Programme Policy Officer (Protection) – NOB
WFP seeks candidates of the highest integrity and professionalism who share our humanitarian principles. Selection of staff is made on a competitive basis. We are committed to promoting diversity and the principle of equal employment opportunity for all our employees and encourages qualified candidates to apply irrespective of religion or belief, ethnic or social background, gender, gender identity and disability.
JOB DETAILS
Job Title: Programme Policy Officer (Protection)
Grade: NOB
Type of contract: Fixed Term
Duration: 12 Months – extendable
Duty Station: Kabul Country Office
Vacancy Number: 177981
Date of Publication: 01 Nov 2022
Deadline of Application:15 Nov 2022
This vacancy announcement is for Afghan nationals only and Female applicants and qualified applicants are especially encouraged to apply to this position.
ABOUT WFP
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. The mission of WFP is to help the world achieve Zero Hunger in our lifetime. Every day, WFP works worldwide to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry and that the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly women and children, can access the nutritious food they need.
ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT
The hunger crisis in Afghanistan is unfolding at a rapidly, with over half the country’s population of 40 million now facing acute food insecurity—the highest number the humanitarian community has ever seen in Afghanistan. Work opportunities are shrinking, with most households now reporting just one day of work per week. This comes on top of the worst drought in years, which is especially concerning for the 85 percent of the population who rely on agriculture for livelihoods.
Preventing and mitigating a drastic increase in hunger and malnutrition is the aim of WFP in Afghanistan which can only be achieved through the scaled up and sustained complementary food security and nutrition interventions, combined with a scale-up of resilience interventions to safeguard gains. WFP has embarked on a significant month on month scale-up of its crisis response and resilience programmes across the country, ensuring that the programme is delivered at the right scale and time, targeted to the right areas. WFP is also actively following up on evolving trends to pre-empt hotspots, while guaranteeing quality and maximum impact of the programme through the monitoring of these hotspots to be able to support continued donor advocacy.
Since the beginning of 2022, WFP has provided food, cash, and nutrition assistance to 21.4 million people, including 11.5 million children. WFP is committed to ensuring that assistance provided reaches all affected persons including women, girls, men and boys of diverse needs. The WFP Afghanistan Country Office has an established gender, protection and accountability team that focuses on ensuring that food assistance is inclusive and adaptive to the needs and capacities of affected populations.
The Country Office is seeking a Protection Officer to work as part of this team, supporting the integration of protection and disability inclusion standards into WFP’s operations in Afghanistan.
JOB PURPOSE
The successful candidate will operate with a high degree of independence to ensure that programme and policy objectives are achieved in full. The incumbent will be involved in a wide variety of programme and policy activities and analytical work, some of which may be of considerable complexity. As this level, jobholders are expected to contribute to performance improvement.
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES (not all-inclusive)
Provide technical support to the Country Office
Provide strategic and technical support for the integration of WFP’s Protection and Accountability Policy (2020) and related humanitarian and human rights normative frameworks across the WFP operation in Afghanistan.
Analyse primary information from stakeholders (affected populations, INGOs, UN agencies and others including the Protection Cluster through its Protection Monitoring) on the situation and experience of crisis affected populations and apply a protection lens to WFP interventions.
Conduct protection and conflict risk analysis and stakeholder mapping and establish and maintain a risk matrix with specific descriptions of each risk and risk ownership.
Undertake regular analysis to map communication, information and language preferences of affected populations to reflect real time needs as the context evolves.
Support WFP operations through a conflict sensitivity lens, make recommendations to WFP stakeholders to improve protection outcomes.
Monitoring and Reporting on Protection and Disability Inclusion issues
Ensure systematic protection, accountability and disability inclusion analysis, provide policy advice on specific protection issues that impact on WFP humanitarian operations;
Systemise the collection, management, and mixed-method analysis of protection relevant data (quantitative and qualitative) to identify risks related to food and nutrition insecurity and interventions;
Monitor and report on programme activity and implementation of protection and disability inclusion issues;
Ensure that protection and disability inclusion considerations are integrated into all monitoring, evaluation and analysis frameworks, activities and outputs;
Provide assistance in data collection, compiling lessons learnt and establishing indicators to support knowledge sharing on protection and disability inclusion;
Support the Accountability and Community Engagement team in ensuring that protection and disability inclusion issues are captured through WFP’s Community Feedback Mechanisms.
Supervise Disability Inclusion staff and manage their performance.
Networking and Coordination
Establish working relationships with relevant local and regional non-state actors, key domestic political and civil state actors, think tanks, academic institutions, human rights organizations, UN, development and donor partners to coordinate and enhance principled humanitarian protection and accountability impact;
Support the development of relationships with protection mandated agencies and inter-agency fora to strengthen coordination and advancement of gender, protection and accountability to affected populations as related to food and nutrition security;
Represent WFP in interagency working groups, conferences and seminars as necessary.
Training and capacity growth
Develop and implement protection, accountability and inclusion training including protection risk analysis, humanitarian principles, conflict sensitivity, gender-based violence, sexual exploitation and abuse.
Strengthen WFP workforce and partners’ protection, accountability and disability inclusion analysis capacities to improve their ability in protection mainstreaming throughout project cycle.
STANDARD MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
Education:
Advanced University Degree in one of the following disciplines: Social Sciences, International Development, Political Science, Law or related field; must have specialization in protection and/or human rights related fields.
Experience:
Minimum of three (03) years of postgraduate solid, responsible and relevant work experience in humanitarian organisations and operational implementation of protection programming and protection integration in other humanitarian sectors, with a strong focus on protection mainstreaming, protection risk reduction including in relation to access to humanitarian assistance, conflict sensitivity, gender in humanitarian operations, community engagement, and disability inclusion
Desired Experience:
Strong analytical, writing and communication skills.
Sound knowledge and skills in training and facilitation.
Knowledge of UN system policies and functions pertaining to promotion of protection, accountability and disability inclusion risk mitigation and good practice.
Strong capacity in establishing and sustaining relationships with diverse stakeholders.
Capacity to innovate solutions for protection and disability inclusion relevant to social, cultural and political norms at local and national levels.
Knowledge & Skills:
In-depth knowledge and operations experience in risk identification and operationalization of mitigation measures, protection, conflict sensitivity, gender, gender-based violence, humanitarian principles, access, and other humanitarian policy issues, and their linkages to humanitarian assistance.
Demonstrated field experience working on protection, human rights and accountability to affected populations.
Experience in assessing humanitarian access constraints and advising on the development of strategies to maintain and protect the humanitarian space and the protection of civilians in emergency, peacekeeping or conflict operations.
Understanding of food security programming, previous experience with WFP or any of its CPs is a strong asset.
Demonstrated skills in diplomacy, access, and community engagement
Flexibility to travel on short notice and in challenging environments
Innovative and self-driven with strong commitment to results focused work
Languages:
Oral and written working knowledge of English. Fluency in Dari or Pashto languages.
HOW TO APPLY
To be considered, interested candidates are invited to apply via (https://www.wfp.org/careers/job-openings).
Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.
We want to ensure the recruitment process is fully accessible. Please contact us at afg.hrrecruitment@wfp.org to advise us of any accessibility needs you may have.
