Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF

Job Number: 513958
Duration: 180 days
Work Type : Temporary Appointment

For Every Child

• Despite substantial efforts to advance children's rights, children still face poverty, disadvantage, and the impact of the crisis.

How can you make a difference?

• Under the guidance of the Child Protection Chief, the international staff will contribute to the advocacy for public budget allocation to sufficiently finance a functioning child protection system in UNICEF Nigeria focus states and key Federal agencies.
• Children have the right to be protected from all forms of abuse, violence, exploitation and neglect.
• The challenge is how to best support Governments to realise this right.
• In recent years, the global community has increasingly recognised that (i) the number of children experiencing abuse, violence, exploitation and neglect is significant, and is rising in some areas (2008 Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Children) (ii) efforts to address child protection issues have been poorly coordinated and resourced, with a focus on stand-alone / single issue based projects (such as on sexual exploitation, child trafficking, street children, child labour etc) with limited sustainability; and (iii) children face multiple risks – abuse can be combined with exploitation and/or abandonment, for example, yet many programs are designed to address a single risk.  Such single-issue programmes have been ineffective at producing sustained change.
• There is now a recognition that children’s issues must be addressed holistically with preventive and response programmes dealing with the array of poverty, protection and rights issues in tandem, rather than in isolated silos, and that in order to achieve sustained change a system building approach to reform is essential.

Overall Objective of the Temporary Position

• The purpose of this temporary appointment is to manage the Public Financing for Child Protection programme component under Output 6.1 of UNICEF Nigeria Child Protection Rolling Work Plan 2018-2019 with the Federal Government of Nigeria.
• The post holder is responsible for lading the advocacy efforts and provision of technical support to the Government and Houses of Assembly at federal and focus states to increase public budget allocation, release and expenditure on basic child protection services.

This will involve:

• Financial Benchmark Report/s and Economic Burden of VAC report printed, disseminated and officially launched
• Related advocacy materials finalized, printed and disseminated.
• Advocacy strategy developed and key high level advocacy meetings conducted.
• Team of international and national consultants recruited and managed.
• Child protection budget lines included by key selected Federal and State agencies in their submissions for 2019 cycle.
• Budgetary guidelines developed by the consultancy firm/individual consultants to fund the child protection services validated by key agencies at Federal and State level.
• DCTs and direct payments to partners timely submitted, processed and liquidated.
• Payments to the consultancy firm/individual expert consultants timely processed.

Requirements
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have:

• An advanced university degree in Social Science, Economic sciences, public finances or related fields (Masters or equivalent level)
• A minimum of five years (5) of relevant professional experience in Child Protection and/or Social Policy programme management
• Understanding of the international framework for child protection
• Excellent organizational and planning skills
• Excellent policy advocacy skills
• Strong communication skills, verbal and written
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• 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 core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.