Individual Consultancy: Child Protection Road Map for Beirut Municipality (80 days)

UNICEF has recently engaged with the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities with individual engagement and advocacy ongoing with municipalities whereby many of these tried to identify their needs to better govern in relation to child protection and child rights agenda. While many of these needs fall directly under participation and coordination to enhance service quality, others under data and evidence generation, budgeting and planning.

Following the development of a memorandum of understanding between UNICEF and The Municipality of Beirut for a productive and fruitful cooperation for the benefits of children, mainly the most vulnerable. The objective of this assignment is to develop a roadmap to serve as a reference document for the municipality with different successive councils on board. A comprehensive roadmap rationalizing the mandate of the municipality granted by Municipal Code 118/1977 with the Child Rights Conventions and children vulnerabilities in Beirut.

The most prevalent Children vulnerabilities in Beirut are clearly shown in the numbers of children in the street, child labor, increase violence against children, gender-based violence, school drop-out rates, substance use among adolescents, etc. With the increased poverty in the country exacerbated with the refugees, COVID-19 crisis, Beirut Blast and children vulnerabilities will further increase.

The roadmap would address preventing child abuse and promote child protection and wellbeing through social and behavior change and ensure availability of relevant child protection services in Beirut. This could tackle structural issues within the municipality, inform its communication and engagement strategies and tools, support establishment of child sensitive data systems, issuance of child focused policies, inform the municipal council’s resource and budget allocations, enhance coordination for resource mobilization and leverage, support capacity development programs for the municipality executive bodies as well as the partners/stakeholders delivering within the municipalities’ geographic boundaries. Effective and efficient coordination among relevant stakeholders through establishing multisectoral referral systems whereby holistic services are offered to vulnerable children and families.    

The municipality being the elected local authority enjoying easy access to the communities, understanding if context and direct engagement with effective mobilizers could play an effective role in addressing child protection issues aligned to and complimenting national strategies and plans.

You will contribute in achieving the expected results through developing a roadmap that will inform the programs of Beirut Municipality to be capable of prioritizing, planning, and delivering results for children (UNICEF Country Program Outcome 7).

The roadmap is part of the municipality’s overall vision and strategy of creating a Child Friendly Municipality that looks after the rights, wellbeing and concerns of children. Achieving this requires an approach that is holistic and integrated. Ensure prevention measures to risks threatening children thriving and their wellbeing, and response measures to child protection in well-coordinated manner across different stakeholders.  Similarly, the engagement of children and youth across different municipal activities – including establishment of child council – is essential for its accountability and for ensuring that the best interest of the child is met and follows a no harm approach.

The scope will entail:

• Defining the context of child depreciations (child protection, GBV and disability) in Beirut area by conducting a desk review of all studies and assessments done by relevant actors and UNICEF. Desk review will include prevalence of child protection issues along with good practices, challenges and lessons learnt.
• Defining the core concepts that the roadmap will be based on in consultation with relevant child protection actors, boys, girls, adolescents and UNICEF specialists.
• Developing consultation tools including key informant interviews and online surveys. Consultations will include: UNICEF staff, local CP actors, international child protection organizations, child protection working group members in Beirut, case management taskforce members, national child protection core group members, academia along with relevant staff from ministries of social affairs, education, justice and interior.
• Rationalization of the roadmap with the frame of the municipality law and link it to national strategies and plans[1] initiated in central ministries level.
• Conducting consultation meetings with children and caregivers to ensure child participation and accountability for affected population. Meetings will include child and caregivers’ friendly exercises and proper consent seeking processes[2]. 

• Calling consultation’s meetings and associated meetings (workshop, orientation), setting the agenda, facilitating the meeting and sharing the minutes.
• Documenting the process by making sure that lessons learnt, best practices, assessment and evaluations are documented and disseminated.
• Finalizing the roadmap while ensuring the revision of the municipality members, Governor and the relevant staff from UNICEF.