Internal Vacancy: Child Protection Specialist (Legal & Policy Frameworks), NOC, FT, #138495, Kingston, Jamaica, Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

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For every child, the right to protection

UNICEF’s Caribbean Multi-Country Office (MCO) serves twelve English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. As part of UNICEF's Future Focus Initiative, the Caribbean MCO brings together policy influence, technical expertise and strategic partnerships to advance results for children across the region through one integrated programme, one management structure and a shared pool of resources. The Multi-Country Programme 2027-2031 focuses on three shared outcomes: equitable access to primary health care, learning and skills; protection of children from all forms of violence; and child poverty reduction and resilience strengthening.

Children across the Caribbean face interconnected challenges including learning losses, mental health concerns, violence, child poverty and increasing exposure to climate-related disasters. Despite many countries being classified as upper-middle or high income, significant inequalities persist, particularly for vulnerable children, adolescents, indigenous communities and those living in remote areas. Small island developing states also face fiscal constraints and heightened vulnerability to economic and climate shocks, requiring stronger regional cooperation and system-based solutions.

The Caribbean MCO’s management strategy is governed by four principles that together translate the new business model into concrete ways of working:

• Impact-driven: technical expertise is organized in shared multi-country working groups rather than replicated in each country, with enabling functions aligned around UNICEF’s strongest comparative advantages.
• Effective and agile: parallel country ecosystems are replaced by harmonized systems and flexible cross-country staffing, keeping management lean and decisions close to implementation.
• Grounded: regional scale is balanced with national depth through country-specific workplans, Heads of Office in each duty station, and matrix management that anchors authority and accountability at country level.
• People-centered: structural and managerial choices are guided by staff wellbeing, transparency and inclusion, with clear role definitions, meaningful consultation, and continuous investment in learning and development.

The operational expression of this model is the working group model. Rather than replicating similar roles across four separate country offices, technical and operational expertise is organized into 16 thematic and functional working groups, each distributed across different duty stations and each serving the full 12-country MCO — not just its host location. Roles are designed around three organizing principles: shared regional service, meaning every specialist contributes to the wider MCO; complementary expertise, meaning team capabilities reinforce each other rather than repeating the same profile in multiple places; and agile presence, meaning the workforce can be rapidly deployed across countries through travel, surge support or remote modalities in line with evolving needs and priorities. This working group model is the foundation of a fundamentally new way of working for UNICEF in the Caribbean: depth replaces duplication, and shared capacity replaces fragmented country-by-country coverage.

The Child Protection Specialist (Legal & Policy Frameworks) is part of the Protecting Children from all forms of Violence working group. This group seeks to reduce widespread, gender and intergenerational violence against children and adolescents through stronger child protection systems, integrated services and transformed social and gender norms. Its function is to develop and scale prevention, detection and child-centred response models across social protection, justice, education and health systems, aligning legal and policy frameworks with international standards and improving the availability and quality of services, including MHPSS in contexts of violence.

The team is led by the Assistant Representative, P4, accountable for the Programmatic priority No. 2 - Protecting Children from All Forms of Violence, and is supported by five NOC specialists: two Child Protection Specialists (Social and Gender Norms, based in Belize and Trinidad and Tobago), two Child Protection Specialists (Social Workforce Strengthening in Guyana and Suriname) and one Child Protection Specialist (Legal and Policy Frameworks, Jamaica). The P4 post is anchored in Guyana, where violence-related deprivations are particularly severe and where the presence of CARICOM headquarters provides a strategic platform for regional norm-setting and child-protection policy engagement.

The legal and policy specialist is located in Jamaica to remain close to MCO senior leadership and the regional legal environment, enabling Caribbean-level legislative and judicial dialogue from the MCO’s governance center. The two Social and Gender Norms Specialists, within a comprehensive Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) strategy of the MCO, lead the design and implementation of evidence-informed, child- and adolescent-centred approaches that combine community engagement, strategic communication and partnerships with civil society, faith leaders and youth groups to shift harmful norms and promote positive, inclusive behaviours across the subregion. They are based in Belize and Trinidad and Tobago, contexts with documented prevalence of gender-based violence, corporal punishment and other harmful norms, and with diverse cultural settings that are critical for community-level norms-change work in the western and southern/eastern Caribbean.

The social workforce specialists sit in Guyana and Suriname, countries facing significant shortages of trained social workers and fragmented case-management systems, where embedded technical presence is required to engage ministries and extend social-workforce strengthening efforts to indigenous, Maroon and other underserved communities; from these duty stations, all posts carry a regional mandate across the full MCO platform. Collectively, the team’s localization ensures coverage of contexts with the highest violence burdens and system gaps, while providing complementary expertise along the continuum from norms change and legal reform to social workforce strengthening and integrated, survivor-centred child protection services

How can you make a difference? 

The Child Protection Specialist reports to the Assistant Representative, P4, accountable for the outcome no. 2 -Protecting Children from All forms of Violence in Georgetown, Guyana, in close functional coordination with the Deputy Representative (Programme coordinator), P5, in Kingston, Jamaica.

This position provides specialized technical expertise in strengthening child protection legal, policy, regulatory and budget frameworks across the Caribbean MCO. The role brings substantive depth in child protection law and policy reform, alignment with international child rights standards, and institutional and accountability frameworks to strengthen the prevention of and response to violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect and harmful practices affecting children and adolescents.

The Child Protection Specialist supports governments and partners across the 12-country MCO to review, develop and strengthen child protection legislation, policies, regulations and related frameworks; identify gaps between national frameworks and international standards; and translate legal and policy commitments into effective institutional arrangements, accountability mechanisms and implementation. The role contributes to regional policy dialogue, knowledge exchange and the development and adaptation of regional frameworks and approaches, while supporting stronger linkages across child protection, justice and other relevant systems.

