UNICEF recruits 01 International Early Childhood Development Specialist Consultant

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.

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For every child,

UNICEF’s overall goal is to support the Government of Iraq in realizing the rights of all Iraq’s children to survival, development, protection and participation, and the creation of an enabling environment to ensure strengthened accountabilities for children with an equity approach.

How can you make a difference?

1. Background and Justification for Consultant / Individual Contractor Contract

Integrated Early Childhood Development (ECD), is not just vital to an individual child; it is a foundational investment for sustainable national development. Investing in integrated Early Childhood Development (ECD) interventions provides an opportunity to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty. Globally, Early Child Development (ECD) is high on the policy agenda. Target 4.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) states that by 2030 calls for access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education for all children. Iraq has embraced the SDG goals and is taking steps to recover from years of conflict and get back on the development trajectory. Recently, the government of Iraq endorsed the National Development Plan (NDP) for 2018-2022. Within the plan, government sets ambitious targets for child development including increasing enrolment for pre-school to 30% by 2020, reducing violence against children, as well as improving the life quality among children.

Currently in Iraq, child poverty is a persistent issue limiting the potential of a substantial portion of Iraq’s children and young population, curbing educational attainment and skills acquisition, generating poor health outcomes, and preventing them from realizing their rights. The prevalence of poverty at national level in Iraq (as per the national poverty line) was estimated at 18.9 percent in 2012 and had further increased to 22.5 percent in 2014.    As a percentage of the total child’s population of 2012, it was estimated that 23 percent of all children, a total of 3.7 million, were living under the poverty line; i.e., approximately, 1 in every four children was poor. Multidimensional poverty was even higher, where 39 percent of children were suffering either one or both forms of poverty (income poverty or deprivations in two or more of their rights) . Delivery of services for your children is impacted by inadequate financing to social services sectors.

In Iraq individual sectors are already implementing some services and interventions and generating and tracking data that are relevant to ECD. However, there is no cross-programme synthesis and examination of evidence through an ECD lens.

There are three distinct phases of ECD: (1) from conception to birth, (2) from birth to three years of age, and (3) the preschool and pre-primary years (3 years to the age of school entry).  While not exhaustive, the ECD Index (ECDI) based on 2018 Iraq MICS data gives a sense of where children in Iraq stand with respect to key developmental milestones. More specifically, the ECDI is based on the percentage of children aged 3-4 years who are developmentally on track in literacy-numeracy, physical, social-emotional and learning domains. According the MICS, almost 8 out of every 10 children (79%) are on track for at least three of those domains.  Physical development, which covers criteria such as being able to pick up a small object with two fingers, and the mother/caretaker not indicating that the child is sometimes too sick to play, is the domain for which the highest percentage of children are developmentally on-track (98%).  Investing in integrated Early Childhood Development (ECD) interventions provides an opportunity to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty. In Iraq individual sectors are already implementing some services and interventions and generating and tracking data that are relevant to ECD. However, there is no cross-programme synthesis and examination of evidence through an ECD lens.

According to the 2018 Iraq MICS, the under-five mortality rate (U5MR) is 26 per 1000 live births, a significant sizable reduction since 2011, where the MICS4 survey estimate was 37 per 1000.  Nonetheless, mortality rates among children under five in Iraq remain much higher than the rates observed in other MENA countries.  While overall under-five mortality is declining, inequities have not. Children from the poorest families are twice as likely to die by their fifth birthday than children from the wealthiest households.  In fact, there is a wider divide between rich and poor rates in present-day Iraq than existed seven years ago. In 2011, U5MRs among the poorest and wealthiest households was 40 and 34, respectively; in 2018, they are 32 and 16, respectively. Thus, based on available evidence, the recent under-five mortality reduction was driven largely by improved survival among the richest Iraqis.

