Nutrition Officer

Details

Mission and objectives

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 the area of ​​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; programs to combat child labor; 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 program with the Brazilian government for the period 2017-2021, 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 semiarid and in large urban centers. Through the UNICEF Seal, UNICEF promotes commitments to guarantee the rights of children and adolescents in the Semiarid and in the Brazilian Legal Amazon. In large cities, UNICEF works with a focus on reducing intra-municipal inequalities, through the Platform of Urban Centers (PCU).

Context

As a result of the Venezuela migration crisis, an estimated 5,4 million Venezuelans - around 30% of them children – have left their home country, including several thousand indigenous people from Venezuela living in shelters of the Operation Acolhida and in local indigenous communities Migrant and refugee children and families face challenges to regularizing their immigration status which can affect their access to social protection, healthcare, early childhood development, education, sustainable livelihoods, and child protection. Meanwhile, the lack of comprehensive public policies on migratory issues in host countries is putting children at higher risk of discrimination, violence, family separation, xenophobia, exploitation and abuse. Those challenges are farther exacerbated for indigenous population from Venezuela. Since 2018, UNICEF Brazil runs a coordinated humanitarian operation for the migrants from Venezuela, based in the northern state of Roraima, later extended to the states of Amazonas (Manaus) and Para (Belem), building on UNICEF’s longstanding presence and programming in these states. Further to this, UNICEF aims to promote an enabling environment for the socio-economic integration of mi-grant children and adolescents across municipalities in 18 states of the Amazon and Semi-Arid regions by including migration in UNICEF’s flagship Municipal Seal Initiative. Through the UNICEF humanitarian programs thousands of children were reached with activities to prevent and treat malnutrition including nutritional assessments, micronutrients supplementation, Severe Acute Malnutrition treatment, among others. As regards Indigenous from Brazil, the state of Roraima hosts 11 indigenous ethnics groups and approximately 58,000 indigenous people, distributed in 12 ethno-regions. UNICEF defined as one of its priorities, the support to civil society organizations that were already working with indigenous peoples, understanding the need for a more specific and differentiated approach in Roraima state. With most of its territory in Roraima, the Terra Indigena Yanomami also endures a critical humanitarian crisis. The aggravated situation led the Government of Brazil to declare a Public Health Emergency on National Importance. The United Nations Country Team (UNCT) appointed UNICEF as co-leader with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to support coordinating the United Nations humanitarian response in the territory. UNICEF joined the national Emergency Operation Center of the Ministry of Health and has representatives in the coordination groups to strengthen coordination ef-forts at national and local levels, linking humanitarian agencies, funding agencies and technical experts, to ensure that humanitarian responses are synchronized, timely and meet agreed standards and benchmarks. UNICEF participates actively on the nutrition response fostering the development of public policies and the direct implementation of services to prevent and treat malnutrition considering the nexus be-tween the humanitarian response to the Yanomami and migration crisis, and the development work planned at the national level, in particular (but not limited to) by the UNICEF Seal. In order to ensure effective support the implementation of activities to prevent malnutrition for migrant and indigenous populations, UNICEF will recruit an UNV Expert who will be based within Health and Nutrition program, in Boa Vista.

Task description

Under the general guidance of the Boa Vista Chief Field Office, and with the technical support of the Health and Nutrition officer, the UN Volunteer will support the following duties in the context of UNICEF’s office to response EZ Boa Vista: • Provide technical support for the implementation of projects accounting for the health and nutrition program, including the UNICEF Seal perspective and activities • Manage and coordinate teams to monitoring of infants to prevent malnutrition, specially the most vulnerable weighing less than 2500g and premature infants under 6 months of age. • Oversee the implementation of micronutrient and vitamin supplementation programs for children aged 6-59 months, ensuring effective delivery and adherence. • Develop and execute individualized nutritional supplementation plans for children identi-fied with chronic or acute malnutrition, monitoring their progress and adjusting plans as needed. • Lead the systematic monitoring of nutritional assessments for pregnant women, ensuring compliance with supplementation and evaluating the nutritional status of the women. • Provide guidance for teams on lactation care, nutrition, and exclusive breastfeeding to pregnant and nursing mothers, and assume a management role in delivering health educa-tion on healthy eating to parents and caregivers. • Monitor and evaluate the overall performance of the health and nutrition programs, including assessing the effectiveness of interventions, and making recommendations for pro-gram improvement.