Protection Technical Advisor

Position: Protection Technical Advisor

Location: Aden or Sana’a – Yemen

Reports to: Deputy Country Director – Programs

Duration: 12 months

ABOUT Relief International.

Relief International (RI) is a leading non-profit organization working in 16 countries to relieve poverty, ensure well-being and advance dignity. We specialize in fragile settings, responding to natural disasters, humanitarian crises and chronic poverty.

Relief International combines humanitarian and development approaches to provide immediate services while laying the groundwork for long-term impact. Our signature approach — which we call the RI Way—emphasizes local participation, an integration of services, strategic partnerships and a focus on civic skills. In this way, we empower communities to find, design and implement the solutions that work best for them.

RI includes the four corporate members of the RI Alliance: RI-US, RI-UK, MRCA/RI-France and RI-Europe. Under our alliance agreement, we operate as a single, shared management structure.

About our Country Program/ Regional Programs.**

RI in the Middle East has programs in six countries – Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Yemen, with a focus on the 4 main RI sectors: Health, WASH, Education and Economic Opportunity.

Relief International currently employs 3900 staff (direct and indirect) in the region and has a range of emergency response and development programs valued at 70 million USD on an annual basis.

Position Summary.

The primary role of Protection Technical Advisor is to provide strategic direction and vision for the protection program, ensuring its comprehensive development and high quality implementation. S/he will provide technical guidance and leadership in embedding protection-mainstreaming approach across all RI programs, by identifying programming gaps, providing recommendations, designing assessment and monitoring tools, and building staff capacity. In addition, Protection Technical Advisor will ensure Protection Mainstreaming in both quality and delivery, in line with the agreed projects, ensuring the protection context is well understood and the programme adapted to ensure mitigation of risks and response to protection concerns in RI’s programs. The Protection Technical Advisor will play a pivotal role in capacity building and mentoring staff on technical standards, tools, approaches, and communicating effectively with affected populations. Further the Protection Technical Advisor will contribute to the development of proposals where protection programming is concerned and engage with other protection actors within the sector to ensure effective coordination and collaboration externally with donors and clusters.v

ESSENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES

General Management

• Guided by protection principles and best international practices, assess the protection program concept and lead identification and adjustment of Protection interventions, to ensure their high quality, appropriateness and comprehensiveness, in conformity with RI global strategy and the international standards and protocols.
• Help country programs in designing/implementing research on the impact of the Women’s Protection and Empowerment projects developed in-country as well as the impact on Mainstreaming Protection in access to Health Services in Emergencies
• Review the short- and long-range plans for delivery of project services, and provide guidance to the RI staff, health facility staff and/or local partners to improve planning, management and delivery of quality services or various program components.
• Evaluate activity progress and determine necessary actions in short and long term.
• Supervise cross project functional roles: Protection Officer as a national support role and mental health team to ensure protection is integrated with mental health activities.
• Adapt training materials and build staff capacity on standards and policies.
• Review and share program-specific tools / resources / curricula and work with Regional and Global team members to contextualize and adapt global and country-specific materials.

Representation/coordination with external actors

• Represent RI at sector working groups, coordination meetings as well during other stakeholder meetings (if relevant), and maintain a positive, continuous and visible presence for RI.
• Ensure RI’s mandate is shared and explained to relevant stakeholders.
• Pro-actively liaise and build rapport with local officials, community representatives, UN agencies, and any other relevant stakeholders.

Program Quality

• Share methods, approaches and tools with RI colleagues across the region, and contribute toward RI’s regional response strategy by ensuring programmatic coherence, innovation and responsiveness.
• Propose and implement capacity building activities aimed at enhancing skills of National Teams, local health providers and/or partners in delivery of protection services.
• Work closely with field teams and community groups to involve communities in program management and to build long-term impact and sustainability of programming.
• Provide technical support to program teams consistent with international and national standards and ensure that program design and implementation creates no harm in the communities, promotes human rights and has positive impact.
• Provide support and recommendations for delivering of service in line with RI policies.
• In consultation with the Protection Lead at the regional level, Program Director and Area Managers, and RI staff, support the development of Yemen’s protection strategic planning documents.
• Integrate RI PSS and GBV approaches in the humanitarian interventions, in order to ensure protection form violence and child protection in intervention areas
• Assist RI programs in establishing a referral network with available service providers in the target area particularly Health and Nutrition programs.
• Work with Reporting and Communications Officer to ensure that the RI Protection program is well documented and that the institutional memory of RI Yemen is preserved.

Donor Relations / Funding

• Ensure that high quality, integrated, and needs-based proposals are developed and according to RI Yemen priorities identified in its country strategy.
• Provide technical input, writing and budgetary input for new program design, as needed.
• Take lead in assessments to inform new programming of impact of RI current programs.

Administration: Finances, Human Resources, and Logistics

• Support project teams to develop job descriptions and recruit qualified staff.
• Ensure that activities and expenses are regularly monitored and that action plans are developed to correct any over- or underspending in a timely manner.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Reporting

• Develop and enact “protection risk analysis”, “protection mainstreaming assessment/monitoring” and other relevant tools, jointly with respective programs units.
• Provide a summary of recommended areas of improvement, areas of success, and lead the commencement of an action plan with RI staff, local partners and/or health facility staff to evolve and make positive systems improvements where needed.
• Include the participation of beneficiaries and communities, particularly those most vulnerable or at-risk, in all stages of the project cycle wherever possible and appropriate.
• Revise program reports and other types of reports (ex. assessment, KAP etc.) that are timely and meet quality methodological, institutional and donor requirements.
• Develop and support effective monitoring and evaluation system by collection, analysis of data about protection issues in order to improve the program interventions.
• Take part in field trips to assess project sites and provide support to team as needed.**

Safeguarding

• Uphold and promote RI’s commitment to ensuring the safeguarding and safety of the vulnerable communities we serve.
• Consistent with RI’s safeguarding and protection policies, ensure all people who come into contact with Relief International are as safe as possible.

Equity and Diversity commitment

• Demonstrate sensitivity and understanding of systemic diversity and cultural differences.
• Ensure that gender equity is addressed in our staffing and programming

QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS REQUIREMENTS

This position demands a dynamic individual with a demonstrated ability to achieve results in a demanding and fast paced environment.

· Post-graduate qualification in the field of law, social sciences/humanities

• An excellent professional track record with a minimum of five years of work experience, with at least three years of oversees experience in a managerial role; technical knowledge and experience in one of the areas – Reproductive Health and protection services, GBV programming or MHPSS.
• Experience working in insecure environments with demonstrated ability to adapt to culturally different and challenging environments
• Work related experience from the Middle East or similar complex displacement situations.
• Fluent in written and spoken English with excellent writing and verbal skills for project proposals, reports, and communications.
• Excellent M&E knowledge and experience, including understanding of how to conduct assessments and analyse data
• Ability and willingness to network with a wide variety of stakeholders
• Proven experience in leading training and conducting research will be added advantage
• Knowledge of Arabic is considered an asset

RI Values:

We uphold the Humanitarian Principles: humanity, neutrality, impartiality and operational independence. We affirmatively engage the most vulnerable communities.

We value:

• Inclusiveness
• Transparency and accountability
• Agility and innovation
• Collaboration
• Sustainability