Country Finance Specialist

Launched in September 2010, the purpose of the SUN Movement is to catalyze collective action and create an enabling environment to end malnutrition in all its forms. With 60 SUN Countries and four Indian States at the helm, the SUN Movement represents an unprecedented country-led effort to bring together stakeholders – from governments, national and global civil society organisations, businesses, the UN system, researchers and scientists across different sectors- and provide them with a collaborative space to convene, mobilize, share, learn, advocate, align and coordinate actions and approaches to improve nutrition.

SUN countries, and all stakeholders in the Movement are committed to scaling up nutrition, by strengthening four strategic processes at country-level as set out in the SUN Movement Strategy and Roadmap 2016-2020:

1. Expanding and sustaining an enabling political environment;
2. Prioritising effective actions that contribute to good nutrition;
3. Implementing actions aligned with national common results frameworks;
4. Effectively using, and significantly increasing, financial resources for nutrition.

The SUN Movement Secretariat (SMS) was established in 2012 as a small coordinating mechanism to support SUN countries, helping them connect with each other for support and advice, and ensuring coordinated and coherent support from actors in a series of networks. The Secretariat also maintains momentum across the SUN Movement, catalyzing interest and action in new or problematic nutrition issues. Finally, the Secretariat tracks and communicates the progress made by each SUN country, and the Movement as a whole.

The SUN Movement Coordinator, a UN Assistant Secretary General, oversees implementation of the Strategy and Roadmap, leads the SUN Movement Secretariat and represents the SUN Movement globally. Day-to-day management of the Secretariat is the responsibility of the Director.

The Country Finance Specialist, reporting to the Director of the SUN Movement Secretariat, will work closely with Country Liaison Team and Communication and Advocacy Team to support SUN member countries in understanding the nutrition financing landscape. 

The key objective of this role is to help the SUN Movement strengthen countries’ access to financing for nutrition and better understand and anticipate the evolving needs in nutrition financing as SUN member countries progress in their efforts. Specifically, this will entail:

a)     Serve as the in-house Specialist on nutrition financing in the SMS and supporting the team to develop development financing landscape literacy

• Collate up-to-date information on the sources of nutrition financing, methodologies and issues related to financial tracking, and the broader policy dialogue regarding development financing and how it pertains to nutrition.
• Support the SUN Movement Coordinator, SUN Executive Committee, SUN Movement Secretariat and SUN Networks on these topics and identify on strategic engagement opportunities for approval
• Cultivate and develop a resource pool of other experts on nutrition financing, available to further support the Movement’s efforts.
• Provide guidance to the Data Manager in managing the SUN Budget Analysis exercise and utilizing it for understanding and anticipating the financing needs of SUN member countries.

b)    Advocate for financing sources that put nutrition at the center

• Develop and manage relationships with major nutrition funding sources.
• Work with funding sources to identify ways in which they can better accommodate countries’ needs and promote better investments towards nutrition outcomes.

c)     Support countries’ preparedness for funding opportunities

• Working with the Country Liaison Team and the Communication and Advocacy Team, develop and maintain an information repository on nutrition funding sources to enable countries to prepare themselves for funding opportunities.  The repository should be a ‘one stop shop’ for the broader set of nutrition financing-related information resources, e.g. the Investment Framework, donor spending analyses, etc.
• Work with SUN Government Focal Points and SUN multi-stakeholder platforms to betters understand the financing landscape for nutrition.
• Identify potential additional sources of finance for nutrition and advise the Movement how best to leverage these sources by mapping key entry points and partnerships.
• Support SUN member to build sustainable nutrition financing in national budgets through stronger domestic resource mobilisation.
• Work across teams at the SMS to identify and disseminate best practices for improving countries’ access to funding from global sources.
• Identify countries’ technical support gaps related to nutrition financing and work with technical partners to find models to address these gaps.
• Work with countries and partners to generate lessons and identify opportunities for increasing domestic resource mobilization for nutrition.
• Pilot approaches to optimize country preparedness for funding opportunities in order to identify lessons on best practices, country technical support needs, and to inform global-level discussions on how to make financing sources work better for nutrition.

d)    Accountability and learning

• Set up systems to track progress in key areas of nutrition financing (in countries and globally); and capture, leverage and disseminate key lessons and opportunities for improvement.

3. Monitoring and Progress Controls

• A work plan will be formulated and agreed between the Director and the SUN Movement Coordinator, with clearly defined outputs, milestones and reporting requirements.
• Successfully meeting deadlines based on work plan.
• Setting personal development objectives within Performance Evaluation Review.

a. Education

• Advanced university degree (Master or equivalent) in Political Science, Social Sciences, Economics, Development, International relations, Nutrition or related fields. A Bachelor degree with two additional years of relevant experience may be acceptable in lieu of the advanced degree.

b. Work Experience

• At least five years of relevant experience in international development financing is required with a strong background in managing projects from conception to delivery.
• At least 4 years of country work experience in support of SUN country-owned and country-driven initiatives for development is desirable.
• Recent experience with support for successful advancement of specific agendas in complex and changing environments is desired.
• Understanding of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is desirable. 

c. Language (s)

• Fluency (at the level of a mother tongue), oral and written in English is essential.
• Fluency in either Spanish, French or Portuguese is desirable.

Contract type: Individual Contractor Agreement (ICA)

• Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time
• Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
• Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
• Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
• UNOPS seeks to reasonably accommodate candidates with special needs, upon request.
• Work life harmonization - UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands. We have a progressive policy on work-life harmonization and offer several flexible working options. This policy applies to UNOPS personnel on all contract types
• UNOPS seeks to reasonably accommodate candidates with special needs, upon request.
• For staff positions only, UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a lower level than the advertised level of the post
• The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.  

It is the policy of UNOPS to conduct background checks on all potential recruits/interns.
Recruitment/internship in UNOPS is contingent on the results of such checks.