Humanitarian Specialist

Contract

This is a P-3 contract. This kind of contract is known as Professional and Director staff. It is normally internationally recruited only. It's a staff contract. It usually requires 5 years of experience, depending on education.

Salary

The salary for this job should be between 110,481 USD and 144,666 USD.

Please keep in mind that the salary displayed here is an estimation by UN Talent based on the location and the type of contract. It may vary depending on the organization. The recruiter should be able to inform you about the exact salary range. In case the job description contains another salary information, please refer to this one.

Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. For a seventh consecutive year, Afghanistan remains among the deadliest places in the world to be a civilian and faces an emerging level of human rights violation.

The ongoing conflict has caused several issues including, an imbalance in people’s access to and control over resources, decision-making and political participation at different scales that exacerbate existing disparities and vulnerabilities, predominantly among women and marginalized groups of people. Considering the present multidimensional emergency as a result of conflict, COVID-19, rapid escalation of violence, severe poverty, food insecurity, and climate vulnerability the country is transitioning from development to humanitarian state and ranks second in the top ten crisis list with nearly half of the population (18.4 M) in need of humanitarian assistance . Consequently, more than 40 thousand families have been internally displaced due to conflict from the beginning of the year, of whom more than 15 percent are women and children. Thus, the country endured one of the world’s most acute internal displacement crises and third largest refugee population in the world .

Amidst a rapidly evolving political, security and COVID-19 situation, the UN Women Afghanistan Country Office (ACO) is working on consolidating its programming under the humanitarian-peace-development nexus, anchored in its country Strategic Note (2018-2022). UN Women ACO continues to deliver on its triple mandate under UN Women’s 2021 Annual Workplan across 4 pillars: 1) Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action; 2) Ending Violence Against Women; 3) Women’s Economic Empowerment and 4) Women’s leadership and Political Participation. UN Women works with Afghan women across civil society, government, and the private sector as the key advocates for women’s participation and engagement in peace processes, local and national governance, business, and in decision making at family and community-level. UN Women continues to support women leaders in their mission to make women’s voices heard in all spheres of Afghan society.

Under the Gender in Humanitarian Action mandate, UN Women provides UN system wide leadership on gender responsive humanitarian action, through its presence in the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT). UN Women is the permanent co-lead of the Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group (GiHAWG)and works closely with its co-chairs, IRC and Medica Afghanistan ,to provide technical, advisory and programmatic support to the HCT and the Inter Cluster Coordination Team (ICCT). The GIHA WG is accountable to and reports to the HCT and provides close collaboration, communication and coordination across clusters and technical working groups (e.g including the Gender Based Violence (GBV) Sub-Cluster, Protection cluster, Humanitarian Access Working Group, Accountability to Affected Population) to ensure gender analysis, and advocacy is adequately coordinated, disseminated, and utilized, through the ICCT coordinated by OCHA, including for strategic planning purposes such as Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) and Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP).

Currently the UN Women GiHA portfolio is anchored within the WPS-GiHA pillar, which is overall led by an international Programme Manager. The GIHA team will comprise of two international staff: Humanitarian Specialist/ Programme Manager (P4) and Humanitarian Specialist (P3) with a programming focus. In addition, the team comprises of two national members : GIHA Programme Specialist who leads the GiHA portfolio and one national UN Volunteer. The Deputy Country Representative provides the overall oversight to the Unit. Outside of targeted humanitarian capacity on humanitarian Kabul, UN Women has sub- offices in 5 provinces which contributes to the overall strategic priorities of the humanitarian mandate.

In Afghanistan, to ensure a gendered response to a worsening humanitarian situation, the UN Women Afghanistan Country Office is working actively to provide strategic leadership and technical support to ensure humanitarian response fully responds to the specific needs and priorities of women in girls through elevating support the humanitarian response architecture ;as well develop targeted programming. Within the worsening humanitarian context in Afghanistan, additional emphasis is being placed on the gendered impacts of the crisis, such as gender targeted security incidents impacting space for women’s humanitarian workers or the impact on women’s access to humanitarian services, amongst others.

Reporting to the Humanitarian Programme Manager, the Humanitarian Specialist will support coordination of the Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group, develop, operationalize and implement humanitarian programmes, specifically centered to women’s multi-purpose centers, LEAP and Second Chance Education, depending on humanitarian portfolio, provide capacity building to humanitarian actors, establish and strengthen partnerships, and develop data driven relevant knowledge products on humanitarian action, including development of gender analysis/alerts and assessments for the Afghanistan Country Office.

