Emergency Humanitarian Access, Safety and Security Advisor

The Emergency Humanitarian Access, Safety and Security Advisor supports IRC's Emergency Unit by providing strategic, technical, and operational support to enable IRC to open, expand, and sustain programs in emergencies and complex environments. The role involves humanitarian access management, safety and security management, emergency preparedness, learning and development, partnerships, and fostering a positive team culture.

Responsibilities

• Plan and deliver inclusive in-person and remote scenario development workshops as part of wider ASAP support to frontline program teams responding to major crises.
• Support frontline program teams to develop and track indicators for tracking crisis developments in support countries and contribute to information sharing.
• Support country leadership to develop and implement specific access and acceptance strategies to enable and safeguard principled, secure, and sustained humanitarian access.
• Build and maintain an active network of humanitarian access and security staff internally and across organisations.
• Maintain currency with methods, approaches and professional developments in relevant topics, and represent IRC in relevant global fora where needed.
• Support country leadership and access, safety and security teams to identify, analyze and mitigate safety and security risks across emergency responses.
• Support the implementation of safety and security standards and approaches to strengthen humanitarian access.
• Support country/response teams in incident management, where relevant.
• Support country programs to develop and implement humanitarian access, safety and security approaches in their emergency preparedness and contingency plans.
• Support EmU in the development and adaptation of humanitarian access, safety and security systems, practices and resources, and centralized knowledge management.
• Co-develop a humanitarian access framework accessible and used by partners.
• Support the development, revision and uptake of IRC’s technical resources for analysis, security, access and preparedness.
• Guide, train, coach and mentor IRC country leaders and frontline staff on humanitarian access approaches, safety and security.
• Design, deliver and track humanitarian access, safety and security capacity strengthening activities for EmU and priority country teams.
• Ensure an ongoing exchange of learning and good practice in ASAP methods and approaches with partners.
• Contribute humanitarian access, safety and security content to EmU trainings and conferences and support cross-learning.
• Champion a culture of effective and respective partnerships across the EmU.
• Ensure partners play a central role in the development of access, security and engagement strategies.
• Work with EmU Partnerships focal points to adapt IRC technical resources for partners.
• Design and deliver capacity sharing activities with partners.
• Collaborate closely with consortium partners to learn, coordinate and ensure shared delivery of analysis, security, access and preparedness approaches.
• Build and maintain strong working relationships across EmU, the Global S&S Department and regional/country colleagues.
• Cultivate and maintain a positive, collaborative, safe and protective work environment.
• Contribute to efforts to safe, diverse, and inclusive culture and ways of working.
• Foster ongoing learning, honest dialogue, and reflection to strengthen safeguarding, GEDI commitments, and IRC values.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of non-profit or NGO work experience within international humanitarian assistance programs with demonstrated successes in planning, organizing and managing safety and security in complex and volatile environments.
• Significant practical experience in humanitarian access, humanitarian negotiation, civil-military coordination, security management or related competencies.
• Substantial and documented prior experience as a facilitator – the ability to develop, implement, facilitate and impart learning to a wide range of audiences.
• Experience with collaborative/inclusive development of tools, guidance and learning materials for/with practitioners.
• Knowledge of legal and normative frameworks for humanitarian action and expertise in applying humanitarian principles in practice.
• Thorough familiarity with principles and current approaches to humanitarian access and acceptance models of security management, including demonstrated understanding and successes in gender security management and gender equality.
• Ability to gain a precise understanding of the various local, regional, country and international policies, operational positions and interactions, and ability to support analysis and its uptake into decision making before and during emergencies and major crises.
• Advanced skills in humanitarian negotiation, humanitarian-military relations and/or engagement with armed groups.
• Strong communication, diplomatic, relationship building and interpersonal skills, including to influence and obtain cooperation of individuals not under supervisory control.
• Proficiency in facilitating challenging conversations, and challenge teams, on strategic, technical and operational subject matter to create shared understanding and inform decisions.
• Proficiency in delivering training and coaching support to individuals, teams and/or partners.
• Humility in analysis, ways of working and willingness to learn with teams in the most complex settings.
• Able to work as member of multinational team and manage a variety of external and internal relationships to achieve results.
• Excellent ability to produce user-centered, effective, and responsive guidance, tools and materials.
• Ability to summarize sophisticated topics and information inclusively, clearly and succinctly.
• Demonstrated commitment to gender equality, diversity, and inclusion in humanitarian settings.
• Ability to identify and address barriers to inclusion for marginalized and underrepresented groups in emergency response.
• Experience working with diverse teams and communities, including women, youth, persons with disabilities, and other groups at risk of exclusion.
• Commitment to ongoing learning and reflection on personal and organizational biases, and willingness to adapt practices to promote inclusion.
• Proficiency in English and French required; Arabic and Spanish of additional added value.

Skills

• Humanitarian Access
• Safety and Security Management
• Humanitarian Negotiation Skills
• Civil-Military Coordination
• Security Management
• Facilitation
• Training Delivery
• Coaching Support
• Development of Learning Materials
• Legal Frameworks for Humanitarian Action
• Humanitarian Principles
• Gender Security Management
• Gender Equality
• Policy Analysis
• Humanitarian-Military Relations
• Engagement with Armed Groups
• Diplomatic Communication
• Relationship Building
• Inclusive Guidance Development
• Emergency Preparedness

Languages

English, French