Social Protection Officer, NO-2 at the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Contract

Job Title: Social Protection Officer, NO-2

Job no: 577476
Location: Abuja (covering Abia, Benue, Oyo and Sokoto)
Contract type: Temporary Appointment
Level: NO-2
Location: Nigeria
Categories: Social Policy

How can you Make a Difference?
Background:

• UNICEF’s core mission is to advocate for the rights of every child, with a focus on equity and reaching the most disadvantaged children and families. This commitment is aligned with UNICEF’s equity strategy, which emphasizes ensuring that every child has the opportunity to survive, develop, and reach their full potential without discrimination. For UNICEF, equity means that all children have an opportunity to survive, develop and reach their full potential, without discrimination, bias or favoritism. There is growing evidence that investing in the health, education and social protection of a society’s most disadvantaged citizens — addressing inequity — not only will give all children the opportunity to fulfill their potential but also will lead to sustained growth and stability of countries towards realizing the human rights of all children, which is the universal mandate of UNICEF, as outlined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, while also supporting the equitable development of nations.
• In Nigeria, the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing insecurity has exposed and exacerbated systemic weaknesses within the social protection systems, highlighting the critical need for strengthened social protection mechanisms. The Government of Nigeria, guided by the National Social Protection Policy (NSPP revised 2023) and the Medium Term National Development Plan (2021 – 2025), is committed to advancing social protection for all. However, challenges such as low expenditure, weak institutional capacities and coordination framework, and complex administrative mechanisms persist.
• UNICEF is committed to supporting the Government of Nigeria in addressing these challenges through system strengthening, shock-responsive social protection, and resource mobilization, with a focus on improving the coverage and impact of social protection programs for children. Hence, UNICEF and ILO have developed a Join program with EU financial assistance  to support “Sustainable Social Protection System in Nigeria”. This joint program focuses on Federal and four states namely Abia, Benue, Oyo and Sokoto.

Purpose of the Assignment

• Under the general supervision of the Social Protection Specialist in Abuja, the Social Protection officer is accountable for providing technical support and assistance in the implementation of the Joint program.
• The position located in Sokoto field office, will support social protection programming and related advocacy to deliver concrete and sustainable results across the four states (Abia, Benue, Oyo and Sokoto).
• This includes programmes aimed at (a) strengthening functional State Social Register including expansion to integrate more poor and vulnerable people; (b) improving capacity of staff and policy makers on social protection; (c) strengthen state social protection policy and legal framework with the development of a social protection policy and bill, aimed at realizing the rights to social protection for consideration by the National and State Assembly; (c) enhance Social Protection Management Information System that is interoperable at the vertical, horizontal level and across social sector with focus on health and education. This position encompasses both direct programme work with government and civil society partners as well as linkages and support to teams working on social protection.

Major Responsibilities
Strengthening social protection coverage and impact for children:

• Supports strengthening of integrated social protection systems, providing technical support to partners to improve expansion of social registry and design of child grants and improve linkages with social services health insurance, public works, and social care services.
• Supports 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.  Identifies, generates and presents evidence to support this goal in collaboration with partners.
• Supports improved monitoring and research around social protection impact on child outcomes, and use of data and research findings for strengthening programme results.

Improving use of public financial resources for social protection for children:

• Supports the identification of policy options for improved domestic financing of child-sensitive social protection interventions.
• Undertakes social protection budget analysis to inform UNICEF’s advocacy and technical assistance to Ministries of Finance, planning commissions and social sector ministries to improve equitable allocations for essential services for children.

Strengthening capacity of local governments to plan, budget, consult on and monitor child-focused social services:

• Where national decentralization processes are taking place, collaborates with central and local authorities to improve planning, budgeting, implementation, consultation and social protection accountability processes so that decisions and child-focused service delivery more closely respond to the needs of local communities.
• Collaborates with the central and local authorities to strengthen capacity on quality data collection, analysis, planning, implementation, coordination, monitoring of social protection services, with emphasis on community participation and accountability.

UNICEF Programme Management:

• Helps manage and coordinate technical support around 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. Ensures risk analysis and risk mitigation are embedded into overall management of the support, in close consultation with UNICEF programme sections, Cooperating Partners, and governments.
• contributes to effective and efficient planning, management, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the country programme. Ensures that the social protection 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.

Monitoring and Reporting:

• Provide technical support and guidance to UNICEF teams and government counterparts on data management best practices.
• Regularly monitor program consistency and data quality to ensure compliance with project management standards.
• Prepare and present data-driven reports to support project reporting
• Provide timely and accurate data insights to inform the design, implementation, and evaluation of social protection initiatives.

Minimum requirements
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have:
Education:

• An Advanced University Degree (master’s or higher) in Social Sciences, Administration, Public Policy, or a related field.

Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years of professional experience in design, program management, system strengthening, data management and analysis, and capacity building within social protection or related fields, preferably with experience in a humanitarian context.
• Experience working on social protection is considered as a strong asset.

Technical Skills:

• Proficiency in social protection system design and programme implementation
• Experience with data management and analysis for social protection
• Capacity-building skills related to social protection
• Knowledge of the social protection landscape in Nigeria is highly desirable.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language or a local language is an asset.

Application Closing Date
3rd December, 2024.