The key accountabilities and responsibilities:

1. Support to programme/project development and planning
2. Programme management, monitoring and delivery of results
3. Technical and operational support to programme implementation
4. Networking and partnership building
5. Innovation, knowledge management and capacity building

This position belongs to the Children Protected from All Forms of Violence working group. If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Job Description here:  NOC Child Protection Specialist (Legal & Policy Frameworks) Jamaica.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• Knowledge of international child rights and child protection standards and their application to policy frameworks in the Caribbean region is highly desirable.
• Experience providing technical assistance to governments in the development, review, implementation or monitoring of legislation, policies, regulations, standards or national strategies related to child protection is highly desirable.
• Relevant experience in child protection related areas in a UN system agency, development agency, NGO, regional or international organization is desirable.
• Experience supporting multi-stakeholder policy dialogue, institutional coordination and/or accountability mechanisms related to child protection is considered an asset.
• Ability to translate legal and policy analysis into practical recommendations for legislative, policy, institutional and programme reform is a desired skill. 
• Relevant Experience in both development, fragile settings and humanitarian contexts is considered as an added advantage. Experience working in a developing country is considered as an asset.

Candidates applying for NO positions must hold the nationality of the duty station country where the position is located, except for UNICEF internal candidates, holding a fixed-term, continuing, or permanent appointment and are legally authorized to work in that country, independently of UNICEF appointment, and as per the UNICEF Staff Selection Procedure. Candidates must hold and upload a valid CARICOM Skills Certificate when applying to positions located in a CARICOM Member State outside of their country of nationality and are accountable for taking the respective steps for the verification of the certificate in the Duty Station, immediately upon arrival to the new Duty Station if selected for the position, in accordance with applicable immigration and employment requirements of the respective Country.

(1) Builds and maintains partnerships

(2) Demonstrates self-awareness and ethical awareness

(3) Drive to achieve results for impact

(4) Innovates and embraces change

(5) Manages ambiguity and complexity

(6) Thinks and acts strategically

(7) Works collaboratively with others 

Familiarize yourself with our competency framework and its different levels.

UNICEF promotes and advocates for the protection of the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything it does and is mandated to support the realization of the rights of every child, including those most disadvantaged, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, minority, or any other status.

UNICEF encourages applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of gender, nationality, religious or ethnic backgrounds, and from people with disabilities, including neurodivergence. We offer a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities. UNICEF provides reasonable accommodation throughout the recruitment process. If you require any accommodation, please submit your request through the accessibility email button on the UNICEF Careers webpage Accessibility | UNICEF. Should you be shortlisted, please get in touch with the recruiter directly to share further details, enabling us to make the necessary arrangements in advance.

UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities. UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.

UNICEF does not hire candidates who are married to children (persons under 18). UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority, discrimination, fraud, corruption and other forms of misconduct.  

UNICEF is committed to promoting the protection and safeguarding of all children. All selected candidates will undergo rigorous reference, safeguarding and background verification checks. These checks may include verification of academic credentials and employment history, screening against relevant United Nations misconduct databases, and requests for misconduct disclosures from current and former employers, professional associations, other relevant organizations and participating organizations under inter-agency safeguarding initiatives, including the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme (MDS), where applicable. Appointment, selection and continued engagement are subject to the satisfactory completion of all required checks. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information and consent to enable UNICEF to undertake these checks.  

Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check, and selected candidates with disabilities may be requested to submit supporting documentation in relation to their disability confidentially.  

UNICEF appointments are subject to medical clearance. Issuance of a visa by the host country of the duty station is required for IP positions and will be facilitated by UNICEF. Appointments are conditional on the selected candidates’ willingness to comply with current or future vaccination requirements, should UNICEF mandate it for personnel.Failure to comply with such requirements, where applicable and without a duly approved medical exemption from the relevant UN authority, will result in the cancellation of the selection or may lead to other administrative measures, including separation from service

• Strong analytical and technical writing skills, including preparation of policy briefs, technical guidance, programme documents and evidence-based recommendations.
• Strong coordination and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across multiple reporting relationships and geographic contexts
• Ability to engage with government officials or policymakers on international child rights and child protection standards

As per Article 101, paragraph 3, of the Charter of the United Nations, the paramount consideration in the employment of the staff is the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity.

UNICEF is committed to fostering an inclusive, representative, and welcoming workforce. For this position, candidates that meet all the requirements and are legally allowed to work in the respective DS are encouraged to apply.

Government employees who are considered for employment with UNICEF are normally required to resign from their government positions before taking up an assignment with UNICEF. UNICEF reserves the right to withdraw an offer of appointment, without compensation, if a visa or medical clearance is not obtained, or necessary inoculation requirements are not met, within a reasonable period for any reason. 

UNICEF does not charge a processing fee at any stage of its recruitment, selection, and hiring processes (i.e., application stage, interview stage, validation stage, or appointment and training). UNICEF will not ask for applicants’ bank account information.

Humanitarian action is a cross-cutting priority within UNICEF’s Strategic Plan. UNICEF is committed to stay and deliver in humanitarian contexts. Therefore, all staff, at all levels across all functional areas, can be called upon to be deployed to support humanitarian response, contributing to both strengthening resilience of communities and capacity of national authorities.

UNICEF shall not facilitate the issuance of a visa and working authorization for candidates under consideration for positions at the national officer and general service category.

All UNICEF positions are advertised, and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. An internal candidate performing at the level of the post in the relevant functional area, or an internal/external candidate in the corresponding Talent Group, may be selected, if suitable for the post, without assessment of other candidates.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.

Advertised: 06 Oct 2026 SA Pacific Standard Time
Applications close: 19 Oct 2026 SA Pacific Standard Time

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