DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS
19 May 2026-23:59-GMT+06:00 Kyrgyzstan Time (Bishkek)WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.
ABOUT WFP
The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.
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WHY JOIN WFP?
WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment.
WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities.
A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe.
We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to the Terms and Conditions section of this vacancy announcement).
JOB TITLE: Programme Policy Officer P3 (Food Systems and Climate Resilience)
TYPE OF CONTRACT: Limited Fixed Term
UNIT/DIVISION: Programme
DUTY STATION (City, Country): Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic
DURATION: 1 July 2026 – 30 June 2027
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BACKGROUND
WFP’s vision is that the Kyrgyz Republic has resilient, inclusive, and shock responsive food and social protection systems that enable all people, especially the most vulnerable, to access healthy diets, sustain livelihoods, withstand climate and crisis shocks, and realize their full human potential, leaving no one behind. Derived from the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework , WFP Country Strategic Plan (2023-27 EN|RU) focuses its human capital development, capacity building and productive asset creation activities to enhance the resilience and livelihoods of the poor and vulnerable, with a focus on food systems strengthening across three core pillars: (i) Social Protection; (ii) Climate Change Adaption, Disaster Risk Management and Emergency Preparedness; and (iii) Schools as platforms for healthy diets. In addition, a contingent emergency response outcome can be activated in case of need.
ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT:
WFP has been supporting the Kyrgyz Republic’s National Development Programme (NDP) 2030 by leveraging its strengths in food security, nutrition, resilience, and logistics through scaling up nutrition sensitive school meals linked to local food procurement, and supporting adaptive, shock responsive social protection systems. WFP has been contributing to food security and rural development by building climate resilient food systems, supporting smallholder farmers and cooperatives, reducing post harvest losses, and integrating anticipatory action and disaster risk reduction in climate affected regions. In addition, WFP has been adding values by enhancing emergency preparedness and logistics capacity, improving food security data and early warning systems to support evidence based policymaking, and helping reduce regional inequalities through targeted interventions — all closely aligned with the NDP priorities on human capital, resilience, digitalization, and inclusive growth.
PURPOSE OF THE ASSIGNMENT
The Programme Policy Officer (PPO) will lead WFP Kyrgyz Republic’s Food Systems and Climate Resilience portfolio as an integrated centre of excellence, providing strategic direction, quality assurance and accountability for delivery of two CSP strategic outcomes. The PPO will lead a multidisciplinary team of 13 staff and drive the design and implementation of scalable programme models that connect policy influence with field delivery—linking resilient livelihoods, climate adaptation/DRR and nutrition sensitive, locally-sourced school meals. The role will position WFP as a trusted technical partner to Government and development partners by translating global evidence and corporate guidance into nationally owned solutions, mobilising resources, and ensuring that interventions are planet friendly, inclusive and shock responsive, with strong sensitivity to donor policy frameworks and partnership modalities.
Supervision: The PPO will be directly supervised by the Deputy Country Director and under the overall supervision of the Country Director. The PPO will ensure effective cross functional coordination to deliver results. The PPO will maintain strategic engagement with Government counterparts, donors, UN agencies, IFIs, academia and civil society partners within the scope of accountabilities.
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:
1. Contribute to formulation of programme policies by translating corporate food systems, climate and resilience policy into country level strategies, guidance and delivery modalities, ensuring alignment with the WFP Strategic Plan, UNSDCF and national priorities, and ensuring strong linkages between policy dialogue and field implementation.
2. Provide advice and support to team members on moderately complex issues to clarify ambiguities and ensure that policy and programme operations are consistent with WFP policies, Executive Board decisions, and other relevant guidance.
3. Provide technical leadership and mobilise expertise on programme design choices (objectives, targeting, activities, transfer modalities and food products), including testing innovative approaches and leveraging school meals as a nutrition sensitive safety net that advances “farm to school” procurement and food systems transformation.
4. Assist counterparts in governments and other partners in identifying how food systems and climate resilience approaches can contribute to the sustainability of the national food security and provide support and technical expertise for the planning, formulation and implementation of moderately complex food security and nutrition programmes to strengthen government and community ownership and effectiveness at national and sub-national levels.
5. Build and sustain strategic partnerships with Government, UN agencies, IFIs, research institutions, civil society and the private sector to expand locally led solutions (e.g., value chains, school feeding supply ecosystems, climate services) and to unlock co financing and joint programming opportunities.
6. Enhance WFP’s leadership status in forums relating to food systems and climate resilience through direct participation, briefings, information products and other materials. Drive integration of climate risk analysis, early warning and anticipatory action into programme design and targeting, in close collaboration with VAM, emergency preparedness and government technical agencies.
7. Manage operational research, evidence generation and learning agendas on food systems and climate resilience, ensuring findings are translated into programme improvements, policy messages and scalable models. Manage the preparation and dissemination of timely analytical and critical reports, publications, and a variety of information products or proposals for internal or external use.
