National PUBLIC FINANCE consultant to support preparedness of the national social protection in Romania to shocks (Home-Based) 50 working days, Bucharest, Romania

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Scope of Work:

In a context where the number, severity, complexity, and duration of crises have been on the rise and overburdening national and humanitarian response systems, the potential role of social protection in addressing the needs of shock affected population is increasingly recognised. Since it is now widely recognised that poor people are more vulnerable and most affected by shock events with long-lasting negative impacts (Hallegatte et al., 2017), routine poverty-targeted social protection programmes are effective in support and resilience building. Moreover, social protection systems can be leveraged during emergencies with potential for a quicker, more predictable, sustainable, and efficient response (O’Brien et al, 2018; OPM, 2017). 

As other countries in the Europe and Central Asia region, Romania is vulnerable to natural disasters, especially earthquakes, floods, droughts, and extreme weather, as well as to displacements due to political conflicts. Moreover, the country has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the cost-of-living crisis, which have tested the resilience of its economy and exacerbated the structural vulnerabilities, especially in terms of poverty and disparities in economic opportunity. The level of maturity of national social protection systems in the region makes the use social protection programmes or their underlying institutions and systems a relevant option for national governments and their partners for a more rapid, cost effective, inclusive, and harmonised response to meet needs of those affected by such shocks.

The World Bank and UNICEF in Romania commissioned two complementary assessments of the national social protection system in 2023. The purpose of the assessments was to review the capacity of Romania’s social protection system to prevent, reduce and respond adequately to disaster-related shocks, and map cash assistance programmes targeted at Romanian residents affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and at the population displaced by the war in Ukraine.  The assessment reports provided policy recommendations to make the national social protection system in Romania adaptive and responsive to shocks and promote a more predictable, sustainable, and efficient response during crises. Policy recommendations covered three major areas of technical support to the national systems in Romania:

• Enhancing policy coherence, institutional capacity, and cross-sector collaboration
• Enhancing social protection and disaster risk data management
• Enhancing social protection programmes and delivery systems

The assessment reports can be accessed here:

• Towards Adaptive Social Protection in Romania (English)
• Shock-responsive social protection in Romania

Overall, it was recommended that all financial support programmes (regular and temporary) to people affected by shocks are delivered using social protection system’s administrative/delivery channels and the regular social protection benefit programmes are made disaster sensitive and shock responsive.  In the event the social protection system is not ready to immediately enrol the population affected by shocks, e.g., in case of a large scale crisis, maximum efforts must be exerted to piggyback on social protection systems by using the social protection data management systems,  delivering emergency support through existing social assistance and social security payment systems and using the social protection information management systems to register additional beneficiaries of emergency response programme and enable coordination/data sharing with other sector information management systems

UNICEF and the Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity agreed to follow-up on policy recommendations of the recent assessments and to undertake measures for strengthening the national social protection system’s preparedness and adaptability to shocks. 

To support the above, UNICEF will contract a team of consultants who will work together to provide technical support to the government: a) an international consultant with solid experience and profoun