 

There are also challenges to coverage of vaccinations. A barrier analysis related to child immunization revealed a number of reasons why children are not being vaccinated including accessibility issues (e.g., the Primary Health Care Centre (PHCC) is too far away, no one is available to accompany the mother to the service delivery site, there are costs incurred in seeking care); awareness and perceptions (e.g., myths/misinformation regarding vaccination); supply-chain management issues (e.g., stock outs of vaccines in some sites, oversupply in other sites); and other quality-of-care shortcomings (e.g., attitude/interpersonal skills of vaccinators).

 

Although the prevalence of Chronic Malnutrition (stunting) has decreased (from 21% in 2011 to 10% in 2018) infant and Children in Baghdad’s outskirts now home to many IDPs still have the highest stunting rate (18%) in Iraq. Generally, girls have higher malnutrition burden; among IDPs, boys have higher burden. The prevalence of acute malnutrition (wasting) is 2.5% nationally, with minimal difference between girls (2.8%) and boys (2.1%). Another body of evidence to consider is, the 2016 Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) which found slightly higher rates of chronic malnutrition (stunting), but not acute malnutrition (wasting), among IDPs (19%) compared to host community residents (16%).

Literacy-numeracy is, by far, the domain for which children are most behind in terms of developmental milestones (13% nationwide), although a small number of governorates (e.g., Kirkuk (39%), Dohuk (33%) and Erbil (30%)) have rates for this milestone that far exceed the national average. Currently, less than 11 per cent of Iraqi children aged 5 years have access to any form of pre-primary education before enrolling in primary schools; this is well below regional and global averages of 19% and 41% respectively. Further, only 3 per cent children age 3–4 attend any form of early childhood development and education programme. Access to early learning is also skewed as there are significant disparities between the rural and urban areas with rural areas accounting for only 1.9 percent of children attending pre-school. Many of the pre-school services are urban based and private owned making it impossible for poor households to afford. In addition to the low access, those children who enroll in some form of pre-school do not seem to learn much due to other system challenges facing the sector.  Although a national education curriculum or syllabus was developed, its implementation has been a challenge due to lack of adequate financial and human resources. Furthermore, only 14% of kindergarten teachers have specialized training while others are not exposed to modern teaching methodologies and practices (e.g. active learning, multi-grade teaching, etc). Effective learning also undermined due to other factors such as poor health, hygiene and nutrition issues as well as child protection issues that are manifested in low birth weight, malnutrition, abuse at home, or lack of water and sanitation facilities both at home and in schools.

Although Iraq had a high reported birth registration rate in 2011 (99 percent), and MICS6 indicates that the national coverage rate remains high, at 98.8 percent, overall 7.8 percent of children under 5 are either not registered or do not have birth certificates that are needed for them to obtain identity documents.  Most markedly, in Ninewa governorate, 23.4 percent of children under age 5 are either not registered or do not have birth certificates.  These are children who would have been born during ISIL occupation or to couples who married during the occupation. This is likely to be one of the causes of disparity in birth registration and certification rates in these locations. Moreover, there are significant pockets in the South of Iraq where lack of birth registration or certificates is significantly higher (Wasit 12 percent and Missan, 11 percent) than the norm.  Lack of documentation is a barrier to protection because it can prevent children from obtaining national identity cards. This can restrict their ability to receive basic services such as education, health and social protection.

Children also face child protection challenges. Children in Iraq, including internally displaced children and refugees, need protection from and services that respond to violence, exploitation, abuse and neglect. Even in the absence of conflict, violence is a significant hallmark of the lives of children and young people in Iraq.  They routinely experience physical, sexual violence and psychological aggression at home, at school and in their community often at the hands of people they trust and with whom they interact daily.  According to MICS 2018, almost 81 percent of children age 1 to 14 years experienced some form of violent discipline method during the last one month before the survey. This is 1.9 percentage points higher than in 2011, and does not include surveys of families within IDP camps, with a likelihood that these numbers could be higher. In addition, 18.4 percent of caregivers surveyed believe that physical punishment is needed to rear or educate a child properly.

