Child Protection Support Officer

UNICEF works in the world's toughest places to reach the most disadvantaged children and adolescents – and to protect the rights of every child, everywhere.

UNICEF Malaysia is a unique country office in that it is an upper middle-income country, but with significant remaining disparities and inequalities where both advocacy and programming approaches are required.

Children in the context of migration: Malaysia hosts the second largest population of migrant children (480,200 reportedly moved to Malaysia within the region in 2019) and refugee and asylum-seeking children (64,801 in October 2025) in the region. Children in the context of migration face challenges accessing essential services in Malaysia, leaving them largely excluded from accessing the child protection system. Children are held in immigration detention (1,899 in September 20246), and mechanisms to enable cross-border child protection are weak. This means that migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking children in Malaysia are at significantly higher risk of violence, abuse and exploitation, while not being adequately protected.

Children in alternative care: Another group of concern are children living in institutional care (often referred to as children’s homes (rumah kanak-kanak), welfare institutions, orphanages, shelters or residential care centers). Global evidence is clear: children growing up in institutional care fare significantly worse across key child development indicators, including nutrition, education and psycho-social well-being, than their peers growing up in a family environment. In Malaysia, many children live in unregistered and unregulated institutional care (including private sector-run centres), with the exact number of children living in institutional care unknown, raising significant child protection concerns including risks of abuse, neglect and exploitation. In a local small-scale study, 73% of children in institutional care had a living parent who was contactable and 30% reported poverty or divorce as the reason for entering care.1 Efforts to support families at risk of separation and expand family-based care options need to be expanded so that every child can thrive in their own family or in family-based alternative care.

UNICEF Malaysia works in partnership with the Government of Malaysia, focusing on quality evidence generation, evidence-based advocacy, modeling solutions and policy reform, supported by alliances of civil society, media, academia, and think tanks. Come join us to create a Malaysia where every child can dream big and reach their full potential!

Under the general supervision of the Child Protection Specialist (Migration and Alternative Care), the UNV will work across the Child Protection Team and the wider UNICEF Country Office in:
• Working closely with the Child Protection Specialist (Migration and Alternative Care) on evidence generation, advocacy, modelling solutions and policy reform in regard to child protection for children in the context of migration and alternative care.
• Playing a leading role in establishing and mobilising Malaysia’s first care leavers network for advocacy – empowering young people who grew up in the alternative care system to inform policy solutions and ensure they are grounded in care leavers’ lived realities.
• Conducting research and developing briefs and materials on other key areas of child protection (such as child justice, child online protection, and social service workforce strengthening), including international best practise and country case studies.
• Assisting the Child Protection Team in the conceptualisation, organization, coordination, logistics, and documentation of meetings, workshops and events as needed.
• Assisting the Child Protection Team in the monitoring of political developments as they pertain to child rights and child protection, such as monitoring parliamentary actions including parliamentary questions.
• Developing communications and advocacy materials related to child protection for internal and external purposes such as PowerPoint presentations, infographics, data visualisation, fact sheets or content for social media platforms.
• Assisting in the drafting, review and translation of documents and correspondence from Bahasa Malaysia to English (or vice versa).
• Any other related tasks as required or assigned by the supervisor.

Furthermore, UN Volunteers are encouraged to integrate the UN Volunteers programme mandate within their assignment and promote voluntary action through engagement with communities in the course of their work. As such, UN Volunteers should dedicate a part of their working time to some of the following suggested activities:
• Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take an 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;
• Provide annual and end of assignment self-reports on UN Volunteer actions, results, and opportunities.
• 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.

Results/Expected outputs:

As an active UNICEF Malaysia Child Protection team member, efficient, timely, responsive, and high–quality support rendered to the team and its beneficiaries in the performance of her/her functions, including:
• Support for high-quality programming and advocacy on alternative care and children in the context of migration, and other areas of child protection as needed.
• Support for the establishment of Malaysia’s first care leavers network for advocacy.
• Documenting and sharing lessons learned and best practices.
• Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD) perspective is systematically applied, integrated and documented in all activities throughout the assignment
• The development of the UNV’s capacity through coaching, mentoring and formal on-the-job training.