Internship - Nutrition and Food Security internship in the Public Health Section in Geneva, Switzerland

Terms of Reference
Internship
Division of Resilience Solutions, Public Health Section

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is offering a full-time internship within the Public Health Section of the Division of Resilience Solutions at UNHCR Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Established in December 1950, UNHCR is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for asylum seekers, refugees, returnees, internally displaced communities and stateless people. Every year, millions of men, women and children are forced to flee their homes to escape conflict and persecution. UNHCR currently operates in over 130 countries, using its long expertise to protect and care for millions.

Title: Nutrition and Food Security Internship
Duty Station: Geneva, Switzerland
Duration: 6 months
Contract Type: Internship
Applications closing date: 15 October 2021
Start date: 01 February 2022

Organisational context
The Public Health Section in the Division of Resilience Solutions (DRS) supports UNHCR¿s objectives to reduce morbidity and mortality among populations of concern through ensuring access to quality preventive, curative, promotive, rehabilitative, and palliative health services. Within this portfolio, nutrition is a key strategic priority. Ensuring adequate nutrition throughout the life cycle and eliminating all forms of malnutrition are recognized as integral to fulfilling UNHCR¿s protection mandate as this saves refugee lives and improves wellbeing. Given the complex issues of malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and food insecurity the primary goal for the nutrition program is to improve the food security and nutrition situation of refugees, and to reduce the prevalence of all forms of malnutrition amongst refugees, especially to women, young children and other vulnerable groups including people with special needs. UNHCR works with partners including governments and NGOs to achieve these objectives and seeks integration of refugees within existing national health systems as much as possible.

The position
Benefits of undertaking this internship assignment include:
¿ The intern will gain practical understanding of UNHCR¿s Public Health work in general and nutrition and food security in particular, and also understand the roles and responsibilities at headquarters, regional and country level;
¿ Will learn more about the challenges and potential solutions of nutrition and food security at country level in refugee and related humanitarian contexts;
¿ Will have a greater understanding of the work across sectors to improve health and nutrition outcomes in refugee contexts;
¿ Enhance educational experience through practical work assignments.

Duties and responsibilities
The intern will work under the guidance of headquarters Senior Nutrition and Food Security Officer and other DRS staff to:
¿ Support the Senior Nutrition & Food Security Officer to improve the knowledge management portals including updating relevant web pages such as the resources sections on Nutrition and Food Security on UNHCR¿s website, intranet and together with the other Public Health staff in sustaining the Community of Practice for Public Health/nutrition and related initiatives.
¿ Collaborate with the Senior Nutrition & Food Security Officer in strengthening various partnership collaboration efforts around nutrition including technical working groups on the Global Action Plan on Wasting, IYCF in Emergencies core group, and Child Health in Emergencies platform etc.
¿ Support the public health section in reporting requirements including assisting in reviewing and collating country and regional level reports for global indicator analysis.
¿ Support the maintenance of the global nutrition database including the visualization outputs of the refugee nutrition data including the survey data, nutrition information system core indicators and data contribution to global reports internally and externally e.g., contribution to the Global Report on Food Crisis.
¿ Support specific ongoing innovative nutrition initiatives in refugee settings.

Minimum qualifications required
In order to be considered for an internship, candidates must meet the following eligibility criteria:
¿ Be either a recent graduate (having completed their studies within one year of applying) or a current student in a graduate/undergraduate school programme from a university or higher education facility accredited by UNESCO ; and
¿ Have completed at least two years of undergraduate studies in a field relevant or of interest to the work of UNHCR.

NOTE: An individual whose father, mother, son, daughter, brother or sister is a staff member of UNHCR, including a Temporary Appointment holder or a member of the Affiliate Workforce, is not eligible for an internship.

Desirable qualifications and skills:
¿ Human Nutrition/Food science/Public health qualification or related areas;
¿ Prior experience in nutrition, food security, infant and young child feeding (IYCF), public health programming; is very desirable;
¿ Strong interest in refugee situations and in humanitarian or development issues;
¿ Public health/nutrition database management;
¿ Experience working with computer software such as MSOffice, nutrition assessment analysis (ENA, Epi-info); Power BI data visualization techniques;
¿ Excellent written and oral communication skills in English. Knowledge of French, Spanish, Arabic or any other UN language is an asset;
¿ Good written and oral communication skills with strong interpersonal skills;
¿ Ability to deal with persons of various cultural and educational backgrounds;
¿ Ability to work independently, when necessary;
¿ Flexibility and adaptability.

Conditions:
It is a full-time role with working hours starting from 09.00am to 06:00pm Monday to Friday (40 hours per week). The successful candidate will be based with the team in the Geneva, Switzerland.

Allowance: Interns who do not receive financial support from an outside party will receive an allowance to partially help to cover the cost of food, local transportation and living expenses.

The UNHCR workforce consists of many diverse nationalities, cultures, languages and opinions. UNHCR seeks to sustain and strengthen this diversity to ensure equal opportunities as well as an inclusive working environment for its entire workforce. Applications are encouraged from all qualified candidates without distinction on grounds of race, colour, sex, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.

UNHCR does not charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process (application, interview, meeting, travelling, processing or training.

We welcome applications from candidates with a refugee or stateless background. Please note that the closing date for this internship advertisement is Friday 15 October 2021 (midnight Geneva time).