Internship on Social Protection

Required profile

Internship position is located in the ILO Decent Work Technical Support Team for  Eastern and Southern Africa and Country Office for South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini (DWT/CO Pretoria). The DWT/CO- Pretoria provides high-quality, timely and integrated technical support to Country Offices under its geographical competence in the design, implementation and monitoring of Decent Work Country Programmes (DWCPs) and United Nationals Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks (UNSDCFs).

Strengthening national social protection systems features prominently in DWCPs of countries under DWT-CO Pretoria, in strategies of regional economic commissions such as East African Community (EAC) and Southern African Development (SADC) and continental frameworks chiefly the Abijan Declaration “Advancing Social Justice: Shaping the Future of work in Africa” and the African Union’s Protocol the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Citizens to Social Protection and Social Security” and the Africa Regional Social Protection Strategy (2021-2025). ILO supports constituents to align national legal and policy frameworks as well as practice with both regional and global initiatives: ILO’s Global Flagship Programme on Building Social Protection Floors for All, the 2021Conclusions of the Second Recurrent Discussion on Social Protection (social security) with tis follow-up Plan of Action on Social Protection 2021-26, and the UN Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  Furthermore, ILO is implementing Global Ratification Campaign on Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952, No.12 to bring the number of ratification to 70 by 2026. 

To this end DWT/CO Pretoria provides policy advice and technical assistance on social protection to tripartite constituents in order to re-shape and strengthen national social protection systems aiming at ensuring that more people have access to better managed, comprehensive, more adequate and gender equitable social protection benefits. It does so, by working on following key areas:
-    Provision of technical input, policy advisory services for the design and implementation of social protection policies, strategies and actional plans  that are consistent with ILO’s work at country level, guided by international social security standards;
-    Planning, coordination, conducting and documentation of implementation of sub-regional strategies and activities on social protection;
-    Supporting evidence building of impact of social protection on poverty reduction; resilience building on individual level, as well as social, economic and fiscal impacts of social protection;
-     Designing, implementing, supporting and documenting practices and innovative case examples of extending social protection to informal workers
-    Provision of expert advice towards ratification of ILO social security standards.
-    Organisation and delivery of training workshops for tripartite constituents.

Learning areas

Under the supervision of Social Protection Specialist in ILO DWT/CO Pretoria the intern will support work on social protection through focus on promotion and implementation of Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012, No. 202 Recommendation supporting Transition form Informal to Formal Economy, 2015 No 204

More specifically, the intern will engage in the following three areas:

1)    Awareness raising, communication and international events

• Assist in preparing workshop and other events on social protection and extension of social protection to workers in informal economy.
• Assist in developing communication materials about ILO’s work on social protection in Eastern and Southern Africa including on social media. Drafting human interest stories (focusing on social protection, extension of coverage and inclusion of persons with disabilities) and news items for ILO website. 
• Assist in preparing background documents (support identification of good practice examples, quantitative and qualitative evidence) for presentation at regional and subregional events and conferences.

2)    Policy advice, development cooperation and capacity development

• Contribute to documenting and disseminating lessons learned and good practice examples undertaken by tripartite constituents and/or ILO related to ratification of social security conventions, pension reforms, extension of social protection coverage to workers in informal economy and inclusion of persons with disabilities.  
• Assist in developing and finalising training materials and guidelines for capacity development of tripartite constituents on social protection.
• Assist in conducting mapping of types of pension reforms in Eastern and Southern Africa.

3)    UN and Multilateral Collaboration

• Support preparation of information for meetings of UN Results groups on social protection in UNCTs for South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini and Lesotho; participate in meetings; draft clear and concise meeting minutes and support with follow up actions
• Document lessons learnt regarding initiation of UN Joint Programmes promoting implementation of interventions on UN Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions (UN GA) in Pathfinder countries: Namibia and Malawi; support information sharing with countries expressing interest UN GA in two sub-regions
   

Education

•    Education:  Currently enrolled in the last year of a graduate degree (Master or higher) or having completed such a programme in the year preceding the application in one or more of the following, or similar, disciplines:  economy; social and political science; development studies international relations, 

Experience

First field experiences in developing countries, including in the area of social protection or social development

Languages

Working knowledge of English (oral and written); command of French and/or  Portugise will be an asset

Competencies

Ability to synthesise information about topic from different sources and present it in a clear manner. Adaptable to an international, multicultural and multilingual environment, good communication skills, and be able to work in a team.