Programme Policy Officer (Gender and Social Protection), Lilongwe

## Programme Policy Officer (Gender and Social Protection), Lilongwe - Organization:WFP - World Food Programme DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS WFP celebrates and embraces diversity. It is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all its employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of race, colour, national origin, ethnic or social background, genetic information, gender, gender identity and/or expression, sexual orientation, religion or belief, HIV status or disability. The World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change. At WFP, people are at the heart of everything we do and the vision of the future WFP workforce is one of diverse, committed, skilled, and high performing teams, selected on merit, operating in a healthy and inclusive work environment, living WFP's values (Integrity, Collaboration, Commitment, Humanity, and Inclusion) and working with partners to save and change the lives of those WFP serves. To learn more about WFP, visit our website: https://www.wfp.org and follow us on social media to keep up with our latest news: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. - WFP is a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. - WFP offers a highly inclusive, diverse, and multicultural working environment. - WFP invests in the personal & professional development of its employees through a range of training, accreditation, coaching, mentorship, and other programs as well as through internal mobility opportunities. - A career path in WFP provides an exciting opportunity to work across the various country, regional and global offices around the world, and with passionate colleagues who work tirelessly to ensure that effective humanitarian assistance reaches millions of people across the globe. - We offer an attractive compensation package (please refer to theTerms and Conditionssection of this vacancy announcement). JOB TITLE & GRADE LEVEL:Programme Policy Officer (Gender and Social Protection), SC8 TYPE OF CONTRACT:Service Contract UNIT/DIVISION:Programme Unit - Gender and Social Protection DUTY STATION (City, Country):Lilongwe, Malawi REPORTS TO:Deputy Head of Programme DURATION:12 months (Renewable) ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT: The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian agency, fighting hunger worldwide. WFP Malawi is undergoing a strategic repositioning aimed at strengthening its alignment with national priorities, enhancing inter-agency collaboration, and supporting the Government of Malawi in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, with a particular emphasis on Zero Hunger (SDG 2), in line with Malawi Vision 2063 and its first ten-year implementation plan (MIP-1). WFP's Malawi Country Strategic Plan (CSP) 2024-2028 seeks to ensure the food and nutrition security of vulnerable people and communities while building resilience through the transformation of food systems. Aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2024-2028, the CSP sets out five mutually reinforcing outcomes and continues WFP's strategic shift from direct implementer to enabler of nationally owned, sustainable systems, with phased handover of interventions informed by capacity assessments. Gender equality and social protection are central to the CSP. The CSP carries a gender and age marker of 3, more than 50 percent of direct beneficiaries are women, and approximately 5.91 percent of the portfolio is allocated to gender equality and gender-responsive interventions mainstreamed across all outcomes. Malawi ranks 145 of 188 countries on the Gender Inequality Index, and women face persistent disadvantages in literacy, education, land access, agricultural inputs and technology, participation in cash and export crop value chains, and exposure to gender-based violence. The country office gender assessment has identified harmful social norms and gender roles as barriers to equitable access to WFP programmes, and WFP's resilience interventions have shown measurable shifts in household and community decision-making power for women. WFP also works through national social protection systems, promoting the use of the unified beneficiary registry and other government systems for targeting, registration and transfer delivery, and linking social protection with climate change and disaster risk management. This work spans CSP Activity 1 (shock-responsive assistance), Activity 5 (resilience and livelihoods), and Activities 6 and 7 under CSP Outcome 4 on national systems strengthening, in support of the Malawi National Social Support Programme and related national policies. To advance this agenda, WFP Malawi seeks to recruit a Programme Policy Officer - SC8 (Gender and Social Protection) to support the mainstreaming of gender equality and women's empowerment across the CSP portfolio, and to support WFP's engagement with national social protection systems, contributing to analysis, programme design, capacity strengthening, monitoring and reporting in line with WFP corporate priorities. THE ROLE:Under the overall supervision and guidance of the Deputy Head of Programme, and in collaboration with the activity managers, the Human Capital Development, Resilience, Crisis Response, RAM/M&E, Partnerships and Protection teams, and the sub-offices, the Programme Policy Officer (Gender and Social Protection) will: KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive, within delegated authority): A. Gender mainstreaming across the CSP - Support the implementation and periodic update of the country office gender action plan, ensuring that CSP activities respond to the different needs of women, men, girls and boys and address identified gender-related risks. - Provide technical inputs into programme design, concept notes, field level agreements and work plans so that interventions are gender-transformative, including measures that reduce women's unpaid work burden, expand women's participation in value chains and support women's leadership in community structures. - Support the tracking and reporting of the gender and age marker and of resources allocated to gender equality, and contribute to corporate gender reporting requirements. - Contribute to social and behaviour change communication activities that address harmful gender norms, and support their integration into crisis response, nutrition, school meals and resilience activities. B. Social protection support - Support WFP's technical engagement with national social protection systems, including the use of the unified beneficiary registry and other government systems for targeting, registration and transfer delivery. - Contribute to analysis and documentation on shock-responsive and nutrition-sensitive social protection, and on linkages between social protection, climate change adaptation and disaster risk management. - Support capacity strengthening activities for national and district social protection actors, including preparation of training materials, workshops and technical briefs. - Support the design and monitoring of complementary ("cash plus") interventions that link WFP transfers to national programmes and services. C. Protection, accountability and disability inclusion - Support the mainstreaming of protection, accountability to affected populations (AAP) and disability inclusion across activities, in line with WFP corporate commitments and the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy. - Support the functioning of the community feedback mechanism, including analysis of feedback trends by sex, age and disability, and follow-up on issues affecting women and other at-risk groups. - Contribute to the prevention o