Accountability Coordinator (Syria)

GOAL has been working in Northwest Syria (NWS) since 2013, responding to the acute needs of conflict-affected communities. GOAL is working in Idleb Governate, both through direct implementation and through partners, delivering food, non-food programming to highly vulnerable populations, and provision of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) through support to Water units, as well as emergency support to recently displaced households.

GOAL has been working in North Aleppo Governate since 2019, through direct implementation and through partners, delivering food, non-food programming to highly vulnerable populations, as well as emergency support for recently displaced household.

Job purpose:

Reporting to the Senior Programme Quality Coordinator (SPQC), the Accountability Coordinator will provide leadership and technical expertise to ensure that GOAL’s Accountability system is implemented effectively. A key part of the role will be capacity building and remote support to the Accountability Team inside NW Syria (which consists of over 100 staff), as well as for GOAL’s partner organisations. Advocating for accountable programmes will be key to this role which should ensure evidence-based programming and donor compliance in a remote management context.

The Accountability Team’s responsibilities include diverse functions, including efforts to help GOAL Syria to inform beneficiaries of their rights and entitlements related to GOAL’s programs, to systematically collect and respond to beneficiary feedback, to enable accountability to the community, to improve the participatory nature of its programming, and to conduct re-verification of existing beneficiaries. It helps to promote a culture of accountability and ethics and an understanding of the necessity of accountability to affected populations in GOAL’s policies and practices. GOAL’s accountability team also maintains one of the largest humanitarian Complaints and Feedback Mechanisms (CFMs) in the world, which processes and responds to over a quarter of a million requests for information, requests for assistance, complaints, and feedback every year.

Duties, objectives and competencies

Job Responsibility #1: Leadership and management (20% of Time)

• Oversee the activities of GOAL’s Accountability Team in NW Syria, which includes community feedback, outreach and information provision efforts, and beneficiary re-verification activities, providing leadership, technical support, and oversight.
• Ensure that GOAL Syria’s programme portfolio is aligned with and meets standards set by the IASC Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) framework and the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS). Ensure also that implementation and strategic plans for such are designed and rolled out.
• Support the development of job descriptions, management structures and performance management, alongside the Field Accountability Coordinator based in Syria.
• Oversee the Accountability budget, ensuring appropriate grant budgets are developed and spending is in line with those budgets.
• Line manage the Senior Accountability Officer within the Amman office, ensuring that delegated tasks are carried out.
• Participate in relevant internal and external working groups (including the GOAL Global AAP Working Group and relevant Syria-specific interagency working groups) bringing their own experience and that of the GOAL Syria context to the wider group.

Job Responsibility #2: Capacity Building (10% of Time)

• Conduct staff and partner workshops on AAP and CHS to increase awareness around humanitarian action and CHS commitments.
• Collaborate with the GOAL Syria Partnership Unit to support the development of tools and processes to identify partner capacity and technical support needs. Provide technical support to GOAL’s local partners to develop and manage Community Feedback Mechanisms (CFM), beneficiary re-verification, and other Accountability matters.
• Provide capacity building, technical support, and training to the NWS-based Accountability Team as well as the Programmes Team on all areas of Accountability.
• Work with partners to conduct beneficiary re-verification processes in line with GOAL Syria’s guidelines.
• In close coordination with GOAL’s Partnership Unit, develop and monitor partner work plans to implement Accountability processes.

Job Responsibility #3: Support to Programme Quality (10% of Time)

• Feed into the overall programme strategy, providing data and analysis as required for strategic purposes and new programme design, including proposal development.
• Ensure that all grant proposals include solid Accountability narratives.
• Work with Programme and PQ Coordinators to develop community consultation and participation plans for sectoral interventions.
• Participate in the Safe, Accountable and Inclusive Programming (SAIP) Taskforce to ensure that an Accountability approach is mainstreamed across all sector programming.
• Work with GOAL Syria’s Gender Equity and Social Inclusion Advisor to ensure that GOAL’s accountability approach is aligned with good practices and standards.
• Participate/present in Grant opening/closing meetings, review or appraise internal monitoring and third party monitor reports.
• Promote efforts to facilitate the capture and capitalisation of learning opportunities generated by the CFM.
• Work with the Global Accountability Advisor to ensure that GOAL’s Syria’s Accountability activities are in-line with agency standards and that relevant learning can be shared across other GOAL country programmes. Collaborate with the Accountability Advisor where opportunities arise to share GOAL Syria’s lessons learned and promotion of its achievements in AAP.

