UNDP Jobs - 59686- Inter-Agency Early Recovery Advisor

Inter-Agency Early Recovery Advisor

Location :

Bujumbura, BURUNDI

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

21-Sep-2015

Application Deadline :

11-Sep-15 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

3 months

Languages Required :

French

Expected Duration of Assignment :

6 months

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

Early Recovery is a key component of humanitarian crisis response. Early Recovery addresses recovery needs during the humanitarian phase, using humanitarian mechanisms in accordance with development principles. It is an integrated, inclusive, and coordinated approach to gradually turn the dividends of humanitarian action into sustainable crisis recovery, resilience building and development opportunities. Emergency relief addresses peoples’ survival and basic well-being. Early Recovery restores people’s capacities and supports communities’ first steps to recover from the crisis. The Global Cluster on Early Recovery (GCER) advocates for humanitarian actors to integrate approaches into their humanitarian work, where possible, that will mitigate the impact of a future crisis on a community. Moreover, the Early Recovery approach presents important opportunities to promote gender equality. These opportunities are often lost because gender issues tend to be given low priority during an emergency and often times not prioritized when recovery begins. Failure to include gender perspectives in early decision-making processes can have long-lasting impacts on women, men, boys, and girls— particularly in the context of governance structures, policies and practices, which can reinforce existing socio-economic disparities between men and women.

Where the humanitarian coordination architecture in a crisis response does not cover all the identified needs of the population, the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) may recommend the establishment of another sector to coordinate the response in this thematic area. This is often an area linked to Early Recovery issues, such as establishing a rubble removal cluster (Currently no agency is globally tasked with this), or a livelihoods cluster (if this is not integrated into another cluster effectively), or a governance cluster which may look at revitalizing the local authorities and empowering them to provide services and ensure they are relevant and active.

Since March 2015, socio-political tensions have been rising in Burundi, following the decision of President Nkurunziza to run for a 3rd term. The Burundian Electoral Commission declared President Pierre Nkurunziza winner of the 21 July presidential election for a controversial third term – for which he was inaugurated on 20 August. The UN Electoral Observation Mission in Burundi (MENUB), however, said in a statement that the overall environment was not conducive for free and credible elections. This was echoed by several member states and international organizations.

On 17 August the UN Secretary-General reiterated his calls to all Burundians to resume inclusive dialogue without delay to peacefully settle their differences. He also reiterated the commitment of the UN to support efforts aimed at consolidating peace and stability in Burundi.

On top of continued unrest with deteriorating security situation and an increase of clashes between the police and alleged armed civilians, a large influx of refugees have fled to neighboring countries. According to UNHCR 191,565 people had fled the country as of 29 August since 1 April. Within Burundi, people have been internally displaced, although the exact number of IDPs cannot yet be determined.

Duties and Responsibilities

Assist and advise the RC acting also in an HC Capacity and provide support in their lead role in strategic planning and coordinating the inter-agency early recovery work across all clusters:

Advocate for the inclusion of early recovery and resilience building issues at the onset of humanitarian response and in humanitarian strategies and plans; provide strategic analysis to the RC on all matters related to economic recovery, resilience, livelihoods within the framework of UN humanitarian response planning in Burundi;
Participate in the humanitarian response mechanisms established in Burundi: the National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, the UN Inter-Agency Sectoral Meetings; prepare summaries of meetings and related analysis for the RC/RR/ under the guidance of the RC establish close technical cooperation with the appropriate government and non-governmental entities (local, international NGO’s/CBO’s, private sector;
Maintain close collaboration with the UNDP Country Director (as UNDP is the lead with regard to ER Programming) maintaining regular exchanges at the strategic level, providing strategic input and analysis in order to support UNDP-led Early Recovery efforts; under the guidance of the UNDP CD, maintain regular contacts, exchange and cooperation with the appropriate programme staff; provide technical and strategic advice to UNDP on all early recovery issues;
Where appropriate, provide conceptual and programmatic support in the development of appropriate early recovery responses in close collaboration and synergy with humanitarian response, and ensuring the linkages to the longer term development activities (as outlined in UN System strategic framework (UNDAF) and other programmatic instruments (PBF), UNDP Country Programme.

Advise on the establishment and maintenance of appropriate coordination mechanisms for early recovery:

Support appropriate coordination with all humanitarian and development partners and establishing effective links between clusters / sectoral groups (including the reintegration working group) promoting Early Recovery planning;
Provide analytical and technical advice to the RC; ensure appropriate information and sharing of analysis with UN System.

Support RC’s coordination with national/local authorities, State institutions, local civil society and other relevant actors:

Work closely with national counterparts, donors and other stakeholders to ensure that humanitarian activities support and/or link into recovery and sustainable development strategies while ensuring that local capacity is utilized effectively and provides the platform for sustainable humanitarian results.

Information Management:

Engage in the inter-agency information management coordination process led by OCHA and supported by sector-specific information management focal points, to ensure visibility of early recovery as a mechanism across sectors, but within the humanitarian response, in information products.

People Centered Approach:

Raise awareness and promote the integration of agreed priority cross-cutting issues (People Centered Approach) in sectoral needs assessment and contribute to the development of appropriate strategies to address these issues.

Needs assessment and analysis:

Ensure effective and coherent sectoral needs assessment and analysis (MIRA/PDNA), involving all relevant partners, stakeholders;
On the basis of the needs assessment and analysis, prepare a coherent proposals for programmatic response dealing with economic recovery and livelihood issues ensuing from the humanitarian operations focusing on the most vulnerable groups, women, youth and demobilized militia groups.

