Adolescent Development and Health Specialist

UNICEF is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children's rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential. UNICEF is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and strives to establish children's rights as enduring ethical principles and international standards of behaviour towards children. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has been present in Brazil since 1950, supporting the most important changes in childhood and adolescence in the country. UNICEF participated in major immunization and breastfeeding campaigns; the mobilization that resulted in the approval of Article 227 of the Federal Constitution and the drafting of the Child and Adolescent Statute; the movement for universal access to education; programmes to combat child labour; among other great advances in guaranteeing the rights of Brazilian girls and boys. In recent decades, Brazil has promoted a strong process of inclusion of children and adolescents in public policies. However, a significant portion of the population remains excluded. Therefore, in its cooperation programme with the Brazilian Government for the period 2024-2028, UNICEF focuses its efforts on the most vulnerable and excluded girls and boys, with a special focus on children and adolescents who are victims of extreme forms of violence. These children and adolescents in situations of greater vulnerability are spread throughout Brazil, but they are more concentrated in the Amazon, in the Northeast and in large urban centers. Through the UNICEF Seal, UNICEF promotes commitments to guarantee the rights of children and adolescents in the Northeast and in the Amazon regions in Brazil. In large cities, UNICEF works with a focus on reducing intra-municipal inequalities, through the #AgendaCidadeUNICEF.

As result of the pandemic, the educational indicators show the situation of Brazilian public education has worsened in these last three years, as well as a sharp increase in the number of cases of lethal and sexual violence against adolescents in large and medium-sized urban centers. Among the situations that have had a major impact on adolescents’ wellbeing, we should also highlight the increase in cases of mental health problems among boys and girls, both in the school environment and in the community - the adverse effects of social isolation, the lack of perspectives and opportunities for legal inclusion in the work´s world or back to scholar studies. Moreover, adolescent girls face menstrual poverty and limited access to sexual and reproductive health services. Health units also need to develop and offer an adolescent friendly approach. The environmental and climate crisis is also another contextual factor that has mobilized the innovative participation of adolescents and young people from different territories and identities to express their demands for a safer, more inclusive, healthy, and equitable climate and environment, based on cultures, community traditions, neighborhoods and cities. A last element of this context that also resulting from the pandemic is related to the drop-in vaccination coverage rates among children and young people, mostly affecting children and adolescents in the Northeast and North regions. This exposes yet another central impact on adolescence related to the importance of investing the best efforts in the first decade of life - the childhood, to commit to a positively impact on the second decade of life the adolescence.
Considering this diagnosis, the new UNICEF’s Country Programme (2024-2028), will work to ensure that by 2028 the following objectives:
Every vulnerable child, adolescent and young person has access to qualified and integrated adolescent health programs, services (in mental health and psychosocial support, sexual and reproductive health, immunization, and healthy eating) and inclusive initiatives regarding gender, race and ethnicity sensitive issues.
Within this perspective, UNICEF plans to continue implementing the “Pode Falar” (Speak Up) initiative, offering online mental health support, and encouraging adolescents to participate in peer-networks to better understand and demand their rights to education, health, protection and others, in dialogue with public policies managers, to improve public policies for adolescents with a gender, race and ethnicity equality perspective.
Strengthening the primary health-care system in joint work with the State and Municipal Secretaries of Health, Education and Social Welfare to regain immunization coverage, identify and immunize non-vaccinated children; and to promote healthy eating through law enforcements and change behavior and practice at municipal levels.
More institutional partnerships (public and private) ensuring that the most vulnerable adolescents make a positive transition from school to the world of work, connecting them to decent jobs and incomes that are equitable in terms of race and gender.
The UNICEF City agenda with adolescents engaged in communitarian issues and UNICEF Seal with adolescents engaged through Núcleos de Cidadania de Adolescentes NUCAS; protected, safe and participating in their community, family and communities and children in their early childhood with guaranteed health care services and a full immunization rate.

