(Remote) Centrality of Protection Guidelines Consultant

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, hope

Under the guidance and supervision of Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy Specialist in UNICEF HQ, New York Humanitarian Policy Section, Lead the inception, conceptualization, and development of UNICEF centrality of protection guidelines.

How can you make a difference?

This consultancy will contribute to ensuring a timely, inclusive and quality rollout of a core UNICEF humanitarian guidance instrument that will seek broad institutional consensus. The future UNICEF protection guidelines will allow it to leverage protection as a strategic priority and enable it to:

• Reinforce its mandate and long-standing commitment to protect children’s rights and its role to promote and support the Convention on the Rights of the Child – including by ensuring that affected communities, especially children most at risk, have a role in shaping and informing humanitarian and development action.
• Increase the quality of its programmes and advocacy and to better ensure the promotion and protection of children's rights, including by building strategic links across sectors.
• Deliver programming and advocacy that is sensitive to protection concerns based on a solid risk analysis resulting in preventive or responsive action is better placed to lay the foundation for a middle to long-term overall strategy to achieve long-term development outcomes as defined in the Sustainable Development Goals.
• Elevate the protection of children and caregivers as central to UNICEF decision-making and response, including engagement with states and non-state parties to conflict.
• Strengthen collective accountability for children through UNICEF’s leadership and coordination roles.
• Better operate as a neutral, independent, and impartial humanitarian actor and reduces the risk of negative outcomes for people, embodying the principle of “do no harm”.
• Develop a more effective humanitarian and development response predicated on acknowledging the role and participation of UNICEF beneficiaries.
• Be a more agile operational humanitarian agency that is able to adapt its efforts in response to mitigating the protection concerns children are exposed to.

Work Assignments Overview****Deliverables/Outputs****Delivery deadlineConduct initial desk review and develop brief inception report (20%)- Stakeholder mapping, identifying the following: affected populations, donors, and operational and strategic practitioners both internal and external to UNICEF, including interagency other child-centered organizations. - Draft inception report

30 November 2023Lead initial consultations and develop theory of change (20%)- Consultations along simple lines of enquiry with affected populations in five countries, identifying protection risks, vulnerabilities capacities as well as how UNICEF can assist. - Meet with stakeholders internal and external to UNICEF - including, senior management - to understand the barriers and enablers to protection and accountability vis-a-vis UNICEF, and to develop a theory of change.

29 December 2023Conduct in-depth consultations/pilot exercise with three UNICEF Country Offices (30%)- Aim to consolidate, test and refine in the field with the support of key country representatives - Support donor consultations

28 February 2024Draft final UNICEF protection guidelines report (30%)- Presentation of the draft policy to Humanitarian Policy Section and other core members of the core protection guiding group. - Incorporate input on several rounds of comments and finalize.

29 April 2024

Nature of ‘Penalty Clause’ to be stipulated in Contract:

Penalties for Unsatisfactory Performance or Incomplete Assignment: Final payment of fees for this assignment will only be affected upon satisfactory completion of services to UNICEF’s satisfaction and certification to that effect by the Supervisor of this assignment.

Cost Estimations

Please include the financial proposal in USD (inclusive of all taxes).

The financial proposal shall be submitted in USD and must include the consultancy fee, the communication costs and all other individual expenses or applicable costs. The financial proposal must be broken down per deliverable.

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Social Sciences, Public Administration, International Law, International Relations or other related disciplines.
• At least eight years of progressively responsible professional work experience in humanitarian action at the national and international levels and in administration.
• Knowledge and understanding of UN humanitarian policy and operations required.
• Prior experience or in-depth knowledge on humanitarian policy, protection, and operational issues is required.
• Experience with inter-agency humanitarian processes is desirable.
• Fluency in English is required. Fluency in French is highly desired.

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 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.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

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 also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. 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:

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.