The British Embassy in Skopje, North Macedonia is part of a world-wide network, representing British political, economic and consular interests overseas and is now looking to recruit a Justice and Home Affairs Officer.

This is an exciting, fast paced role that will help the UK deliver its new model for tackling threats overseas, particularly focussing on developing the response to disrupt organised immigration crime (OIC) and people smuggling, as well as other forms of serious and organised crime (SOC) and Illicit Finance (IF).
 
The successful candidate will be an enthusiastic self-starter who is comfortable working as part of virtual regional and physical teams.
 
This role will provide integral support to IF & SOCNet Regional Coordinator and IF Lead, based in British Embassy Tirana, and the local team based in British Embassy Skopje.
 
The scope of responsibilities includes primarily focussing support to British Embassy Skopje, and further support to the British Embassies in Belgrade and Sarajevo in the delivery of activities to counter OIC, SOC, and IF.
 
The role will require occasional travel across the region.

Roles and Responsibilities:

External Engagement

• Assisting Embassy and Regional Teams to further develop a range of contacts in academia, the media and government institutions across the Western Balkans.
• Research and identification of appropriate stakeholders for engagement in relation to specific OIC, SOC and IF issues inside the government, government agencies and civil society.
• Arrange meetings and workshops with contacts to engage on OIC, SOC, and IF issues.
• Attend stakeholder engagement events (occasionally out of hours).
  

Administration

• General office administration, including diary management.
• Support the management budgets and undertake expense reporting.
• Support travel arrangements

Briefing Support and Media Monitoring

• Support the preparation of briefings by undertaking relevant research to inform the content.
• Undertake regular media monitoring and research of relevant publications to inform the UK’s evidence base of regional OIC, SOC and IF threats and trends.
• Basic analysis of regional OIC, SOC and IF, and geopolitical issues to support UK understanding.

Project Management

• Support the oversight and accountability of existing regional projects and strategies including:
  • Skopje; enabling the delivery of joint activities in response to OIC, SOC and IF;
  • Sarajevo; supporting the development of an OIC, SOC and IF Country Action Plan;
  • Belgrade; supporting the delivery of the Country Action Plan.
• Develop ideas for new projects, which address the drivers and enablers of crime in the region.
• Support project design and implementation, including through conducting basic research and analysis.

Events

• Supporting delivery of SOCNet events in the region, including organising logistics and administration of regional workshops.
• Lead and coordinate stakeholder engagement, including maintaining guest lists, sending out invitations, scoping and providing suggestions for venues, travel, and facilities.
• Support evaluation of events and collate learning to understand how we can improve delivery.

Our ideal candidate shows:

• Excellent communication skills both written and oral (English and Macedonian) minimum C1 level for the CEFR framework*
• An understanding of transnational serious and organised crime issues in the Western Balkans
• An ability to report with clarity on complex issues
• Excellent organisational skills and high level of attention to detail
• Experience of working with a wide network of external stakeholders engaged tackling SOC, OIC and IF
• Excellent IT skills – including Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Ability to prioritise workload where required, working with minimal supervision