Under the general guidance of the Head of the Salvador Field Office, the UN Volunteer Specialist selected will be responsible for providing technical assistance, incidence and advocacy on Citizen and Development Participation of Adolescents though four dimensions: improving immunization rates and the public health services, Adolescent Health , racial, gender and territorials identities straightened, in the territory of Valeria and Salvador (by UNICEF City Agenda, Salvador/BA) and in the states of Sergipe, Minas Gerais and Bahia via the UNICEF Seal; Working with state governments of that respective State, establishment of alliances with civil or private society organizations and with communities, families and adolescents of the territories prioritized by UNICEF.

The UN Volunteer Specialist will contribute to the development of programme into main territorials initiatives: UNICEF Seal and UNCEF Agenda Cidade implementing following activities:


• Provide technical assistance to implementing partners - IPs and other partners on immunization, nutrition and integral heath issues and advocacy to municipal and state governments to improve municipal indicators on Resultado Sistemico 1 within the framework of the Seal, Municipal Agenda strategies.

• Provide technical assistance and training municipals technicians on health and nutrition issues in collaboration with Salvador team responsible for UAPIs initiative (Unidade Amiga da Primeira Infância) implementation.

• Collaborate to Salvador team responsible for PIA initiative – primeira Infância antiracist implementation on dissemination and training anti-racism practices within health public service for early childhood, and other social technologies on racial literacy for health professionals.

• Provide technical advocacy to the establishment of adolescent health program in Primary Health Care units, aligned to the Integrated Adolescent Health National Policy as well as UAA (Unidade Amiga das Adolescencias)

• Contribute to strengthen the adolescent participation component of the School-Education Programme (Programa Saúde na Escola - PSE), in coordination with health and education areas at the territorial level.

• Contribute, at local and state levels, to implementation of the online Pode Falar initiative which provides online support to adolescents and young people on issues of well-being and mental health, with a view to transforming it into continuous and systematic public action. Acting as a key actor to strengthen Pode Falar network, actively searching for new partnerships and connecting with the current ones in the region.

• Contribute to promote adolescents’ right to participate at the local level, by identifying, mobilizing and strengthening adolescents’ groups and connecting them to decision-makers. Support adolescents’ active presence in formal spaces of participation such as conferences, public hearings, forums and strategic meetings with public policy managers, based on an ecosystem of adolescents’ participation. Prioritize groups who are historically excluded from decision instances, promoting gender, race and ethnicity equality.

• Provide technical assistance to IPs and other partners on engagement and activism of adolescents and young people issues and advocacy to municipal and state governments to support NUCAS within the framework of the UNICEF Seal and Municipal Agenda strategies.


• Implement UNICEF strategy to promote adolescent girls’ rights at the local level, aligned with UNICEF Gender Equality Action Plan - UGEAP 2026-2029, ensuring significant engagement of adolescent girls in decision-making spaces with focus on reducing gender-based violence and improvement of public policies for girls.

• Mobilize adolescents to get engaged in climate actions at the local level, aligned with the Green Rising initiative (#EntreNoClimaUNICEF).

EXPECTED RESULTS:

Ensuring specific policies and investments on health in the first decade of life in the states of BA, SE and MG, in order to consolidate more investments for the second decade of life by policies for the development of adolescents into prioritized territories, municipalities and traditional and originating communities at UNICEF Seal and #AgendaCidadeUNICEF initiatives, the UN Volunteer may be required to travel, to participate in collaborative work with internal and external teams, including territories and communities in rural areas far way into the States. In addition, the UN Volunteer will participate in face-to-face events, webinars, and virtual meetings with colleagues and/or partners. Activities such as organizing meetings, conferences, workshops and training will be required. Contribution with articles and opeds (artigos de opinião), production or provision of inputs for reports, proposals for donors, notes and audiovisual pieces for the purposes of communication, analysis, data collection and systematization will be requested.