Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Climate Resilience Assistant

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where
every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, and every young person's potential is fulfilled.
UNFPA is on the ground improving lives in about 150 countries, home to 80 per cent of the world’s population. In these countries, the Fund is a catalyst for progress.
Ensuring sustainable financing for SRHR in the current economic landscape requires greater reliance on domestic public resources and building on strategic private-public partnerships and innovative financing approaches to accelerate the shift from funding to financing the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) agenda. To achieve its 2022-2025 Strategic Plan, UNFPA aims to boost access to sustainable financing for SRHR from various sources to implement the ICPD agenda.
As part of this effort, the organization seeks to establish and expand partnerships to strengthen
financing architectures and promote innovative financing modalities for SRHR.
The position is placed in a small team led by the UNFPA APRO Regional Health Economic Adviser,
coordinating UNFPA’s strategic efforts to expand and leverage public and private financing in its
mandated field in Asia and the Pacific.

The Asia Pacific region is home to nearly one billion young people aged 10-24 years, representing 23.7% of people in this region and accounting for 60% of the world’s adolescents and young adults. The region is also highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with significant implications for the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of adolescents and youth. Climate change-related events such as heat waves, floods, and droughts disrupt access to the essential health, education and community programmes that all adolescents and youth, especially girls and young women to early, unintended pregnancy and poor maternal health outcomes. Moreover, displacement caused by climate disasters increases their risk of sexual violence and exploitation, while economic hardship can lead to child marriage and transactional sex, all of which have negative consequences for adolescent girls and young women.

This generation of adolescents and youth face the difficult reality of growing up amidst the climate crisis. This includes issues of resource scarcity, stressors on their families and communities, disruptions to their education and other adolescent-focused programmes and services, and elevated insecurity and risks to their individual well-being. Unless existing adolescent and youth-focused programmes are adapted for the climate crisis, or young people are left out of these efforts, the potential for negative intergenerational impacts and inequalities for young people are significant.

Given this context, the International UNV will support regional activities to promote and strengthen UNFPA’s adolescent and youth programming knowledge, models, and partnerships for Youth SRH climate resilience. These activities will focus on youth leadership, promising practices and innovative approaches that transform adolescent sexual and reproductive health services, comprehensive sexuality education, life skills and development, and youth activism for the new climate realities. It will also involve stakeholder mapping in the youth and climate resilience sectors to strengthen the quality and relevance of regional and country office’s activities and advocacy to reach the most vulnerable adolescent girls and young women.

Under the direct supervision of the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:

Under the direct supervision of the Technical Advisor on Adolescents and Youth, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:

Support knowledge management activities to understand the evidence and age-differentiated impact of climate change on adolescent girls and young women and their sexual and reproductive health.

Support the development of key knowledge products and messages on youth SRH and climate change that can be used for regional and country offices’ advocacy efforts.

Contribute to analytical review of relevant national and regional youth development frameworks to identify entry points for adolescent and youth programming and advocacy for climate resilience.

Support the mapping of different entities and networks involved in the youth, health, and climate resilience sectors with respect to advocacy and promising projects underway in the Asia Pacific region.

Participates in and contributes to regional webinars and learning exchanges with country offices on youth programming, and linkages to climate change.

Contribute toward building strategic activities on youth-led engagement in climate action and SRHR

Contribute to resource mobilization through development of concepts and proposals on climate change and adolescent SRH linkages.

Develop areas/topics for climate-related SRH research and policy that leverages community engagement and includes diverse key stakeholders.