The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is mandated to lead and coordinate international action to protect and assist refugees and other persons of concern. It is constantly seeking talented, compassionate candidates with high-integrity to strengthen its capacity to respond urgently to crises with the right skills. Given the nature of UNHCR¿s work, it is essential that its workforce has the right mix of skills and qualities to fulfil its mandate.
While UNHCR’s primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees, our ultimate goal is to help find durable solutions that will allow them to rebuild their lives in dignity. There are three durable solutions pursued by UNHCR refugees in protracted situations: voluntary repatriation; local integration; or resettlement to a third country. While pursuing durable solutions, UNHCR works to increase the self-reliance and livelihood opportunities of refugees, including through strategic partnerships with development actors.
UNHCR works with multiple stakeholders, including development actors, to promote the economic inclusion of refugees, hereby preparing them for their future whether it be in a return home, or in their countries of asylum or in a third country.
Economist
- Job TypeFull Time
- QualificationBA/BSc/HND
- Experience6 years
- Location Nairobi
- Job Field NGO/Non-Profit
Organizational Setting and Work Relationships
Framed by the Global Compact for Refugees (GCR) and UNHCR¿s mission to find solutions to refugee situations, strengthened cooperation with development and private sector partners is essential. The increasing number of refugees and internally displaced persons in protracted displacement situations, together with the increasing scale of irregular migration, large-scale refugee movements, and costs of responding to humanitarian situations, have placed forced displacement high on the global agenda. These elements have further driven the realization that humanitarian support must be complemented by development and private sector actors to lift displaced populations out of poverty, enable solutions, and encourage an area based approach to poverty reduction.
Within UNHCR, the Division of Resilience and Solutions (DRS) was formed to address these challenges, in part by broadening strategic partnerships with key actors in these areas, including importantly the World Bank and other multilateral development banks and in so doing aligning approaches by Government. To support investments by development actors in area based approaches including both forcibly displaced and their hosts, requires better data and standardized information about refugees and host community households, particularly in relation to their socio-economic status or multidimensional poverty status. Accurate data on welfare conditions is also needed UNHCR and partner operational needs including cash, livelihoods, and education programming, welfare targeting and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals. Finally, comparable information for both refugees and host community member is a pre-requisite for measuring changes in welfare required to inform medium-term programming with development partners and national governments. DRS together with the World Bank Poverty Global Practice supported by the UNHCR World Bank Joint Data Center manage the partnership and play the global coordination role for the institution in working with National Statistics Offices to include forcibly displaced into National Poverty Assessments.
The Economist will contribute to the Global Compact for Refugees (GCR) objectives 1 and 2- Ease the pressures on host countries and Enhance refugee self-reliance. Concretely the Economist will contribute to the indicators measuring the success of the Global Compact for Refugees and particularly the Proportion of refugees living below the national poverty line in the host country. Depending on where the Economist is based the reporting lines will differ. If the Economist is based in Headquarters it will map to the DRS Partnership Analytics Research and Knowledge (PARK) section. If the Economist is based in a country or regional office, the Economist will report to either the Representative or Deputy Representative Programme, or in some cases Head of Sub-Office or Senior Operations Officer. In all cases a dotted line will be to DRS PARK for technical functional clearance of candidates and for technical oversight of economics products. The Economist will work closely with Programme and Protection colleagues in addition to Senior Management in the operation as well as Bureaux and technical unit key external stakeholders and development agencies, including the World Bank, government agencies, national statistical agencies, and other operational partners.
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All UNHCR staff members are accountable to perform their duties as reflected in their job description. They do so within their delegated authorities, in line with the regulatory framework of UNHCR which includes the UN Charter, UN Staff Regulations and Rules, UNHCR Policies and Administrative Instructions as well as relevant accountability frameworks. In addition, staff members are required to discharge their responsibilities in a manner consistent with the core, functional, cross-functional and managerial competencies and UNHCR¿s core values of professionalism, integrity and respect for diversity.
Duties
Project Management
- Lead the design and implementation of assessments and other data-driven products related to the socio-economic welfare of refugees, forcibly displaced persons and host communities, wherever possible through coordination with the National Bureau of Statistics and World Bank Country Economist in inclusion of forcibly displaced into National Poverty Assessment.
- Successfully manage all partnerships and activities in the collection of comparable socio-economic (poverty) data on forcibly displaced
- Contribute to defining and promoting a vision for the use of socio-economic data, particularly in planning, programming and advocacy at the country, regional and headquarters levels.
- Maintain a strong understanding of the state of literature on poverty analysis for forcibly displaced.
- Manage data collection activities, as appropriate. This may take place at all stages of data collection (preparation, survey design, sampling, onsite data collection oversight and supervision and quality assurance, data analysis and report writing).
- Conduct data analysis using econometric programs (R, Stata).
