Senior consultant to provide technical assistance to the Parliament supporting Policy and Budget Analysis on Nutrition, Gender including girls’ education, ECD and Child Rights Promotion and

Contract

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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

To learn more about UNICEF work in Rwanda, please visit the country website https://unicef.sharepoint.com/sites/RWA/ or watch this video about UNICEF work in Rwanda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7B91m5Yzoc

How can you make a difference?

Scope of Work

1. Background

Rwanda has made tremendous progress in inclusive socio-economic development. Over the two decades, Rwanda has been among the top ten best performers in economic growth across Africa, with the annual growth between 2000-2019 averaging at 7.5 percent and the country being widely recognized for its inclusive and pro-poor growth policies and strategies. Despite the recently recorded high inflation, Rwanda is among few countries that have demonstrated a fast recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic with the annual growth expected to average 7.6 per cent between 2021 and 2025 (MINECOFIN Budget Framework Paper-2022/23-2024/25).

Rwanda is one of the few countries in Sub Saharan Africa that achieved almost all the Millennium Development Goals, including by substantially reducing Maternal and Infant Mortality as well as meeting the goals on Gender Equality. The population living below the national poverty line reduced from 58.9 per cent in 2000 to 38.1 per cent in 2017 and the share of the population living below extreme poverty line has reduced by more half from 40 per cent in 2000 to 16 per cent in 2017 (NISR, 2018).

Despite impressive achievements over the past two decades, Rwanda is still confronted with a number of social development challenges which include (i) high rate of stunting, (ii) low coverage of Early Child Development (ECD) and Early Childhood Education (ECE) services, (iii) limited access to child protection services including case management and referral mechanism, and most importantly as (iv) a narrowing fiscal space which constrains adequate budget allocations to social sectors (priority sector for children).

The sixth Demographic and Health Survey (DHS 2019/20) shows that the stunting rate stands at 33 per cent among children under 5 years, down from 38 per cent in in 2024/15. However, the stunting rate differs significantly between rural and urban areas population, by the gender of children, by income levels of households and mothers’ education levels.

Through the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1, 2027-2024), the Government of Rwanda has set ambitious goals to eradicate malnutrition and significantly reduce stunting levels among children under five years up to 19%. The Strategy also outlines key Strategies for achieving that goal, including the implementation of a multi sectoral coordination and ensuring/sustaining food security for all households.

Regarding Early Childhood Development, the Government of Rwanda envisages to ensure access to pre-primary education so as to increase pre-primary net enrolment rates to 45% by 2024 up from 25.9% (2020/21). This will be achieved through providing standardized Early Childhood Education schools in all villages through partnership with private sector, communities and putting in place public-private partnership models for ECE and ECD to enhance cost-effective rollout.

To maximize the benefits from efficient utilization of the national budget, the Government of Rwanda has strengthened measures to disclose to the public budget information across the PFM cycle, as way of promoting budget transparency and budget openness. The Open Budget Survey (2021) shows that under budget transparency, Rwanda scored 45/100 up from 39/100 in 2019, and under legislative budget oversight pillar, Rwanda scored 61/100. However, more efforts are still needed to reach international benchmarks of open budget.

Furthermore, political, and institutional factors together shape the environment for policy making and budgetary choices for children and young people, both boys and girls, in addressing nutritional challenges, stunting elimination, fostering ECD access, protecting child from harmful practices and abuse, and other social issues. In addition, sectoral integration, better budget allocations, effective and efficient use of public funds constitute robust instruments to address the above-mentioned social issues.

Most specifically, the role of Parliament is paramount to ensure adequate budget allocation to critical sectors and stronger oversight mechanism to eliminate malnutrition and enhance multi sectoral programming for ECD promotion, child rights protection, and community ownership trough the participation of parents in the efforts to uplift the rights of their children.

It is against the above background that UNICEF and the Parliament of Rwanda are recruiting a national consultant to support the Parliament (Chamber of Deputies through the Rwanda Women Parliamentary Forum/ FFRP) to strengthen the capacity of Members of Parliament and their advisors to conduct a multi sectoral policy and budget analysis, tagging evidence for budget allocation for nutrition and gender, including girls’ education, Early Childhood Development (ECD) and Child Rights Promotion and Protection.

2. Justification

In December 2020, the Parliament through the Rwanda Women Parliamentary Forum (FFRP) and Rwanda Management Institute (RMI) with the support from UNICEF, organized a high-level technical workshop on nutrition budget analysis and tracking. The main objective of the workshop was to strengthen the parliamentarian’s capacity to review and track national resources allocated to programmes fighting malnutrition among children and women. The workshop was attended by more than 105 delegates from both chambers (deputies and Senates). The participants demonstrated the need for continuous engagement and further budget analysis covering nutrition and other priorities areas for children including ECD, child protection.

The national planning and budgeting cycle continue to undergo a series of reforms such as (i) Performance-Based Budget Analysis (PBB), (ii) baseline costing and sectoral budget outlook papers which require specialized and time intensive budget analysis to inform budget scrutiny and hearing by the parliament through various parliamentary commissions and (iii) the need to develop and publish on the website the findings from parliamentary budget analysis and budget hearing.

In October 2022, UNICEF and Parliament signed a first Rolling Work-Plan 2022-2024 which outlines critical interventions guiding their mutual engagement in the medium-term, among which the provision of hands-on technical assistance to analyze policy and budget for nutrition, ECD, Gender including girls’ education and child protection.

