Consultant - Child Rights

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Consultant – Child Rights based in Australia.** In this consultancy, you will contribute to strengthening child rights analysis and ensuring that the voices and experiences of children and communities meaningfully influence organizational strategy and decision-making. You will develop practical guidelines, tools, and resources to help country teams and local partners engage stakeholders in validating and enriching Child Rights Situation Analyses. Your work will help identify priority issues, emerging trends, evidence gaps, and opportunities for meaningful action across diverse country contexts. You will also provide technical advice on integrating youth participation into strategic planning, advocacy, and broader organizational priorities. With a focus on inclusive engagement, accountability, and practical implementation, you will help ensure that children's perspectives inform decisions that affect their lives. This remote consultancy offers an opportunity to contribute to international child rights initiatives through a focused assignment delivered over three months. ### Accountabilities - **Develop Participatory Guidelines and Tools:** Design practical guidelines, methodologies, and supporting resources to strengthen stakeholder participation in Child Rights Situation Analyses across different country contexts. - **Strengthen Stakeholder Engagement:** Establish approaches that enable children, young people, community members, and other relevant stakeholders to review, validate, challenge, and enrich research findings. - **Identify Priorities and Evidence Gaps:** Support the identification of critical child rights issues, emerging trends, evidence gaps, and opportunities for action based on both published research and community perspectives. - **Promote Evidence-Informed Decision-Making:** Ensure that insights gathered through participatory processes can inform organizational strategy, country-level planning, program portfolios, advocacy priorities, and investment decisions. - **Ensure Practical and Consistent Implementation:** Develop low-burden, repeatable engagement processes that can be adapted to different operating environments and make effective use of existing community engagement structures. - **Strengthen Accountability and Feedback Mechanisms:** Recommend clear processes for communicating how stakeholder contributions have influenced findings, priorities, and subsequent decisions. - **Provide Technical Advice on Youth Voice:** Advise on the role of youth participation in strategy development and broader strategic decision-making, including its purpose, Terms of Reference, engagement processes, and feedback mechanisms. - **Deliver Consultancy Outputs:** Develop and submit the agreed technical deliverables within the consultancy period, collaborating with relevant stakeholders and taking country office and partner capacity constraints into account. ## Requirements - **Relevant Professional Experience:** Demonstrated experience in child rights, children's participation, youth engagement, international development, social research, or related fields. - **Technical Expertise:** Strong understanding of Child Rights Situation Analyses, participatory methodologies, stakeholder consultation, and evidence-informed strategic planning. - **Research and Analytical Skills:** Ability to assess published evidence, identify emerging trends and information gaps, synthesize stakeholder perspectives, and translate findings into practical recommendations. - **Guideline and Resource Development:** Proven ability to develop clear, practical, adaptable guidelines, tools, frameworks, or other technical resources for use across diverse organizational and country contexts. - **Youth Participation and Accountability:** Experience advising on meaningful youth engagement, inclusive decision-making, feedback mechanisms, and approaches that demonstrate how stakeholder contributions influence outcomes. - **Strategic Thinking:** Ability to connect research and community insights with organizational strategy, program planning, advocacy priorities, and resource allocation. - **Communication and Writing Skills:** Excellent analytical writing and communication skills, with the ability to produce high-quality technical documents and actionable recommendations for varied audiences. - **Independent Consultancy Management:** Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage deliverables, work plans, stakeholder inputs, and deadlines independently within a time-limited assignment. - **Cultural Sensitivity and Inclusion:** Ability to work respectfully across diverse cultural and geographical contexts, ensuring that children's and communities' perspectives are meaningfully represented. - **Proposal Submission Requirements:** Interested consultants must submit an expression of interest comprising a technical proposal of no more than three pages outlining their understanding of the assignment, proposed search strategy and sources, and work plan; a financial proposal or fee schedule in USD; a CV including at least two references from similar assignments; and a sample of previous, comparable written work. - **Child Safeguarding Commitment:** Willingness to comply with applicable child safeguarding and policies addressing sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEAH), including relevant background checks and required safeguarding procedures. ## Benefits - **Remote Consultancy:** Work remotely from Australia. - **International Development Impact:** Contribute to initiatives that strengthen children's rights, meaningful youth participation, and evidence-informed decision-making across international programs. - **Flexible Consultancy Structure:** Complete the assignment over a three-month period, with an estimated total commitment of 20 working days. - **Specialist Contribution:** Apply your expertise to develop practical resources and approaches that can be adapted across multiple country contexts. - **Strategic Influence:** Help ensure children's voices and community perspectives inform organizational strategies, advocacy, programming, and investment decisions. - **Inclusive Working Environment:** Contribute to a mission-driven, diverse, and supportive international development environment that values different perspectives and backgrounds. - **Professional Engagement:** Collaborate with international program teams and partners working to improve children's safety, rights, and opportunities to reach their full potential.