The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a United Nations organization tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human development. Headquartered in New York City, it is the largest UN development aid agency, with offices in 170 countries.

Organizational Context

• The Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) continues to support the office of the Humanitarian Coordinator (HC), the UN Country Team (UNCT) and relevant government counterparts in facilitating predictable, accountable and result-based humanitarian coordination in Ethiopia. The aim is to strengthen the coordination capacity of the government through the cluster approach to respond to the quick onset and deteriorating humanitarian crises effectively. Since the cluster approach was rolled-out in Ethiopia in 2007, significant efforts have been made to empower federal and regional counterparts to take leadership in coordinating humanitarian activities. OCHA supports humanitarian coordination efforts at the federal and regional levels through six permanently based sub-offices in three multi-hazards-prone regions and the Addis Ababa office through regular and predictable field monitoring missions involving National Humanitarian Affairs Officers.
• OCHA Ethiopia recognises the need to keep its field offices fully operational to fulfil its mandate to ensure effective and predictable protection of humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable populations through principled and hands-on field-level coordination of humanitarian actions. In this regard, OCHA is recruiting a full-time National Humanitarian Affairs Officer (NHAO) at the NOB level to be based in Jijiga with the relevant competencies to support the OCHA Eastern hub office in monitoring and having oversight responsibility for the facilitation of humanitarian coordination in the hub. The incumbent will also support the Eastern hub to fulfil OCHA’s protection and disaster risk management roles defined by OCHA’s policy procedures and guidelines on these themes.

III. Functions / Key Results Expected

Summary of key functions:

• Within the limits and delegated responsibilities, the Humanitarian Affairs Officer will facilitate coordination in their assigned areas in the Eastern hub of OCHA on behalf of OCHA and the HC. He/She will work under the overall supervision of OCHA’s Head of the Eastern hub and be directly supervised by an International Humanitarian Affairs Officer (HAO) based in Jijiga. The incumbent will be based in Jijiga and work closely with regional, zonal and woreda authorities in coordinating humanitarian actions and engendering a scalable suite of coordination amongst humanitarian agencies in the Somali Region.

Specific duties include:

• Spend one-third of their time visiting and monitoring and coordinating current and planned relief operations and travelling extensively in vulnerable crisis-prone areas, obtaining information, assessing or monitoring either independently or jointly with relevant stakeholders.
• Liaise closely with regional and zonal government officials and humanitarian counterparts in coordinating the humanitarian programme cycle (HPC) in his/her area of assignment (needs assessment and analysis, joint planning, response, and monitoring).
• Facilitate and undertake joint assessments of vulnerability to emergencies and disasters in the Somali Region’s insecure and other crisis-prone areas.
• Work closely and consistently with the regional authorities, UN agencies, NGOs and other partners as appropriate and required to ensure the functional, accountable, predictable and scalable suite of coordination systems in designated assignment areas.
• Facilitate establishing and strengthening effective sectoral task forces in the designated region with relevant regional and zonal line bureaus taking leadership and supporting humanitarian cluster leads to assuming their respective cluster leadership roles.
• Work closely with relevant regional officials, and UN and NGO counterparts to monitor, analyse and report on humanitarian development, emergency or relief management and the government-led ongoing durable solutions programme in assigned areas.
• Work with regional counterparts to strengthen or establish the appropriate disaster or emergency preparedness tools and activate ad-hoc coordination mechanisms to respond in a more timely and predictable manner in the event of quick onset or deteriorating emergencies
• Maintain a close working relationship with regional, zonal and woreda government officials, especially the regional Disaster Risk Management Bureau (DRMB), civic and non-governmental aid organisations and the red cross movements to establish a cooperative network for the exchange of humanitarian information.
• Work with regional counterparts to enhance community participation, including but not limited to facilitating the creation of a platform for the effective involvement of local NGOs and CBOs in various humanitarian programme cycles (HPC).
• Work with other humanitarian actors to identify gaps in the capacity of regional government humanitarian coordination apparatus and endeavor to marshal resources locally to address those gaps
• Work closely with and support the regional early warning system in monitoring and reporting on hazards and their impact on communities in designated regions of the assignment.
• Participate in early recovery and development forums to ensure that regional humanitarian concerns are integrated and addressed by development tools such as UNDAF and government-led multi-year resilience strategy (MYRS).
• Organize and facilitate OCHA and humanitarian donors’ field missions to their designated area of assignment, including organising appropriate briefs on humanitarian situations and facilitating local field travel.
• Work with OCHA Information Management Unit and Information Management Officers (IMO) of the partners, to enhance information management by ensuring that information products such as zonal profiles, 3Ws, 4Ws contact lists, and briefing packs are in place for their area of assignment and updated regularly.
• Work with humanitarian counterparts to ensure that cross-cutting issues such as gender and protection are embedded more thoroughly in the humanitarian program cycle in their assigned area.
• Promote the dissemination and understanding of OCHA’s mandate, the humanitarian principles and the humanitarian code of conduct amongst partners in assigned areas.
• Perform other duties as may be required by the Head of the Somali Regional Office.

Impact of Results

• The OCHA Country Office has determined, based on the humanitarian need in the designated region, that the function of the HAO is crucial and significantly contributes to improved coordination in identifying humanitarian gaps and responding to the needs of affected populations.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates commitment to UNOCHA’s mission, vision, values
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race and nationality sensitivity and adaptability

Functional competencies

•  Development and operational effectiveness
•  Demonstrates a considerable breadth of knowledge and flexibility
• Ability to analyse, explain and document the broader context and nature of each situation and develop recommendations for appropriate action for submission to the OCHA Head of Somali Regional Office
• Leadership and self-management
• Integrity
• Client orientation

Job Requirement

Education: Advanced university degree (Master’s degree) in political science, social science, public administration, international studies, economics or related area or First Degree in the above-mentioned areas.

Experience:

• 2 years of experience with an Advanced Degree and a minimum of 4 years of progressively responsible and relevant professional experience with a BA degree in humanitarian affairs, emergency preparedness, rehabilitation, and development, with significant field experience in complex emergencies, including humanitarian emergency efforts.
• UN or NGO experience required.
• Proven ability to work in an inter-agency environment and experience in working with government officials and technical staff cooperatively is essential.
• The ability to build and lead a field team under difficult and insecure conditions is important.

Language Requirements: Fluency in English and the languages of the region (oral and written), is required. Being able to interpret/translate relevant communications, reports and/or documents from the local language into English is a requirement

Duty Station:  Jijiga, Somali Region