Purpose for the job: Under the day-today supervision of the Deputy Representative, you will ensure that the UNICEF Turkmenistan Country Office and national partners have useful, valid and reliable information on:

• the situation of children and women and on the progress in realizing their rights;
• the reduction of equity gaps within the country;
• the results of UNICEF-supported national public programmes including their evaluation; and
• the contribution of UNICEF to the achievement of the results;

Summary of key functions/accountabilities:

Within the delegated authority and under the given organizational set-up, the incumbent may be assigned the primarily, shared, or contributory accountabilities for all or part of the following areas of major duties and key end-results.

Strengthening child rights systems monitoring

• Maintain and develop partnerships with relevant stakeholders, the national statistical office, the parliament and civil society to establish and/or strengthen the existing independent monitoring and evaluation systems and processes so that reliable and disaggregated data and analysis on the situation of disadvantaged and excluded children are available to, and used by, decision-makers in the development child-related policies and programmes.
• Systematically promote equity-based child rights indicators and monitoring systems in partnerships
• Actively seek partnerships with centres of excellence for the identification of capacity gaps (in terms of human resources, processes, indicators, etc.) to monitor and evaluation progressive realisation of child rights and reduction of equity gaps and the development of strategies to address them.

Situation Monitoring and Assessment

• Support partners in the establishment and management of national statistical databases (e.g. SDG database/dissemination platform); and contribution to regional and international databases (e.g. TransMonEE, HELIX), ensuring that key indicators are readily accessible by key stakeholders. Potential uses include the Situation Analysis, Common Country Assessment, Early Warning Monitoring Systems, SDG reporting/VNR and Mid-Term Reviews.
• Develop a Situation Monitoring and Assessment system owned by all key partners which supports the preparation of country level statistical and analytic reports on the status of children’s and women’s rights issues and of equity gaps; and which allow, when opportunities emerge to influence developmental and social policies. This is to include technical support to global reporting obligations including national reports on progress toward international commitments for children, and toward CRC and CEDAW fulfilment.
• In coordination with other stakeholders, where applicable support the collection of data on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and other nationally or internationally agreed key social development indicators (supporting MICS or other relevant surveys) to improve national planning.
• In humanitarian response situations, provide professional support for one or more rapid assessments (inter-agency or independently if necessary) to be carried out within the first 48-72 hours, working in close collaboration with the humanitarian clusters partners.

Evaluation

• Technically support programme colleagues and national partners in identifying and designing strategic evaluations that meet UNICEF policy coverage requirements. This may include joint or country led evaluation of public policies and programmes, impact evaluation of models and pilots and participation in strategic multi-country evaluations. Apply UNICEF taxonomy to evidence generation work to determine which activities should be treated as evaluations.
• Formulate evaluation Terms of Reference in consultation with UNICEF programme staff and external partners, establish evaluation Reference Groups, recruit qualified independent evaluation teams and manages objective and ethical evaluation processes from design to dissemination in line with UNEG evaluation norms and standards and UNICEF’s regional quality assurance procedures. Ensure that evaluations are appropriately budgeted for and are delivered on time.
• Disseminate evaluation findings and recommendations to the intended audiences in user-friendly formats. Ensure that effective participatory feedback is provided to community and civil society stakeholders.
• Support the Country Management Team in the preparation of management responses. Ensure that a management response to the findings and recommendations of evaluations are jointly developed by all relevant stakeholders, recorded, and followed up for implementation. Most specifically, ensure that evaluation recommendations are submitted to the Country Management Team and follow-up actions recorded in CMT minutes. Submit electronic copies of all evaluations to NYHQ via the Evaluation Data Base web portal, with full accompanying documentation. Update the online evaluation and research database and management response tracker on a quarterly basis.
• Together with other UN agencies, promote evaluation capacity development (enabling environment, organizational capacity and experience, individual knowledge and skills) of national institutions and departments with mandates related to monitoring and evaluation. Joint evaluations of components of the national development agenda/SDGs, particularly those most relevant for children, are encouraged.

Knowledge Management

• Coordinates the CO efforts to support the government, the parliament and civil society in the identification of good practices in and support their dissemination within the country, regionally and internationally (as relevant) by partners themselves.
• Undertake lessons-learned reviews on M&E practices and experience at the national level, and ensure they are shared as appropriate. Similarly, pay attention to M&E knowledge networks to identify innovations and lessons learned that may be relevant for the CO and partners to improve their M&E function.
• Maintain online UNICEF systems used for gathering and sharing data, evidence and evaluations (HELIX, EISI, Teamsite, etc.).

Contribution to Networking and Advocacy

• Strengthen the capacity of UNICEF colleagues and national partners, including the media, to generate and use reliable and disaggregated data and analysis on the situation of vulnerable children for their own interventions and advocacy for child rights.
• Link UNICEF’s partnerships and advocacy strategies with the knowledge strategy to ensure that the CO has at its disposal the latest data and analysis on vulnerable children and their families, generated by UNICEF or partners.
• Participate in UN M&E and/or SDG M&E related working groups.

Monitoring, Evaluation & Research Planning

• Make professional contributions to and provide technical assistance for planning and establishing major research, monitoring and evaluation objectives, priorities, and activities in UNICEF’s 5 year Costed Evaluation Plan (CEP) and CO annual plan for research, studies and evaluations (RSEs), in consultation with child-rights and implementing partners.
• Collaborate with the Regional M&E Adviser and HQ Evaluation Office for overall coordination of priority research, monitoring and evaluation activities, especially those of regional scope requiring the coordinated effort of multiple countries.
• Support management to track progress in implementing the CEP and annual RSE plan, ensuring that any deviations are documented in CMT meeting minutes.
• In humanitarian response situations, within the first month, draft and recommend a simple one-month data-collection plan to cover key data gaps as required for the initial emergency response, working in close collaboration with the humanitarian clusters partners. After the initial humanitarian response, support management of the medium-term response with a revised RSE plan.

To qualify as Child Rights Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, you need to have...

Education:

• Advanced university degree in social sciences, statistics, planning development, planning. Formal training in the conduct of rigorous evaluation is an asset.

Experience:

• Relevant professional work experience in programme development and implementation including monitoring and evaluation activities as follows:
• Five years of relevant professional work experience. Experience in conducting and/or managing evaluations and assessments is an asset.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in English, Russian and Turkmen is required.

Source:https://www.unicef.org/about/employ/?job=525843