- Training is conducted across FOs and at ICO

9. Providing technical support and coordination follow up and content development of the three option papers on social protection including

- Three Policy option papers developed on three policy option papers on (1) child sensitive social protection, unified national registry, (2) poverty targeting, and (3) public financing for social protection

10. Support the Social Policy Section in the development of related documents and technical proposals/conversations corresponding to the data and research work in the section

- Reports, notes, and documents are delivered as agreed with the Chief of Section

- Child Poverty white paper is produced and disseminated

- Section’s Theory of Change is updated

Recruitment qualifications:

• An advanced university degree in one of the following fields is required: Economics and/ or Finance, Public Finance, Policy, Social Sciences, International Development, Political Science, or another relevant technical field.
• A minimum of 8 years of relevant professional experience in relevant professional work experience is required.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with humanitarian response and emergency is considered an asset.
• Previous work with UNICEF would be an asset as it would be previous work on Small Area Estimates and Child Poverty.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset

For every Child, you demonstrate…

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

Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant

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.