Regional Humanitarian Access Advisor-Sahel & DRC

TITLE:  Regional Humanitarian Access Advisor for the Sahel and DRC

TEAM/PROGRAMME: Regional Humanitarian team

LOCATION: Burkina-Faso

GRADE: International 4

CONTRACT LENGTH: 6 months (with high likelihood of extension for 1 additional year if funding is confirmed). 

CHILD SAFEGUARDING: 

Level 3:  the post holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.

ANNUAL GROSS SALARY LEVEL: $50,000 - $58,000 (offer will be based on experience/internal equity and financial ability).

ROLE PURPOSE: 

The Humanitarian Access Advisor will provide high-quality strategic guidance and technical advice, support and capacity-strengthening to Save the Children (SCI) Country Office’s (COs) and Local/National Partner Organizations in the WCA region S/he will lead on planning and operationalizing of strategies and approaches that will increase the reach, acceptance and efficacy of SCI programmes, particularly in difficult-to-access areas of operations, via contributions in humanitarian negotiations, access coordination and analysis, civil-military coordination, and armed non-state actors’ engagement. The Advisor will support country teams to develop and implement tools to assess risks and opportunities to advance children’s rights and increase humanitarian space through more effective engagement and negotiations with authorities, armed actors, communities, and other relevant stakeholders across WCA. S/he will advise on programming, engagement and negotiations modalities, monitoring, and operational footprints to be adaptive, conflict-sensitive and contextually driven. The Advisor will be expected to contribute to adaptation, development of solutions and recommendations for change linked to procedures and practices with long-term impact in the field of Humanitarian Access and Relations with Armed Actors. To achieve this, the role is expected to support remotely as well as deploy within SCI humanitarian responses. 

The Advisor will have a significant level of external representation and communications which will require strong negotiation, influencing skills, and representation of SCI’s position vis-a-vis technical and decision-making representatives.

Within delegated authority, the Humanitarian Access Advisor will be responsible for the following

duties:

• Support the CAAC Africa programmes’ and ensure deliverables related to the programme objectives and activities. 
• Support response teams on humanitarian access related issues (e.g., through development/drafting and roll-out of context-specific guidance, engagement, access or community acceptance plans/strategies, and/or capacity building)
• Remote or direct support to relevant response teams or CO SMT in their engagement with authorities, armed actors or communities around particular access challenges and/or other principled engagements. This could involve Crisis Team support, engagement planning, or direct support. 
• Monitoring and analysis of access constraints and programme contexts, including bureaucratic access impediments (BAI) and aid diversion incidents, to inform SCI and partners operational and strategic decisions and accountability with regards to operations in hard-to-reach areas.
• Training of SCI and partner staff on civil-military coordination, humanitarian negotiations, reporting of violations, conflict sensitive approaches to relations with armed actors, humanitarian principles, and other relevant thematic areas.
• Support SCI field colleagues and partner practitioners in sharing experiences and lessons internally and externally, as well as participate in/facilitate regional and global coordination, learning and networking through relevant internal and external platforms/webinars/meetings/workshops related to access, humanitarian negotiations, civil-military relations, safety and security etc.
• Ensuring that lessons learnt is fed into annual country and strategy planning in order to improve quality of programming. 
• Mapping and monitoring of, and capacity building support to, relevant SCI’s national and local partner NGOs current capacity and ability to maintain and expand high-quality access in areas of operations and hard-to-reach areas.
• The Humanitarian Access Advisor will play a contributing role in designing proposals
• Ensure that child safeguarding and safe programming is embedded in program design and considered throughout implementation to ensure that we do all we can to ensure children in our programs are safe, in line with our child safeguarding policy.
• Ensure that program design and implementation addresses cross-cutting issues (gender, disability, and resilience) and is responsive in a humanitarian context.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Master’s degree in social sciences with a focus on humanitarian protection and access in armed conflict and emergencies. Postgraduate courses on Conflict and/or Security Studies, International Humanitarian Law, Civil-Military Relations.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

Essential

• 8-10 years of experience in humanitarian + at least 2 years in access related role/field experience in conflict and restricted access environments. 
• Minimum 3 years of Protection or similar/relevant humanitarian programming, including on CAAC, humanitarian access, and Civil-Military coordination and ANSA relations.
• Solid understanding of humanitarian principles, humanitarian access, humanitarian negotiations, and conflict sensitivity.
• Demonstrated experience of capacity building of internal and external stakeholders.
• Excellent analytical skills. 
• Able to work well under pressure and deadlines.
• Demonstrated capability to make decisions with creativity and independent judgment.
• Demonstrated experience in influencing to obtain the cooperation of others. 
• Excellent listening, inter-personal, communication and networking skills; proven experience and effectiveness working across functional teams and in a complex matrixed structure; highly developed cultural awareness and an ability to work with diverse populations.
• High level of self-awareness and willingness to take feedback for growth and self-development.
• Ability to present complex information in a succinct and compelling manner.

Desirable

• Demonstrated knowledge of children’s issues, rights-based program approaches, and child safeguarding principles.

Language

• Exemplary level of spoken and written French and English is a requirement.

Additional job responsibilities

The duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the role holder may be required to carry out additional duties within reasonableness of their level of skills and experience.

Equal Opportunities 

The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI Equal Opportunities and Diversity policies and procedures.

Child Safeguarding:

We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

Health and Safety

The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with SCI Health and Safety policies and procedures.

Female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.