Sustainable Finance Analyst, Crisis Contexts (Home-Based)

Background

Office/Unit/Project Description 

Present in 166 countries and territories, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) supports governments in developing strong policies, institutions, and partnerships to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In its 2022-2025 Strategic Plan, UNDP committed to working with countries to increase investments in sustainable development, outlining a $1 trillion dollar moonshot target to catalyze public and private finance for the SDGs. 

Efforts towards the $1 trillion dollar moonshot target are led by UNDP’s Sustainable Finance Hub (SFH), which was established to bring together the organization’s expertise and ongoing work on SDG financing, and to provide a comprehensive package of guidance, tools and support for this area of work. UNDP’s SFH has established four offers through which country offices can scale up their engagements with public and private partners towards the delivery of the SDGs and to achieve this Moonshot. Ultimately these offers will contribute to the systemic transformation required for finance to deliver on the SDGs at scale in all countries. These services are interlinked and offered across the following areas: (i) Public Finance for the SDGs; (ii) Private Finance for the SDGs (iii) Integrated National Financing Frameworks and Portfolios; and (iv) the SDG Finance Academy. 

It is vital that UNDP’s $1 trillion moonshot target reaches all countries in which it works, including those at risk for, experiencing or emerging from crisis. Adequate finance is essential for countries to reduce risk to prevent crisis, to respond and recover from crisis, and to build long-term resilience. Despite this pressing need, financing is not reaching fragile and crisis contexts at the scale and speed necessary. In this context, UNDP’s Crisis Bureau (CB) and the SFH have partnered to ensure that sustainable financing solutions are tailored to meet the need of today’s crises, which are increasingly long-lasting, recurring, and complex in nature.

CB spearheads UNDP’s efforts to support countries on a key challenge: how to anticipate, prevent, respond to, and recover from fragility and crisis. CB addresses the risks that precipitate crises, prevent early exit from them, and perpetuate long-term dependency on humanitarian assistance.  Guided by UNDP’s Crisis Offer (2022), CB works within the GPN and with Regional Bureaux (RBx) and Country Offices (COs) to implement solutions across prevention, response and recovery that help break the cycle of protracted fragility and crisis.

CB is organized into five core teams. Each team integrates gender considerations across all areas of work to ensure inclusive and sustainable outcomes, leaving no one behind. The Research, Analytics, Learning, and Innovation (RALI) team harnesses the combined power of thought leadership, decision intelligence, learning and innovation to position UNDP as an agile and future forward leader on risk management across the HDP nexus. The team’s objectives include investing in organisational capacity for top-tier research and analytics on multidimensional risks, unlocking crisis financing through innovation, and by providing best-in-class training and networking for humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding communities. 

In this context, the Sustainable Finance Analyst, Crisis Contexts, will support efforts to scale up UNDP efforts to leverage and align public and private financing in fragile and crisis contexts, as well as supporting broader coordination and partnerships related to UNDP’s sustianble financing work. This will be a dual reporting role, matrixed between CB and SFH. 

Scope of Work 

Support country-level implementation of financing solutions, focused fragile and crisis contexts

• Support COs in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes/projects on leverage and align public and private financing in fragile and crisis contexts, with a focus on COs receiving support through the GPCR Funding Window Fin4Peace Initiative;
• Provide technical assistance to country-level sustainable financing work, including conducting research and analysis; drafting/reviewing ToRs, concept notes, service offers etc.; and participating in the preparation of technical reports, as requested be COs.

Support data, research and analysis on issues related to financing, focused on fragile and crisis contexts

• Conduct research and analysis on issues related to financing in fragile and crisis contexts, including developing and maintaining a dataset on public and private financing flows to fragile and crisis contexts versus other development contexts;
• Contribute to a policy paper that provides an overview of financing that is reaching fragile and crisis contexts, key challenges faced and opportunities to scale-up successful efforts, including highlighting UNDPs support in this area.

Support partnership development and coordination on sustainable financing

• Provide analysis of partners and donors’ interests, including public development banks, and support the design of joint offers and presentations from the SFH;
• Support coordination of programming across technical leads and regional leads to ensure streamlined communications to COs;
• Coordinate substantive preparations for partners meetings and events, as required.
• Coordinate, collect, analyze and present quantitative and qualitative data from COs on their contribution to the $1 trillion moonshot and deliver for ongoing HQ reporting;
• Support the mapping of UNDP’s support to public and private financing  support across SFH, including providing disagreggated data on UNDP support in fragile and crisis contexts;

Support communication, knowledge management and engagement efforts 

• Support the collection of country impact stories, including on financing in fragile and crisis contexts, that can be used for advocacy and engagement efforts, as well as to inform and guide training materials;
• Support the promotion and management of knowledge to increase learning, promote country to country exchanges and ensure ongoing learning opportunities;
• Support the planning, development and delivery of financing content in relevant UNDP Academies and training events and online learning programmes, including the design of joint trainings between CB and SFH; 
• Ensure the ongoing systemic running of the sustainable finance roster, including by working with CB, and RBx and COs to ensure access to roster experts, SOPs, TORs etc. and liaise with experts on pre and post deployment activities;
• Support the organization of SFH events related to financing, including in fragile and crisis contexts.

The incumbent performs other duties within the functional profile, as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization.

Institutional Arrangement

The Sustainable Finance Analyst, Crisis Contexts will report directly to the  Sustainable Finance Advisor, Crisis Contexts, and under the matrix supervision of  the Lead Programme and Partnerships Advisor for SFH.

Competencies

Core

Cross-Functional & Technical competencies

Minimum Qualifications of the Successful IPSA

Education requirements     

• Advanced university degree (Master´s degree or equivalent) in international relations, international development, public policy, or other relevant fields such as social science, economics, business administration, etc.is required, or
• A first-level university degree (bachelor’s degree) in the above-mentioned fields of study, in combination with an additional two years of qualifying experience will be given due consideration in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Min. years of relevant work experience   

• Minimum of 2 years (with Master’s degree) or 4 years (with Bachelor’s degree) in international development, or combined experience in the public, private or CSO space and in the development world in sustainable finance and crisis and peacebuilding settings

Required  skills         

• Experience with quantitative and qualitative data collection, research, review, analysis and presentation 
• Experience and knowledge on the sustainable finance agenda, both public and private sector 

Desired skills in addition to the competencies covered in the Competencies section       

• Experience and knowledge on sustainable finance in fragile and crisis settings is desirable
• Experience with capacity building training programmes and approaches is desirable
• Knowledge of the Development Finance Assessment (DFA) and Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF) framework is desirable
• Previous experience  with the UN is desired but not a requirement

Required Language(s)           

• Excellent writing, editing, and oral communication skills in English 
• Working knowledge of other UNDP working languages, (French or Spanish) is an advantage.

Equal opportunity

As an equal opportunity employer, UNDP values diversity as an expression of the multiplicity of nations and cultures where we operate and, as such, we encourage qualified applicants from all backgrounds to apply for roles in the organization. Our employment decisions are based on merit and suitability for the role, without discrimination. 

UNDP is also committed to creating an inclusive workplace where all personnel are empowered to contribute to our mission, are valued, can thrive, and benefit from career opportunities that are open to all.

Sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse of authority

UNDP does not tolerate harassment, sexual harassment, exploitation, discrimination and abuse of authority. All selected candidates, therefore, undergo relevant checks and are expected to adhere to the respective standards and principles. 

Right to select multiple candidates

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.

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