Donors:

Provide input into RC/UNCT advocacy efforts with donors on the importance of early recovery to maximize the potential for mobilizing resources to support integrated projects that respond to immediate needs and illustrate how the project contributes to longer term recovery and community resilience.

Assist the HC/RC with linking humanitarian processes to the longer term recovery agenda:

Identification of strategic entry points for building sustainable institutions and systems and advising on transitioning coordination mechanisms to a nationally led system;
Provide guidance and support to the RC on issues related to the transition process from the outbreak to longer-term support structures and actors;
Provide input and guidance to the design of HCT/UN strategic plans as appropriate.

Application of standards:

Ensure that sector participants are aware of relevant guidelines and standards and apply those in their response also in line with government commitments to Human Rights and IHL obligations.

Monitoring and reporting:

With the support of the inter-sector coordination mechanism, work across sectors to establish monitoring mechanisms that illustrate how well early recovery is integrated into the implementation of the response, and account for how effective the sector working groups’ are in sustaining the gains of the emergency interventions.

Advocacy and resource mobilization:

Identify core advocacy concerns, including resource requirements, and contribute key messages to broader advocacy initiatives and resource mobilization.

Training and capacity building:

Promote Early Recovery efforts to strengthen the capacity of the national authorities and civil society, including staff and cluster partners.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
Promotes the vision, mission and strategic goals of the UN;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competencies:

Professionalism:

Advanced knowledge of the use of information management in humanitarian response and recovery environments;
Highly developed conceptual, analytical and innovative ability to identify and articulate the information management requirements of complex situations requiring a coordinated response between disparate actors;
Demonstrated problem-solving skills and ability to use sound judgment to ensure the effective and timely completion of complex tasks;
Ability to work under extreme pressure, on occasion in a highly stressful environment (e.g. civil strife, natural disasters).

Communication:

Excellent communication and training (spoken and written) skills including the ability to convey complex information management concepts and recommendations to staff at all levels, both orally and in writing, in a clear, concise style that can be readily understood by non-information management practitioners.

Teamwork:

Works collaboratively with colleagues to achieve organisational goals;
Places team agenda before personal agenda;
Supports and acts in accordance with final group decision.

Planning and Organisation:

Develops clear goals that are consistent with agreed strategies;
Identifies priority activities and assignments;
Adjusts priorities as required;
Foresees risks and allows for contingencies when planning;
Monitors and adjusts plans and actions as necessary; uses time efficiently.

Accountability:

Takes ownership of all responsibilities and honours commitments;
Operates in compliance with organisational regulations and rules;
Supports subordinates and peers, provides oversight and takes responsibility for delegated assignments;
Takes personal responsibility for his/her own shortcomings and those of the work unit, where applicable.

Client Orientation:

Considers all those to whom services are provided to be “clients” and seeks to see things from clients’ point of view;
Designs solutions and basis recommendations on the principles of usability;
Establishes and maintains productive partnerships with clients by gaining their trust and respect;
Monitors ongoing developments inside and outside the clients’ environment to keep informed and anticipate problems;
Keeps clients’ informed of progress or setbacks in projects; meets timeline for delivery of products or services to clients.

Judgment/Decision-making:

Identifies the key issues in a complex situation, gathers relevant information before making a decision;
Considers positive and negative impacts of decisions prior to making them;
Proposes a course of action or makes a recommendation based on all available information;
Checks assumptions against facts;
Determines that the actions proposed will satisfy the expressed and underlying needs for the decision.

Summary of Critical Competencies for Immediate Response Situations:

Possess a comprehensive set of competencies to immediately take on the challenging role of leading the information needs of early recovery efforts in the designated area of responsibility – strategic, integrity, results oriented, teamwork, good inter-personal skills, well developed communication skills, sound judgment, analytical skills, flexibility, proactive engagement, innovation, risk management, gender and culturally sensitive, ability to work under pressure and demonstrates high tolerance for change, complexity and unpredictability.

Humanitarian Response:

Good knowledge of humanitarian response systems, coordination mechanisms, and humanitarian policy. This includes coordinated needs assessments (MIRA, PDNA), and the Humanitarian Programme Cycle.

Recovery Programming:

Strong knowledge of one or several of the early recovery programmatic areas e.g. livelihoods, cash programming, rubble removal, governance, community restoration.

Transition Planning:

Comprehensive understanding of the challenges and experience of countries transitioning from humanitarian assistance to recovery and development.

People Centered Approach:

Understands that a people-centered approach to humanitarian action brings together the universal determinants of age, gender, and other specific diversity characteristics for analysis that informs an effective response which includes; disability, HIV AIDS, mental health, socio-economic status, religion, nationality, the environment and ethnic origin.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Advanced university degree (Masters Degree or equivalent) in Social Sciences (International Development, International Relations etc.), Social Science, A related field; or
A combination of relevant academic background (at least a first level university degree id est Bachelor’s degree or equivalent) and extensive relevant professional experience in a related area may be accepted in lieu of advanced university degree.

Experience:

Minimum of eight years of progressively responsible experience in humanitarian coordination or a related field; experience both at the national level and international level in large organizations with dispersed operations and/or in the public and private sector preferred (seven years’ experience if candidate holds Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent);
Experience working within the UN system, preferably in an operational UN Agency or with OCHA;
Experience in humanitarian response and recovery operations (complex emergencies and/or natural disasters) is desirable;
Qualifications and / or industry certification and /or demonstrable experience in the following applications: Microsoft Office (advanced user certification of MS Access, MS Excel and MS Word desirable) and Lotus Notes are desirable.

Language:

Fluency in written and spoken French is essential;
Fluency in one or more official UN languages, preferably English, is desirable.