SDG Specialist (Re-advertisement)

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Background

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UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

The Kyrgyz Republic is highly committed to achieving the 2030 Agenda and integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the country’s national development efforts. The SDGs have been reflected in the national development framework through gap analysis and priority-setting undertaken in the 2040 National Development Strategy of the Kyrgyz Republic (NDS), the mid-term National Development Programme of the Kyrgyz Republic (2021–2026) (NDP), and through various programmes and strategies on healthcare, education, gender, youth, green economy, digitalization, regional development, and other sectors. 

UNDP as a global SDG integrator has been a trusted partner of the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic in multifaceted SDG-targeted efforts, including mainstreaming, acceleration and policy support. To name a few, UNDP supported joint Review of Mainstreaming, Acceleration, and Policy Support (MAPS) for Achieving Progress on SDGs, Voluntary National Report, is continuously engaged with enhancing capacity of the National Statistics Committee and other national partners to improve SDG progress monitoring, ensure SDG nationalization and prioritization, and beyond. Furthermore, UNDP in the Kyrgyz Republic supports the Government to streamline the national system of strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation to become compliant with SDGs, integrate SDGs into the budget processes and adopt SDG-aligned strategic planning and budgeting, as well as leverage tax incentives contribution for SDGs achievement.

The financing of SDGs, as one of the key means of implementation, presents multi-fold challenges for the Kyrgyz Republic and requires comprehensive efforts from the government and key partners. Channeling global and national financial flows towards Sustainable Development is imperative to achieving the 2030 Agenda. To achieve SDGs as outlined in the 2030 Agenda will require actors across public and private sectors to work together at scale. Understanding the scale and types of investment needed to achieve the SDGs is a key foundation on which governments can build effective SDG financing strategies and ensure their successful implementation through multi-party collaboration.

Further, the combined impact of COVID-19 pandemic, international economic decline, domestic instability, and regional conflict have taken a toll on people’s resilience in recent years in Kyrgyzstan pushing back the progress towards achieving SDGs and realization of 2030 Agenda and posing increasingly complex development challenges to economic and political stability, governance, environmental stability, social inclusion, gender equality, and beyond. UNDP will build further on its core value proposition as an impartial policy advisor and integrator of SDG solutions leveraging its global network and service lines to help the government and other stakeholders advance inclusive, fundamentally sound development solutions and reforms in complex settings. This will help manage risks and progressively realize greater prosperity, resilience, and social cohesion.

In this light, UNDP in the Kyrgyz Republic aims to hire an SDG Specialist to provide senior level support to the diverse efforts of national partners building on achieved results and identifying most impactful priorities for UNDP’s SDG-related interventions.

Objective of the Assignment 

The objective of the assignment is to strengthen the UNDP’s economic programmatic offer with particular focus on UNDP’s integrator role for SDGs in the national context, advance partnership base, establish a strong resource mobilization pipeline and carry out advocacy for the UNDP’s mandate of sustainable economic development promotion.

Qualification requirements

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree in International Development, Economics, Statistics, Social Sciences, Public Administration or other relevant field; OR
• Bachelor’s degree in the above mentioned fields in combination with an additional two years of qualifying experience will be given due consideration in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• Minimum 5 years (with master’s degree) or 7 years (with a bachelor’s degree) of relevant professional experience in the field of economics, public finance, statistics, or other relevant fields:
  • macroeconomic analysis, socio-economic research design and implementation, economic planning, policy advice, policy design, and policy impact evaluations; 
  • public finance management, development finance, local (subnational) development and local governance finance. 

Required Skills:

• Proven experience of working with/in international organizations’ programme and projects.
• Proven record of management advisory services, hands-on experience in design, monitoring & evaluation of development projects in governmental structures, CSOs or international organizations including relevant experience in the respective programme sphere.

Desired Skills:

• Knowledge of quantitative approaches to researching development challenges.
• Proven experience with SDGs related programming.

Languages:

• Spoken and written proficiency in Russian and English is required.
• Kyrgyz language proficiency is desirable.

Core Competencies:

• Achieve Results: LEVEL 3: Set and align challenging, achievable objectives for multiple projects, have lasting impact
• Think Innovatively: LEVEL 3: Proactively mitigate potential risks, develop new ideas to solve complex problems
• Learn Continuously: LEVEL 3: Create and act on opportunities to expand horizons, diversify experiences
• Adapt with Agility: LEVEL 3: Proactively initiate and champion change, manage multiple competing demands
• Act with Determination: LEVEL 3: Think beyond immediate task/barriers and take action to achieve greater results
• Engage and Partner: LEVEL 3: Political savvy, navigate complex landscape, champion inter-agency collaboration
• Enable Diversity and Inclusion: LEVEL 3: Appreciate benefits of diverse workforce and champion inclusivity

