Humanitarian Access, Safety and Security Advisor

The International Rescue Committee is a global humanitarian aid, relief and development nongovernmental organization.

Humanitarian Access, Safety and Security Advisor

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.