Senior Consultant on Integrating Technology

Client of United Nation careers

Background Conflicts across the Arab region over the past two decades have generated severe short-term humanitarian crises and long-term developmental decline. Wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, and Palestine have produced one of the world s largest displacement crises, forcing tens of millions from their homes and eroding livelihoods, assets, and social cohesion. Host communities face immense pressure as public services, infrastructure, and labor markets struggle to absorb displaced populations. Humanitarian aid has become essential for survival in many conflict-affected countries. In Syria and Yemen, most of the population depends on external assistance for food, water, healthcare, and shelter. Yet rising needs and funding gaps have sharply reduced the ability of humanitarian actors to reach people in need. Food insecurity is widespread and severe: Yemen, Sudan, Syria, and Gaza face acute hunger, with famine conditions emerging in parts of Sudan and Gaza. Child malnutrition is increasing rapidly, posing irreversible risks to growth and cognitive development. Beyond immediate harm, conflicts have produced long-lasting deterioration in health, education, and institutional systems. Healthcare infrastructure has collapsed in many areas, causing excess mortality from preventable diseases and injuries. Life expectancy has plummeted, with Gaza and Syria experiencing some of the worst declines globally. Millions of children are out of school due to damaged facilities, insecurity, and displacement, undermining future human capital. Social fragmentation and brain drain further weaken resilience and recovery prospects. Human development indicators confirm deep regression: countries like Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Lebanon have not regained pre-crisis levels. Rising needs, declining aid access, and persistent violence risk locking the region into a prolonged cycle of poverty and instability. Peace, institutional rebuilding, and large-scale investment in health, education, and food security are essential for reversing these trajectories and transitioning towards recovery. However, traditional recovery models often centralized, reactive, and slow struggle to rebuild trust or address the complex needs of conflict-affected populations. In this context, integrating technology and innovation into mitigation and resilience efforts becomes essential, particularly for conflict-affected populations in the Arab region. The transformative tools of the Fourth Industrial Revolution such as AI, digital finance, and geospatial mapping offer powerful ways to accelerate, localize, and make recovery more transparent and inclusive. These technologies can strengthen early-warning systems, improve aid targeting, expand financial access, and enhance accountability, enabling communities to participate more actively in shaping their own recovery. Yet the benefits are not automatic. To prevent the deepening of inequalities or the misuse of digital systems, technological integration must be guided by robust governance, ethical safeguards, and a commitment to equitable access and protection. Against this backdrop, the consultant will produce a comprehensive study, develop a guidance note and accompanying training materials, and deliver a capacity-building workshop to support conflict-affected Arab States in strategically leveraging innovation and technology for enhanced resilience, effective recovery, and long-term sustainable development. The objective of this consultancy is to enhance the ability of conflict-affected Arab States to strategically govern, deploy, and scale innovation and emerging technologies in support of enhancing resilience, recovery, and long-term sustainable development. Building on regional evidence, policy dialogue, and emerging practice, the consultant will pursue the following interrelated objectives:

1. Reframe recovery as a continuous, technology-enabled resilience process:

• Advance a shift from viewing recovery as a post-conflict phase to a continuous, adaptive process that embeds resilience during crisis, aligned with the humanitarian development peace nexus.
• Position technology not as a peripheral support tool, but as a strategic enabler of governance, service continuity, human development and social cohesion in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

2. Operationalize the Integrated Technological Planning Framework for conflict-affected Arab States

• Apply and contextualize the Integrated Technological Planning Framework, which embeds technology across the full policy and planning cycle diagnostics, foresight, implementation, monitoring, and accountability.
• Promote a transition from fragmented, siloed interventions toward systems thinking, linking data, institutions, inclusion, and governance within a unified resilience architecture.

3. Identify high-impact technological entry points for resilience and recovery

• Assess how frontier and digital technologies including AI, geospatial intelligence, Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), digital finance, and early-warning systems can strengthen food security, health, education, livelihoods, and crisis preparedness.
• Highlight scalable, context-appropriate solutions that have demonstrated impact in conflict-affected settings across the Arab region.

4. Strengthen ethical, inclusive, and human-rights-based digital governance

• Integrate ethical, legal, and humanitarian safeguards to ensure that technological deployment does not exacerbate inequalities, expose vulnerable populations to harm, or undermine trust.
• Promote principles of digital justice, data protection, transparency, and accountability, aligned with UNESCO and OECD frameworks for responsible AI and data governance.

5. Translate knowledge into actionable guidance and learning

• Produce a comprehensive analytical study, a practical guidance note, tailored training materials, and a capacity-building workshop to enable policymakers and practitioners to design, govern, and scale technology-enabled resilience initiatives.

Duties and responsibilities Under the guidance of the Cluster leader, Governance and Prevention of ESCWA, the Senior Consultant will:

• Conduct a strategic analysis of how technology and innovation can strengthen resilience, recovery, and sustainable development in conflict-affected Arab States.
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