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Purpose of the consultancy:

This individual consultancy will help Government generate critical public finance for children evidence that will inform planning processes at both national and sub-national levels. The consultancy will result in the production of Budget Briefs (national and sectoral) and national Citizens’ Budget for the enacted budget.

Background & Rationale:

The current UNICEF (2023-2025) County Programme Cycle is anchored on the 2023-2025 South Sudan United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF). The country programme contributes to the four UNSDCF outcomes of governance, economic development, social services and social protection, and empowerment of women and youth, as well as to the framework’s joint programmes on resilience, justice, and nutrition. The current country programme is based on the Theory of Change of the UNDSDCF and is aligned to South Sudan’s Revised National Development Strategy 2021-2024, South Sudan 2040 Vision Document, the UNICEF Strategic Plan 2022-2025, and the Gender Action Plan 3. The UNICEF programme therefore seeks to ensure all children, including adolescents and women, particularly the most vulnerable, are safer and enjoy their rights, with systems strengthened to ensure they have access to high quality and resilient services. The humanitarian component of the programme seeks to ensure assistance and development cooperation address the structural causes of fragility and vulnerability.

The operating environment in South Sudan remains complex and is still characterized by insecurity and political instability. The structure of the current programme is thus an adaptation of the UNICEF global key programme outcome areas. One of the outcome areas of the country programme is Social Inclusion (SI) which partly promotes UNICEF’s global mandate on public financial management through the UNICEF public finance for children (PF4C) programme. The overall objective of SSCO PF4C programme is to influence the mobilization, allocation, and utilization of domestic and public financial resources for children in South Sudan. These resources include general revenues, on-budget overseas development assistance and private sector finances. The SSCO SI programme therefore supports the Government of South Sudan and partners in budget monitoring and analysis, evidence generation, PF4C awareness activities and public participation in budgetary processes.

In 2021, the Country Office supported South Sudan’s participation in the Open Budget Survey (OBS). The OBS is a fact-based research instrument that assesses budgetary processes pertained to transparency, participation, and oversight. South Sudan’s transparency index in the 2020 round of the OBS is 11 out of 100. In 2023, Country Office continues to support South Sudan’s participation the 2023 round of the survey. Other support areas from Country Office include on: 1) evidence generation (including PETS/PER and Budget Briefs) to influence the design of national and state-level social sector budget plans; 2) budgetary processes and capacity building at national and subnational levels so that governments regularly report on financial resources received and utilized; 3) implementation of recommendations derived from key diagnostics such as the Education Sector PETS/PER and government PFM reform processes/agenda, and; 4) advocacy work with legislators pertained to allocations of national budget to social services, with focus on education, health, social and humanitarian sectors.

In 2023, UNICEF initiated a PFM support for Abyei Administrative Area. The support focuses on basic aspects of Public Financial Management (PFM) pertained to planning, reporting, monitoring, and accounting. The Technical Assistance (TA) also entails direct on-the-job and one-to-one support through a dedicated human capacity support from both UNICEF and the Inter-Governmental Fiscal Relations Unit of the Budget & Revenue Directorate of National Ministry of Finance and

Planning (MoFP), guided and led by the State Monitoring Transfer Committee housed in the MoFP. The project also covers other PFM aspects pertained to oversight, budget transparency and evidence generation, covering Juba and the Abyei Administrative Area.

Scope of Work:

This individual consultancy will help Government generate critical public finance for children evidence that will inform planning processes at both national and sub-national levels. The consultancy thus aims to generate evidence on public finance for children, notably Budget Briefs (national and sectoral) and national Citizens’ Budget for the enacted budget.

Main Duties and Responsibilities:

Under the overall guidance of the Deputy Representative (Programme) and the direct supervision of the Social Policy Specialist, the consultant will produce the following pieces of evidence:

a) National Budget Brief for FY 2023/2024, covering all sectors,
b) Education sector specific Budget Brief FY 2023/2024, with a light touch investment case
c) Citizens’ Budget FY 2023/2024
d) Budget Brief for Abyei Administrative Area FY 2023/2024 covering all sectors

Background documents will be provided to the consultant to familiarize himself/herself with the PFM/PF4C and development context of South Sudan.

Output Result Statement: In close collaboration with the PFM partners in South Sudan, the capacity of Government is enhanced to mobilize, allocate, spend, and report on resources for social services, and Abyei sub-national PF4C work & Budgetary Support across government levels.

The following deliverables (of this consultancy) will therefore advance South Sudan’s PFM National agenda. The consultant is expected to deliver/produce the following five documents:
Deliverables Timeline Cost
1. Based on UNICEF’s Global PF4C programme and framework, produce a National Budget Brief (FY 2023/2024), covering all sectors

This is a national budget Brief. It must not be more than 20 pages and should contain infographics and pictures. A sample of a national budget brief is here: http://grss-mof.org/.

Two weeks (10 days) Delivered by Monday, 13 November 2023

2. Based on UNICEF’s Global PF4C programme and framework, produce a Citizens’ Budget for South Sudan; a sample is here. Two weeks (10 days) Delivered by Monday, 27 November 2023

3. Based on UNICEF’s Global PF4C Programme, produce an Education Sector Budget Brief (FY 2023/2024)
This is a modified Education Sector Budget Brief of not more than 30 pages, accompanied with a light touch 3 weeks (15 days)

4. Based on UNICEF’s Global PF4C programme, produce one Budget Brief for Abyei Administrative Area for FY 2023/2024, covering all sectors

Like a National Budget Brief, this Abyei Budget Brief must not be more than 20 pages and should contain infographics and pictures. A sample of a national budget brief is here: http://grss-mof.org/.
Two weeks (10days) Delivered by Monday, 15 January 2023.

Minimum Qualifications required: Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required:

• Master’s degree in Economics or Social Science
• 5 years’ experience in PFM, with concentration on PF4C
• Additional 3 years of relevant experience in lieu of a master’s degree.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Fluency in written and spoken English is required.