Country Support Communications Officer

The World Health Organization serves as the directing and coordinating authority for public health within the United Nations system. WHO seeks to promote health, ensure everyone can attain the highest level of health, keep the world safe and serve the vulnerable through partnerships, people and countries.

This assignment is part of a UNV-funded initiative designed to bring fresh, diverse talent into UN programmes from countries that are currently unrepresented among UN Volunteers. It offers a unique opportunity to help ensure that global volunteering truly reflects the world we serve, while giving participating UN Volunteers meaningful, hands on experience with leading UN partners. As such, the initiative targets candidates from the following nationalities: Andorra, Croatia, Estonia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, San Marino, Slovenia. The UN Volunteer will act as a Communications Officer (Country Support) at the Strategic Communications and Advocacy (SCA) unit. In this role he/she will support the WHO Country Offices (WCOs) across the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region in the development of communications plans and products in line with the Regional Communications and Advocacy strategy, as well as maintaining and enhancing the WCOs’ Communications channels and platforms including web, media and social media. The position will further help enhance quality, visibility, consistency and branding of the WCOs’ communications materials. The Strategic Communications and Advocacy (SCA) is a unit of the Communications and Partnerships (CAP) cluster under the Department of Programme Management at WHO/EMRO. To provide strategic leadership and integrated oversight across the technical, managerial, and external engagement functions of the Regional Office. The post will ensure coherence between programme management, resource mobilization, partnership development, and strategic communications, fostering synergy between technical departments, country offices, and the Regional Director’s Office. Thereby, strengthening WHO’s collective impact in advancing health priorities across the Eastern Mediterranean Region, ensuring alignment with WHO’s General Programme of Work, the Regional Flagship Initiatives, and the Regional Director’s Vision. The mission of the CAP Cluster is to provide strategic support and oversight across all WHO communication activities in the region (to mobilize and leverage resources, build strategic alliances and partnerships, and to guide external relations and multilateral affairs. The cluster manages WHO/EMROs relationship with the international community by contributing to the positioning of the Organization's regional health priorities in the global and regional agenda and in positioning the Organization as a trusted and recognized health leader in the region. The SCA Unit Strategic Objective is to reinforce WHO’s role as the trusted health authority, to share and expand access to evidence-based health information in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. The SCA Unit specific objectives are to: - Communicate accurate, timely, appealing and engaging information to the public, partners, media and other stakeholders through traditional and innovative platforms. - Advocate for WHO’s impact and credibility as the leading voice for public health so that general population and partners trust and support WHO and take action with or as guided by it. - Enhance WHO’s capacity to communicate for health, foster partnerships with the media and other key communications partners and stakeholders, and attract resources for strategic priorities. - Advise senior management on latest developments to strengthen communication and issues that affect WHO’s reputation and credibility.

Within the delegated authority and under the supervision of Regional Advisor, Strategic Communications and Advocacy or his/her designated mandated representative(s), the UN Volunteer Country Support Communications Officer will: 1. Support the development of country-specific communication plans and standard operating procedures for WHO Country Offices (WCOs) in line with the Regional Communications for Health (C4H) Strategy, aimed at improving health outcomes through positive behaviour change among target audiences, and ensure its timely, efficient and impactful implementation. 2. Identify subjects of interest for Communications for Health and provide technical and creative input for conception, development and dissemination of the WCOs’ C4H products , drawing on techniques and evidence from social and behavioural change communication, health promotion, behavioural insights, community engagement, risk and crisis communications. 3. Develop and maintain a calendar of health events for the WCOs to be used as a single standard planner for marking local, Regional and International health days/events/campaigns in a streamlined manner. Ensure timely planning and developing of corporate communications materials (posters, brochures, videos, human-interest stories, etc) for the events and campaigns. 4. Support Drafting content (e.g. media releases, web stories, social media posts) for, and regularly update/monitor the WCOs’ Communications Channels and Platforms (i.e. media, web, social media, etc) in accordance with WHO global and regional corporate guidelines and standards. 5. Support WHO Country Offices in proactively communicating to their workforce, by Sharing/adapting global and regional internal information and materials, so that the ‘Internal Communications’ content can be cascaded at the country level. 6. Participate in the development of communication products to be used by the WCOs to advocate for support from donors, stakeholders and partners to respond to the country office needs in the steady-state and health emergency situations. 7. Technically support documentation, monitoring and evaluation of the WCOs’ communications initiatives and products to measure and maximize their impact. Establish and maintain an archive of communications products in a systematic manner and contribute to WHO global and regional archiving platforms such as the WHO/EMRO Photo Library. 8. Support capacity building approaches and activities for improved communications skills, content planning, design and production at the country level, including coaching and assisting staff on design and branding best practices for their dissemination of public health information.