Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM) Officer NOB

ABOUT WFP

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian Agency, fighting hunger worldwide. WFP has been working in Afghanistan since 1963. WFP food assistance aims to help the most vulnerable, food insecure Afghans, including women and children, as well as families affected by conflict and natural disasters. In 2017, WFP fed over 2.8 million vulnerable Afghans  through various programme activities such as general distributions (food, and/or cash and voucher as the transfer modality); nutrition programmes, through targeted supplementary feeding; school take-home rations; food for assets creation, Purchase for Progress (P4P), training and capacity development activities.  For more information, see wfp.org

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

With a committed government, rich natural resources, and a young and diverse population, Afghanistan has the potential to make significant progress on the 2030 Agenda. However, a complex and protracted conflict, combined with challenges related to climate change, demographics, gender inequalities, underemployment, and transparency issues, has dramatically impeded its efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 2 on Zero Hunger. The 2017 Afghanistan Zero Hunger Strategic Review (ZHSR) found that the country suffers from high, and in some cases rapidly rising, levels of food insecurity and undernutrition, and outlines a series of recommendations to address the problem.

WFP is well placed to help Afghanistan implement several of the key recommendations through their new Country Strategic Plan (2018-2022). The overarching goal of the WFP Afghanistan CSP is to support the country to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 in a manner that also contributes, wherever possible, to the broader, longer-term transition to peace and development. Mainstreaming the cross-cutting issues of gender equality and women’s empowerment, protection, and accountability to affected populations, the CSP will focus on six, highly interrelated outcomes that span both SDG 2 and 17 (partnering for the goals).

Extensive consultations with government, partners, and affected communities, helped to guide this approach which entails shifts that will allow WFP to more effectively support the country to achieve SDG 2, including a shift to a more comprehensive, national-led framing of all strategic result areas, by supporting policy coherence.  This will help the Afghanistan Unity Government to build trust and enhance its legitimacy.  These shifts will also permit WFP to contribute to the broader, long-term goals of the country by operationalizing the humanitarian-development-peace nexus.  This approach is directly aligned with the government’s commitment to achieve the SDGs by 2030 and with its five-year plan – the Afghanistan National Peace and Development Framework (ANPDF) – for making progress on the SDGs. 

Implementing the activities under the CSP requires support of several other units across all functions, including vulnerability analysis and mapping (VAM).  The functional role of the VAM team is to provide the most relevant and updated information from multiple sources, both primary and secondary, to decision makers such as Government, WFP, and other partners.  Key outputs from the VAM team guide operational, strategic and monitoring decisions.

JOB PURPOSE

Reporting to the Senior National VAM Officer/Head of VAM unit, and with technical and strategic guidance from the Head of Programme and other international staff, the National VAM Officer will provide analytical and technical support to the VAM unit, M&E unit, Operations and Management as well as to the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster of the UN Humanitarian group.  There will also be support work to the entire UN Country Team as necessary.

He/she will focus on four broad categories of work: food security assessments and analysis, market assessment and reporting, analytical support to monitoring and evaluation, and capacity development of WFP staff and partners.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)

1. Contribute to the development of VAM projects and activities, plans and processes, ensuring alignment with wider WFP policies and guidance.
2. Support the development of systems and tools for the monitoring and assessment of food assistance needs in line with innovative methodologies and best practice.
3. Support the development of food security and vulnerability analysis and the preparation of timely reports on food security assessment needs in line with wider VAM policies, processes and guidance to enable effective decision-making on the development of country strategy, policies and programmes.
4. Provide assistance on the coordination of data gathering and monitoring systems ensuring that rigorous quality standards are maintained.
5. Liaise with implementing partners (internal and external) to monitor ongoing projects, ensuring effective collaboration, timeliness and efficiency and highlight potential risks to project delivery.
6. Support the capacity building of WFP staff, partners and national government to conduct vulnerability analysis to effectively inform preparedness and response activities.
7. Provide support to relevant partners that are focusing on food security and nutrition issues to enable sharing of experience, lessons learned and best practice.
8. Guide and mentor VAM Assistants in the field office, acting as a point of referral and supporting them with analysis and queries.
9. Act in an assigned emergency response capacity as required to meet emergency food assistance needs.
10. Other as required.

STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

Education: Advanced University degree in Economics, Food Security, Statistics, Data Science, Public Health/Nutrition, Geography or other related field, or First University degree with additional years of related work experience and/or training/courses.
 

Language: Fluency (level C) in English language and in Dari and/or Pashto

DESIRED EXPERIENCES FOR ENTRY INTO THE ROLE

• Strong knowledge of statistics and data analysis - including familiarity with at least one analytical software. 
• Experience with data visualization (making graphs, charts, infographics)
• At least 3-5 years of working experience in data analysis - preferably in the development/humanitarian sactor.
• Good English writing skills and ability to write reports to present findings of data analysis.
• Good computer literacy (including Microsoft Office suite – Word, Excel, Power Point, Access).
• Courtesy, tact and ability to work effectively with people of different national and cultural backgrounds. Ability to maintain accurate and precise records.
• Ability to handle a large volume of work quickly and accurately under time constraints.
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OTHER

Willingness to travel throughout the country, including to remote rural areas.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Position Title: VAM Officer

Grade: National Officer - Level B  (NOB)

Contract: Fixed-term - One-year renewable

Duty Station/travel: Kabul, Afghanistan with travel inside Afghanistan and occasionally internationally

Salary: Starting at USD 45,101.04 net per annum (exempted from Afghanistan income tax)

Pension: USD denominated pension plan

Medical Plan: International valid medical plan valid also for staff, spouse and dependents children under 18 years

Annual leave: 30 working days per annum

WFP Work Envirionment

WFP is committed to ensuring that all its workplaces are free from abuse, offensive behaviour, harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. WFP is also committed to promoting a work culture in which every employee understands, and is able to carry out, his/her personal responsibilities for maintaining the dignity of work colleagues. WFP seeks to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women. We believe our mission of fighting global hunger worldwide can only be achieved if women, men, girls and boys are offered equal opportunities in terms of access to resources and services and participation in decision making roles.

Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

Saturday, 26 May 2018