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🚩 Vacancy Announcement n°: JR104962
📢 Job Title: Nutrition Consultant (Wasting Transition Plan Regional Manager)
✨ Contract type and Grade: International Consultant, CST Level II
📧 Duration: 11 months
✅ Unit / Division: Nutrition Unit
📍 Duty Station: Dakar, Senegal
⏰ Closing date: 06 November 2024
The progress made in the 19 countries comprising RBD against the 2025 World Health Assembly nutrition targets remains insufficient. West and Central Africa is the world’s only region in which the number of stunted and wasted children continues to rise. In West and Central Africa, several factors threaten the food security and nutritional status of the population, especially of women and children under five. These include recurrent climatic and economic shocks, conflicts and armed violence, population displacement, fragile health systems, demographic pressures coupled with minimal coverage of basic social services, household food insecurity, poor access to clean water and sanitation, chronic poverty, high levels of childhood illnesses and water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, and inadequate feeding practices for infant, children, and women. Affordability remains also a challenge in the region, more than half of households in the Sahel countries have no access to nutritious diets.
In these humanitarian contexts, continued efforts for the early detection of children with wasting and their management remain critical; likewise essential are actions to reduce the incidence of children whose nutrition situation may deteriorate into wasting.
The 2023 WHO Guideline on the Prevention and Management of Wasting and Nutritional Oedema together with the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting (GAP) provides an opportunity to foster new program approaches to ensure that as many children as possible benefit from coordinated efforts to prevent and address wasting. WFP with its partner UNICEF has developed a joint strategic approach to accelerate programmatic shifts in humanitarian and fragile contexts based on this new WHO Guideline. WFP and UNICEF will work together to provide a combined package of interventions to address child wasting. The joint approach emphasizes the importance of addressing maternal nutrition, elevates attention given to preventive actions as part of every program response and to increasing convergence and coverage to reach those populations most vulnerable and hardest to reach.
This approach will be implemented through a phased three-year transition plan (2024-2026) in 15 priority countries (Haiti, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Afghanistan, Yemen); supporting governments and partners incorporate evidence-based programmatic shifts in alignment with the WHO Guideline.
WFP in these countries will implement shifts in programs to address child wasting and maternal malnutrition in collaboration with its key collaborators, supported through the respective Regional Bureaus and joint actions taken at global level. The global actions include evidence generation through strong monitoring and evaluation or operations research, nutrition vulnerability analysis, documentation and sharing of success and lessons learnt from new program approaches, joint advocacy, and supply chain optimization of specialized nutritious foods.
MAIN ACCOUNTABILITIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:
The overall purpose of this assignment is to steer the WFP contribution of the joint transition plan of child wasting towards its intended outcomes by engaging proactively and supporting constructively the various stakeholders involved at regional and country level, as well as improving nutrition response to emergencies in the region.
Under the overall guidance of the Senior Regional Nutrition Advisor, the consultant will report to the Regional Nutritionist. The consultant will work in close collaboration with a variety of stakeholders such as colleagues across the Nutrition Unit in RBD, with WFP’s Nutrition and Food Quality Service in headquarters and selected country offices, and with counterparts in UNICEF at the regional level.
The consultant will be required to travel periodically to support high priority countries that are part of the transition plan on child wasting in the region (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria), as well as in other francophone high priority countries in Africa (DRC and Madagascar).
The consultant will coordinate and manage the joint transition plan on child wasting at the regional level to ensure that respective country offices are effectively supported. This includes:
1. Stakeholder engagement and coordination: Support coordination structure and external communication at regional and country level between WFP, UNICEF, and other stakeholders as required., including:
2. Strategic and overall support to Country Offices
3. Visibility, Communication, and Advocacy
4. Support any other activities related to WFP’s strategic objectives in nutrition and related workplans as required.
Education:
Master’s degree in nutrition, Public Health, Food Security, Food systems or other related fields, or Bachelor’s degree with additional years of relevant professional work experience
Experience
At least 5 years’ work experience in international nutrition programming experience related to fragile and humanitarian contexts.
Knowledge and Skills Required
Language Skills
Fluency in both English and French is required (Level C - reading, writing, speaking)
Closing date: 06 November 2024
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU APPLY
Special Notice on WFP RBD office relocation:
WFP and other UN Agencies will be moving to the new United Nations House in Diamniadio, 30 kilometres from downtown Dakar.
Special recommendation:
Before you apply, please confirm that both (i) your on-line profile and CV are accurate and up to date, (ii) your CV should include your employment history, academic qualifications, and language skills
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REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION
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REMINDERS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION
We strongly recommend that your profile is accurate, complete, and includes your employment records, academic qualifications, language skills and UN Grade (if applicable).
Once your profile is completed, please apply, and submit your application.
Please make sure you upload your professional CV in the English language
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Additional documents such as passport, recommendation letters, academic certificates, etc. may potentially be requested at a future time
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