Access to Justice Lead

Access to Justice Lead – Ukraine

For over 30 years, and through our work in more than 100 countries, the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) has sought to strengthen legal institutions, support legal professionals, foster respect for human rights, and advance public understanding of the law and citizen rights. In collaboration with government agencies, the judiciary, lawyers, bar associations, legislatures, and civil society, we design programs that are responsive to local needs and that prioritize sustainable solutions to pressing rule of law challenges.

To learn more about our work in Ukraine, please visit https://www.americanbar.org/advocacy/rule_of_law/where_we_work/europe_eurasia/ukraine/

Job Summary

ABA ROLI is looking to hire a local Ukrainian expert to serve as the Access to Justice Lead for the new five-year “Healing & Accountability through Human Rights Activity” funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The purpose of this new activity is to help Ukrainians achieve justice and address social divisions resulting from Russia’s full-scale invasion. The activity will support processes aimed at accountability for war crimes, foster dialogue on difficult questions related to post-conflict recovery, and begin healing and reconciliation using human-rights-based approaches, including transitional justice tools. This is a full-time position based in Kyiv, Ukraine, reporting to the Deputy Chief of Party (DCOP).

The Access to Justice Lead will provide technical oversight to one of the program’s three objectives, specifically “Objective 3: Increasing access to victim-centered, gender-responsive transitional justice.” The Lead will be responsible for developing and implementing programming aimed at reinvigorating national conversations on a transitional justice framework, strengthening locally relevant transitional justice processes in all unoccupied areas, and improving coordination among stakeholders on redress for victims of war crimes at the domestic and international levels. The Lead will manage interventions designed to increase access to victim-centered, gender-responsive transitional justice; enhance public communication and education about reparations and war crimes documentation; and help ensure that investigative data can be safely and securely compiled, stored, and analyzed.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

·         Ensuring adherence of Objective 3 program activities to USAID’s articulated program strategy.

·         Manage the design and implementation of relevant programmatic activities under Objective 3, in collaboration with USAID, project leadership, partner organizations and other key stakeholders. This includes but is not limited to:

o   Holding focused dialogues in the communities of Ukraine’s regions to discuss existing proposals for transitional justice and the future of the de-occupied territories and their populations, including various groups in such discussions, including veterans, internally displaced persons, relatives of victims, businesses, and representatives of other marginalized groups as well as local and national authorities.

o   Using input from local partners to create sustainable national and regional platforms for stakeholder coordination on transitional justice (including government, civil society, and private sector).

o   Supporting stakeholders in Ukraine to create and apply judicial and non-judicial mechanisms through which victims can seek redress and communities will be able to move toward reconciliation, using effective existing methods and creating new victim-centered reparative and retributive (e.g. prosecutions) justice approaches.

o   Developing media products targeted at different audiences (residents of frontline regions, people who left Ukraine due to the armed conflict, veterans, other groups classified as victims of war) regarding the need to approach law enforcement agencies or NGOs to document war crimes.

o   Conducting a review of registers containing information on persons affected by the armed conflict and help create a mechanism to allow for the inclusion of data from human rights NGOs documenting war crimes during the registration of victims.

o   Identifying local grass-roots initiatives supporting survivors of torture and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and provide them with technical support in organizational development, management and operations, and fundraising.

o   Mapping the efforts of various actors presently collecting war crimes data to determine who the players are, what information they are collecting, how their platforms operate, and what their baseline skill level is. Ensure that the data being collected can be safely and securely compiled, stored, and analyzed, as a coherent whole.

o   Working with existing working groups to integrate information about victims and survivors of international crimes documented by CSOs into the process of obtaining reparations.

·         Directly supervise an Access to Justice Program Assistant.

·         Coordinate closely with the DCOP and COP in the identification and development of small grant activities, and monitor and supervise implementation of the small grants activities implemented under Objective 3.

·         Coordinate closely with the Field Finance and Administration Manager (FFAM) to ensure that activity development and implementation comply with USAID and ABA ROLI financial, procurement, administration and other regulatory and environmental requirements.

·         Ensure that the program team is effectively using the Monitoring & Evaluation tools and processes for the program; design and implement tools to assess and report on the status and efficacy of Objective 3 initiatives.

·         Contribute to quarterly and annual programmatic reports on the activities implemented under Objective 3.

·         Perform other duties and activities as required by the COP and DCOP for successful implementation of the USAID program.

Required qualifications:

·         Excellent oral and written English language communication skills required.

·         Minimum of five (5) to seven (7) years of professional experience in international technical assistance project implementation and management in international or national non-governmental organizations, preferably with USG-funded programs, or small grants programs.

·         Minimum of three (3) years of professional experience in political transition, justice, advocacy, democracy or good governance areas or with transitional justice programming.

·         Relevant experience working with NGOs, grassroots organizations, and/or local communities.

·         Master’s degree (or higher), or undergraduate degree with minimum of five years of demonstrated experience showing increased responsibility in the areas of law, political science, social sciences or other relevant fields.

·         Ability to work under difficult conditions while maintaining security awareness.

How to apply:

To apply, please send your CV to roli-ukraine-recruitment@americanbar.org by May 29, 2024. Please include the name of the position and country (Objective 3/Access to Justice Lead – Ukraine) in the subject line.