Social Policy & Development Specialist

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Description

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To make a difference, the incumbent shall be responsible for following key strategic functions, accountabilities and related duties/ tasks;

Analysis of the development context and emerging development issues in the province to position UNICEF in the advancement of children’s rights

• Undertake robust analysis of emerging development contexts including the macroeconomic, social, political, cultural and political economy issues and dynamics, structures, norms and power relations and how they affect the development, implementation and financing of social sector policies, laws, and to optimize impacts on children especially the most vulnerable.

Improving use of public financial resources for children

• Facilitate and undertake budget analysis to inform UNICEF’s advocacy and technical assistance to the departments responsible for Finance, planning and budget, and social sector ministries / departments to improve equitable allocations for essential services for children.
• Monitor and update current information on provincial budgeting and spending patterns for social programs and decentralization status of social service on an ongoing basis to support advocacy for greater public resource and budget allocations for social development, the prioritization of resource allocation for children and universal coverage of essential services for children, to ensure that they reflect best interest of children.
• Undertake and build 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.

Strengthening social protection coverage and impact for children

• Support the development of social protection policies, legislation and programmes with attention to increasing coverage of and impact on children, with special attention the most marginalized. Identify, generate and present evidence to support this goal in collaboration with partners.
• Promote strengthening of integrated social protection systems, providing technical support to partners to improve the design of cash transfers and child grants and improve linkages with other social protection interventions such as health insurance, public works and social care services as well as complementary services and intervention related to nutrition, health, education, water and sanitation, child protection and HIV.
• Undertake improved monitoring and research around social protection impact on child outcomes and use of data and research findings for strengthening programme results.

Improving data on child poverty & vulnerability for increased use for policy and programme action

• Support 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.
• Provide timely, regular data-driven analysis for effective prioritization, planning, and development; facilitate results-based management for planning, adjusting, and scaling-up specific social policy initiatives to reduce child poverty.

Strengthened advocacy and partnerships for child-sensitive social policy

• Support correct and compelling use of data and evidence on the situation of children and coverage and impact of child focused services – in support of the social policy programme and the country programme overall.
• Establish effective partnerships with the Government, bilateral and multilateral donors, NGOs, civil society and local leaders, the private sector, and other UN agencies to support sustained and proactive commitment to the Convention of the Rights of the Child and to achieve global UN agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
• Identify other critical partners, promote awareness and builds capacity of partners, and actively facilitate effective collaboration within the UN family.

UNICEF Programme Management

• Manage and coordinate technical support around child poverty, social protection, public finance and governance ensuring it is well planned, monitored, and implemented in a timely fashion so as to adequately support scale-up and delivery. Ensure risk analysis and risk mitigation are embedded into overall management of the support, in close consultation with UNICEF programme sections, Cooperating Partners, and governments.
• Support and contribute to effective and efficient planning, management, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of thematic, cross sectoral and the evaluation of the country programme with focus on provincial priorities. Ensure that the social planning project enhances policy dialogue, planning, supervision, technical advice, management, training, research and support; and that the monitoring and evaluation component strengthens monitoring and evaluation of the social sectors and provides support to sectoral and decentralized information systems.
• Support CFO and provincial sections in maximizing results for children through convergence and integration of programme actions.
• leveraging external resources through promoting non-transactional partnerships and collaboration with other stakeholders

Lead the Gender Equality Agenda

• Lead UNICEF work on gender equality in the field office through engagement with partners and supporting them to implement gender accelerators, enabling UNICEF to deliver its ambition to integrate gender quality outcomes across its all its programmes and to achieve gender equality targets.

Support to the Evaluation and Research function at PCO

• Support programme sections to identify strategic public sector initiatives and projects for indepth research and impact evaluations, lessons learned, and knowledge building.
• Provide technical and coordination support to the social policy section in the evaluation activities including close coordination with the government and implementing partners during data collection.
• Coordinate and provide technical support for any studies planned by the social policy section.

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

• An advanced university degree in one of the following fields is required: Economics, Political Science, Public Policy, Social Sciences, International Relations, Political Science, or another relevant technical field.
• A minimum of five years of relevant professional work experience around policy, research, advocacy program is required.
• Solid understanding of the development context in Pakistan, including the country’s decentralized governance structure.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language or a local language is an asset.

Source: https://jobs.unicef.org/cw/en-us/job/571616

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