Emergency Humanitarian Access, Safety and Security Advisor

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world’s largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you’re a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.

Responding to the world’s worst humanitarian crises in a great variety of roles, the International Rescue Committee’s staff is a force for humanity and hope. If you’re skilled and passionate, we’d like to add your energy to ours.

Through its Emergency Unit (EmU), the IRC is one of the world’s largest humanitarian agencies, leading rapid emergency responses that provide life-saving assistance, early recovery, and stabilization support to people affected by conflict, displacement, natural disasters, and complex emergencies across multiple contexts worldwide. We are committed to innovation, agility, and strong partnerships to deliver timely and effective humanitarian action. Active in public health, education in emergencies, livelihoods, women’s empowerment, youth development, and protection and promotion of rights, we assist people from harm to home.

The IRC recognizes that people affected by crisis and the actors closest to them are best placed, have the right, and should have the power and resources to respond and drive lasting change. We commit to increasing the share of funding channeled to local actors in emergencies, asking “Why not partner?’ whenever we plan programming, and partner as equals.

Job Overview:

IRC’s Global Crisis Analysis, Humanitarian Access, Safety and Security, and Preparedness teams have come together to form ‘ASAP’ (Analysis, Security, Access and Preparedness) to strengthen global and regional support to IRC teams to deliver in the most complex, volatile and high-risk operating environments to reach the worst-affected and least-served people in need. Housed within the IRC’s Emergency Unit, but supporting countries and emergencies responses across IRC’s footprint, the Advisor allies with country and emergency response leadership, ASAP colleagues, and Regional Safety and Security Directors, to provide strategic, technical and operational support to enable IRC to open, expand, and sustain programs in emergencies, major crises, and complex environments – to reach the worst-affected and least-served populations.

The Advisor will work alongside the Director, and the Emergency Response Team Humanitarian Access, Safety and Security Coordinator, to split responsibilities by country portfolio and/or thematic demands and/or level of complexity based on their respective scope of work and experience. The role brings additional capacity, and challenges and supports teams to meet IRC’s mandate through effective analysis and scenario planning to inform program and operational ambitions, and support to deliver on these with enhanced humanitarian access and security management.

The International Rescue Committee’s Emergency Unit (EmU) leads IRC’s global emergency preparedness and response to sudden-onset crises, complex emergencies, and high-risk contexts. EmU strengthens IRC’s ability to operate safely and effectively in volatile environments through surge capacity, systems development, and expert technical leadership.

Location: This position is open to national candidates or candidates who have residency in either Kenya, UK or Geneva. Candidates from any other country that has an IRC Office, are welcome to apply as well and will be hosted in that country.

Fluency in both written & Spoken French & English required

Major Responsibilities:

Humanitarian access management

• 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, linking those scenarios relevant strategies to support the IRC to serve the worst-affected and least-served populations despite conflict, volatility and risk.
• Support frontline program teams to develop and track indicators for tracking crisis developments in support countries, where requested as part of wider support, and actively contribute to information sharing with IRC colleagues about key crisis developments in support countries.
• Support country leadership to develop and implement specific access and acceptance strategies, in support of the Country Director/Emergency Team Leader, ASAP and/or RSSDs to enable and safeguard principled, secure, and sustained humanitarian access to reach target populations, in line with IRC policy and international humanitarian law – these may include a wide range of access approaches including broader risk management and remote management.
• Ensure strategies include how IRC builds relationships, engages and negotiates with authorities, key power brokers, security actors, and community stakeholders, including with state and non‑state actors, to ensure IRC’s mission and activities are understood and accepted, and that staff and programs can operate safely and without disruption.
• 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.

Safety and security management

• Support country leadership and access, safety and security teams to identify, analyze and mitigate safety and security (S&S) risks across emergency responses, ensuring alignment with IRC Security Minimum Standards (SMS), Duty of Care, GEDI and PEERS principles, and integrate into access, security, preparedness strategies where relevant.
• Support the implementation of S&S standards and approaches to strengthen humanitarian access, and ensure S&S preparedness and contingency align with program ambitions.
• Support country/response teams in incident management, where relevant.

