National Consultancy: Nutrition & Child Development Consultant, 22 months, (home based in Lebanon with visits to UNICEF Office)

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, nutrition

Background: 

Lebanon is experiencing a growing triple burden of malnutrition (stunting, micronutrient deficiencies, and obesity) among children and adolescents and high rates of undernutrition among women. Despite this unprecedented progress, the burden of poor child nutrition and development is increasing in Lebanon due to the protracted refugee and economic crisis. Children under five years of age in the most deprived areas are not growing and developing well because of poor care, malnutrition – undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight – and three in four children are living in food poverty, without the minimum diet they need to grow healthy. This’s wile 30 to 40 per cent of school age children and adolescents (specially girls), are affected by obesity and or anemia.

One of the main drivers of this is extremely poor dietary patterns of children and adolescents; 70% of children are deprived of the best start in life (Exclusive breast-feeding) and 3 in 4 children under age 5 experienced child food poverty, which means their diets included only four food groups at most. Even more alarmingly, over 1 in 4 children under age 5 live in severe food poverty, meaning, the diets of 85,000 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian refugees’ children, include at most two food groups, a few spoonsful of porridge and a small cup of milk may be their only meal of the day, every day, leaving them highly vulnerable to severe stunting and wasting – the most life-threatening forms of undernutrition in early childhood.

Guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UNICEF Nutrition Strategy 2020-2030 and the national nutrition startgey in Lebanon, UNICEF Lebanon Country Programme aims to prevent maternal and child malnutrition in all its forms across the life cycle and ensure the early detection and treatment of children suffering from life-threatening malnutrition. Our Strategy calls for a systems approach to improving maternal and child nutrition by supporting the delivery of nutrition-specific actions through five key systems: the food system and the health, water and sanitation, education, and social protection systems.

The Nutrition consultant provides professional technical, operational, and administrative support to implementation of the projects related to maternal nutrition, nutrition of school age children and adolescents through multiple systems (Health, Food Systems, Education and Social Protection).

How can you make a difference? 

1. Roll out of the school nutrition and meal assessment in partnership with MEHE, WFP, and MOPH
2. Promotion of nutrition behaviors and school nutrition environment
3. Adolescent girls and maternal Nutrition
4. Early Childhood Development, capacity developments and coordination
5. Universal Salt Iodization
6. Food Systems for child nutrition: Food marketing for children

To view detailed work assignment expected results, please view the attached document:  2024_NUT_Nutrition and Child Development Consultant_ToR.docx

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

• University Degree in Nutrition or other relevant disciplines with major experience in nutrition projects, master’s degree is preferred.
• A minimum of 4 years of relevant professional experience in nutrition, public health, nutrition programme planning and management, or maternal, infant, and Child health/nutrition care.
• Relevant experience in nutrition programme/project development and management in a UN system agency or organization is an asset.
• Experience in nutrition of school-age children and adolescent and maternal nutrition through multiple platforms is required.
• Experience working on nutrition-sensitive food systems.
• Additional experience and or training in Early Childhood Development is an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language or Arabic language is an asset.
• Experience working in a developing country is considered an asset.

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.