Short-term Consultant for the Country Situation Analysis on Child Labor and Children’s Participation

The global campaign “Dialogue Works” is organized by child-rights organizations Kindernothilfe and Terre des Hommes Germany with funding from the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The project builds upon the previous campaign called “It´s Time to Talk!” promoting working children’s right to be heard in decisions that concern them.

In collaboration with partner organizations, the Dialogue Works project is implemented in 15 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. In Lebanon, a number of CBOs including AMURT Lebanon is supporting implementation of the Dialogue Works project.

Dialogue Works aims to increase spaces and opportunities for working children to express their views and to participate in dialogues with adults who have responsibilities to improve the lives of children. It is intended that dialogue between working children and adults can take place at different levels, from local to global levels, so that adults have increased understanding of children’s experiences and ideas, and that they act on children’s suggestions to improve practices and policies affecting working children and their families.

The project will be implemented by supporting Children’s Advisory Committees (CACs), groups of working children that meet regularly on the local level to promote working children´s right to participation. Children’s Advisory Committees will be supported to plan and implement action and advocacy dialogues to improve the lives of working children in their own countries.

Dialogue Works provides that all partners of the Campaign develop a Country Situation Analysis on child labour and children’s participation in the first months of the project. The Analysis helps the CACs to formulate their own political demands, to strengthen their evidence-based advocacy and targeted advocacy efforts and to identify strategic entry points for working children to participate, etc.

Job Purpose

In liaison with the Dialogue Works Project Coordinator, the Short-term Consultant is responsible for conducting a country-specific analysis on child labor and children’s participation, and is responsible for coordinating the translation of the findings into local language, a child-friendly format, and interactive visuals.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Short-term Consultant takes on the following tasks:

• Develop a work-plan for the analysis including methodology, proposed secondary data sources, proposed field consultations and related questions, and an approach to analysis.
• Provide accessible and recent data on the scale, trends, and types of child labor in both formal and informal settings, especially the worst forms of child labor.
• Identify underlying and root causes of child labor exploitation.
• Identify and analyze the status of existing legal and policy frameworks, national strategies and national plans of action concerning child labor and related policies/ strategies (on child protection, education, health, social protection, migration etc.)
• Undertake a duty bearer mapping, and capacity gap analysis on child labor to better understand the extent to which government duty bearers have the capacity (motivation, authority, resources and capacities) to implement existing laws, policies and strategies.
• Identify and analyze the status of existing legal and policy frameworks, strategies and platforms concerning children’s participation.
• Undertake a duty bearer mapping, and capacity gap analysis on children’s participation to better understand the extent to which government duty bearers have the capacity (motivation, authority, resources and capacities) to fulfil their participation rights.
• Identify strategic entry points for working children to participate in policy and practice dialogues to influence matters that affect them.
• Participate in weekly meetings with the country situation analysis team.
• Document key findings in English (using excel and summary of highlights in a word document) and liaise with translator to document key findings in local, child-friendly language.
• Discuss and validate key findings with CAC members.
• Others as required and agreed upon.

Experience Required

• Experience with child-rights-based and participatory programmes
• Experience with child-friendly research/ child-rights based research
• Experience on child labor issues including knowledge of child labor related laws and law enforcement is desirable

Personal Characteristics

• Sensitive and respectful of ethnic and cultural differences
• Approachable, trustworthy and discrete
• Committed to equality and social inclusion
• Conscientious, with an excellent sense of judgment
• Proactive approach encouraging positive spirit among team members
• Flexibility with unexpected events