Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. 

 The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region

• The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region comprises 30 extremely diverse countries, with a population of nearly 500 million people. Although 10 of our clients have joined the EU and 7 of these have graduated, most continue to remain active recipients of knowledge and/or lending services. Furthermore, in the midst of a crisis like the pandemic that we are experiencing now, some of the advanced countries re-engage with the Bank for additional support, including financial. ECA has a strong lending pipeline as well as a large and growing portfolio of Reimbursable Advisory Services. Knowledge is critical to the Bank’s value proposition to client countries in the ECA region in both lending and advisory services.
• A predominantly middle- and high-income region, ECA continues to be at the forefront in confronting the numerous development challenges that countries face in the evolving global economy. The region is at the vanguard of building regional connectivity while having to manage the changing structure of the labor market. At the same time, digital technologies are changing the nature of work, populations are aging, and large migration flows have generated social tensions that have contributed to increased political polarization. These emerging trends threaten to reverse the region’s achievements in regional integration, poverty reduction and shared prosperity.  
• The ECA region is also one of the most vulnerable to climate change. It has a large potential to strengthen climate change resilience and improve energy efficiency, thereby reducing its contribution to climate change. Other important challenges affecting parts of the region include frozen conflicts and domestic political instability.
• In February 2020, the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak interrupted the incipient recovery and the impact on growth remains highly uncertain and in a downside scenario of prolonged shutdowns, output in ECA could contract by nearly 8 percent in 2020. The pandemic also poses medium-term risks, particularly if global value chain linkages are lost or if extended school closures have a significant impact on learning, dropout rates, and human capital development.

The near- and medium-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis serve to re-emphasize the critical importance of ECA’s medium-term strategic agenda on raising productivity and boosting resilience. This focuses on three priority areas:

• Boosting human capital to raise productivity
• Building solid foundations and resilience for growth
• Enabling markets to achieve high productivity in the private sector

The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region: https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/eca

• The Sustainable Development (SD) Practice Group (PG) helps countries tackle their most complex challenges in the areas of Agriculture and Food, Climate Change, Environment, Natural Resources & Blue Economy, Environmental and Social Framework, Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience & Land, Social Sustainability and Inclusion, and Water.

Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice

• The Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice helps countries tackle deep rooted social problems stemming from fragility, climate change, exclusion, and the digital age with people centered solutions that build on local values and institutions. The Practice engages with citizens, communities and governments to deepen resilience, build inclusion, and empower vulnerable and marginalized groups to have influence and voice. It prioritizes participatory, multi-sectoral approaches that build on norms and informal institutions to address social challenges and to build more inclusive, empowered communities.  The Practice also works across the Bank’s portfolio to implement the Environment and Social Framework (ESF) standards. The ESF offers an overarching platform for fostering inclusive approaches to ensure vulnerable groups benefit from Bank investments and mitigate against related risks.

The Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice has adopted a new strategy that aims to promote inclusive sustainable development anchored on three pillars: 

• Social Inclusion: Enhancing opportunities for equality and inclusion of all people irrespective of income level, geography, gender, ethnicity, disability, religion, sexual orientation or other grounds of discrimination; Advancing inclusive laws, regulations, policies and institutions; and investing in access to markets and services for hard to reach and marginalized groups living in lagging regions. 
• Social Resilience: Strengthening social risk management for social sustainability and inclusion; Enhancing social cohesion and opportunities in fragile communities; Strengthening social resilience to climate extremes and natural hazards; and Supporting emergency response and an inclusive recovery from COVID-19. 
• Social Empowerment: supporting community empowerment for more effective service delivery; Fostering accountable governance including from the bottom up; and Promoting community-driven women empowerment and livelihood support programs. 

Regional Management Unit Context 

• The SCASO team is responsible for: (i) undertaking social analysis during project preparation and implementation, to mainstream social development issues throughout the Bank’s work in the region; (ii) supporting clients to manage project-level social risk; (iii) ensuring that Bank-financed projects meet the requirements of the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF), including: social assessment; labor and working conditions; community health and safety; land acquisition, restrictions on land use and involuntary resettlement; Indigenous Peoples; stakeholder engagement (with a focus on vulnerable groups); grievance redress and Sexual Exploitation and Abuse/Sexual Harassment; (iv) undertaking Analytical and Advisory Activities (ASA) in the form of thematic studies on social development issues, country social analysis, and Reimbursable Advisory Services (RAS); (v) leading the preparation and supervision of lending operations, with a particular focus on promoting the inclusion of vulnerable groups (including youth, the elderly, Roma, women, internally displaced persons, refugees, etc.), and citizen engagement; and (vi) facilitating partnerships and dialogue with civil society through outreach and engagement with a broad range of actors.  To this end, the ECA Social Development Unit works closely with staff across all Country Management Units and Global Practices in ECA.

