For every child, evaluate

1. Improving program and policy effectiveness: UNICEF evaluations provide valuable insights into the impact of its programs and policies. Decision-makers can also use evaluation findings to identify best practices, assess program effectiveness, and make informed decisions about how to allocate resources (both scaling up and scaling down). In addition, UNICEF collaborates with governments to generate evidence to improve policy design and effectiveness by means of evaluation.
2. Enhancing accountability and transparency: UNICEF evaluations provide a mechanism for accountability and transparency. By sharing evaluation results with stakeholders, UNICEF demonstrates its commitment to transparency and openness.
3. Promoting learning and knowledge sharing: UNICEF evaluations provide a place for learning and knowledge sharing. By communicating evaluation findings, UNICEF promotes learning and knowledge sharing among stakeholders, including UNICEF staff, donors and partners.
4. Strengthening partnerships and collaboration: UNICEF evaluations provide an opportunity to strengthen partnerships and collaboration. By involving stakeholders in evaluation processes, UNICEF can build trust and strengthen relationships with partners.

1. Thematic Evaluations: These evaluations are developed in consultation with the Global Evaluation Committee, as well as divisions and offices at the global, regional, and country levels. Independent Corporate Evaluations gather and synthesize evaluation evidence on priority topics related to promoting and protecting children’s rights, with a specific focus on the five Goal Areas outlined in the UNICEF Strategic Plan.
2. Impact Evaluations: Impact evaluation (IE) aims to empirically establish attribution by quantifying causal links between the intervention (projects, programs, policies, networks or capacity development) and outcomes of interest, typically at the targeted beneficiary level. It does so by establishing a counterfactual scenario.
3. Humanitarian Evaluations: UNICEF’s humanitarian evaluations are systematic assessments conducted in emergency and crisis settings to understand the effectiveness, efficiency, and relevance of UNICEF’s humanitarian response efforts. These evaluations focus on evaluating the impact and outcomes of UNICEF’s interventions in meeting the urgent needs of children and their families during times of crisis, such as natural disasters, conflicts, epidemics, or displacement.
4. Country-led Evaluations: A UNICEF country-led evaluation is an evaluation conducted at the country level, where the national government leads the assessment with support and guidance from UNICEF. This type of evaluation focuses on programs, policies, or interventions related to children’s welfare and rights, which UNICEF supports or is involved in. The key features of a country-led evaluation include strong national ownership, alignment with national priorities and systems, and capacity-building for local evaluation professionals.

UNICEF evaluations remain crucial in informing decision-making processes, improving program, institutional and policy effectiveness, enhancing accountability and transparency, promoting learning and knowledge sharing, and strengthening partnerships and collaboration. Thus, it remains important for UNICEF evaluations to be influential in decision-making, particularly in helping to improve the conditions and situations of the most vulnerable children and, more broadly, to ensure that UNICEF programs and policies are evidence-based, effective, efficient, and sustainable. To what extent are UNICEF evaluations catalyzing the changes expected from them? This question remains to be more comprehensively answered. Although there have been a few assessments aimed, among other things, at determining the extent to which evaluations were being used, these have been mainly focused on the degree of implementation of evaluation recommendations.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• Advanced university degree, at least Master’s Degree, in evaluation, public policy, international development, social sciences or related field;
• A minimum of 10 years of relevant professional experience in leading evaluations or evaluative enquiries.
• Proven experience as a team leader in evaluation.
• Proven experience in qualitative data collection, processing and analysis.
• Experience in using Natural Language Processing for text mining is highly desirable.
• Knowledge of the UN System is highly desirable.
• Strong analytical and writing skills / Ability to perform internal / external consultations with stakeholders including UN agencies, NGOs, and government offices.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Working knowledge of Spanish and French is desirable. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, or Russian) or a local language is an asset.

How to apply:

• CV and cover letter.
• The daily rate and availability within duration of this assignment.
• A test may be administered to shortlisted candidates.
• The shortlisted candidates may be asked to submit short examples (of completed analyses or published papers, in line with the required qualifications described above.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit  here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

Remarks

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.