L’UNICEF  recrute un Spécialiste WASH, Bentiu, Soudan du Sud

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

 

For every child, a Future

The South Sudan humanitarian crisis continues to affect millions of children, remaining one of the largest, most volatile in the world. The pace of displacement has been significant,  with nearly 2.2 million people currently estimated to be internally displaced. 9.4 million people are in need, of which, half are children. With this scale of humanitarian need, the affected population continue to require a broad range of life-saving and specialized assistance.

Unity State has been severely affected by the crisis with Bentiu hosting 102,000 IDPs, in the ex-Protection of Civilian site; with at least 65 per cent being children. Moreover in 2021 exceptional flooding cut of access to Bentiu and displaced a further 60,000 individuals into camps within Bentiu, whilst an estimated 203,655 people were affected by flooding across Unity State.

Unity State is on the front line of the climate emergency, where heavy rains in 2021 have swept away homes and inundated farmlands, forcing families and livestock to seek safety on higher ground. Displacement, severe food insecurity, and high levels of vulnerability have had exponential effect on populations health and well-being and exposed women and children to further forms of violence and protection risks. WASH facilities including water sources and latrine infrastructure have been affected in communities and institutions, and services in camps are extremely fragile. The surrounding circumstances and poor WASH conditions have negatively impacted access to safe water and sanitation for women and children resulting in disease outbreaks such as Acute Watery Diarrhea, Cholera and Hepatitis E in the IDP sites, whilst acute malnutrition admissions trends are the highest in years.

 

How can you make a difference?

PURPOSE

The WASH Specialist / Sub-national Coordinator for the AoR is expected to provide the following:

• Support Sub-national level leadership and facilitate coordination of humanitarian WASH response among actors in the Unity State, with a focus on Bentiu and Rubkona.
• Provide strategic guidance in the planning, development and implementation of the WASH Sub-national Cluster and its technical components, in line with then South Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan, international humanitarian standards and indicators.
• Coordinates with the national cluster and ensure subnational activities are in line with the national standards and guidelines.
• Ensure prioritization, evidence-based actions to enhance an accountable, predictable, and effective WASH response to the affected population.
• Provide technical support to the UNICEF WASH Team in Bentiu in the delivery of WASH services

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES AND TASKS

Coordination

• Ensure the inclusion of key WASH humanitarian partners in a way that respects their mandates and programme priorities, as well as national and local authorities, other governmental actors, civil society and other actors working and related to the WASH sectoral response.
• Ensure appropriate coordination mechanisms between all WASH humanitarian partners are in place, including effective links, communication and information management, as well as technical working groups and/or sub-national coordination platforms as appropriate.
• Ensure information on all current and potential WASH partners, their capacities and areas of work (including Who, What, Where and When) are properly collected, analyzed and feedback to partners
• Participate in the national cluster meetings with inputs/feedback from the sub-national cluster.

Needs assessment, analysis and strategy development

• Ensure effective and coherent WASH assessment, analysis and feedback involving all relevant partners, including the identification of gaps and conceptualize how sectoral needs can be met through collective delivery, involving all relevant partners and ensuring complementarity of their actions.
• Facilitate WASH cluster/sector and its members/partners:
• develop/update agreed WASH responses strategies and prioritized action plans and ensure these are adequately reflected in the overall country strategies and appeals.
• are aware of relevant policies, guidelines, technical standards and relevant commitments that the Government/concerned authorities have undertaken under international human rights law; and that sectoral response is in line with them.
• develop an exit/transition strategy for the WASH sector and key sector partners.
• Facilitate integration of agreed priority cross-cutting issues in WASH assessments, analysis, planning, monitoring and response as well as the utilization of participatory and community-based approaches in WASH in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the WASH response.
• Facilitate WASH humanitarian responses build on local capacities to build on local solutions
• Promote WASH emergency response actions while at the same time considering WASH within early recovery planning as well as prevention and risk reduction concerns.
• Provide technical support to UNICEF’s Bentiu WASH programme in line with the above strategies.

