Senior Emergency and Rehabilitation Officer

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 Senior Emergency and Rehabilitation Officer reports to the Deputy Director, OER.

Technical Focus

Support to implementation of FAO's resilience agenda at global, regional, subregional and/or country level.

Key Results

Leadership and technical policy expertise for the planning, development and implementation of Programmes of work, projects, products, services.

Key Functions

• Plans, manages, or leads highly specialized or multidisciplinary teams, leads, coordinates, and/or participates in Organization-wide committees, and provides technical leadership on inter-agency committees, networks and international working groups;

• Contributes to and/or coordinates the planning, budgeting, implementation and reporting of the divisional programme of work, team plans, the supporting policy, tools, standards and systems frameworks and collaborates with the Strategic Objective (SO) Coordinator in (i) the conceptualization of the SO programme; (ii) the supervision and evaluation of the SO contributors; (iii) the identification of resources; (iv) the development of networks and partnerships; (v) the implementation of advocacy and communication activities;

• Oversees and/or provides expert technical assistance to divisional teams focusing on (i) humanitarian Policy, inter-agency collaboration and mobilization of emergency resources (ii) response, food chain crisis, special operations, level 3 emergency preparedness, early warning and support to transition, and/or (iii) programming, integrating resilience into FAO planning at all levels, and the delivery of related products and services;

• Coordinates FAO interdivisional emergency needs assessment activities and related missions including food and nutrition security assessments and analyses, the coordination of in-country early warning alerts and further coordination with all partners;

• Promotes best practices and provides technical support/services and operational coaching to the Decentralized Office network, designates Division-wide geographical focal points to facilitate emergency programming, resource mobilization and integration of emergency and development work in countries in collaboration with Regional Offices, and provides capacity during critical phases of emergencies;

• Oversees ongoing operational emergency and recovery projects and programmes and related capacity development in countries and regional and subregional offices;

• Represents FAO on international committees and develops and maintains partnerships and inter-agency collaboration in support of FAO's corporate co-leadership of the global Food Security Cluster (gFSC ) and with a range of other partners such as the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, The World Food Programme (WFP), The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), NGOs and other humanitarian groups involved in emergency and recovery activities;

• Coordinates the monitoring and promoting of resource mobilization activities including corporate appeals, donor macro grants and CERF/SFERA submissions and collaboration with countries and ROs to facilitate resource mobilization through project and programme formulation;

• Oversees knowledge management activities including the maintenance and updating of FAO emergency information systems, crisis communications, information and advocacy, as well as providing up-to-date information for reporting, audits, evaluations and inputs to FAO governing body documents;

• Performs other duties.

Specific Functions

• Leads and supervises the Enabling Environment Team, being responsible for allowing a quality and inclusive environment to create a working setting that embraces equality, eradicates bias and focuses on thematic areas such as Gender, AAP, Cash, Procurement, Culture Change and Capacity Building;

• Sets and pursues clear programmatic direction and achievement indicators to interlinkages within and between the Enabling Environment Team and other Teams in all three clusters of OER;

• Leads initiatives through engagement of staff for implementation of change management process;

• Fosters the development and promotes the implementation of FAO cash based programmes;

• Encourages projects and initiatives that are protective, inclusive and accountable to the affected populations;

• Advises and develops new initiatives, in particular as related to the use of new technologies and learning opportunities;

• Advises on development of new methods and tools for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the work; enable the simplification and standardization of corporate procedures and ensures that the country offices are equipped with the necessary tools and people where emergency and resilience programming and delivery is concerned, along the humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) nexus;

• Promotes collaborative work with the country offices to invest in employee capacity development to improve emergency and resilience programme impact;

• Oversees capacity development activities and the development of related materials, on-line tools and information kits;

• Provides strategic guidance on the investment in employee growth, ensuring diversity, gender balance and engagement of youth;

• Develops and fosters innovative delivery models and modalities.

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CANDIDATES WILL BE ASSESSED AGAINST THE FOLLOWING

Minimum Requirements

• Advanced university degree in agriculture, food security, economics, natural resources, rural development, business administration and management, international relations or other field related to the work of the Organization;

• Ten years of relevant experience in public and/or private sectors related to programming, planning and technical cooperation in food and agriculture, including experience in developing countries, especially in countries that are vulnerable to disaster or other emergency risks;

• Working knowledge of English and limited knowledge of a second official language of the Organization (Arabic, French, Chinese, Russian or Spanish).

Competencies

• Results Focus

• Leading, Engaging and Empowering

• Communication

• Partnering and Advocating

• Knowledge Sharing and Continuous Improvement

• Strategic Thinking

Technical/Functional Skills

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

• Demonstrated experience in, needs assessments, cluster coordination, UN consolidated appeal process and/or emergency operations for Level 3 emergencies;

• Demonstrated experience in rehabilitation and humanitarian policies development, programme formulation and implementation;

• Extent and relevance of experience at international level in formulating policy and programming managing field operations;

• Depth of experience in identifying and preparing programme strategies and policy position on humanitarian and transition contexts, at both global and country levels;

• Extent of knowledge of international humanitarian architecture, including agencies, NGOs, and other partners;

• Demonstrated experience in response management and surge support coordination.