Data Collection and Analysis
- Consolidate raw primary and secondary datasets into final datasets to be used for analysis, as needed. This will involve creating and merging various sources of data and may require programming matching algorithms, linking up with field staff for additional information, and performing manual matching.
- Clean all datasets and create all necessary indicators. Work with the research team to design a thorough plan for data analysis and carry out the coding to perform this analysis. Common analytical tasks include production of descriptive statistics and regression analysis for various outputs such as briefs, presentations and academic papers.
- For any field survey, assist in programming the instrument and developing protocols to ensure high quality data.
- Properly prepare and document relevant datasets for archiving on the UNHCR Microdata Library.
- Lead the preparation of research papers including formatting and creating tables, graphs, and related analysis.
- Engage with country operation, partners and government, as appropriate, in the design and implementation of data collection and research projects.
Coordination
- Ensure good communication and coordination among members of the country team, Governments, researchers and partners, serving as a link between these parties.
- Lead drafting and writing of presentations, analytical reports and research and policy briefs.
- Participate in official missions and deliver capacity building and training activities for partners and governments.
- Identify research opportunities and contribute to proposals for research partnerships and funding.
- Reflect UNHCR’s positions on policy, advocacy and programming issues as they relate to the protection, resilience and solutions of refugees with medium-term economic and social development programmes.
- Represent UNHCR in negotiations and meetings relating to socio-economic profiling of forcibly displaced and wider partners research in country.
- Represent UNHCR in technical capacity with external actors.
- Perform other related duties as required.
Minimum Qualifications
Education & Professional Work Experience
Years of Experience / Degree Level
For P3/NOC – 6 years relevant experience with Undergraduate degree; or 5 years relevant experience with Graduate degree; or 4 years relevant experience with Doctorate degree
Field(s) of Education
Economics Statistics
(Field(s) of Education marked with an asterisk* are essential)
Certificates and/or Licenses
Not specified
(Certificates and Licenses marked with an asterisk* are essential)
Relevant Job Experience
Essential:
- At least six (6) years of demonstrated experience in economics, analysing data and conducting research.
- Familiarity with processes of the World Bank, the African Development Bank or other international financial institutions, bilateral development agencies or research institutions.
Desirable:
- Familiarity with displacement and development issues.
- Experience of working with the private sector.
- Experience working in applied development economics.
- Experience in poverty modelling.
- Experience leading primary data collection effort and data analysis.
- Experience of working with synergies between the humanitarian-development nexus.
- Demonstrated skills and experience with measuring welfare through socio-economic profiling.
- Demonstrated experience with analysis of large datasets.
- Demonstrated expertise in utilization of relevant statistical software (R, Stata).
- Ability to work independently with limited supervision and deliver high quality products
- Demonstrated ability to think creatively, and to explore, harness and translate innovative concepts into relevant practical approaches for programming, policy, and advocacy purposes.
- Demonstrated ability to think creatively, and to explore, harness and translate innovative concepts into relevant practical approaches for programming, policy, and advocacy purposes.
Functional Skills
- MS-Drafting, Documentation, Data Presentation
- MS-Networking
- MG-Project Management
- IT-Statistical software (eg. SPSS, Stata, CSPRO, etc.)
- MS-Statistics Analysis
- MS-Data Collection and Analysis
- (Functional Skills marked with an asterisk* are essential)
Financial Inclusion Officer, P3, Nairobi
- Job TypeFull Time
- QualificationBA/BSc/HND
- Location Nairobi
- Job Field Finance / Accounting / Audit
Organizational Setting and Work Relationships
Improving livelihoods through economic and financial inclusion is a key component of achieving protection and long-term solutions for the refugee situation. Economic inclusion contributes to the self-reliance and resilience of refugees and other forcibly displaced persons, empowering them to meet their needs in a safe, sustainable and dignified manner, avoid aid-dependency, contribute to their host economies, and prepare for their future whether they return home, integrate in their country of asylum, or resettle in a third country.
Self-reliance is often contingent to the ability of forcibly displaced to have access to financial services such as loans and credit lines, savings accounts and payment services. Most forcibly displaced, in particular refugees, are today excluded from the formal financial sector, which means they lack a safe place to save and receive money, affordable ways to make payments, and access to loans to invest in a business activity or to smooth their consumption needs.
Ongoing global processes such as the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) and the focus on the humanitarian-development nexus show the need for and benefit of taking a holistic approach which requires the engagement of a broad range of stakeholders, leveraging the value-add and strategic positioning of each of them.
