Individual Consultant: Technical Support for

**Job no**: 572416

**Contract type**: Consultant

**Duty Station**: Kuala Lumpur

**Level**: Consultancy

**Location**: Malaysia

**Categories**: Child Protection

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

**For every child, **_hope_**

Together with the Malaysian government and others who are truly passionate about child rights, UNICEF works in Malaysia to ensure every child has the opportunity to grow healthy and happy; live safely; and achieve their full potential.

With the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the 12th Malaysia plan as our guides, we endeavor to change minds, change policies, and in turn change the lives of all children in Malaysia.

**Background**
UNICEF Malaysia’s work on access to justice for children, which is in line with UNICEF’s Reimagine Justice1 agenda, continues to be a core component of the UNICEF country programme. The justice programme has been growing steadily, and slowly making an impact for children in the justice system. The new country programme builds on the gains made during the last country programme with expansion in the areas of work in child justice based on increasing buy-in from government justice agencies. Partnerships with both government and non government stakeholders have also expanded. The work on justice has been guided by the recommendations from the “The Malaysian Juvenile Justice System: A Study of Mechanisms for Handling Children in Conflict with the Law”, the Diversion Pilot Evaluation recommendations, and recommendations from the policy briefs analysing the various legal and policy frameworks for child victims and witnesses in the criminal justice system.
- Building on these recommendations, UNICEF Malaysia will continue to focus on facilitating access to high level technical support to assist the government in gaining exposure to best practices in the region and from other common law countries, invest in evidence generation (including via piloting of new models) to support evidence based advocacy and continue to advocate for removal of reservations to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Currently, the main interventions in these areas are enhancing capacity of duty bearers to create a child friendly justice system, development of child rights based diversion programmes as part of the overall initiative for reform of the justice for children system, strengthening the child victim support system, including handling of child victims in the trial process, strengthening laws and policies to ensure better protection of children as victims and also as offenders.

There have been various successful results achieved in recent years due to the high level technical assistance provided by external consultants. These include the Sexual Offences against Children Act 2017 which is largely compliant with international standards due to the technical assistance provided during the drafting of the Act. The provision of high level technical advice to the office of the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department on various issues related to child victims, had also led to UNICEF being recognised for its technical expertise. The provision of technical advice on diversion by UNICEF led to government to launch a diversion pilot in August 2019, which was also supported via technical support from UNICEF.

However, these reforms have not been without challenges and are yet to be fully implemented. Substantial gaps remain including lack of specialist child justice professionals, limited community-based services for diversion, alternatives to detention and child victim support services. At the same time, the substantial changes introduced to the justice system have been hindered by the lack of concomitant comprehensive capacity building and shifting of mindsets, both within the justice sector and amongst the public. As a result, the reforms have not yet achieved a level of coherence needed to create a comprehensive and integrated justice for children system in Malaysia.
Recognizing these challenges, UNICEF Malaysia has been working continuously to support the Government of Malaysia to reform its legal framework and delivery of justice services to improve the protection of all children who enter the justice system. Malaysia is currently at a critical juncture where strong commitment and investments are needed for effective and coherent implementation of justice for children reforms.

Given the critical need for continued technical support to assist the government and other key stakeholders to strengthen access to justice for children, an individual consultant is currently being sought.**Objectives**Major Task to be accomplished