Humanitarian Specialist

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[1]. Consequently, more than 40 thousand families[2] 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[3].

Amidst a rapidly evolving political, security and COVID-19 situation, the UN Women Afghanistan Country Office (ACO) is working on consolidating its programming under 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 HCT. UN Women is the permanent co-lead of the Gender in Humanitarian Action (GiHA WG) 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 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 HNO and HRP.

Currently UN Women GiHA portfolio is anchored within the WPS-GiHA pillar, which is overall led by an international Programme Manager. The GIHA team comprises of two national staff: the 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.

Reporting to the Deputy Representative, the Humanitarian Specialist will oversee the development of Humanitarian programmes, provide capacity building to establish and strengthen partnerships, and develop relevant knowledge products on humanitarian action for the Afghanistan Country Office. 

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. Within this context, the GiHA Unit at UN Women seeks international surge to enhance its internal capacity in order to support the GiHA WG in providing strategic and technical support to the humanitarian architecture, including through supporting the development of HCT strategy that includes guidance on engagement for gender targeted humanitarian access; assessment tools and knowledge products; and provide data driven analysis to inform strategic planning and programming. S/he will work in close coordination with the GiHA Programming Specialist to work with the ICCT, and cluster, sub cluster and with technical working groups; as well as well contribute to ACO programming. S/he will be the technical focal person on behalf of UN Women ACO in various coordination mechanisms as relevant  

[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/

• Oversee the development of programmes on Humanitarian Action to Afghanistan Country Office
• Oversee the development of country programme documents on humanitarian action and humanitarian response
• Provide technical inputs to cluster plans;
• Provide advice on contextualizing/ localizing programme documents, response strategies, and knowledge products;
• Coordinate monitoring and reporting for humanitarian action in collaboration with programme teams;
• Develop, implement and monitor capacity building initiatives;
• Provide technical support to partners on implementation of humanitarian action;
• Provide technical policy advice to programme/ project managers/ specialists in thematic areas related to humanitarian programming;
• Strategic and technical support to Humanitarian Country Team, ICCT and cluster, sub clusters and technical working groups:
• Serve as co-chair of Gender in Humanitarian Action Working Group;
• In close collaboration with the GiHA WG co leads, advance development and implementation of HCT Gender Strategy;
• Provide technical support to the inter-cluster coordination Team (ICCT), clusters, sub clusters and technical working group with gender analysis, capacity building and technical assistance;
• Support strategic planning process by contributing to the development of HNO and HRPs;
• Advocate and identify opportunities for the engagement and meaningful participation of local women’s organizations and platforms in humanitarian coordination mechanisms, particularly at sub national levels;
• Lead specific efforts in mainstreaming gender and protection in disaster preparedness, response and recovery efforts of other clusters and relevant working groups, including inclusion and participation of under-represented groups in accordance with Commitments on Accountability to Affected Populations;
• Advocate for the engagement and participation of local organizations and civil society networks in humanitarian coordination mechanisms;
• 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;
• Produce periodic updates and briefs on regional/country development situation to be used by stakeholders, CO, RO, HQ;
• Manage the resource mobilization strategy for humanitarian action
• Participate in the implementation, monitoring and periodic updating of the resource mobilization strategy on humanitarian action;
• Research and analyze information on donors; prepare substantive briefs on possible areas of cooperation.
• Oversee advocacy and communication of humanitarian action
• During emergency response, develop and implement communication and advocacy messages and 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);

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

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Values and Competencies Framework: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf

Functional Competencies

• Substantive knowledge and experience related to current policies and practices in the fields of gender equality, protection and humanitarian action, including humanitarian coordination; 
• Strong knowledge of the region;
• Excellent 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;
• Excellent analytical skills;
• Ability to write policy papers, speeches, briefings;
• Strong knowledge of programme development, implementation, results based management and reporting;

Education and certification:

• Master’s degree or equivalent in human rights, gender, humanitarian action,  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;

Experiance:

• At least 7 years progressively responsible experience in designing and managing humanitarian programmes, with a particular focus on gender and protection in emergencies;
• Substantive and technical experience in inter-agency coordination, preferably protection cluster coordination, and/or ProCap/GenCap in disaster settings;
• 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 the other 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 Application and recruitment process | About us: Careers at UN Women | UN Women – Headquarters  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.

Inclusion Statement:

At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity, and organizational need.

If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.

UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority, and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)