Birth Registration Officer

For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and Governments.

The UNICEF programme in Tanzania prioritizes the monitoring of emerging trends and their impact on children, the country’s development landscape and use of evidence and successful pilots to leverage investments and wider coverage of quality services for children.
The programme also aims to strengthen children’s and communities’ engagement in their own development. In Tanzania, UNICEF supports programmes in health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, education, child protection and water and sanitation. Cross-cutting priorities include social policy, budgeting and financing, gender, behavioral change, communication and partnerships.
The assignment for the national UNV will be in the Child Protection section at UNICEF Tanzania. Since 2012, UNICEF has supported the Government of Tanzania, through Registration Insolvency Trusteeship Agency (RITA), to strengthen the civil registration and
vital statistics (CRVS) system by making birth registration more accessible, affordable and efficient.
This includes technical and financial assistance to implement the Simplified Birth Registration System (SBRS), amend the legal framework, train personnel, and raise public awareness. As a result, birth registration coverage increased from 10 per cent in 2013 to 68
per cent in 2023 across all 26 regions of Mainland Tanzania.
UNICEF is now supporting the development of a fully digital and integrated CRVS system through the e-RITA platform and advancing efforts to ensure every vital event is digitally captured. Moving forward, UNICEF plans to sustain progress by addressing the large backlog of unregistered children and paper records, while supporting government efforts to link legal, school and national identities, including biometric IDs for children over six, towards the creation of a unified digital identity system under the JAMII Stack.

The Birth Registration Officer will report to the Child Protection Specialist (Justice and Civil Registration and Vital Statistics) and will be based in the local government office in Mwanza. The Birth Registration Officer will lead a variety of day-to-day technical and administrative programme tasks to facilitate programme development, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting.
Key functions/accountabilities are as follows:
1. Support the planning of the programme interventions in Mwanza
2. Provide technical support to local government authorities (LGAs ) for the rollout of the electronic Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (eCRVS), digitization of the backlog of registers, and the development and implementation of a plan for archiving the paper records as needed
3. Liaise regularly with the Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA ) and National Identification Authority (NIDA ) regional coordinators; regional, district, and ward education officials; and Prime Minister's Office Regional Administration and Local Government (PMoRALG ) coordinator to ensure that newborns 0 - 3 months, children aged 3 - 5 years, and 6 - 17 years have a birth certificate and Jamii number that links to the eCRVS and NIDA ID
4. Support RITA, NIDA, and the LGAs in developing appropriate monitoring and evaluation tools with a focus on gender and equity (including the most marginalized)
5. Visit districts to monitor implementation of the testing of the registration strategies, highlight issues that are hindering implementation, and provide technical support to address these issues
6. Visit districts to monitor implementation of the school connectivity component
7. Represent UNICEF to the local government officials
8. Work closely with the UNICEF Child Protection and Innovations Officers to draft reports, blog posts, and other knowledge products
Furthermore, UN Volunteers are required to:
• Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant United Nations Volunteers (UNV ) and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark International Volunteer Day (IVD));
• 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.