In the area of financial inclusion, UNHCR engages with financial service providers (FSPs), specialized development agencies, and impact investors to facilitate the financial inclusion of refugees and other forcibly displaced. To make its planning and interventions effective in this area, UNHCR wishes to hire a Financial Inclusion Officer who will be working under the supervision of the Senior Financial Inclusion Coordinator based in HQ and in close collaboration with the Economic Inclusion Unit. The incumbent will have a broad range of tasks and responsibilities related to programs¿ design, monitoring and evaluation, partnerships¿ creation, and support of field operations. S/he will be responsible for supporting field operations with the screening and implementation of financial inclusion projects and partnerships; identifying new areas of work for UNHCR to promote access to finance for forcibly displaced in Africa and neighbouring countries; and establishing key partnerships with financial inclusion actors ¿ in particular investors, financial service providers and specialized development agencies.
S/he will promote awareness about the needs for access to finance for forcibly displaced and disseminate findings of UNHCR work in this area by planning and delivering on a research agenda and writing/editing relevant communication pieces and papers as needs arise.
S/he will establish and maintain close and effective partnerships with the financial inclusion sector, in particular investors, donors and financial service providers. S/he will also ensure UNHCR representation in appropriate regional coordination mechanisms and networks.
All UNHCR staff members are accountable to perform their duties as reflected in their job description. They do so within their delegated authorities, in line with the regulatory framework of UNHCR which includes the UN Charter, UN Staff Regulations and Rules, UNHCR Policies and Administrative Instructions as well as relevant accountability frameworks. In addition, staff members are required to discharge their responsibilities in a manner consistent with the core, functional, cross-functional and managerial competencies and UNHCR¿s core values of professionalism, integrity and respect for diversity.
Duties
- Identify new projects in the area of financial inclusion, support the planning and successful implementation of these projects through sustainable partnerships with relevant financial institutions, international lenders and development financial institutions.
- Document the impact of any project in financial inclusion, ensure acknowledgement for its relevance, and wide dissemination of its findings.
- Support the capacity strengthening of field staff involved in financial inclusion operations, particularly in relation to the identification of suitable financial institutions to partner with, data-collection and performance/outcomes monitoring.
- Support UNHCR field operations to raise awareness about access to finance for forcibly displaced within the financial community and to establish partnerships with qualified financial service providers.
- Provide technical guidance to UNHCR field operations engaged in partnerships with financial service providers.
- Train financial service providers and other key stakeholders in the industry about the financial needs of forcibly displaced by organizing workshops and focus groups with refugees in field operations in Africa and neighbouring regions.
- Identify and build solid partnerships with the financial sector, research institutes, competent technical agencies and others that can bring knowledge, know-how and networks in support of creating financial inclusion opportunities for forcibly displaced and hosting communities.
- Raise awareness about the needs of forcibly displaced in access to finance and on the work done by UNHCR in this area by writing/editing publications and presenting at key international events in the Africa region.
- Proactively seek new opportunities for effective shared value partnership building and resource mobilization amongst highly qualified financial institutions, as well as development actors and donors.
- Support the monitoring, reporting on measurement of results/impact of financial inclusion projects implemented by UNHCR or partners.
- Support the identification and assessment of technical assistance needs of refugees and selected financial institutions.
- Support creating training material for financial service providers (FSP) and delivery on them.
- Support selecting areas of intervention ¿ in line with UNHCR strategic objectives and in coordination with field operations – for implementing projects and fostering partnerships with the financial community.
- Decide on coordination with partners, the selection of FSPs with whom UNHCR will engage in multi-country programs.
- Support in reviewing project proposals coming from field offices and implementing partners to promote access to finance for forcibly displaced.
- Research and write/edit knowledge products pertaining to financial inclusion/resilience of forcibly displaced for publication.
- Perform other related duties as required.
Minimum Qualifications
Years of Experience / Degree Level
For P3 – 6 years relevant experience with Undergraduate degree; or 5 years relevant experience with Graduate degree; or 4 years relevant experience with Doctorate degree
Field(s) of Education
- Development Economics;
- International Development;
or other relevant field. - (Field(s) of Education marked with an asterisk* are essential)
- Certificates and/or Licenses
- not specified;
Relevant Job Experience
- Essential: Solid knowledge of the financial inclusion sector as evidenced by minimum 6 years of professional experience in the sector as researcher or provider. Practical experience in conducting needs assessments of microfinance clients and analysis of results. Proven experience of developing training materials, organization and delivery of trainings for microfinance and banking institutions. Professional experience with financial and social performance data collection and due-diligence of microfinance institutions.
- Proven knowledge of the financial and social performance standards of the microfinance industry.
- Desirable: Experience with living and working on financial inclusion in Africa. Previous experience working with FDPs or migrants in the area of economic inclusion. Professional experience working for a microfinance investment fund or a financial service provider. Experience to support FSPs with improving their social performance management systems.
Functional Skills
- MS-Drafting, Documentation, Data Presentation
- MS-Presentation
- CO-Strategic Communication
- CO-Public Speaking
- IT-Computer Literacy
- IT-MS Office Applications;
- (Functional Skills marked with an asterisk* are essential)
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