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1. Afghanistan: Humanitarian Response Plan 2018 – 2021 (2021 Update) https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/afg_humanitarian_response_plan_2018_2021_jan_2021.pdf
2. Afghanistan - Conflict Induced Displacements in 2021 - https://data.humdata.org/dataset/afghanistan-conflict-induced-displacements-in-2021
3. UNHCR’s Refugee Population Statistics Database - https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/

Duties and Responsibilities

Manage the development of programmes on Humanitarian to Afghanistan Country Office, with a focus on the women’s multi-purpose centers, LEAD and Second Chance Education:

• Develop programme documents and strategies on humanitarian action;
• Draft technical inputs to concept notes, proposals including on women’s multi-purpose centers, and in line with UN Women global humanitarian program approaches, such as LEAP, Second Chance Education, livelihood and leverage and scale- programsme within women’s economic empowerment, ending violence against women, women’s protection centers into humanitarian programming
• Lead drafting and contextualizing/ localizing programme documents, country strategies, and knowledge products;
• Conduct proper monitoring and reporting for humanitarian action in collaboration with programme teams.

Provide capacity building support to the Humanitarian Country Team, ICCT and cluster, sub clusters and technical working groups humanitarian clusters and partners:

• Provide substantive technical and strategic support to cluster response plans
• Implement and monitor capacity building initiatives, such as GiHA, Gender and Age Partner, Gender and Cash Voucher Assistance for clusters and partners;
• Provide technical support to partners on implementation of humanitarian action.

Establish and strengthen strategic partnerships with stakeholders, regional/ international actors and development partners:

• Build and maintain alliances and strategic partnerships for the advancement of humanitarian action;
• Build and maintain close liaisons with relevant donors and other actors supporting efforts towards humanitarian action, as delegated;
• Contribute inputs to updates and briefs on country development situation to be used by stakeholders, clusters, CO, RO and HQ;
• Maintain close contact with relevant staff in UN Women HQ and RO.

Technically contribute to the resource mobilization strategy for humanitarian action:

• Participate in the implementation, monitoring and periodic updating of the resource mobilization strategy on humanitarian action in the region;
• Provide technical support to field based presences in the region in mobilizing resources for the implementation of humanitarian action;
• Research and analyze information on donors.

Provide technical contributions to design of humanitarian action in the region and the development of relevant knowledge products:

• Provide inputs to policy recommendations and guidance to strategic planning and positioning on humanitarian action;
• Research and develop analytical reports, research papers, briefing notes, background papers, summaries, correspondence, and knowledge products on humanitarian action;
• Identify promising practices, technical expertise in humanitarian action.

Manage the advocacy of humanitarian action through inter-agency coordination:

• Work closely with and provide advice to regional/ national bodies and interagency groups that influence national policies related to humanitarian action;
• Participate and contribute inputs to the Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group, including supporting the secretariat function.
• Coordinate specific efforts in mainstreaming gender and protection in disaster preparedness, response and recovery efforts of other clusters and relevant working groups;
• Advocate for the engagement and participation of local organizations and civil society networks in humanitarian coordination mechanisms.

Manage knowledge management, advocacy and communication efforts of humanitarian action:

• During emergency response, develop and implement communication and advocacy messages and contribute inputs to strategies on key gender and protection concerns;
• Develop information, education and communication (IEC) materials, press releases, situation reports, alerts and contribute gender and protection-related inputs to documents prepared by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and other humanitarian partners.
• Develop data driven relevant knowledge products

Competencies

Core Values:

• Respect for Diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues
• Accountability
• Creative Problem Solving
• Effective Communication
• Inclusive Collaboration
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Leading by Example

Functional Competencies:

• Strong knowledge an related to current policies and practices in the fields of gender equality, protection and humanitarian action, including humanitarian coordination;
• Strong knowledge of the region
• Strong networking skills
• Ability to interact with donors, identify and analyze trends, opportunities and threats to fundraising
• Ability to perform qualitative and quantitative policy research
• Ability to advocate and provide policy advice
• Strong analytical skills;
• Ability to write policy papers, speeches, briefings;
• Strong knowledge of programme development, implementation, results based management and reporting

Required Skills and Experience

Education and Certification:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in human rights, gender, international relations, international development, international law or other social science fields is required.
• A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• A project/programme management certification (such as PMP®, PRINCE2®, or MSP®) would be an added advantage.

Experience:

• At least 5 years of progressively responsible experience in designing and managing humanitarian programmes, with a particular focus on gender and protection in emergencies;
• Technical experience in inter-agency coordination, preferably protection cluster coordination, and/or ProCap/GenCap in a natural disaster setting;
• Experience in policy analysis and strategic planning;
• Experience working with, and building partnerships with governments, donors and civil society organizations internationally and in the field;
• Experience working with the UN is an asset; and
• Experience working in the region is an asset

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in English is required;
• Knowledge of another UN official working language is an asset

Application:

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/about%20us/employment/un-women-p11-personal-history-form.doc?la=en&vs=558. Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.

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