Emergency preparedness

• In close collaboration with ASAP and the Director, Emergency Performance and Quality, support country programs to develop and implement humanitarian access, safety and security approaches in their emergency preparedness and contingency plans, streamlining existing strategies and plans where relevant/possible, through in-country or remote mentoring, training and technical support.
• Support EmU in the development and adaptation of humanitarian access, safety and security systems, practices and resources, and centralized knowledge management.

Learning & Development

• Co-develop, with consortium partners, a humanitarian access framework that is accessible and used by partners to define access ambitions and strategies.
• Support the development, revision and uptake of IRC’s technical resources for analysis, security, access and preparedness, learning from operational experience, as well as global trends and good practices.
• Guide, train, coach and mentor IRC country leaders and frontline staff on humanitarian access approaches, safety and security, including Security Risk Management (SRM), and partner capacity strengthening, ensuring the inclusion of gender-sensitive approaches that address gender-specific risks.
• Design, deliver and track humanitarian access, safety and security capacity strengthening activities (including training, coaching, peer-to-peer learning) for EmU and priority country teams in access, safety and security training (including READI and humanitarian negotiation) and context analysis and scenario planning – leveraging internal and external resources.
• Ensure an ongoing exchange of learning and good practice in ASAP methods and approaches with partners; and deliver capacity sharing activities on analysis, access and security where relevant and prioritized.
• Contribute humanitarian access, safety and security content to EmU trainings and conferences and support cross-learning, and to global Safety and Security resources, as relevant.

Partnerships

• Champion a culture of effective and respective partnerships across the EmU, including supporting country and emergency teams to provide technical or operational support to partners.
• To further IRC’s partnership ambitions, ensure partners play a central role in the development of access, security and engagement strategies, and the identified approaches, including capacity sharing initiatives.
• Working with the EmU Partnerships focal points, ensure IRC technical resources for humanitarian access, safety and security are adapted and/or oriented towards partners for their own adaptations, and support partners in their uptake and cross-contextual learning and application amongst partners and IR.
• Design and deliver capacity sharing activities with partners where this is identified by the country program and ASAP access and security support, including peer-to-peer exchange and humanitarian negotiation.
• Collaborate closely with consortium partners to learn, coordinate and ensure the shared delivery of each organisation’s analysis, security, access and preparedness approaches within the defined Project results, including grant reporting and capturing case studies.

Team Culture

• Build and maintain strong working relationships across EmU, the Global S&S Department and regional/country colleagues to promote a culture of partnership, collaboration and One IRC.
• Cultivate and maintain a positive, collaborative, safe and protective work environment, while additionally setting an example of ‘One IRC’-way of working within the team, EmU, and the wider organization.
• Contribute to efforts across EmU and through ASAP support to safe, diverse, and inclusive culture and ways of working  across our programming.
• Foster ongoing learning, honest dialogue, and reflection to strengthen safeguarding, GEDI commitments, and IRC values.

REQUIREMENTS

Work Experience: 

• 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.

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

• 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.

Language Skills: Proficiency in English and French required; Arabic and Spanish of additional added value.

Key working relationships:

Position Reports to: Director of Emergency Humanitarian Access, Safety and Security 

Position directly supervises: N/A

Other Internal and/or external contacts: ASAP colleagues, Regional Safety and Security Directors, Emergency Safety & Security Coordinator

Working Environment: Up to 40% international travel may be required, including to environments affected by armed conflict.

Compensation: (Switzerland Pay Rate: CHF 100,000 – 115,000/yr; UK Pay Rate: GBP 60,000 – 66,000/yr). Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget.  Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.

Professional Standards: All International Rescue Committee workers must adhere to the core values and principles outlined in IRC Way – Standards for Professional Conduct. Our Standards are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Safeguarding, Conflicts of Interest, Fiscal Integrity, and Reporting Wrongdoing and Protection from Retaliation. IRC is committed to take all necessary preventive measures and create an environment where people feel safe, and to take all necessary actions and corrective measures when harm occurs. IRC builds teams of professionals who promote critical reflection, power sharing, debate, and objectivity to deliver the best possible services to our clients.