3. Summary of key functions/accountabilities

Strengthen Parliament’s capacity through initiating and facilitating development building sessions linked with financing of Nutrition, ECD, Gender, and Child protection financing.

• Support FFRP and the Parliament at large to facilitate capacity building sessions with the Members of Parliament from both chambers (Deputies and Senators) and technical staff in Result-Based Management (RBM), Gender transformative programming, Public Financial Management (PFM), Performance-Based Budgeting and other related emerging topics.
• Identify knowledge sharing opportunities for collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN), the Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC), NCDA and UNICEF.
• Stay abreast of the ongoing PFM reforms and propose a timely learning framework (workshops, public lectures) among the Members of the Parliament (MPs).
• Work closely with FFRP secretariat, technical/senior staff of Parliamentary Committees and key stakeholders including development partners.

Support Parliamentary budget committee to analyze the Budget Framework Paper (BFP) with a particular focus on ECD, Nutrition, Child Protection, Gender including girls’ education and empowerment and disseminate the findings on a website.

• In collaboration with the Parliament senior management, conduct analysis capacity gaps in planning and budget analysis for Nutrition, ECD, gender and girls’ education/empowerment and Child Rights Promotion and Protection and suggest the optimal strategy to fill the gap including leading the development of capacity building strategy.
• In collaboration with the Parliamentary budget committee, and other relevant committees, draft budget analysis guidelines to be used by the parliaments during budget hearing, budget scrutiny and advocacy for more budget.
• In collaboration with the Parliament senior management team, perform a detailed analysis of the Budget Framework Paper (BFP) and its accompanying annexes, and mid-year budget execution reports, to come up with a summarized information which guide the parliamentarian budget hearings and engagement with concerned Ministries, Agencies and Districts.
• Contribute to the development of policy briefs on integrated/multi sectoral budgeting for Nutrition, ECD, Gender including girls’ education/empowerment and Child Rights promotion and protection, in collaboration with UNICEF, NCDA, and other key stakeholders.
• Document the feedback and support the Parliamentary commissions (budget committee, and social committee) to draft actionable resolutions to be submitted to the government for actions including more allocations to the programme with budget need.
• Ensure quality and timely publication on Parliament website the findings from budget analysis including commendations to the Government mainly the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN).
• Provide technical and backstopping support to FFRP secretariat and the Parliament at large on costing the FFRP Strategic Plan 2022-2026.
• Participate in coordination and networking opportunities as relevant
• Regularly participate in external meetings organized by MIGEPROF-NCDA and social sector meetings as may be delegated by Clerk of the Chamber of Deputies.
• Advise the programme management team and draft adequate tools for enhancing communication and information between the Parliament and UNICEF.

Work Assignment Overview

Tasks/Milestone:

• Strengthen Parliament capacity through initiating and facilitating development building sessions linked with financing of Nutrition, ECD, Gender, and Child protection financing. • Support the Parliamentary budget committee to analyze the Budget Framework Paper (BFP) with a particular focus on ECD, Gender, Nutrition, Child Protection, and girl’s education/empowerment.

Deliverables/Outputs:

• Parliamentary budget analysis guidelines developed and availed for use. To be completed by 30 March 2023

• Facilitated capacity building sessions of Parliamentarians from both chambers in in Result-Based Management (RBM) and Public Financial Management (PFM), Performance Based Budgeting and other related emerging topics of financing. To be completed by 30 April 2023

• Detailed BFP analysis produced and presented to the relevant commissions in the Parliament. To be completed by 30 May 2023

• Capacity gap analysis report on planning and budget analysis for Nutrition, ECD, gender and girls’ education/empowerment submitted. To be completed by 30 May 2023

• Feedback report produced and draft report of actionable resolutions submitted to the Parliament. To be completed by 30 June 2023

• Finalized parliamentary policy briefs on integrated budgeting for Nutrition, ECD, Gender and Child Rights promotion and protection for publication on Parliament website. To be completed by 30 July 2023.

• Identified and facilitated knowledge sharing opportunities for collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, the Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC), NCDA and UNICEF. To be completed by 30 August 2023

• Final document of findings including recommendations from parliamentary budget analysis, budget hearing sessions and other analytic works ready for publication on the Website of the Parliament and a wider dissemination. To be completed

Payments: The consultant will be supporting Parliament full time for 6 months and will be paid a monthly fee upon submission of satisfactory progress reports against defined deliverables.

Selection Criteria

Applications shall be assessed based on their technical and financial proposals. Maximum scores for technical and financial applications will be 75% and 25%, respectively.

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Economics, Finance, Development Finance, Public Policy, Public Administration, or other related fields
• At least 8 years of proven experience in national development planning or budgeting, public sector engagement, financial analysis, or development financing.
• Demonstrable ability in developing concise and user-friendly analytical reports/briefs to be used by high level politicians with diverse background.
• Experience in working with senior officials from Government and non-government sector.
• Familiar with of the public sector operations/programmes preferably in social sectors including Nutrition, Early Childhood Development (ECD), gender or Child Rights promotion and protection.
• Advanced capacity to research and synthesize information from a diverse stakeholders and sources.
• Good knowledge of parliament functions and processes.
• Experience with Rwanda’s financing architecture is considered as an asset.
• Fluency and excellent writing skills in English and Kinyarwanda is required.
• Ability to work under tight deadlines.
• Working experience with the UN or other international organizations will be an added advantage.

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.