Nutrition Intern

Hardship Level (not applicable for home-based)

H (no hardship)

Family

Internship

2024-08-01

July 29, 2024

Organizational context

The Public Health Section (PHS) in the Division of Resilience Solutions supports UNHCR’s objectives to reduce morbidity and mortality among populations of concern through ensuring access to quality preventive, curative, promotive, rehabilitative, and palliative health services. UNHCR works with partners including governments and NGOs to provide access to health and nutrition services, strengthen national health services and include refugees in national health systems and plans. Within this portfolio, nutrition is a key strategic priority.
Ensuring adequate nutrition throughout the life cycle and eliminating all forms of malnutrition are recognized as integral to fulfilling UNHCR’s protection mandate. Priority areas include prevention of all forms of malnutrition by supporting and advocating for access to healthy and affordable diets and basic services; improvement of maternal, infant and young children diet, practices and services; Management of acute malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies; nutrition data for evidence generation to support advocacy and programming, and systems approach- leveraging on the health, food, water sanitation and hygiene promotion systems in addition to the broader self-reliance livelihoods and social protection options.
UNHCR works with partners including governments and NGOs to achieve these objectives and seeks inclusion and integration of refugees within existing national health systems as much as possible.

Benefits of undertaking this internship assignment include:

 The intern will gain practical understanding of the Public Health work of UNHCR in general and inclusion into national health systems, nutrition in particular, and understand the roles and responsibilities at headquarters, regional and country level.
 Will learn more about the challenges and potential solutions of public health and nutrition programming in refugee contexts.
 Will have a greater understanding of the work across sectors to improve health and nutrition outcomes in refugee contexts.
 Enhance educational experience through practical work assignments.

The position

The intern will support the Public Health Section-Nutrition by maintaining the global nutrition database, collaborating on partnership efforts, and improving knowledge management portals. They will also assist in the section’s reporting requirements. The ideal candidate is a recent graduate or current student with at least two years of undergraduate studies in Human Nutrition with experience in nutrition programs, public health and nutrition database management, and knowledge of data visualization techniques. Strong communication skills and an interest in refugee situations are important, along with the ability to work independently and adaptability.

Duties and responsibilities

The intern will work under the guidance of headquarters Senior Nutrition Officer and other DRS staff to:

• Support the the Senior Nutrition Officer with the maintenance of the global nutrition database including the visualization outputs of the refugee nutrition data including the SENS survey data, nutrition information system core indicators and data contribution to global reports internally and externally e.g., nutrition inputs to the Global Report on Food Crisis.

• Collaborate with the senior nutrition officer in strengthening various partnership collaboration efforts around nutrition including technical working groups on the Global Action Plan on Wasting initiative, Infant and young child feeding core group, healthy diets working group etc.

• Support the Public health section to improve the knowledge management portals including the Community of Practice and SharePoint portal for public health/nutrition and related initiatives.

• Support the public health section in reporting requirements including assisting in reviewing and collating country and regional level reports for global indicator analysis.

• Any other duties as part of the practical understanding of UNHCR’s Public Health work in general.

Minimum qualifications required.

In order to be considered for an internship, candidates must meet the following eligibility criteria:
• Be either a recent graduate (having completed their studies within two years of applying) or a current student in a graduate/undergraduate school programme from a university or higher education facility accredited by IAU/UNESCO; and
• Have completed at least two years of undergraduate studies in Human Nutrition.

Desirable qualifications and skills

• Human Nutrition qualification
• Prior experience in nutrition, maternal and Infant and Young Child Feeding/ Nutrition; Management of Acute Malnutrition; Nutrition assessment and surveys; Nutrition information systems; food security, public health programming is very desirable.
• Public health/nutrition database and knowledge management
• Experience working with computer software such as MSOffice, nutrition assessment analysis (SMART, ENA, Epi-info); Power BI data visualization techniques.
• Strong interest in refugee situations and in humanitarian and development issues.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English. Knowledge of French, Spanish, Arabic or any other UN language is an asset.
• Good written and oral communication skills with strong interpersonal skills.
• Ability to deal with persons of various cultural and educational backgrounds.
• Ability to work independently, when necessary.
• Flexibility and adaptability.

Conditions

It is a full-time role with working hours starting from 9.00am to 6:00pm Monday to Friday (40 hours per week). The successful candidate will be assigned to support the team in Geneva, Switzerland.
Allowance: Interns who do not receive financial support from an outside party will receive an allowance to partially help to cover the cost of food, local transportation and living expenses.

How to apply

Interested applicants should submit their application through www.unhcr.org/careers.html click on vacancies and search for JR ______.
The UNHCR workforce consists of many diverse nationalities, cultures, languages and opinions. UNHCR seeks to sustain and strengthen this diversity to ensure equal opportunities as well as an inclusive working environment for its entire workforce. Applications are encouraged from all qualified candidates without distinction on grounds of race, colour, sex, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.
UNHCR does not charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process (application, interview, meeting, travelling, processing or training.
We welcome applications from candidates with a refugee or stateless background.

Standard Job Description

Required Languages

English

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Desired Languages

,

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Additional Qualifications

Skills

Education

Certifications

Other information

This position doesn’t require a functional clearance

Home-Based

No