Further, over the course of the conflict with ISIL, incidents of unaccompanied and separated children, particularly in 2017, had a significant upward trend. Majority of children without both parents are living with extended family members, however those without any caregivers are placed in state institutions.  Children who are deprived of parental care, unaccompanied and separated children, and children living in residential care, live without oversight of their conditions, are at heightened risk of violence, abuse and neglect.  A greater proportion of children living in Ninewa (7.1 percent), Salah Al-din (7.5 percent) and Anbar (6.5 percent) governorates have one or both parent’s dead, compared to a national rate of 4.3 percent. These local variations almost certainly result from the conflict and if children and young people from camps were surveyed, the situation is likely to be worse.

MICS 2018 data shows that percentage of children age 5-17 years who are involved in child labor is slightly higher for south and central Iraq (10.3) in comparison to Kurdistan (7.3) and in the poorest quintile is three times higher than the richest quintile.

 

At present, Kurdistan Region of Iraq has a regional strategy for ECD, however, none exists for the Federal Government of Iraq. The Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee (PMAC) has assembled a Multispectral Steering Committee on ECD, which has been tasked with developing an integrated strategy for a multispectral, coordinated action for ECD. A draft strategy has since been initiated. PMAC has requested the support of development partners, including UNICEF and World Bank to support the review and finalization of this draft strategy drawing on international standards and experiences from other contexts. Provide general context of the situation and/or country context.

 

Explain briefly which functional area this consultancy will support and how the consultancy will support. As applicable, provide justification as to why this could not be covered with the existing staff capacity in the office

 

1. Goal / Objective – Programme Group Result/Intermediate Result (PCR/IR) relevance

To provide technical support to Government of Iraq  to develop a comprehensive, multi-sectorial, medium to long-term 5-year National Strategy for ECD in Iraq.

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1. Specific Tasks

 

The Consultant will work closely with the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee (PMAC), and in collaboration with the key ECD stakeholders in Iraq including: Ministry of Health (MoH), Ministry of Education (MoE), and Ministry of Social Labour Affairs (MoLSA) and other relevant stakeholders.

The consultant will also work closely with the UNICEF Iraq as the Managing Entity and World Bank as a collaborating partner during the duration of the consultancy. Other international and local organizations active in ECD will be consulted during the process.

Tasks

 

1. Undertake a rapid analysis of the ECD sector through a review of the relevant published data, strategic documents related to early childhood development from a holistic dimension, information on ECD activities, programs, research, coverage and other information needed from relevant Ministries and stakeholders; An important report to review is the 2014 SABER ECD report.

 

2. Undertake a review of the current draft strategy that is being developed by PMAC to identify if it comprehensively addresses the issues identified as a result of the review (in point 1 above)

 

3. Prepare a report summarizing the key issues identified in points 1 and 2 above including a proposed approach to and steps to finalize the strategy (to be shared with PMAC, relevant Ministries, UNICEF, World Bank and relevant stakeholders);

 

4. Assist PMAC in conducting a workshop for the ECD steering committee (members representing related Ministries) to share the proposed approach for the development of the strategy and the inputs required from their respective Ministries as well as a timeframe;

 

5. Following the consensus in point 4 above, work with PMAC and relevant Ministries to finalize a comprehensive 5-year National ECD Strategy that corresponds to the context of Iraq and a costed implementation plan;

 

6. Once draft documents are developed, facilitate meetings/workshops to validate the Strategy and the costed implementation plan; and,

 

7. Prepare final versions of comprehensive the ECD Strategy and costed implementation plan incorporating feedback from PMAC, relevant Ministries, UNICEF, World Bank and all stakeholders.

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

• Education: MSc degree in pediatrics/behavioral psychology/psychiatry, ECD/Education/Public Policy/Social Sciences/ or related fields.
• At least 8-10 years of proven experience in similar area of public policy, socio-economic development and ECD.
• Strong communication, analytical and writing skills, ability to conceptualize, plan and prepare analytical reports in English.
• Experience working in emergencies or other similar contexts.
• Fluency in English. Knowledge of Arabic is an asset.
• Work effectively through email, phone, and other means of communications.
• Availability to travel.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

The competencies required for this post are….

View our competency framework at

http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

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, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.

Remarks:

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