Cross-Functional & Technical Competencies

• Strategic Thinking:         
  • Ability to develop effective strategies and prioritized plans in line with UNDP’s objectives, based on the systemic analysis of challenges, potential risks and opportunities; linking the vision to reality on the ground, and creating tangible solutions
  • Ability to leverage learning from a variety of sources to anticipate and respond to future trends; to demonstrate foresight in order to model what future developments and possible ways forward look like for UNDP
• System Thinking:            
  • Ability to use objective problem analysis and judgement to understand how interrelated elements coexist within an overall process or system, and to consider how altering one element can impact on other parts of the system
• Negotiation and Influence:        
  • Ability to reach an understanding, persuade others, resolve points of difference, gain advantage in the outcome of dialogue, negotiates mutually acceptable solutions through compromise and creates “win-win” situations
• Knowledge Generation :               
  • Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need
• Integration within the UN:          
  • Ability to identify, and integrate capacity and assets of the UN system, and engage in joint work; knowledge of the UN System and ability to apply this knowledge to strategic and/or practical situations
• Project Management:
  • Ability to plan, organize, prioritise and control resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals
• Partnerships Management:
  • Ability to build and maintain partnerships with wide networks of stakeholders, Governments, civil society and private sector partners, experts and others in line with UNDP strategy and policies

Duties

Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide strategic advice on the identification and formulation of SDG-related interventions of UNDP CO in the Kyrgyz Republic (UNDP CO) to support the national partners. The interventions might target but are not limited to SDG policy support, integration, mainstreaming, acceleration, nationalization, implementation, impact and monitoring, finance, etc. The required action include:
  • Facilitate continuous policy dialogue, technical advice and needs assessment to the national stakeholders in the area of integrated SDG policy;
  • Support continuous liaison with other UNDP country offices, UNDP regional hub and UNDP global, as well as with other UN Agencies and development partners with regards to SDG-related initiatives and opportunities for cooperation to inform UNDP CO’s SDG-related interventions;
  • Ensure internal communication and coordination around SDG-related interventions with project and programme UNDP CO’s personnel to assure quality, create synergies and avoid duplication of effort along UNDP CO’s programme activities;
  • Ensure strategic alignment of proposed SDG-related interventions with the UNDP Country Programme Document (CPD) 2023-2027, United Nations Sustainable Development Framework 2023-2027 and respective Joint Workplan, and other relevant UNDP, UN System and national strategic documents;
  • Provide observation and trend watching, on-demand analysis of the emerging development concerns in the country and the region and respective recommendations on UNDP’s and national partners’ action priorities that will promote sustainable economic development.

• Provide senior level substantive support in operationalizing and implementing the proposed SDG-related interventions.
  • Lead the conceptualization and instrumentalization for SDG-related interventions by providing senior level expertise and technical assistance on the methodological approaches, common guidelines, toolkits, statistics deployment, and beyond.
  • Provide substantial inputs in designing the proposed SDG-related interventions, including justification of most-suitable UNDP modalities, preparation of project documents, development of terms of reference, request for proposal and other relevant documents as requested per POPP;
  • Consult on the development of working/action plans, monitor on a regular basis the implementation of the activities/project and deliver respective reporting, if assigned;
  • Support coordination and assure quality of the performance of experts mobilized for the design and implementation of SDG-related interventions;
  • Substantially contribute to preparation of programme progress reports for dissemination among donors and other relevant stakeholders;
  • Ensure clear and timely communication of the results of SDG-related projects/programme activities within UNDP and to the external partners.
• Provide strategic advice for SDG-related resource mobilization (RM) and facilitate implementation of identified RM actions.
  • Ensure guidance and support to RM mapping, design and update of donor fund-raising strategy, management of relations and thematic communication with donor community and investors;
  • Facilitate the development of concept notes and project proposals and provide substantive technical support to this process in line with the national priorities, UNDP CPD, and development partners’ priorities.
• Promote partnership, cooperation and coordination for common development action through continuous interaction with the national stakeholders and development partners.
• Support SDG advocacy on the national and global levels by continuously shaping and validating SDG agenda with national stakeholder and relevant development partners.
• Support continuous SDG awareness-raising and results-oriented communication on joint efforts of the national partners and UNDP Country Office in the Kyrgyz Republic, including support to high level intergovernmental SDG forums, regional and national dialogue platforms, and beyond.
• Ensure SDG-related knowledge management, including adopting SDG-related knowledge sharing and exchange practices between UNDP Country Office and UN Agencies, developing expert pool/community for leveraging SDG-related expertise, relevant data storage and dissemination, and beyond.
• Perform other duties that may be required by the Team Leader of the Sustainable Economic Development (SED) Programme at the UNDP Country Office in the Kyrgyz Republic.

Institutional Arrangement

SDG Specialist will work under the overall guidance of the UNDP Senior Management and direct supervision of the Team Leader of the Sustainable Economic Development (SED) Programme, and in close engagement with the Team Leaders of Climate Change, Energy and Environment (CCEE) Programme and the Governance and Social Cohesion (GSC) Programme, RBEC/IRH economic advisers, UN Agencies and in close collaboration with key national partners – President’s Administration, Ministry of Economy and Commerce, Ministry of Finance, National Statistical Committee and other key governmental bodies and development partners.

Conditions

Disclaimer 

Applicant information about UNDP rosters

Note: UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement.  We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements. 

Non-discrimination

UNDP has a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual exploitation and misconduct, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.   

UNDP is an equal opportunity and inclusive employer that does not discriminate based on race, sex, gender identity, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, age, language, social origin or other status.  

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