Monitoring and reporting

• Ensure adequate monitoring mechanisms are in place to review outcomes of WASH interventions and progress against strategy and action plans; including an analytical interpretation of best available information to benchmark progress over time (monitoring indicators: quantity, quality, coverage, continuity and cost; with target population data disaggregated by sex, age, etc.).
• Ensure adequate WASH outcome reporting and effective information sharing (with government, national cluster and other partner support) to demonstrate closing the gaps.
• Monitor the distribution and end user satisfaction of WASH supplies, including WASH pipeline distributions.

Intersectoral coordination and advocacy

• Ensure effective links with other sub-national clusters or sectoral coordination platforms and represent the interests of the WASH sector in discussions with the CFO, WASH section and other stakeholders on prioritization, resource mobilization and advocacy.
• Identify core WASH advocacy concerns relating to Bentiu (Unity State), include resource requirements, and contribute key messages to broader advocacy initiatives UNICEF and other actors.
• Advocate to donors to fund WASH actors to carry out priority WASH activities in the sector concerned, while mobilizing WASH actors to mobilize resources for their activities through usual channels.
• Where critical gaps in addressing WASH priorities are identified:
• lobby for implementing humanitarian partners (including UNICEF) to address the gaps.
• advice/support the National WASH Cluster Coordinator, CFO, WASH Section and other humanitarian partners as needed and advocate, as appropriate, on the adequate provision of resources and safe access.

Ensuring that women, men, girls and boys of all ages and diversity backgrounds, affected by a crisis have equitable and meaningful access to:

• Appropriate, relevant and timely information
• Two-way communications channels that facilitate feedback and complaints and provide redress for complaints.
• Means to participate in decisions that affect them, including fair and transparent systems of representation; and

Active involvement in the design, monitoring and evaluation of the goals and objectives of programmes.

Contingency Planning

• Identify hazard, assessment and monitoring of risk is undertaken as part of the Humanitarian Programme Cycle or on a needs basis and reflected into the national WASH Cluster contingency plans.
• Ensure that core pipeline is adequately replenished, gaps reported to the national cluster and facilitate submission of core pipeline requests by partners in Unity.

 

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

Education:

•  Advanced University degree in water supply, enviromental public health, social, Geology, Hydrogeology, or Sanitation Engineering, or another related field. Formal training in cluster coordination an advantage.
•  Knowledge of WASH sector as a whole and its priority issues; an ability to strategize how these sectoral needs are met through collective delivery, and ensuring that the roles, responsibilities and functional linkages among Cluster support team are clear and well-coordinated.

Work Experience:

•  A minimum of 8 years of professional work experience, including direct WASH emergency experience, with the UN and/or NGO. WASH Cluster experience an advantage.

Language:

•  Oral and written proficiency in English is required. Knowledge of local language is an advantage.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s Core Values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS) underpin everything we do and how we do it. Get acquainted with Our Values Charter: UNICEF Values

 

UNICEF competencies required for this post are…

•  Nurtures, Leads and Manages People (1) ;
•  Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (2) ;
•  Works Collaboratively with others (2) ;
•  Builds and Maintains Partnerships (2) ;
•  Innovates and Embraces Change (2) ;
•  Thinks and Acts Strategically (2) ;
•  Drive to achieve impactful results (2) ;
•  Manages ambiguity and complexity (2).

During the recruitment process, we test candidates following the competency framework. Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels: competency framework 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.
We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF strongly encourages the use of flexible working arrangements.

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 is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. 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.

 

Remarks:

UNICEF’s active commitment towards diversity and inclusion is critical to deliver the best results for children. For this position, eligible and suitable qualified female candidates are encouraged to apply.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance.  Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station, which will be facilitated by UNICEF, is required for IP positions. Appointments are also subject to inoculation (vaccination) requirements, including against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid). Government employees that are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason.

Eligible UNICEF International Professional (IP) Staff Members on fixed-term, continuing or permanent contracts applying to a Temporary Appointment, which is dedicated to L3 (or L2) Response, may be able to retain a lien and their fixed-term entitlements. The conditions of the temporary assignment will vary depending on the status of their post and their current tour of duty, and relocation entitlements may be limited as per the relevant policies.