[offre en anglais ] La Banque mondiale à Tunis recrute un spécialiste/économiste de la protection sociale et des emplois عودة إلى الفرص

Job Title :  Social Protection Specialist

Job Family Social Protection

Job Type Professional & Technical

Grade GF

Location Tunis, Tunisia

Recruitment Type Local Hire

Language Requirement: Arabic [Essential]; English [Essential]; French [Essential]

Background / General description:

Established in 1944, the World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest sources of funding and knowledge for development solutions. The World Bank Group seeks to achieve the twin goals of (1) ending extreme poverty by 2030, and (2) promote shared prosperity for the bottom 40% of the population in every developing country.

The Group consists of five specialized institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

IBRD and IDA are commonly known as the World Bank, which is organized into six client-facing Regional Vice-Presidencies, several corporate functions, and fourteen Global Practices (GPs) to bring best-in-class knowledge and solutions to regional and country clients. The 14 GPs are: Agriculture; Education; Energy and Extractives; Environment and Natural Resources; Finance and Markets; Governance; Health, Nutrition and Population; Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management; Poverty; Social Protection and Labor; Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience; Trade and Competitiveness; Transport and ICT; and Water.

The Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice (SPJ GP) has an exciting, innovative, and growing portfolio of operational and analytical work in the areas of social inclusion, resilience and job creation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region seeking to promote peace and social stability. The SPJ program in MENA contributes to implementing the World Bank’s regional strategy, built around four pillars: Renewing the social contract – to generate a new development model that is built on greater citizen trust; more effective protection of the poor and vulnerable; inclusive and accountable service delivery; and a stronger private sector that can create jobs and opportunities for MENA’s youth; Regional cooperation – particularly around regional public goods and sectors such as education, water, and energy so as to foster greater trust and collaboration across MENA countries; Resilience – to refugee and migration shocks by promoting the welfare of refugees, internally displaced persons, and host communities by focusing on building trust and building their assets; and Reconstruction and recovery – through a dynamic approach that brings in external partners, leverages large scale financing, and move beyond humanitarian response to longer-term development wherever and whenever conflict subsides.

SPJ activities in MENA seek to help individuals and families find jobs, improve productivity, cope with shocks, invest in the health and education of their children, and protect the aging population. In collaboration with other GPs and CCSAs, SPJ in MENA seeks to assist Governments in the regions through interventions that:

1. Improve effectiveness and efficiency of SPJ programs and build transparent and accountable SPJ systems. In particular, the program promotes better targeting and links Social Safety Nets (SSN), such as cash-transfer programs, to interventions that build human capital (designed, implemented and evaluated jointly with other GPs in the Human Development Practice Group) and strengthen productive inclusion across poor and vulnerable population groups. In these efforts, key success factors will be establishing the building blocks of an integrated SPJ system that promotes transparency, accountability as well as efficient and effective coverage of all poor and vulnerable groups, which would support the needed shift from subsidies to well-targeted, scalable, and effective social protection and labor programs. Progress in this area will help promote social cohesion and trust as well as break the cycle of poverty and alleviate fiscal pressures.

2. Enhance resilience of communities and institutions in fragile and conflicted affected countries through social protection schemes that help protect the poor and vulnerable (including refugees, internally displaced, and host communities), improve livelihoods, and stimulate local markets. Working in a multi-GP manner and linking livelihood programs, such as cash-for-work, training, and apprentice programs with access to micro-finance programs and enterprise development are as critical to success as improvements in the delivery of SPJ-services: they will enable the poor and vulnerable to take advantage of income-generating opportunities, while addressing some of the resentment from congestion in the current SPJ services in host communities and from social instability.

3. Promote job creation and employment through innovative, comprehensive and demand-driven employment interventions particularly for youth and women, and entrepreneurship/self-employment interventions. This approach, conducted jointly with other GPs, contributes to building a consensus for medium-term, game-changing reforms aimed at promoting productive job creation and employment among the poor and vulnerable. A strong focus on the youth and women is required as unemployment in MENA is mostly a structural problem facing these population groups at all levels of qualifications.

The SPJ portfolio in MENA reflects the priority areas outlined above, and is the product of strong partnerships with other development actors. SPJ interventions span operational, analytical and knowledge-sharing work across countries in the region, and include:

In the Maghreb Countries, the World Bank has been supporting clients through a range of operations and analytical and knowledge sharing activities. In Tunisia, the World Bank is stepping up its engagement in all areas of the social protection system, as well as in the area of labor and jobs. The World Banks is supporting the modernization of the social safety net system towards enhanced targeting and effectiveness through an array of instruments, including grant financing from the Transition Fund and technical assistance. It is starting to renew its dialogue on social insurance, with a recent focus on pensions. In the area of employment, the Bank is developing a multisector operation to address job opportunities for young people and vulnerable groups including members of the social safety nets programs. In Morocco, the Identity and Targeting Project seeks to extend the coverage of the Moroccan population with a unique identifying number and improve the targeting of social safety nets, thus laying the ground for the establishment of the first integrated SPJ system in the MENA region. In Algeria, technical assistance tasks support clients in developing social protection policies, programs and system.

The World Bank SPJ Global Practice for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region is seeking to recruit a Social Protection Specialist to be based in the World Bank Office in Tunis and support the World Bank social protection and labor engagement in Maghreb countries. The successful candidate will have operational responsibilities with respect to the SPJ portfolio and pipeline in the Maghreb countries and will contribute to selected analytical and advisory activities and policy dialogue on social protection and labor in the region. S/he will report to the SPJ Practice Manager for MENA in Washington, D.C. and work closely with the Program Leaders and Task Team Leaders covering the Maghreb SPJ program.

Note: If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, s/he will retain his/her Regular or Open-Ended appointment. All others will be offered a 3 year term appointment.

Duties and Accountabilities:

The duties and responsibilities of the SP Specialist/Economist will include the following:

1. Lending Services and/or grant-financed operations: Participate in missions to develop, appraise, and supervise SP sector investment operations and/or development policy lending and operations that help clients to improve their social protection and labor systems. These tasks will require an ability to perform technical analysis independently; help to design project components and technical assistance activities; evaluate studies, contribute to project documentation; interact with clients (primarily at the technical level); supervise consultants; manage trust funds, and support the agenda of reform with proper client orientation. It requires some knowledge of and a commitment to becoming proficient in all aspects of loan preparation and supervision.

2. Non-Lending Services: Contribute to services to clients by helping to develop and implement sector strategies, as well as collaboration between social protection agencies and other sectors, and broad-based consultations with social partners (especially in Tunisia) and civil society stakeholders. Contribute to social protection policy papers or analytical work as needed.   Participate in missions to provide specialized technical inputs and guidance to counterparts.  Contribute to complex reports and improvement of the monitoring and evaluation of sectoral activities.  The candidate will work on cross-sectoral teams to produce products such as poverty assessments, public expenditure reviews, and program evaluations and participate in social protection aspects of country dialogue in other sectors when needed.

3. Partnerships: Support coordination with other international partners involved in the modernization of the social protection system, the set-up of a social protection floor. Tasks will include help maintaining regular communication with partners; organizing and following up on meetings; supporting the preparation, implementation and quality control of technical activities under the initiative; and organizing of international knowledge exchanges. 4. Participate in the SPJ GP knowledge sharing and collaborate with colleagues in the SPJ GP and the MENA region.