WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability.
The United Nations World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetimes. Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need.
In 2022, the world faced a historic food and nutrition crisis. Continuing in 2024, an estimated 29 million children will suffer from wasting in 15 of the worst-affected countries, In the same countries, 156 million people are estimated to face crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity, which is a 83 per cent increase from 2019 (before the global pandemic). The number of people living in emergency and catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity also saw a significant increase and represents a deterioration of the situation since 2019.
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.
As a United Nations (UN) agency reaching an estimated 150 million nutritionally vulnerable and food-insecure people each year, WFP plays a critical role in multi-stakeholder efforts to address malnutrition. In 2023, over 27 million children under the age of 5 and pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls were assisted through WFP supported nutrition-specific programmes that aim to prevent undernutrition and manage moderate wasting across 52 countries.”
The 2023 WHO Guideline on the Prevention and Management of Wasting and Nutritional Oedema together with the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting (GAP) provide 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 optimisation of specialised nutritious foods.
The overall purpose of the assignment is to strengthen integration of nutrition into WFP’s emergency preparedness and response mechanisms and support regions and countries to implement these; this will facilitate early and effective actions to prevent increases in child wasting in crises affected countries, especially in the 15 priority countries under the joint transition plan.
1. Strategic and operational support to the programmatic shift in 15 countries
2. Strengthen the capacity of regional and country offices to integrate nutrition in emergency preparedness and response into their operation.
Education:
Experience:
Languages:
The incumbent will be requested to have regular travels to the 15 priority countries (Haiti, Burkina Faso, Chad , Mali , Niger, Nigeria, Ethiopia , Kenya , Somalia , South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo , Madagascar , Afghanistan , Yemen).
Deadline for applications: 23 May, 2024 (Midnight Rome time).
WFP has a zero-tolerance approach to conduct such as fraud, sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to WFP’s standards of conduct and will therefore undergo rigorous background verification internally or through third parties. Selected candidates will also be required to provide additional information as part of the verification exercise. Misrepresentation of information provided during the recruitment process may lead to disqualification or termination of employment
WFP will not request payment at any stage of the recruitment process including at the offer stage. Any requests for payment should be refused and reported to local law enforcement authorities for appropriate action.
