Integrated Protection Coordinator

Job Description

BACKGROUND OF COUNTRY AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE:

The International Rescue Committee responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, IRC offers life-saving care and life-changing assistance to refugees and others affected by conflict. At work today in more than 40 countries and in 22 U.S. cities, IRC restores safety, dignity, and hope to millions who are uprooted by war or disaster. IRC leads the way from harm to home.

The Ukraine crisis is the worst humanitarian crisis Europe has seen in decades. Since the escalation of conflict in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, more than 7.8 million refugees have sought safety in European countries, and over 5.5 million people are currently reported to be internally displaced in Ukraine. Reports indicate that a majority of arrivals in Poland are women and children, including those that are unaccompanied and separated, as well as older persons.

Between February 7-23, 2022, an IRC team undertook a scoping mission covering Poland and Ukraine to better understand the context, humanitarian and civil society landscape, and anticipated service gaps in the event of an escalation of conflict in Ukraine and consequent displacement into neighboring Poland. As of February 24th, the IRC has pivoted to emergency response and has identified partner agencies in Ukraine and Poland to facilitate immediate assistance that can be used where it is most needed. Simultaneously, the IRC has established operations across Ukraine and Poland offering a robust humanitarian response to complement partner response services either in breadth or scale.

Key working relationships:

• Position Reports to: Deputy Director of Programs, Poland

• Position directly supervises: Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE) Manager; Protection Rule of Law Manager; Child Protection Manager

• Internal collaborations within IRC: Economic Recovery and Development (ERD) Coordinator; Partnerships Coordinator; Supply Chain Coordinator; Finance Coordinator; Senior Technical Advisor for Violence Prevention and Response in Emergencies (VPRiE)

• External collaborations to IRC: Protection actors, organizations, and agencies; IRC partners

Job Overview/Summary:

The Integrated Protection Coordinator (IPC) leads the IRC’s efforts to meet conflict-affected people’s safety and protection needs, reducing risk and responding to cases of violence, coercion, and deprivation, as well as mainstreaming protection throughout the IRC and partners’ response in Poland. This includes Protection, GBV, and Child Protection programming, as well as protection monitoring, through partner-led and direct implementation. The Integrated Protection Coordinator will set and manage a clear and coherent program direction, drive forward implementation, and ensure robust and effective management and oversight to best meet the needs and aspirations of people who are displaced from Ukraine. The IPC also plays an important role in shaping and informing IRC’s advocacy agenda to influence the overall protection environment for a more effective response and protection of the rights of those displaced by conflict.

The Integrated Protection Coordinator will have the overall responsibility to supervise and support the Protection program teams composed of Women Protection and Empowerment (WPE), Protection and Rule of Law (PRoL), Child Protection (CP) and Protection monitoring. S/he will ensure program results delivery, quality, and impact, sustainability.

Duties And Responsibilities

Program Strategy and leadership

• Provide strategic direction, leadership and overall technical and management support to protection and rule of law, women’s protection and child protection programming (partner-led and direct implementation) in Poland, ensuring it is needs-based, context-appropriate, responsive, coherent, collaborative, and operationally feasible and in line with the Emergency Strategy Plan

• Lead a comprehensive assessment of opportunities for greater cross-sector protection mainstreaming in other sectors

• Proactively continue to grow the Poland protection, women’s protection and child protection portfolio through the development of concept notes and proposals to existing and new donors, maintaining a coherent strategy across IRC’s areas of intervention in Poland.

• Lead assessments and context-appropriate research aimed at generating a strong evidence base for IRC protection programming, as well as informing IRC advocacy.

• Strongly engage in external coordination bodies related to protection including the Protection Working Group and others; together with country program leadership, represent IRC in inter-agency discussions and identify opportunities for strategic advocacy and partnerships.

Program Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation

• Work closely with other sectors to contribute to program integration that respond to clients’ multiple needs, share learning and maximize the impact of interventions.

• Supervise Protection teams and oversee implementation of Protection activities while extending technical support and supervision to IRC’s local partners delivering protection services.

• With support from the Monitoring and Evaluation unit, the Regional Measurement Advisor as well as VPRU Technical Advisors, coordinate the design and implementation of sound monitoring and evaluation plan for protection interventions.

• Ensure that programs are continuously adapted to optimize quality and impact levels based on information drawn from data analysis and client feedback through established mechanisms.

• Ensure projects and activities are of high technical quality, meet humanitarian standards, mainstream protection, align with IRC’s Strategy, and respond to community needs.

• In collaboration with program, finance, HR and Supply Chain departments, ensure smooth management, implementation, integration and compliance of project work plans and budgets (budget forecasting, spending plans, procurement plans and expenditure), with best use of resources across activities and delivering on time, to scope and within budget.

• Engage and maintain effective working relationships with stakeholders and coordination structures relevant to humanitarian response in Poland including NGO, UN, and technical and government actors

Staff Management and Development

• Plan, organize, recruit, supervise and develop the team and individuals needed to achieve program goals and maximize ownership and leadership

• Coach, train, and mentor staff with the aim of strengthening their technical capacity, exchanging knowledge within the team and providing professional development guidance

• Supervise and mentor direct-report staff, including communicating clear expectations, setting performance objectives, providing regular and timely performance feedback, and providing documented annual and mid-year performance reviews.

• Provide constructive feedback and counsel on appropriate career paths and professional development. Support the development of business development skills and responsibility among the integrated protection team.

• Promote and monitor staff care and well-being; manage all leave requests to ensure adequate coverage.

• Model and promote adherence to the IRC Way standards for professional conducgt.

Qualifications

• Bachelors Degree in social work, human rights, international law, social science or related field. Advanced degree preferred;

• 7 years’ experience implementing similar programming in an emergency or complex emergency context and demonstrable understanding of the relevance of international humanitarian law and human rights law to humanitarian action;

• Professional experience in program implementation in the field of protection or human rights in conflict-affected areas; strong experience in representation and coordination within an international humanitarian response.

• Demonstrable knowledge of and commitment to child protection, and women’s protection, empowerment and gender-based violence; Previous work on Protection Rule of Law, CP and GBV programming important.

• Applied experience in case management;

• Ability to manage up and across and to influence others to mainstream protection across units;

• Strong team and people leadership, management, organizational and development skills;

• Strong program and budget management skills including planning and reporting across multiple grants;

• Strong written and oral communication skills, effective in representation and liaison with external parties;

• Works well in and promotes teamwork, comfortable in a multi-cultural environment, flexible and able to handle pressure effectively and productively;

• Fluent in spoken and written English; Polish language a strong advantage; Ukrainian desirable.

This position will be based in Warsaw, with occasional travel to Wroclaw, Krakow, Lublin and other locations as necessary. As this is a fluid and rapidly changing context, the location of this position and length of the assignment may change based on the needs of the program.

#LI-GR2

Qualifications