Kyrgyz Republic Country Context

• World Bank supports Kyrgyzstan to maintain macroeconomic stability, invest in strategic infrastructure, and improve access to social services. To enhance the impact of the sizable external assistance that the country enjoys and avoid duplication of effort by donors, the World Bank Group, through its convening role, worked closely with the Government to help improve broader donor coordination in the country and link it more directly to identified national priorities. Since the Kyrgyz Republic joined the World Bank in 1992, the Bank’s financial assistance has amounted to over US$2,024 million.
• The strategic focus of the World Bank’s program, as highlighted in the Country Partnership Framework, is to assist the Kyrgyz Republic in promoting diversified, export-oriented, inclusive, and sustainable private sector–led growth. World Bank engagement for the next several years will be built around three focus areas:
• First, strengthening the foundations for inclusive private sector–led growth, focusing especially on fiscal stability, improvements to the regulatory environment for business, and risk reduction.
• Second, boosting overall productivity and building greater connectivity through support for the development of promising natural resource sectors and greater digital and physical connectivity.
• Third, expanding economic opportunities and building resilience through investments in human capital, efforts to decentralize and support regional development, and better adaptation to environmental and climate risks.
• Support for these areas will be provided through concessional lending, supplemented by trust fund financing and intensified Advisory Services and Analytics (ASA) that emphasize practical, problem-solving advice. 

Duties and Accountabilities 

• The Social Development Specialist (SDS) will be based in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic and will support the Kyrgyz Republic portfolio’s work on social risk management including managing issues related to the old Bank safeguards policies and the new Environmental and Social Framework (ESF). The SDS will also provide technical support on broad social development themes including gender, social accountability and youth centered activities. The SDS will report to the ECA SSI Practice Manager and work in close collaboration with the Regional Safeguards Coordinator and Central Asia ESF CMU Coordinator. 

The SDS will have the following main tasks and responsibilities:

• Provide guidance to clients on social risk management so that not only the Bank’s social risk management standards are fully complied with, but also the impact and sustainability of Bank supported operations are enhanced. 
• Work in close collaboration with the ESF CMU Coordinator for the Central Asia CMU, the Regional Safeguards Coordinator and the ECA SSI Practice Manager. 
• Primarily provide implementation support to the Bank’s operations in Kyrgyz Republic, and to other countries in the Central Asia CMU as required.
• Advise task teams and clients on the Bank’s Environmental and Social Standards and supporting the conceptualization of approaches to mitigate social risk and maximize social benefits through the preparation and supervision of lending operations across sectors. 
• Provide guidance and direct operational support to task teams and staff on responses to social safeguards and ESF related topics and during preparation and implementation on all aspects related to social risk management.
• Ensure that, at any time, the relevant reporting systems are updated with high quality information to allow proactive monitoring, management, and reporting of social risk across the portfolio.
• Support other STCs working on social risk management and supervise the timeliness and quality of their work.
• Advise and participate in project teams to help develop operational designs and mechanisms to assess social opportunities, impacts, constraints and risks related to Bank supported operations; develop and evaluate proposed technical solutions and assist in the preparation of project documentation. 
• Contribute to management briefs of relevant social safeguards issues.
• Support policy dialogue with clients on social risk, social inclusion, and social sustainability issues, ranging from upstream inputs into country Systematic Country Diagnostics and Country Partnership Frameworks, to advising counterparts on related policies or on risks and opportunities in relation to Bank-supported operations. 
• Develop and build relations within the Bank and with clients and contribute to generating new business for the Bank.
• Contribute to ongoing and emerging corporate initiatives related to social standards, through participation in the Global Solutions Group on Social Sustainability and Inclusion. In this context, improve feedback mechanisms through participating in and contributing to high quality training and other learning events related to social assessments, social safeguards, and broader social development issues. 
• Build capacity with clients on issues related to safeguards and broader social issues, including clients’ monitoring and evaluation of social development activities and outcomes.

Selection Criteria

• At least advanced university degree (Masters or PhD) in relevant social science (e.g., Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, and Political Science) or related fields. 
• Minimum of 5 years of professional experience in social development topics, including social safeguards, social inclusion, gender integration and ethnic minorities. 
• Knowledge and experience in addressing issues covered by the World Bank Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) and social safeguards policies, particularly social assessment, involuntary resettlement, labor and working conditions, community health and safety, Indigenous Peoples, stakeholder engagement and information disclosure and/or similar policies in other international finance institutions in complex and challenging settings, and across sectors. Experience with grievance redress mechanisms.
• Experience with involuntary resettlement and integration of relevant planning instruments such as Resettlement Action Plans (RAP) in overall project planning and implementation. 
• Strong operational (task management) and analytical skills and demonstrated ability to translate analytical work into policy advice and actionable, practical recommendations. 
• Proven experience in engaging in policy dialogue with government, development partners in at least 2 relevant social development areas.
• Demonstrated ability to organize and manage a complex work program; aptitude to lead diverse team, navigate team dynamics, and mentor STCs. 
• Experience with managing donor-funded projects/programs a plus.
• Excellent oral and written communications skills in English, Kyrgyz and Russian is essential. 

Source: https://worldbankgroup.csod.com/ats/careersite/JobDetails.aspx?id=21630&site=1