Child Protection Officer (Emergencies) at UNICEF

Task description

• Under the direct supervision of the Child Protection Specialist (Humanitarian Situations & MHPSS), the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:

Support programme planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting

• Contribute to the planning of child protection programmes including emergency pro-gramming, GBV, MHPSS, and Public Health emergencies components.
• Formulate, design, and prepare programme/project proposals, ensuring alignment with UNICEF’s overall Strategic Plans and the Country Programme, as well as coherence and integration with the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF), regional strategies, and national priorities, plans, and competencies.
• Monitor programmes/projects through field visits and exchange of information with partners to assess progress, identify bottlenecks, potential problems, and child protection risks. Make recommendations accordingly to resolve issues and/or refer to relevant officials for timely resolution.
• Collaborate with inter-agency partners and UNICEF zonal offices on planning and im-plementation of activities. Ensure organizational priorities are fully considered and integrated in development planning and agenda setting.
• Monitor and verify the optimal and appropriate use of programme resources (financial, administrative, and other assets) in compliance with organizational rules, regulations, procedures, donor commitments, as well as standards of accountability and integrity. Ensure timely reporting and liquidation of funds advanced to implementing partners.
• Support the implementation of the Child Protection Section annual work plan and the office Annual Management Plan. This will also entail mobilizing funding in support of planned activities, promoting visibility and advocacy for the protection and well-being of children in humanitarian context
• Contribute to integrating Child protection in emergencies with other sectors such as Health, Nutrition, WASH, Education and Social Policy and protection including cross-cutting issues i.e. gender, communication for development, PSEA, advocacy as well as enhancing cross-sectoral coordination and collaboration

Provide technical and operational support for programme implementation

• Provide technical guidance and operational support to government counterparts, NGO partners, UN system partners on child protection in emergencies and the understand-ing of UNICEF policies, strategies, processes, best practices, and approaches on child protection, GBV, MHPSS, and related issues to support delivery of results for children.
• Seek opportunities to bridge humanitarian and development work by linking UNICEF’s long-term child protection systems strengthening work with child protection in emergencies in order to promote more sustainable interventions and risk informed pro-grammes.
• Participate in child protection programme meetings, including programme development and contingency planning discussions on emergency preparedness in the country counties, to provide technical and operational information, advice, and support.
• Coordinate monitoring, evaluation, and reporting on programme results for the section and develop harmonized tools for data collection, consolidation, manipulation, and vis-ualization. Collect and consolidate data for humanitarian and donor proposals and re-ports and internal bi-annual reporting exercises.
• Work with the Child Protection Specialist in strengthening national and county level child protection in emergency working groups for effective coordination and leverag-ing of resources.
• Support the Child Protection Specialist in strengthening UNICEF’s resilience-building initiatives in order to achieve sustainable and resilient child protection systems including child-friendly communities through continuous engagement with county govern-ments.

Support child protection capacity building including in emergencies

• Facilitate the designing of evidence-based, integrated programmes that enable UNICEF to be more community responsive at scale.
• Work with UNICEF staff, government counterparts, and partners to coordinate and de-velop projects and identify opportunities within UNICEF for cross-sectoral information sharing, programming, and technical support
• Support capacity building of relevant stakeholders and service providers on CP, GBV, and MHPSS by developing and/or contextualizing training materials and implementing relevant training sessions. Support implementation of procedures to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation (PSEA)
• Support the mainstreaming of Children Rights into the county governments DRR strat-egies and response plans.
• Keep abreast, research, benchmark, and implement best practices in child protection management and information systems. Assess, institutionalize, and share best prac-tices and knowledge learned.

Required experience

• 3 years of experience in one or more of the following areas is required: program management, social work, child protection, GBV, mental health and psychosocial support, adolescent programming, public health emergencies programming, development and/or humanitarian work, programme planning and management or any other related field.
• Prior experience in child protection, GBV, community development, or social work in a developing country is an advantage.

Experience Description:

• Experience in child protection, GBV, social work programming (or other areas mentioned above)
• Good understanding of the humanitarian response especially in displacement/refugee contexts
• Demonstrated experience in program management including program quality, results tracking, program documentation, knowledge management
• Good analytical skills and understanding and experience in manipulating data, generating visual tools, and analyzing information.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills.
• Good communication skills (written, and oral) in English. Knowledge of Swahili and other languages are spoken in Kenya welcome