The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. We are the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and the impact of climate change.

Our response to emergencies - saving lives and livelihoods either through direct assistance or by strengthening country capacities – remains at the heart of our operations, especially as humanitarian needs become increasingly complex and protracted, such as those brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT & BACKGROUND OF THE ASSIGNMENT

WFP Ukraine office is scaling-up food assistance (via in-kind food and cash-based transfers (CBT) to the affected populations in Ukraine within its Limited Emergency Operation (LEO). The scale-up plans include providing assistance to additional 2.4 million affected civilians with in-kind food in hard-to-reach areas and rapid response rations for displaced populations across the country, as well as plans of assisting at least additional 500 thousand internally displaced people with CBT leveraging national social protection systems. In order to meet the operational scale-up while ensuring quality and principled response, WFP Ukraine Office is hiring a Protection, Gender & AAP Advisor who will be responsible to lead mainstreaming and integration of WFP's Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (GEWE), Protection and Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) across WFP's operations in Ukraine. Under the direction of the Deputy Emergency Coordinator and Programme Management in Ukraine, and with technical support from the Gender and Protection Units in HQ and Regional Bureau Cairo, the Protection, Gender & AAP Advisor will lead on the operationalization of relevant WFP policy and strategic frameworks, such as the Gender Policy (2022), the Protection and Accountability Policy (2020), the Disability Inclusion Road Map (2020-2022), and the Community Engagement for AAP Strategy (2022-2026), at the country office level.

Considering the breath of WFP's commitments and the need to operationalize them across the country’s office operations in a volatile and complex environment, WFP Ukraine needs a highly-experienced practitioner who has subject matter expertise and can carry out technical and strategic support tasks independently. This will be done by providing timely specialized support to senior management and implementing teams for the implementation of different policies' components, ensuring close external coordination with relevant actors and inter-agency coordination fora, and ensuring timely communication and liaison with relevant counterparts at the regional and global level. Based in the Country Office, the incumbent will be required to travel regularly to support field offices and WFP’s operations in Ukraine.

ACCOUNTABILITIES/DELIVERABLES/ RESPONSIBILITIES:

Lead knowledge management, information and analysis to ensure integrated protection and gender-sensitive data collection, analysis, monitoring, reporting and decision-making.
Provide strategic and technical support for the integration of WFP’s relevant policies and related humanitarian and human rights normative frameworks across WFP operations in the Ukrainian context;
Conduct protection and gender analysis aimed at providing solid evidence to inform vulnerability-based and inclusive response across the programmatic cycle;
Develop and update risk matrix and mitigation responses including programme adjustments, advocacy measures, partnership building and coordination enhancement activities, etc;
Lead and manage a team of Protection, Gender & AAP staff and liaise closely with other teams to ensure cross-functional synergies;
Work with senior management in Country and Sub-Offices to ensure strong institutional commitment and leadership for gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE) and protection mainstreaming across programming and operations.
Provide advice and support on the integration of gender and protection in the formulation of country level WFP-specific and interagency strategic documents and programmes.
Support programme staff to integrate gender and protection throughout the programme management cycle (design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation), and in needs assessment frameworks as appropriate, including the adaptation of tools, collection, analysis and reporting processes to ensure that different beneficiary needs are identified and met;
Support programme staff and cooperating partners to integrate and mainstream disability inclusion across the operation, including both programmes and support functions;
Lead the AAP team to ensure affected communities are meaningfully engaged across the programme cycle and inclusive two-way communication with communities mechanisms are available, including by ensuring Community Feedback Mechanisms (CFM) are established and respect WFP's minimum requirements;
Provide technical support to Programme staff and Cooperating Partners for the application of the Gender and Age Marker (GAM);
Devise and support the implementation of gender and protection capacity development initiatives, undertaking training and building the capacity of staff on protection analysis, response development and integration of these areas in WFP’s work.
Represent WFP in all relevant inter-agency gender, protection and AAP coordination mechanisms, coordinating and strengthening the link between WFP’s internal work on gender, protection and AAP and its interagency role as a partner and peer within the humanitarian system; including coordination and support to develop harmonized approaches with other protection, gender and AAP work across the sector.
Work with senior management to ensure adequate allocation of human and financial resources, supporting the mobilisation of resources to implement Action Plans.
Establish and strengthen strategic partnerships on GEWE, Protection Mainstreaming and Disability Inclusion with international, national and local actors, including organizations representing women, persons with disabilities and other particularly marginalized groups in affected communities.

Deliverables at the end of the contract

Developed integrated Protection and Gender analysis and Risk Matrix relevant to WFP programmes and operations.
Established strategic partnerships with national/local protection and gender-related agencies and organizations.
Developed Community Engagement for AAP strategy/action plan; Developed Protection and Gender action plans.
Established and maintained a CFM that fully meets corporate's minimum. requirements; Established and maintained protection and gender referral mechanisms;
Conducted Capacity strengthening initiatives organised for WFP, CP staff and contractors;
Led on strategic planning and reporting through technical contributions to the Country Strategic Plan (CSP), the annual country reports (ACR), and other processes and documents as required by management.

Experience Required

At least 8 years of postgraduate relevant progressively responsible professional experience in humanitarian and development sectors, of which at least 5 years have been spent working in a humanitarian crisis context with UN agencies and NGOs.
Demonstrated experience of working directly on protection integration or protection mainstreaming, gender equality and women empowerment, disability inclusion, and accountability to affected populations.
Experience of undertaking capacity building of colleagues or partner organisations and/or delivering training.
Experience in establishing and maintaining multi-sectoral collaborations, partnerships, and networks. Prior experience with WFP is an asset.
Strong analytical and writing skills, including the ability to write in an engaging and informative manner, and conceptualize and clearly synthesize information.
Ability to facilitate consultations and technical discussions.
Initiative, enthusiasm, and flexibility with excellent interpersonal skills and team spirit.