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, …. An opportunity

The Programme Group (PG) provides global programme leadership to achieve results for the most disadvantaged and excluded children everywhere within the overall framework of the UNICEF Strategic Plan 2022–2025 and in response to the universal scope of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). PG leads UNICEF’s global programmatic vision to provide countries in all types of contexts with technical assistance (working closely with ROs) to boost programme excellence as well as support to leverage evidence, partnerships, and innovations that can be adapted and taken to scale in different country contexts – including humanitarian settings and fragile and crisis affected settings in low, middle-, and high-income countries.

Within the PG, a small core team led by the Director, Programmes facilitates cross-programme teams around UNICEF’s normative mandates (gender, human rights, disabilities) and life course priorities (including the focus on early childhood and adolescence). This team fosters and champions special programming areas, programming in high-income countries; change strategies, such as systems strengthening; emerging programme priorities, such as mental health; as well as advocacy as a programme strategy. A key priority has been and will increasingly be to support high quality programmes in humanitarian action, deliberate support to COs in building resilience through the humanitarian-development-peace nexus approach.

Purpose of the post

The Senior Programme Specialist works under the overall guidance of the Director and Deputy Director, Programme Group. He/she is responsible for the coordination of effective, high quality and relevant contribution to prevention, preparedness, response, resilience, and transitions through systems and localized approaches in fragile and conflict affected settings.

How can you make a difference?

Provision of guidance and technical assistance

• Coordinate the use of assets across PG and inter-divisionally to ensure that country offices receive timely and high quality technical assistance in developing and implementing appropriate resilience promoting programmes in fragile and conflict affected settings.
• Ensure that technical assistance as well as tools/guidance/policies developed for the organization are supported by knowledge management through data collection and analysis, evidence generation exercises; participate in information exchange through regular inter-agency and other knowledge platforms.

Promotion of policies, standards and partnership

• Lead the development of policies and strategies in areas of migration and displacement, urbanization, climate informed prevention and recovery, and other emerging areas that advance results in building sustainable and resilience institutions.
• Oversee the adaptation of programmatic approach according to new strategies, policies and the evolving humanitarian context and their application to countries emerging from acute crises to build resilience in the long term.
• Ensure high quality contributions into the development of joint policies and technical guidelines for provision of humanitarian response and countries affected by fragility, crises and/or countries emerging from acute crises in coordination with other UN agencies, relevant NGOs and institutions.

Representation & Communication

• Develop proposals and engage with donors to fundraise for programming in fragile and conflict affected settings and high quality programmatic strategies and interventions to prevent and mitigate the impact of shocks on children and systems.
• Position UNICEF – working with country and regional leadership – to support effective transitions and recovery after crises and build resilience in communities and institutions.
• Represent UNICEF at external fora related to prevention, transitions, resilience and recovery ; and advise the PG Deputy Director, Director and the DED Humanitarian and Supply in influencing relevant external interagency fora and conferences.
• Shape communication and advocacy efforts on prevention, transition and recovery in close collaboration with EMOPS, DGCA and other relevant Divisions and Groups.

Management and Supervision

• Ensure effective management and supervision of the organization’s human resources including through matrixed ways of working across HQ Divisions.
• Produce timely and high quality reporting and analysis on utilization of resources and impact of programmatic interventions to inform future partnerships.

National and Local Capacity Building/Sustainability

• Advise HQ Divisions, ROs and COs in developing programmes for the purpose of capacity building and programme sustainability in fragile and conflict affected settings.
• Ensure the building or reinforcing of the commitment and institutional capacities of the national and local partners, taking a strategic approach to the identification of these partners and partnerships.

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Social Sciences, International Relations, Political Science or any other related field is required.
• A minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience in international development, programme management and coordination in complex and fragile environments heavily affected by conflict and/or disasters is required.
• Prior experience in broad multisectoral knowledge and field experience in development and humanitarian action, preferably including with UN agencies is desired.
• Demonstrated strong organizational and inter-personal skills.
• 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 values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability (CRITA), and sustainability

Please click Here to view UNICEF’s core values and Here to view our competency framework.

UNICEF competencies required for this post are.

• Nurtures, Leads and Manages People (3)
• Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (2)
• Works Collaboratively with others (2)
• Builds and Maintains Partnerships (2)
• Innovates and Embraces Change (2)
• Thinks and Acts Strategically (2)
• Drive to achieve impactful results (2)
• Manages ambiguity and complexity (2)

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 including everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks, and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.

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 is committed to promoting the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.

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.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance.

Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments may also be subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid).

Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF.

UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

“UNICEF only considers higher educational qualifications obtained from an institution accredited/recognized in the World Higher Education Database (WHED), a list updated by the International Association of Universities (IAU) / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The list can be accessed at http://www.whed.net/”

For more information on remuneration and benefits, please visit UNICEF’s Entitlements’ page.  If you would like to find estimates for entitlements, you may use the online Salary Estimate Calculator

• Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.
• Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service