Child Protection Home Based Consultant 107 views

Terms of Reference

Child Protection Home Based Consultant

Child protection / SGBV Unit

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is offering a Child Protection Home Based Consultancy thin the Child protection / SGBV Unit under the protection Pillar at the Regional Bureau Nairobi.

The UN Refugee Agency, is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. An unprecedented 79.5 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 26 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. Responding to the protection needs of children is a core component of UNHCR’s protection mandate.

The two Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in the East and Horn of Africa, namely the East Africa Community (EAC) and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) jointly comprise ten Member States: Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Collectively, these countries host the largest refugee and internally displaced populations in Africa – 82% of whom are women and children and are also affected by high levels of forced displacement and mixed movements, both within and outside the sub-region.

In recent years, efforts have been undertaken by the EAC and IGAD to address forced displacement, migration management and child protection in a coordinated way. These efforts have consistently been supported, individually or collectively, by the Regional Child Protection Network (RCPN) – a regional coordination forum comprised of UN agencies and NGOs (DRC, LWF, IOM, IRC, Save the Children, World Vision International, Plan International, ICRC, UNHCR and UNICEF) which aims to strengthen the child protection response in refugee and IDP operations, as well as in situations of mixed movements.

Over the past two years, a number of different workshops, forums and roundtables have been held across the region focusing on the inclusion of refugee children into national systems and either on establishing or reinforcing existing mechanisms to strengthen cross- border child protection mechanisms in the region. The most recent workshop, organized in Nairobi on 6th and 7th November 2019, was organized to follow-up on previous initiatives and provide a forum for the two RECs to share good practices, identify opportunities for closer collaboration and discuss how to address the critical gaps and challenges identified in responding to the needs of refugee and migrant children. The workshop led to the development of a draft roadmap on strengthening national child protection systems and cross border collaboration to respond to the needs of migrant and refugee children in the East and Horn of Africa “herein after the Nairobi roadmap”. The purpose of this consultancy is to support the RCPN to follow up on actions agreed in that roadmap with a focus on inclusion of refugee and migrant children into national child protection system and child friendly procedures for children in mixed movements. This consultancy remains even more relevant in the context as the COVID 19 pandemic as those populations might be at risks of stigmatization and left out of the national response plans.

• Title: Child Protection Consultancy on inclusion of refugee and migrant children into National Child Protection System in the EHOA
• Duty Station: Home based with travel to selected operations Duration: until 31 December 2020
• Contract Type: International Individual Consultant
• Closing date: 13 July 2020
• Start date: ASAP

Organisational context

The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) identifies “the appropriate economic, social and cultural inclusion of refugees” as a local solution pending a durable solution becoming available; and commits states and relevant stakeholders to “contribute resources and expertise, including technical guidance on legal and institutional frameworks that foster the peaceful and productive inclusion of refugees and the well-being of local communities”.

This overall ambition of inclusion is consistent with the Sustainable Development Goal commitment to ‘leave no one behind’, to which UNHCR has committed to contribute. The current consultancy supports this agenda by progressing joint efforts by UNHCR and partners to promote and support inclusion of refugee and migrant children in national child protection systems, and to strengthen those systems – amplifying and strengthening the work done to date jointly by UNICEF, Save The Children, IOM and UNHCR in East Africa to promote inclusion of refugee and migrant children. This work generated two key publications: a mapping of child protection systems in refugee-affected contexts: Bridging the Humanitarian-Development Divide for Refugee Children in Eastern Africa and the Great Lakes Region; and a synthesis of learning from efforts to strengthen inclusion: Inclusion of Refugee Children in National Child Protection Systems: Guidance for Practitioners in East Africa and the EAC IGAD roadmap on strengthening national child protection system for refugee and migrant children and cross border collaboration with the support of the RCPN.

The consultancy will be led from UNHCR’s regional Bureau based in Nairobi in partnership with UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO), IOM regional Office and Save The children regional office and other RCPN partners. UNHCR and UNICEF Regional Office will also work in collaboration with the two HQ Divisions in UNHCR funding the initiative: The Division of Resilience and Solutions, and the Division of International Protection; as well as with UNICEF Child Protection section at HQ level.

The position

UNHCR is seeking to hire a consultant to follow up on commitments made by UNHCR, UNICEF, IOM, Save The Children and RCPN partners to promote and support inclusion of refugee and migrant children into national Child Protection systems and cross border collaboration, in accordance with the outcomes of the November 2019 workshop mentioned above. Overall the consultant (under the lead of UNHCR and UNICEF) will provide support to the RCPN to follow up on the regional initiatives focusing on inclusion of refugee and migrant in national child protection systems and cross border collaboration.

The consultant will report to UNHCR and will coordinate the project with an advisory committee including UNHCR, UNICEF, IOM, Save the Children, IGAD and EAC and key members of the RCPN. They will provide regular updates on the project to the RCPN as required/appropriate.

Duties and responsibilities

Specifically, the consultant will undertake the following tasks:

1. Generation and sharing of knowledge to inform further action

2. Desk review /Mapping of Regional Economic Communities legislations and policies to identify provisions on child protection and inclusive of children in Mixed Movements in the East and Horn of Africa.

3. Organize a regional level workshop in Nairobi with RCPN members and the RECs (EAC and IGAD) to review the implementation the roadmap and identify the milestones towards the end of 2020 (pending the COVID 19 restrictions – remote meetings and bilateral discussions will be organized if physical workshop are not possible).

4. Coordination of road-map implementation

5. Facilitate/support EAC and IGAD member states in finalizing their country plan at national level through meetings with the support of strategic child protection partners and share it in the above regional workshop to discuss cross border implications in collaboration with EAC and IGAD Secretariat (or virtual workshop pending COVID 19 restrictions).

6. Develop a monitoring framework to assess progress against roadmap and EAC and IGAD framework for collaboration.

7. Develop and implement a mid-way webinar and an end of year webinar to share ongoing learning with key stakeholders, including in other regions.

8. Drafting and report writing

9. Document the process undertaken by partners to implement the Nairobi roadmap, and the learning and results generated. Compile these in a report, together with learning and recommendations for next steps including a contribution to RCPN joint publication.

10. Input into global tools on child protection systems under development by UNICEF and UNHCR.

11. Participate in a global level workshop on child protection systems strengthening.

Essential minimum qualifications and professional experience required
The ideal candidate should possess the following:

Education:

● University Degree in International Law, Human Rights, International Development, International Relations, Political or Social Science.

Work Experience:

• 10 or more years of experience in humanitarian programming, including field experience.
• Demonstrated expertise in child protection, including on social system workforce strengthening and case management.
• Ability to exercise sound judgment in a politically sensitive and potentially insecure environment.
• Interagency leadership and coordination.
• Ability to build and maintain key relationships with a diverse range of stakeholders, including government and civil society partners and community members, while remaining politically neutral.
• Proven ability to conceptualize, innovate, plan and execute ideas in national contexts.
• Extensive experience in research and analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to write clearly and succinctly for both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Experience in writing practical, reader-friendly guidance is an asset.
• Capacity to speak and write in French is an asset.

Location

The successful candidate will be home-based.

Conditions

The consultancy is for six months and the start date is in July 2020. It is a full-time role with working hours starting from 8.30am to 5pm Monday to Friday (40 hours per week) and may involve travel to approximately two field operations pending COVID -19 restrictions.