ORGANIZATIONAL LOCATION: UN-HABITAT
DUTY STATION: Nairobi
FUNCTIONAL TITLE: Project Officer (Youth Research and Analysis)
GRADE: P4
POST DURATION: 364 days from start date
CLOSING DATE: 2 June 2011
BACKGROUND
Since Habitat II, UN-Habitat has been committed to promoting the participation of young people as
partners in implementing the Habitat Agenda and the achievement of the MDGs. At the 20th Governing
Council in 2005, the Strategy for Enhanced Engagement with Youth was adopted and has provided a
framework for designing and implementing a Youth Empowerment Programme (YEP) through
subsequent years. Through the support from the Government of Norway and the institutional commitment
of UN-HABITAT, a number of member states have expressed interest and continued support for the
youth program.
The issues facing urban youth globally have been virtually unknown and misunderstood until championed
by UN-HABITAT. This has presented a significant challenge to UN-HABITAT and to the development of
programmes globally. In spite of this, these programmes have advanced UN-HABITAT’s programmatic
and normative goals through creation of pilot projects that have both improved the lives of thousands of
poor urban youth, while at the same time being best practices that local and national governments have
begun to adopt.
For example, the Opportunities Fund launched in 2008, has attracted interest from a number of UN
agencies, international institutions and youth-focused programmes that wish to explore partnership
relations with the fund. Stemming from this has been the establishment of a Global Youth Help Desk, an
interactive portal that engages youth, youth-led agencies, researcher and policy makers in a dialogue on
youth in urban development. Parallel to this the Urban Youth Research Network has enabled
consolidation in knowledge management and dissemination of urban youth issues.
Building on the on the successes achieved thus far and taking into account the recommendations of the
Urban Youth Programme external evaluation which identified the urgent need to expand staffing in the
youth program, with a specific focus on managing and further developing the research program,
developing and managing a monitoring and evaluation activities, and supporting the implementation of
the youth fund.
Activities to be undertaken to achieve these goals are outlined in the following sections.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Under the general supervision of the Chief, Partners and Youth Branch/Youth Programme, the incumbent
is responsible for development and management of:
Urban Youth Research The evaluation of UN-HABITAT’s youth empowerment program identifies the
need to expand the normative work of UN-HABITAT’s youth work. In order to do this there needs to be an
expansion of capacity in staffing with relevant research so as to better enable the seamless
transformation of experience from the operational work to the normative work. The specific capacities
required are in the area of research and youth policy.
A key component of UN-HABITAT’s youth research program is the engagement of its partners in the
academic and civil society sector through the Urban Youth Research Network (UYRN), and the
dissemination of the knowledge generated there. The incumbent will be tasked with the management of
the network, assuring it works effectively and efficiently and advances global knowledge on urban youth.
The incumbent is also expected to bring in more south-based research institutions in the UYRN.
Another key component of the network is to assure that the normative work is based on current research
to support urban youth. The incumbent will be required to support UN-HABITAT and the Norwegian
government at key policy forums such as the proposed Youth 21 meeting in Oslo mandated by the recent
Governing Council Resolution.
Activities that will be undertaken by the incumbent will be:
Management of the Urban Youth Research Network
• Formalize the architecture of the UYRN:
o membership, assuring strong Southern institution representation
o communication structures + timeline and research program
• Develop the online research architecture of the Global Youth Help Desk (GYHD) platform to
enable sharing of data, research and policy
• Manage the current, and the development of new, research activities through both management
of current research projects, and refereeing of proposed research projects
• Plan and implement a UYRN meeting focused on operationalizing the network during 2nd or 3rd