Assistant Human Rights Officer

Contract

This is a UNV National Specialist contract. This kind of contract is known as National UN Volunteer. It is normally only for nationals. More about UNV National Specialist contracts.

OHCHR Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA) is based in Pretoria, South Africa, and covers Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In addition to the staff in Pretoria, OHCHR has Human Rights Advisors in Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe and has a project with staff based in Mozambique. The Regional Office provides technical support and guidance to Resident Coordinators (RCs), UN Country Teams (UNCTs), States, national human rights institutions, civil society and other stakeholders on early warning and prevention, enhancing participation and protecting civic space, strengthening rule of law, accountability and national human rights institutions, advancing equality and non-discrimination, addressing gender-based violence, integrating human rights in sustainable development and supporting States and other stakeholders to engage with and follow up to recommendations of human rights mechanisms.

The work of the Regional Office includes identifying, collecting, processing and sharing data, information and analysis of human rights trends in the region, ensuring support to RCs/UNCTs as well as other OHCHR presences in the region. This work requires human rights and information management expertise to better advocate for the protection of human rights by strengthening its analysis with accurate supporting data, empowering the Office to take a more active inter-agency leadership role and to better engage key decision-makers with compelling analytical and data-driven information and preventative measures in support of early action.

Under the direct supervision of the Regional Representative and Deputy Regional Representative of the OHCHR Regional Office for Southern Africa, the NUNV will undertake the following tasks:

• Researches and collects information pertaining to human rights matters, including their gender dimensions, from a variety of data sources (e.g. communications, publications, the press); • Through remote monitoring, keep abreast of relevant issues/events in the Southern Africa Region and provide up-to-date information; • Assists in the analysis of information, to include the impact on the countries and thematic mandates on the human rights situation in assigned areas, with a focus on vulnerable groups; • Participates in meetings and consultations and prepare summaries of results/outcomes; • Reviews human rights issues, including their gender dimensions, and participates in discussions with other Human Rights Officers on the integration of these issues into political, humanitarian and socio-economic efforts and programmes; • Prepares correspondence, talking points, briefing notes, and provides human rights legal analysis on the various country and thematic situations; and • Performs other related duties as required.

Professionalism; Planning and organisation, Communication

human rights, political affairs, international relations, law or related area is required. • Experience in working with international human rights standards, instruments and mechanisms is desirable; • Experience in human rights monitoring and reporting and/or in building capacity for the promotion and protection of human rights is desirable; • Experience in social justice communication, advocacy and campaigns is desirable; • Previous experience as a volunteer and/or experience of another culture, (i.e. studies, volunteer work, internship) would be highly regarded and can be considered at 50%, if deemed relevant.

Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province in South Africa. It is one of the country’s two capital cities serving as the executive (administrative) and de facto national capital. It offers excellent living conditions with various types of world-class available facilities. Housing is readily available, and rents can be negotiated. Infrastructure, internet connectivity, roads, utilities, telecommunications are of a high standard. Airbnb and Uber are in common use. The other city is Cape Town, the legislative capital. Pretoria is classified as an A duty station, and South Africa is in security phase 1. Like in other big cities with significant crime rates, caution must be exercised always.