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.¿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 ExperienceYears of Experience / Degree LevelFor 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 LicensesNot 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)
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