Social Policy Support Officer

Details

Mission and objectives

UNICEF was established in 1946 to supply emergency relief to millions of children suffering in the aftermath of World War II. The organization still functions to ease the suffering of millions of children in emergency situations across the world. UNICEF also focuses on the protection and promotion of child rights, working for the survival, protection, education and healthy development of every child.
UNICEF has worked in Jordan since 1952 to promote and protect the rights of children. In the following decades, significant progress has been achieved for children. Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2013, UNICEF has significantly increased its operation to respond to the challenges faced by both refugee children and those in the communities where they live.
Building on the lessons learned from this emergency response, UNICEF Jordan moved to a vulnerability approach in 2018 – supporting interventions that target the most vulnerable children in the country, regardless of their nationality.

Context

The UN Volunteer will support the UNICEF MEANRO Social Policy team, specifically the Social Policy Specialist (Public Finance), in the following areas:
• Monitoring socio-economic and policy trends and evidence generation related to MENA’s public finance and social spending trends.
• Technical support to UNICEF Country Offices (COs) in social policy analysis and ad-vocacy focused on technical support and guidance for Public Finance for Children (PF4C).
• Facilitating knowledge-sharing among COs in the region on PF4C, including reviewing and disseminating key emerging research in policy measures and promising practices.
• Developing and conducting training sessions in selected PF4C areas.
The UN Volunteer may join Social Policy Specialist (Public Finance) in his country/field missions to provide technical assistance and/or training upon request.

Task description

Under the direct supervision of UNICEF’s MENARO Social Policy Specialist (Public Finance), the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:
• Support and contribute to technical support in modelling and monitoring socio-economic and policy trends and evidence generation related to public finance and social spending trends in MENA.
• Contribute to creating a regional database by collecting and compiling public finance and socio-economic data from countries in the MENA region to inform the RO’s evidence-based advocacy and technical assistance.
• Support and contribute to creating a regional human and institutional resources data-base of critical institutions, thinkers, and potentially valuable consultants in MENA’s social and economic policy areas.
• Contribute to the RO’s work on building capacity of COs (social policy and other pro-gramme teams) by supporting planning and facilitation of training workshops in PF4C and multi-stakeholder dialogues on child-responsive planning and budgeting.
• Support and contribute to reviewing the RO’s research and policy products (including regional background papers/reports on policy measures and promising practices in MENA) and CO’s policy and knowledge products (including budget briefs, fiscal space analyses, etc.).