UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. Our mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
We promote gender equality and empower women, girls, and young people to take control of their bodies and their futures. We work with partners in more than 150 countries to provide access to a wide range of sexual and reproductive health services. Our goal is ending unmet need for family planning, preventable maternal death, and gender-based violence and harmful practices including child marriage and female genital mutilation by 2030.
Surge is the rapid scale up of humanitarian professionals and resources in emergency settings. Over the last few years, UNFPA has become very active in surging qualified personnel due to growing humanitarian needs. These needs are met by using UNFPA’s Surge Response Roster, a staffing modality that provides technical experts to surge.
Selected candidates will be added to UNFPA’s Surge Response Roster and contacted for any surge opportunities that meet their profile.
What We Offer:
- The opportunity to make a direct impact during humanitarian emergencies, protecting the health and rights of women and girls.
- Deployment for short term (3 to 6 months) surge missions as part of UNFPA humanitarian response.
- A platform to utilize your expertise in Humanitarian Access and Civil Military Coordination.
Access/Civ-Mil specialists roleincludes humanitarian access analysis, strategy development, coordination, stakeholder engagement, and capacity strengthening within UNFPA and with its partners. They will be expected to provide strategic advice and support to CO leadership, operational support to CO and field teams, and contribute to both UNFPA and inter-agency access efforts.
Furthermore, they play a crucial role in ensuring that sexual and reproductive health and rights, particularly for women and young people are protected and their needs are met during humanitarian emergencies.
They act as champions for sexual and reproductive health and rights, ensuring that these critical needs are not overlooked in the chaos of humanitarian emergencies.
They work to create a protective environment where women, girls, and young people can access essential services and live with dignity and safety.
Access/Civ-Mil specialists selected for the roster will be deployed for emergencies to do the following activities:
- Access Mapping and Analysis: Conduct access assessments and analysis, map access constraints, and analyse humanitarian dilemmas to inform strategic and operational decisions.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Provide stakeholder analysis and plan, support, coordinate, and/or lead engagement efforts and/or strategies with key stakeholders, supporting negotiation efforts with clear messaging on UNFPA mandate, policies and positions (bottom lines/red lines).
- Strategy Development: Assist in the development of area and/or country level access strategy in collaboration with senior management and programme teams.
- Programmatic and Operational Support: Support UNFPA teams and partners to adapt programme implementation and monitoring to current access environments and identify needs for, and develop, new guidance and SOPs.
- Capacity Development: Contextualise and execute trainings on humanitarian access, humanitarian negotiations, and humanitarian principles for UNFPA and partner staff.
- Coordination: Actively participate in and contribute to inter-agency access coordination efforts like the Humanitarian Access Working Group (HAWG) and OCHA CMCoord platforms, and relevant initatives such as related to Joint Operating Principles (JOPs), access advocacy, etc.
- Facilitate dialogue and interaction: Act as a bridge between humanitarian and armed actors in humanitarian emergencies, including fostering mutual understanding between humanitarian actors and parties to the conflict.
- Protect and promote humanitarian principles: Ensure that UNFPA and partner actions adhere to the core humanitarian principles.
- Reporting and Communications: Contribute to the provision of access and context related input for internal and external reporting, donor, and public communications.
- Protecting reproductive health services: Work to ensure that access to sexual and reproductive health services, including maternal health care, family planning, and services for survivors of gender-based violence, is maintained and prioritized during emergencies. This involves advocating for attention to affected population’s access to assistance and services, as much as to humanitarian actor’s access to affected populations.
- Promoting gender equality: Promote gender equality in all aspects of humanitarian action, ensuring that the specific needs and vulnerabilities of women, girls, and other marginalized groups are addressed. This could involve advocating for attention to gendered access constraints in inter-agency access coordination as well as the inclusion of indicators related to gendered access constraints in the OCHA Access Monitoring and Reporting Framework (AMRF).
- Preventing and responding to gender-based violence: Play a key role in preventing and responding to gender-based violence, which often escalates during emergencies. This could involve engaging with parties to the conflict to establish safe spaces for women and girls, and supporting the provision of psychosocial support and legal assistance to survivors.
- Supporting youth: Pay special attention to the needs of young people, who are often disproportionately affected by humanitarian crises.
What are we looking for:
Education:
- Advanced university degree in political science, law, international studies, or a related field
Knowledge and Experience:
- Minimum of five years of field experience in complex emergencies is required.
- Experience in humanitarian access and civil-military coordination in complex humanitarian emergencies.
- Experience in supporting and advising on principled, strategic, and operational humanitarian issues.
- Demonstrated experience and skills in negotiation, relationship-building with government and non-state actors, and the ability to manage and coordinate effectively in diverse cultural settings.
- Experience in facilitating operations in settings with notification/deconfliction or similar systems in place.
- Strong interpersonal skills and representation abilities.
Languages:
- Fluency in oral and written English. Knowledge of other languages, preferably Arabic, French and/or Spanish, is desirable.
How You’ll Be Assessed?
- Resume & Application Review: Our vetting committee will examine your resume, application, and supporting paragraph to determine if your experience and skills align with UNFPA’s surge needs.
- Technical & Soft Skills Assessment: You may be asked to complete a technical assessment tailored for the area of expertise to evaluate your knowledge and problem-solving abilities. You may also have to answer questions relating to soft skills.
- Video Interview: Candidates may be invited to a recorded video interview where you’ll answer questions covering both technical and behavioral aspects relevant to humanitarian work.
- Reference Checks: As a final step, we may request your professional references to gain further insights into your work ethic, performance under pressure, and suitability for surge deployments.
We look at the whole picture, considering your technical and soft skills, adaptability, commitment to UNFPA’s mission, and potential to successfully contribute in crisis settings.
Selected candidates will be added to UNFPA’s Surge Response Roster and contacted for any opportunities that meet their profile.