Job Responsibility #4: Accountability and Reporting (20% of Time)

• Oversee the roll-out of activities and training within the GOAL Syria Accountability Framework and update the framework and related SOPs as needed.
• Continue to develop and improve on GOAL’s independent monitoring systems designed to ensure Accountability, both to beneficiaries and to donors.
• Report accurate Accountability figures and activities as needed for new grant proposals and existing grant reporting.
• Report GOAL Syria’s CFM data to the GOAL Global Accountability Advisor on a quarterly basis through an established flow process.

Job Responsibility #5: Oversight of GOAL’s Community Feedback Mechanism (10% of Time)

• Ensure effective oversight and smooth running of GOAL Syria’s Community Feedback Mechanism (CFM), which is one of the largest humanitarian CFMs in the world. Due to the size of the CFM, the Coordinator will not be involved in directly responding to communications received through the CFM, but will rather focus on oversight, systems building, and process improvements.
• Lead new efforts to improve the CFM, including by piloting the use of automation, technology improvements, or new approaches to improving in-person access of vulnerable populations to the CFM.
• Conduct periodic reviews/evaluations of the CFM and performance of GOAL Syria programme portfolio against key Accountability benchmarks.

Job Responsibility #6: Serious Complaints and Conflict of Interest Management (10% of Time)

• Ensure that all serious allegations received by CFM channels managed by the Amman-based Community Feedback Officer (CFO) are properly entered to the serious complaints database with the needed information, in collaboration with the Senior Accountability Officer (SAO).
• Work closely with the Investigation Coordinator to ensure that all cases referred are well received and action has been taken, ensuring the Accountability Team can feedback to the complainant accordingly.
• Support joint efforts between the Accountability and Investigations Teams to improve GOAL’s systems data tracking, processing, and closing of serious cases.
• Ensure that all conflicts of interest (COI) related to beneficiaries are reviewed by the COI Reviewer, in this case the Senior Accountability Officer (SAO).
• Ensure that CFM and the Whistleblowing procedures and channels for serious cases are adapted to the context and are accessible and available to staff and project participants.

Job Responsibility #7: Oversight of GOAL’s Beneficiary Re-Verification Functions (10% of Time)

• Coordinate joint efforts between the Selection Team (which aims to verify the identity of potential beneficiaries in GOAL’s programs, and is managed by a different department) and the independent Verification Team (which aims to re-verify the identity of existing beneficiaries, in order to ensure the quality and accuracy of GOAL’s beneficiary lists, and is managed by the Accountability Team).
• Oversee the activities of the independent Beneficiary Verification Team, ensuring beneficiary re-verification processes are independent and consistent and are properly documented and reported.
• Report on the results of re-verification efforts to GOAL Syria management and to donors.
• Analyze and assess the results of re-verification activities to inform future and ongoing programme decision making.

Job Responsibility #8: Oversight of GOAL’s Outreach / Information Provision Functions (10% of Time)

• Oversee the activities of the Outreach Team, which aims to support more vulnerable and harder-to-reach beneficiaries to access information and make their voices heard by organizing information and feedback sessions, running feedback helpdesks, and by directly engaging with individuals who have less access to information and feedback mechanisms.
• Support coordination and oversight of information provision efforts in GOAL, including efforts to improve GOAL’s public Telegram Channel, and the development of relevant SOPs on information provision at GOAL.
• Analyze and assess the results of Outreach and Information Provision activities to inform future and ongoing programme decision making.

Requirements (essential)

• Bachelor’s degree in in social sciences, international development, or another relevant field.
• Minimum of three (3) years of managing staff.
• At least 3 to 4 years of experience developing and implementing of complaint/ accountability frameworks in humanitarian action.
• Knowledge of Core Humanitarian Standards and Accountability to Affected Population Frameworks.
• Data analysis and data management skills.
• Experience of, and commitment to, working through systems of community participation and accountability.
• Politically and culturally sensitive with qualities of patience, tact, and diplomacy.
• Fluency in written and spoken English.
• Experience working and building the capacity of partners on technical issues.

Requirements: GOAL Competencies

• **Communication:**Skilled communicator and ability to work effectively across multiple cultures, including remotely.
• Adaptability and flexibility: Ability to manage a large workload and multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment with tight deadlines, and to continually re-prioritize multiple tasks in response to new information.
• **Work style:**Highly organized team player, pro-active and with demonstrated strong personal initiative and interpersonal skills.
• **Travel:**Ability and willingness to travel to Turkey and regionally when required.

Requirements (desired)

• Good contextual knowledge of Northwest Syria ‐ social, cultural and economic context, priorities and constraints.
• Fluent in written and spoken Arabic.
• Ability to work effectively and independently within a multi-cultural team with differing areas of expertise.