UNICEF seeks to engage a consultant to provide technical, coordination, and documentation support across selected countries under “Programme guidance to Protect the Nutrition of Women and Adolescent Girls in Humanitarian Settings.” The guidance is intended to be used alongside existing humanitarian assessments, food security analyses, and response mechanisms.

Contract Duration: 7 months

Working arrangement: Remote/Home-based

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built. We offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, nutrition

Background

More than one billion adolescent girls and women globally suffer from undernutrition, largely due to deficiencies in essential micronutrients and anemia, as well as underweight and short stature. Pregnant and breastfeeding women and adolescent girls are at heightened nutritional risk compared to their non-pregnant and non-breastfeeding peers. In humanitarian and emergency settings, these risks are further exacerbated by exposure to violence, disruption of essential services and livelihoods, weakened social support systems, and widening inequalities.

In the context of the global food and nutrition crisis, UNICEF estimates that the number of malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women and adolescent girls increased by 25 per cent between 2020 and 2022 across 12 crisis-affected countries.1 These trends underscore the urgent need for more systematic, coordinated, and context-appropriate approaches to protect and improve the nutrition of women and adolescent girls in humanitarian settings.

In 2023, UNICEF launched a flagship report, “Undernourished and Overlooked: A Global Nutrition Crisis in Adolescent Girls and Women” which informs that malnutrition in pregnancy, especially anaemia significantly increases the risk of maternal mortality, obstetric complications and low birthweight infants and pregnant women and adolescents from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to be at risk of malnutrition; introducing a dangerous intergenerational cycle of malnutrition that is hard to break. Consequently, in March 2024, UNICEF launched the Maternal Nutrition Action Plan, aiming to reach 16 million pregnant women across 16 priority countries with an essential package of services, by the end of 2026.

In 2024, UNICEF, WFP, and partners with the Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC) released the “Programme guidance to Protect the Nutrition of Women and Adolescent Girls in Humanitarian Settings.” The guidance is intended to be used alongside existing humanitarian assessments, food security analyses, and response mechanisms. It focuses on the specific actions and programmatic adaptations required to address the nutritional needs of pregnant and breastfeeding women and adolescent girls across acute emergencies, protracted crises, and recovery contexts. The guidance is designed for country-level implementation.

To support the application of the programme guidance, UNICEF seeks to engage a consultant to provide technical, coordination, and documentation support across selected countries.

Purpose of Assignment:

The purpose of this consultancy is to support countries in the adoption of guidance on women’s and girls’ nutrition in humanitarian settings. The consultant will facilitate consultations, complete mapping and analysis of uptake of the recommendations from the guidance, assist in the development of country adoption roadmaps, and contribute to documentation and learning to inform uptake in other countries.

Scope of Work:

Under the overall supervision of the UNICEF Centre of Excellence (CoE) - Global Nutrition Practice and jointly guided by UNICEF and WFP global teams, the consultant will undertake the following tasks:

  1. Country Selection and Consultation
  1. In collaboration with the UNICEF and WFP global teams, identify three countries with humanitarian contexts for initial engagement. The selection of countries will align with requests received from countries for support in Emergencies and/or maternal nutrition in humanitarian contexts.
  2. Plan and facilitate initial consultations with Country Office teams and national cluster/sector coordination mechanisms on the consultancy, its objectives, and proposed activities.
  1. Mapping and Analysis of Uptake
  1. Conduct the mapping of the current state of nutrition data analysis, programming and monitoring for women and girls in humanitarian situations, in each selected country.
  2. Map existing intervention packages, including monitoring and evaluation, capacity development, supplies, and service delivery platforms used across the selected countries.
  3. Apply a programme cycle approach to identify gaps, bottlenecks, and opportunities for integrating the guidance into existing systems and responses, with special consideration on risk mitigation strategies to ensure services are safe and accessible to all women and girls.
  4. Validation of findings and recommendations with stakeholders in-country.
  1. Documentation, Knowledge Management and Technical Assistance support
  1. Document lessons learned and prepare a webinar to inform next steps and expansion to additional countries.
  2. Provide technical assistance to countries and develop country adoption roadmaps.
  3. Develop a case study and/or operational tools to guide countries on the operationalization of the guidance.
  4. resource mobilization strategies to cover the needs for protecting women’s and girls’ nutrition in humanitarian contexts.

How can you make a difference? 

If you would like to know more about this consultancy assignment, please review the Terms of Reference here:  Download File ToR Consultancy to uptake Guidance on Women and Girls Nutrition in Humanitarian Settings TMS.pdf

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

Minimum requirements: (qualifications/experience/expertise/skills)

  • Education: Master’s degree in nutrition, public health, international development, humanitarian studies, or a related field.
  • Work Experience: 
  • Minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible professional experience in nutrition programming, with a strong focus on humanitarian, fragile, or emergency contexts.
  • Demonstrated experience working on maternal, adolescent, and women’s nutrition, including programming for pregnant and breastfeeding women in crises.
  • Proven experience supporting multi-country or regional initiatives and facilitating structured, multi-stakeholder consultation and adoption processes.
  • Strong familiarity with UN humanitarian coordination mechanisms and programming cycles; prior experience working with UNICEF or other UN agencies is a strong advantage.
  • Skills: 
  • Excellent analytical, facilitation, and writing skills, with a track record of producing high-quality technical reports and synthesis documents.

For every Child, you demonstrate Care

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust and Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

UNICEF promotes and advocates for the protection of the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything it does and is mandated to support the realization of the rights of every child, including those most disadvantaged, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, minority, or any other status.

UNICEF encourages applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic backgrounds, and from people with disabilities, including neurodivergence. We offer reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. throughout the recruitment process. If you require any accommodation, please submit your request through the accessibility email button on the UNICEF Careers webpage Accessibility UNICEF. Should you be shortlisted, please get in touch with the recruiter directly to share further details, enabling us to make the necessary arrangements in advance.

UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.

Qualified candidates are invited to submit the following documents via the online recruitment portal (Talent Management System):

Remarks:  If the TOR or financial proposal documents are not visible on certain recruitment platforms, please visit our official page Vacancies | UNICEF Careers.

UNICEF does not charge a processing fee at any stage of its recruitment, selection, and hiring processes (i.e., application stage, interview stage, validation stage, or appointment and training). UNICEF will not ask for applicants’ bank account information.

All UNICEF positions are advertised, and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.

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