Senior Human Rights Officer

The Senior Human Rights Officer leads and coordinates the work of the CARICOM Regional Office in Nassau, Bahamas, representing the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The role involves advising governments and UN teams on human rights, managing the regional office, and promoting human rights strategies and policies in the Caribbean region.

Responsibilities

• Leads and coordinates the work of the CARICOM Regional Office following its mandate of monitoring, advisory services, technical cooperation, protection and promotion of human rights.
• Formulates human rights strategies, including from a gender equality perspective; develops a vision or direction for the work of the CARICOM Regional Office and creates the conditions for implementing that vision or direction.
• Advises the Governments on human rights matters.
• Advises UN Resident Coordinators and the UN Country Teams on strategies to build and strengthen national capacities and institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights.
• Exercises daily management of the office, including oversight of all logistic, financial and human resources aspects in accordance with relevant UN Rules and Procedures.
• Represents the High Commissioner on matters of human rights in the region.
• Builds and maintains relationships with the Caribbean countries authorities, Ambassadors, Heads of UN Agencies and other intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations on human rights issues and implementation of programmes.
• Proposes policy directives and plan of action to appropriate United Nations bodies for immediate and long-range solutions to human rights problems in general and specific geographical areas.
• Designs, develops and implements significant policy and program changes to address regional or global human rights issues, including their gender dimensions.
• Formulates the programme of work, budget and medium-term plan of the regional office and participates in the overall formulation and approval of the programme of work, and administrative matters.
• Effectively promotes fund-raising strategies at local level to ensure financial sustainability of the regional field presence and the strengthening of human and financial resources.
• Prepares human rights reports on key sectors or key regional developments.
• Develops and maintains relations with officials at the highest levels of governments and advises them on human rights issues and policies.
• Coordinates and oversees human rights research initiatives.
• Manages OHCHR CARICOM Regional Office including supervision, management, guidance, development and coaching of international and national staff.
• Performs other related duties as required.

Requirements

• Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in law, political science, international relations, social sciences or related field. A first-level university degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying work experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• A minimum of ten years of progressively responsible experience in human rights, political affairs, international relations, law or related area is required.
• Experience in designing and delivering capacity-building initiatives on international and regional human rights mechanisms is required.
• Experience in high-level policy and advocacy engagement with senior government officials and high-level decision-makers on human rights, governance, and institutional reform processes is required.
• Experience supporting the integration of human rights into strategic planning and programming processes at the national or country level, including through inter-agency or multi-stakeholder coordination mechanisms, is required.
• Experience in integrating human rights into humanitarian response to natural disasters and recovery efforts is required.
• At least two years of experience managing a large team is desirable.
• Experience providing advisory services and technical cooperation in field settings is desirable.
• English language proficiency at UN Level III in reading, writing, listening, and speaking is required.

Skills

• Human Rights Advocacy
• International Relations
• Policy Engagement
• Capacity Building
• UN Human Rights Mechanisms
• Governance Reform
• Institutional Reform
• Strategic Planning
• Program Integration
• Inter-agency Coordination
• Stakeholder Coordination
• Humanitarian Response
• Disaster Recovery
• Team Management
• Technical Cooperation
• Advisory Services

Languages

English