Background

Due to the isolation of the Gaza Strip, the difficulties of movement of staff between Jerusalem and Gaza, PAPP senior management decided to establish a full functional sub-office in the Gaza Strip.  The average PAPP program delivery portfolio is around 60 million USD per year, up to half of it is in the Gaza Strip.  Accordingly, PAPP had to sustain a substantial programming, technical engineering and operations capacity within its Gaza sub-office. Currently the Gaza Office has over 70 UNDP personnel, most of them are program and technical engineering professionals.

Duties and Responsibilities

Office Management:

• Ensures the smooth running of the sub-office, including good management and supervision of staff, finance and administrative matters in accordance with relevant UNDP rules and regulations including PAPP’s internal control framework;
• Is responsible and accountable for the appropriate use and management of resources attributed to the Office and to the portfolio of the geographic area;
• Provides first line Quality Assurance of the sub-office’ activities;
• Motivates staff and promotes team work, collaboration and synergies within his office, among the project teams in his area, and with the programme units at the main office in Jerusalem;
• Ensures timely and regular reporting.

Representation and Coordination:

• Represents UNDP in the Gaza Strip, and in various fora as requested by the Special Representative;
• Provides strong coordination support to UN Agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and national authorities through the establishment of a wider consultation process and appropriate fora to enhance coordination between humanitarian and transition-to-development partners, thus strengthening the links between relief, early recovery and development activities;
• Ensures proper coordination and inputs to PAPP’s planning process;
• Maintains regular contact with projects and programme counterparts in the Gaza Strip;
• Advocates for adherence to UNDP recovery and development principles with a view to enhance community recovery, good governance and human security;
• Provides support to overall resource mobilization efforts of the PAPP head office in close collaboration with the Programme Units, and initiate and coordinate  Gaza Strip-specific  resources mobilisation efforts, particularly those targeting the many Arab countries directly and indirecty having representation in the Gaza strip.

Programme Development, Strategic Analysis, Planning and Advice:

• Responsible, in close collaboration with the Deputy Special Representative and relevant programme units at the PAPP head office level, for the strategic direction of the sub-office programmatic activities from programme design through implementation;
• Advises the Special Representative, national counterparts and other aid partners on policies and strategies to adequately respond to transitional recovery and development challenges and needs;
• Ensures identification and promotion of joint programming and planning opportunities;
• Recommends and participates in joint needs assessments and surveys, and facilitates the collection and verification of available data to ensure the availability of consolidated information for planning purposes;
• Based on monitoring and evaluation of the recovery and development situation, provides programmatic responses to the deficits in these areas;
• Promotes identification and synthesis of best practices and lessons learned for organizational sharing and learning.

Programme Oversight and Implementation:

• Ensures proper implementation of programmes based on continuous monitoring and analysis of (a) the most critical recovery and development needs, response capacities, access situation, operational environment and applicable security issues and (b) implementation progress of the programmes in the Gaza Strip;
• In close collaboration with the Deputy Special Representative, leads the UNDP programme and ensure attainment of expected results in his geographic area of responsibility;
• Ensures effective application of RBM tools, monitors sub-office and project unit work plans, programme effectiveness and achievement of results;
• Ensures the integrity of financial systems, review of budget requirements and the consistent application or rules and regulations; 
• Supports capacity-building of national counterparts; 
• Performs any other related task assigned by the supervisor.

• Play a lead role in identifying significant issues and problems to be addressed;
• Develop and implement well-reasoned, innovative programmes;
• Effective leadership and management of major programme portfolio’s and work teams and timely delivery of outputs, in accordance with overall objectives and policies;
• Form strong partnerships with relevant parties to help meet organization's objectives with respect to overall policy initiatives and coordination of recovery and development activities.
  

Competencies

• Sound knowledge of and exposure to a wide range of humanitarian assistance, emergency relief, human rights and development-related issues; 
• Strong analytical capacity, including the ability to analyze and articulate recovery and development dimensions and related issues that require a UNDP or a coordinated UN response; 
• Ability to identify issues, challenge assumptions and to use sound judgment in applying technical expertise to resolve a wide range of issues; 
• Good knowledge of Gaza and region of assignment, including the political, economic and social dimensions; 
• Ability to work under extreme pressure in a highly stressful environment;
• Good knowledge of institutional mandates, policies and guidelines pertaining to recovery and development issues and sound knowledge of the institutions of the UN system;
• Willingness to keep abreast of new developments in the field;
• Excellent communication (spoken and written) skills, including the ability to draft/edit a variety of written reports and communications and to articulate ideas in a clear, concise style;
• Ability to plan own work, manage conflicting priorities and work under pressure of tight and conflicting deadlines;
• Fully proficient computer skills and use of relevant software and other applications.;
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to establish and maintain effective partnerships and working relations;
• Strong leadership capacities to guide a multi-cultural team in challenging circumstances.

Core Competencies:

• Promoting ethics and integrity, creating organizational precedents;
• Building support and political acumen;
• Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation;
• Building and promoting effective teams;
• Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication;
• Creating an emotionally intelligent organization;
• Leveraging conflict in the interests of UNDP & setting standards;
• Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning. Promoting learning and knowledge management/sharing is the responsibility of each staff member;
• Fair and transparent decision making; calculated risk-taking.

Required Skills and Experience

• University degree (Masters Degree) preferably in management, political or social science, international studies, public administration, economics; or the equivalent combination of education and experience in a related area.

• Minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible professional experience in recovery and development affairs, crisis response and prevention, recovery and development, or other related area;
• Proven management experience from difficult development settings, demonstrated cultural understanding, and political acumen are essential;
• UNDP experience is an asset.

• Fluency in oral and written English is essential;
• Working knowledge of spoken Arabic is preferred.