Emergency and Rehabilitation Officer (Needs Assessment)

Organizational Setting

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is the specialized Agency of the United Nations leading international efforts to defeat hunger. FAO works in over 130 countries worldwide to achieve food security for all and make sure that people have regular access to high-quality food.

FAO's Office of Emergencies and Resilience leads the Organization’s efforts to support member countries in their endeavours to save agricultural livelihoods of people and communities and enhance their resilience in the face of disasters, crises and conflicts. The Organization strives to secure sustainable development gains while ensuring that all interventions to support agriculture and food systems are risk-informed and sustainably productive. Food crisis contexts require a well-organized, highly prioritized, and well-resourced humanitarian and resilience programme to play a meaningful role in the relevant fora at national, regional and global levels. To claim its rightful place and to contribute meaningfully to relevant SDGs in food crises contexts, timeliness and speed in generating quality information and analysis together with agility in processes, partnerships, and delivery are central. In short, prevention and mitigation of disasters, whether related to natural hazards, plant and animal pests and diseases and/or conflict, together with being prepared and able to respond when disasters hit, require structured and agile system that is able to carry out effective processes of risk assessment and risk management.

The Office of Emergencies and Resilience (OER) is composed of three main clusters. These are:

1) Overall Leadership and Management of OER, including the Global Food Security Cluster and the Global Network Against Food Crises;

2) Programme Quality and Management, including the Strategic Positioning team, the Evidence for Programming team, the Programme and Results team and the Enabling Environment team;

3) Programme Implementation including the Country Support team, the Global Support team and the Resource Mobilisation and communication team.

Reporting Lines

The Emergency and Rehabilitation Officer (Needs assessment) reports to the Senior Technical Officer in the Evidence for Programming Team.

Technical Focus

The Emergency and Rehabilitation Officer (Needs Assessment) will be part of the Needs and Impact Assessment team, set up within OER to support evidence-based emergency and resilience programing and communication. He/she will undertake and oversee data collection, analysis and report writing processes in support of high quality and timely assessments in crisis and emergency settings.

Key Results

Research, technical analysis, and project related services to support the delivery of programme projects, products, and services.

Key Functions

• Researches and analyses technical, food and nutrition security assessments, emergency response, policy related and/or funding/project related data and information to support the delivery of programme projects, products and services;

• Produces various reports, proposals, programme/project documents, position papers, policy briefs, financial/donor reports as well as critical information for inclusion in governing body reports etc.;

• Participates in project teams, collaborates in project and programme formulation and provides technical and/or administrative support to ongoing operational emergency and recovery projects;

• Liaises with FAO technical Departments as well as other UN Organizations to obtain and/or exchange information regarding food and nutrition security assessments, emergency and recovery activities and other related issues;

• Provides technical/administrative support and promotes best practices to Decentralized Offices;

• Monitors and provides support to resource mobilization activities including corporate appeals, donor macro grants, CERF/SFERA submissions, annual appeals and mid-year reviews, maintains information and prepares related reports;

• Maintains and updates information systems, databases and web pages;

• Performs other duties as required.

Specific Functions

• Provides technical advice, inputs and support to the formulation, coordination, implementation, data analysis and reporting for various assessment processes concerned with agriculture and food security in emergency and recovery settings. This will include but not be restricted to: Covid-19 monitoring in 30 high priority countries; rapid agricultural livelihood assessments; market assessments; seed security assessments and other sector specific assessments for livestock and fisheries and; in depth assessments for livelihood recovery including Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) and Recovery and Peace Building Assessment (RPBA);

• Supports the development of OER Geospatial analysis processes, including setting up of a new geospatial platform for resilience;

• Develops and supports capacity building programmes for staff in decentralized offices, regional offices and subregional resilience hubs in order to build capacity within FAO and partner organizations in the field of agricultural and food security assessments;

• Contributes to FAO global technical development with the development and implementation of new methodologies and approaches to assess the impact of disasters and crises and related needs of rural population;

• Participates in global initiatives and fora such as the global Food Security Cluster(gFSC); the Global Network Against Food Crisis (GNAFC); the Needs assessment workstream of the Grand Bargain including the work of the Joint Inter-sectoral Analysis Group (JIAG); the PDNA and RPBA;

• Contributes to the linking of information with decision making by engaging with programming staff in headquarters and overseeing the development of adequate communication and outreach material passing the key messages to target audiences;

• Ensures the uploading of cleared material on key dissemination platforms including the Hand in Hand Geospatial platform, the FAO Emergencies needs assessment webpage, the gFSC website, the GNAFC website;

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CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

• Advanced university degree in food security, geography, applied statistics, applied economics, economics, agricultural economics, development economics;

• Five years of relevant experience in food security and/or agricultural sector assessments crisis settings;

• Working knowledge of English and limited knowledge of another FAO official language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish).

Competencies

• Results Focus

• Teamwork

• Communication

• Building Effective Relationships

• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

Technical/Functional Skills

• Work experience in more than one location or area of work, particularly in field positions is desirable;

• Extent and relevance of knowledge and experience in conducting and supervising food security related assessment processes;

• Extent and relevance of experience in organizing data collection and management;

• Extent and relevance of experience in food crisis in field-related contexts is desirable;

• Understanding of FAO policies and programmes is considered a strong asset.

• Extent and relevance of experience in the preparation, editing and revision of emergency food security and agricultural sector assessments

• Extent and relevance of experience in organizing and conducting meetings and workshops to varied audiences.

• Extent and relevance of experience in formulating and implementing analytical and policy documents.