8. Contribute to resource mobilisation, including positioning food systems transformation and climate resilience as investable priorities (e.g., climate finance and green funding windows), and proactively track project resource status (cash/commodities), risks and mitigation actions, escalating as needed.
9. Advice and support the development of functional training in areas of expertise to enhance the capacity of WFP staff and partner to design and deliver effective food assistance programmes.
10. Lead, motivate and develop a team of staff to enable high performance.
11. Ensure the best use of assigned financial resources for achievement of set objectives within a moderate budget.
12. Contribute to Country Office Emergency Preparedness i.e. early warning, risk analysis, and contingency planning in order to respond to humanitarian crises and needs.
OTHER JOB REQUIREMENTS
13. Provide strategic inputs into the design of the next CSP and related programme strategies, including high level policy engagement and donor positioning for national food systems and climate resilience priorities aligned with the National Development Programme 2030, Food Security and Nutrition Programme 2030, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) 3.0 and other government strategies.
14. Manage an integrated portfolio on food systems and climate resilience, ensuring timely implementation, quality assurance and compliance with multiple donor conditions (Republic of Korea, Japan, Switzerland and Green Climate Fund etc.), and delivering results across climate sensitive livelihoods, disaster risk management, value chains, and planet friendly school meals, including donor‑specific implementation modalities, visibility requirements and policy dialogue expectations.
15. Ensure strong coordination with the Government, UN and development partners while empowering national systems and capacities through adequate capacity-strengthening training, policy support, and progressive handover of existing programmes to the Government counterparts.
16. Contribute to the resource mobilization efforts for upcoming projects, ensuring alignment with WFP’s strategic objectives and operational requirements. This includes coordinating with relevant stakeholders to secure necessary funding for project implementation and providing support for donor reporting, with particular attention to compliance with diverse donor requirements and reporting standards.
17. Oversee the initiation and rollout of new project activities, ensuring operational readiness (including procurement/logistics interfaces), clear implementation arrangements, and fit for purpose monitoring, evaluation and learning frameworks; regularly brief senior management and donors on progress, risks and corrective actions.
18. Lead the development, testing and refinement of scalable programme models in food systems and climate resilience; ensure lessons learned and good practices are captured and packaged into guidance, briefs and knowledge products that contribute to regional and global learning.
19. Contribute to the overall office work, including respective focal points and tasks beyond the above-mentioned, to jointly deliver the CSP results as one WFP team.
20. Any other tasks as required.
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DESIRED EXPERIENCES FOR ENTRY INTO THE ROLE:
• Has gained experience in implementing or overseeing technical programs related to food systems, agriculture, nutrition-sensitive social protection and community engagement, ideally with understanding of value chain enhancement and farm-to-school approaches in school meals, delivering technical assistance and capacity-strengthening to national partners.
• Has implemented programmes and provided input into designing operations related to food systems, in coordination with national or international partners, national or sub-national government entities.
• Has provided input into policy discussions and decisions in the area of Value Chain and social behaviour change communication at community level.
Experience: Minimum five years of relevant post-graduate professional general experience related to Climate-smart Agriculture or other Social Sciences background relevant for home-grown school feeding, with additional value chain, public-private partnerships and other innovative finance background considered desirable, a research background an asset.
Education: Advanced University degree in International Affairs, Economics, Nutrition/Health, Agriculture, Environmental Science, Social Sciences or other field relevant to international development assistance, or First University Degree with additional years of related work experience and/or trainings/courses.
Language: Fluency (level C) in both oral and written communication in English and knowledge of any of the duty station’s languages (Russian or Kyrgyz) is an asset.
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REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION
WFP is committed to supporting individuals with disabilities by providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation, please contact: global.inclusion@wfp.org
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REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION
All applications must be submitted exclusively through our online recruiting system. We do not consider CVs or applications sent by email, LinkedIn, or any other channel.
We strongly recommend that your Workday profile is accurate and complete, and that all sections are filled in, including your employment history, academic qualifications, language skills, and UN grade (if applicable). Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application.
If you experience technical issues while submitting your application, you may contact us at global.hrerecruitment@wfp.org. Please note that this email is only for technical issues with an application - unsolicited applications or documents sent to this inbox will not receive a reply.
At the application stage, the only required documents are your CV and Cover Letter. Additional documents (passport, certificates, recommendation letters, etc.) may be requested later in the process.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and invited to proceed to the next stage of the recruitment process.
All employment decisions are made on the basis of organizational needs, job requirements, merit, and individual qualifications. WFP is committed to providing an inclusive work environment free of sexual exploitation and abuse, all forms of discrimination, any kind of harassment, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. Therefore, all selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
No appointment under any kind of contract will be offered to members of the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), International Civil Service Commission (ICSC), FAO Finance Committee, WFP External Auditor, WFP Audit Committee, Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) and other similar bodies within the United Nations system with oversight responsibilities over WFP, both during their service and within three years of ceasing that service.