Associate Economist Officer (Temporary Appointment) – UNHCR Rwanda

This Job Opening is available to eligible UNHCR staff members and external applicants.

Interested applicants should consult the Administrative Instruction on Recruitment and Assignment of Locally Recruited Staff (RALS). Applicants must be nationals of, and be locally recruited within the country of their employment.

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 Experience

Years of Experience / Degree Level

3 years relevant experience with Undergraduate degree; or 2 years relevant experience with Graduate degree; or 1 year relevant experience with Doctorate degree

Field(s) of Education– Economics Statistics

Certificates and/or Licenses- Not specified

Relevant Job Experience

Essential:

– At least one (1) year of demonstrated experience in economics, analysing data and/or 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)

Good command of English Language and Knowledge of local language, Kinyarwanda. Knowledge of another UN language is an added advantage.

 

Please note that UNHCR does not charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process (application, interview, meeting, travelling, processing, training or any other fees).

Qualified Female candidates are encouraged to apply.

Only Rwandese candidates are eligible to apply for the national officer positions.

Operational context

Rwanda has been welcoming refugees for over two decades and continued to receive new arrivals in 2020, providing a favourable protection environment supported by its national legal framework including right to work. Rwanda hosted a total of 148,694 Refugees at the end of August 2020. The population of concern included mainly persons from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (51.7 %) and Burundi (48.1 %). Following the conclusion of a tripartite agreement between the Governments, the African Union and UNHCR in September 2019 establishing an Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM), over 300 refugees and asylum-seekers were evacuated from Libya to Rwanda. COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect operational activities.

Since the Leadership Summit in 2016 and the adoption of the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) in early 2018, the Government of Rwanda (GoR) has promoted the integration of refugees within the scope of four commitments on documentation, socio-economic inclusion, and integration in national education and health systems. Subsequently, in February 2019, the GoR prepared a `Strategic Plan for Refugee Inclusion¿ (2019-2024), which further emphasized on the delivery of commitments made at the leader¿s summit in 2016. One of the key commitments is to enhance self-reliance, economic inclusion and livelihoods of the refugees alongside their host communities. The United Nations Development Assistance Plan (UNDAP) II has been agreed with the Government of Rwanda with specific results on Refugee Inclusion for the period of 2018-2023. During the Global Refugee Forum in December 2019, the Government renewed pledges in these four areas and made a new commitment relating to energy and environmental preservation.

A Joint Strategy by The Ministry in charge of Emergency Management (MINEMA: formerly the Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs/ MIDIMAR) and UNHCR was developed in 2016 for enhancing refugee self-reliance and economic inclusion for the period of 2016-2020. An updated new strategy is currently under validation which envisioned that refugees and neighbouring communities are graduated out of extreme poverty and able to fulfil their productive potential as self-reliant members of Rwandan society who contribute to economic development of their host districts. Following GoR¿s call for inclusion of refugees into national system through a number of targeted initiatives and policy directives in response to their commitment made at the Global Leader¿s Summit in 2016 and subsequently to implement the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), WB made available of 60 Million USD funding for 2019-2024 under a Refugee Sub Window of IDA 18 round. A new round of funding under WB IDA 19 Window of Host Communities and Refugees (WHR) for the next 3 years may be available.

To engage with country operation, partners and government, as appropriate, the Associate Economist will be involved in the design and implementation of socio-economic assessments, as well as Monitoring and Evaluation of Socio-Economic Inclusion of Refugees as part of result based management. He/she should have specialised M&E skills, prior experience of socio-economic assessment and data collection, its design and management. Any expertise on targeting assessment would be an added advantage. In a multi-functional team, the Associate Economist will be working with government, WB, other UN, NGO and Private Sector and operational partners on socio-economic data and results including any other assessments related to Covid-19 Socio-Economic Impact to strengthen operation¿s data system. Candidates with existing experience of collecting socio-economic data in Rwanda on refugees will be prioritized.