Child Protection Officer (Gender-based violence in emergencies)

UNICEF, also known as the United Nations Children's Fund, is a United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. The agency is among the most widespread and recognizable social welfare organizations in the world, with a presence in 192 countries and territories. UNICEF's activities include providing immunizations and disease prevention, administering treatment for children and mothers with HIV, enhancing childhood and maternal nutrition, improving sanitation, promoting education, and providing emergency relief in response to disasters.

The fundamental mission of UNICEF is to promote the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything the organization does — in programmes, in advocacy and in operations.


UNICEF Kenya Country Office (KCO) 2022-2026 Country Programme under Outcome 3 aims to ensure that:


By 2026, more children, including adolescents, particularly in deprived areas, are safer and better protected from violence, exploitation abuse, neglect, harm and HIV, including in emergencies.


More specifically, UNICEF has committed to enhance the capacity of government and non- governmental partners to adopt risk-informed approaches to emergency preparedness, planning and response to humanitarian needs for child protection including Gender-Based Violence (GBV) .


UNICEF is providing technical support to the Government to strengthen its capacity for child protection and Gender-based violence in emergencies, including preparedness and response planning as well as mainstreaming disaster risk reduction and resilience building in the emergency response. With recurrent emergencies (floods and drought) in the country, support for the emergency preparedness and response capacity at the national and county level is essential. UNICEF is also implementing child protection programmes in refugee hosting areas, with a view to increasingly working towards bridging the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. This also includes working towards ensuring that UNICEF’s child protection systems strengthening are also informing child protection programmes in the refugee operation.


UNICEF KCO works very closely with government and non-governmental partners to raise awareness and build the capacity of relevant actors in these areas. The specific needs of adolescents in general and the adolescent girl in particular represent a strategic area of focus to build collective impact across the child protection, health and education sectors to address the Triple Threat of adolescent vulnerability to HIV/ AIDS, teenage pregnancies and GBV.


Social and behaviour change strategies leveraging behavioural insights along with community mobilization

approaches are key change strategies of the current country programme. UNICEF strives to mobilise SBC strategies at scale in a way that better understands the belief and value systems, milestone behaviour shifts, leverages local experience knowledge and amplifies local voices and agency.


Overall, this position will contribute towards the implementation of UNICEF’s core commitments for children. The position will provide the National UNV with a unique opportunity to gain experience in child protection and GBV and at the same time work on longer-term child protection systems strengthening.

Under the direct supervision of the Child Protection Specialist (NOC- Garissa based), this post will contribute to the functioning of a county child protection system that prevents and responds to violence, abuse and exploitation of children, including during emergency scenarios.

This UNV will work on a broad spectrum of child protection and GBV issues such as those relating to preparedness and response, but the main focus of this position will be to support the Garissa office in its support the counties of Garissa, Isiolo, Mandera and Wajir by: (1) contributing to the strengthening/integration of gender-based violence and child protection in county level programming; and (2), support the UNICEF Garissa Zonal Office on child protection and GBV programming in the four counties, working closely with the Ministry of Health and local Civil Society Organizations.

The UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:


Support programme planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting


· Contribute to the planning of child protection programmes, including emergency programming

· Monitor programmess through field visits and exchange of information with partners to assess progress, identify bottlenecks, potential problems and child protection risks. Make recommendations accordingly to resolve issues and/or refer to relevant officials for timely resolution.

· Collaborate with inter-agency partners at county level and UNICEF Garissa zonal offices on planning, coordination and implementation of child protection activities. Ensure organizational priorities are fully considered and integrated in development planning and agenda setting.

· Monitor and verify the optimal and appropriate use of programme resources (financial, administrative and other assets) in compliance with organizational rules, regulations, procedures, donor commitments, as well as standards of accountability and integrity. Ensure timely reporting and liquidation of funds advanced to implementing partners.

· Support the implementation of the Child Protection Section annual workplan and the office Annual Management Plan. This will also entail promoting visibility and advocacy for the protection and well-being of children, including in humanitarian context.

· Contribute to integrating Child protection and GBV with other sectors such as Health, Nutrition, WASH, Education and Social Policy and protection including cross- cutting issues i.e. gender, social behaviour change, Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), PSEA, advocacy as well as enhancing cross-sectoral coordination and collaboration


Provide technical and operational support for programme implementation


· Undertake field monitoring visits and collect and share reports with child protection staff in UNICEF Garissa Zonal Office and Nairobi.

· Report on critical issues, bottlenecks, and potential risks for timely action to achieve results.

· Provide technical support to government counterparts, NGO partners, on the application and understanding of UNICEF policies, strategies, processes and best practices in child protection, to support programme implementation.

· Support child protection program design, planning and implementation interventions with partners, Government counterparts and CP/Gender Technical working group members in line with the humanitarian response plan and UNICEF Kenya’s child protection programming priorities.

· Participate in Reproductive maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health ( RMNCAH) meetings and provide technical support GBV response activities implementation and ensure GBV are reflected within the cluster plans, including the strengthening of GBV services within health facilities, coordination activities and response, referrals.

· Contribute to the development, adaptation, review and rollout of training materials, guidelines, standard operating procedures, and other documents pertaining to child protection in the counties.

· Support capacity-building for child protection frontline workers related activities ,including case management of GBV

· Compile and submit monthly activity work plans, weekly and monthly reports.


Furthermore, UN Volunteers are required to:


· Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark International Volunteer Day);

· Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country.

· Reflect on the type and quality of voluntary action that they are undertaking, including participation in ongoing reflection activities.

· Contribute articles/write-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publications/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.;

· Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly arrived UN Volunteers.

· Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering or encourage relevant local individuals and organizations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technically possible.