Associate Durable Solutions Officer

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (the UN Refugee Agency, also known as UNHCR) is an intergovernmental organization with a mandate to protect refugees and stateless persons worldwide. Since 1950, the agency has helped tens of millions of people restart their lives. Today, a staff of more than 15,000 people in 130 countries continues to help and protect millions of refugees, returnees, internally displaced and stateless people. UNHCR provides lifesaving assistance, protection, shelter, food, clean water, education and medical care to some of the world’s most vulnerable. UNHCR also provides assistance to refugees who want to return home when it is safe to do so and helps integrate refugees within their local host country or resettle to a third country when returning home is no longer an option. Non-governmental organization (NGO) partners work with UNHCR around the globe to assist and protect refugees and internally displaced people.

UNHCR Mexico operates in a dynamic protection environment where increasing numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers are seeking opportunities for sustainable integration. Advancing durable solutions, particularly local integration through access to decent work and socioeconomic inclusion, remains a central pillar of UNHCR’s strategy in the country.
Strengthening pathways to formal employment, fostering private sector engagement, and promoting inclusive labour market participation are key to enabling refugees to become self-reliant and contribute meaningfully to host communities. Mexico offers a favorable context for advancing these objectives. The country hosts a significant presence of Japanese companies, particularly in the automotive and manufacturing sectors, which present strong potential for inclusive employment partnerships. In parallel, JICA Mexico brings over three decades of experience in industrial development, especially in the Bajío region, providing a solid foundation for collaboration around skills development, employability, and private sector engagement.
In this context, the objective of this JICA-funded position is to support UNHCR Mexico in advancing its livelihoods and socioeconomic inclusion agenda in priority locations, while generating strategic synergies between UNHCR and JICA cooperation frameworks. The role will contribute to expanding inclusive employment opportunities and strengthening partnerships under UNHCR’s Local Integration Programme.
At the same time, UNHCR Mexico is operating under significant financial constraints, including a substantial reduction in its approved 2025 budget, which has resulted in staffing reductions and the consolidation of field presence. Additional reductions are foreseen for 2026, even as needs related to integration and employability continue to grow. In this context, the position is also critical to sustaining core operational capacity and ensuring continuity of key programme activities. This request aligns with the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (HDP) Nexus priorities highlighted at the Global Refugee Forum (GRF) in December 2023, as well as with Japan’s diplomatic initiative toward Latin America and the Caribbean announced by Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa in February 2024, which promotes strengthened political, economic, and development cooperation with the region. It is strongly supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, as well as by the Embassy and Consulate-General of Japan in Mexico.

Under the supervision of the National Durable Solutions Officer, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:
• Support the implementation of UNHCR’s Local Integration Programme in line with México Integra, a national policy designed to make refugee inclusion a systematic part of the country’s development agenda. It brings together protection, access to rights and services, employment and socioeconomic integration through a coordinated, state-led approach, with the aim of enabling refugees and asylum-seekers to begin building self-reliance from the earliest stages of the asylum process.
• Support UNHCR in liaising with key Japanese stakeholders, when required for the durable solutions operation.
• Support coordination with other UN agencies in the implementation of of joint initiatives involved in formal employment, self-reliance, livelihoods, vocational training, documentation, financial inclusion and integration services.
• Support monitoring and evaluation of livelihoods and integration activities, including collection and analysis on results, challenges and good practices in coordination with the field and the Information Management unit.
• Assist in preparing inputs for internal reports, briefs, donor updates and presentations related to durable solutions and socioeconomic inclusion.
• Support the documentation of lessons learned and good practices from the Local Integration Programme.
• Support durable solutions’ teams to follow-up on employment placements, retention and basic working conditions, in coordination with partners and employers.
• Contribute to employer and private sector engagement by mapping companies in priority economic sectors, sharing basic guidance on inclusive hiring.
• Perform other durable solutions-related duties as required in support of operational priorities.