Technical Adviser, Afghanistan Social Demographic and Economic Survey (SDES), Kabul, P-5

DEADLINE FOR THIS VACANCY IS EXTENDED TO: 30 JANUARY 2017 (5 PM NEW YORK TIME)

Duration: One year (renewable) [i]

Duty Station: Kabul, Afghanistan (* Currently, Kabul/ Afghanistan is a non-family duty station).
 

Position Summary:

The position of Technical Adviser, Afghanistan Social Demographic and Economic Survey (SDES) is located in the Afghanistan Country Office and reports directly to the UNFPA Country Representative.

The last population and housing SDES in Afghanistan was carried out more than three decades ago (1979) when the population was estimated at 15.6 million people.  This SDES however, covered only two-thirds of the country due to the security situation at that time which made it impossible to conduct the SDES in all Afghanistan’s provinces.  Recognizing the importance of data in this process, the need for the conduct of a population SDES in Afghanistan was explicitly stated in the Bonn Agreement (2001) and reiterated in the London Compact (2006).

Recognizing the ever-growing need for up-to-date information on the population without having to go through a full SDES process postponed by circumstances,  CSO proposed the conduct of a  Socio-Demographic and Economic Survey (SDES)  designed to  gather information on the population, province by province to generate reference data for local development planning classified by sex for every district and major urban sub-divisions, individual towns and major villages, as well as clusters of smaller villages.

The SDES was initially implemented in Bamiyan province in 2011 with technical assistance of UNFPA and financial assistance of the Government of Japan.  It was expanded and conducted in Ghor and Daikundi provinces in 2012 and in Parwan and Kapisa in 2014 also with financial assistance of the Government of Japan. Kabul SDES, which was conducted in 2013, and Samangan and Takhar SDES in 2015, were funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).  Data processing is currently on-going for Balkh SDES (UK-DFID funded) and in Herat (USAID funded) while survey enumeration in Nimroz (USAID funded).

It is expected that the survey will be rolled out in other provinces until 2019 and will be completed (including analysis and data dissemination) in 2021, with five provinces (Herat, Nimroz, Panjsher, Baghlan, and Kandahar) in 2016, seven provinces in 2017, six provinces in 2018 and the remaining in 2019.

The activities necessitate the service of an experienced Technical Advisor for the SDES who will be in charge of all the technical aspects of the surveys, data management and further analysis to enable widespread dissemination and utilization for programme planning and development in Afghanistan. The Technical Advisor will also be responsible in advising the President General and Senior Staff of CSO in all technical aspect of the work related to the SDES and maintain state-of-the-art scientific and internationally recognized standards. The Technical Adviser manages professional staff and consultants.

The Technical Advisor for SDES will report directly to the UNFPA Country Representative and work on a day-to-day basis closely with the President General and other staff of CSO.

Requirements:

 Education:

·        Advanced university degree in Demography, Population Studies, Economics, Statistics or related field.

Knowledge and Experience:

·        Ten (10) years relevant experience in the field of population censuses, preferably in a developing country;

·        Experience in providing on-the-job training to local staff in data analysis, report writing and use of Internet resources;

·        Experience in the dissemination of data and socio-demographic analyses to broad audiences as well as in motivating the utilization of data and results in development planning and policy issues;

·        Proficiency in current Microsoft Office software applications; census data processing software (CSPro, REDATAM), demographic data analysis (Mortpak, Pas), statistical packages (SPSS, Stata) and projection programs (Spectrum, RUP);

·        Communication skills especially for transfer of knowledge.

·        Fluency in oral and written English;

·        Experience in field data gathering in hazardous work environment is essential;

·        Experience in technical capacity building or training in developing countries is essential;

Languages:

Fluency in English language is required