Community Engagement and Accountability Expert P3/P4 NORCAP

Are you passionate about strengthening the relevance, quality, and impact of humanitarian aid through the meaningful participation of people affected by crisis and disasters? Do you have the technical expertise and advocacy skills to support humanitarian organizations to adopt a more systematic and coordinated approach to community engagement and accountability? Are you able to coordinate humanitarian actors to adopt more collective approaches to accountability? Can you strengthen the capacity of local actors and support them to lead and coordinate accountability approaches in humanitarian responses? If so, use your skills to improve the accountability of humanitarian response as a NORCAP Community Engagement and Accountability (CEA) Expert[1].

The mission

There is a growing demand among policymakers, donors and practitioners for greater accountability and increased commitment towards people’s participation in the humanitarian sector. This is reflected in global commitments, such as the Core Humanitarian Standards and the Grand Bargain 2.0, which identifies the participation of affected communities as a key enabling priority (alongside localization) and outcome pillar (alongside inclusion). **

However, within the humanitarian sector there is still a gap between rhetoric and reality and communities are not always engaged in humanitarian action in a systematic or meaningful way. The Grand Bargain Independent Reports (2020 and 2021), the State of the Humanitarian System (2018), Humanitarian Accountability Report (2020) and ODI’s research into collective approaches to accountability, as well as the wealth of data collected from affected people themselves by Ground Truth Solutions, all point to the failure of the humanitarian system to be genuinely driven by the needs of people affected by disaster and crisis.

NORCAP aims to help address these gaps and support stronger sector-wide accountability to affected people through the deployment of highly skilled CEA experts, into advisory, interagency coordination, and technical capacity support, roles within key humanitarian responses and agencies.

Duties and responsibilities

Successful candidate roles vary, but NORCAP CEA Experts can play a critical role in:**

· Improving CEA coordination and collective accountability through convening and chairing CEA or AAP interagency working groups. Including coordinating the design, implementation, and monitoring of collective accountability plans and approaches. Working with local media as a link between the affected people and humanitarian actors.

· Advocacy and support to response leadership to ensure CEA in well integrated in Humanitarian Response Plans and Programme Cycles, with adequate budgets, and that response decision-making is driven by the needs, priorities, and feedback of affected people and communities.

· Providing technical support and guidance across clusters to integrate effective approaches to CEA in sector plans and activities, including informing, discussing, and advising on how to address key issues raised through community participation and feedback. This includes close coordination and collaboration with other people-centered, quality programming approaches such as protection, prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse, gender, and inclusion.

· Facilitating greater local actor engagement and leadership of CEA approaches, through ensuring CEA working groups are open and inclusive for all actors, identifying and facilitating local organization to lead/co-lead CEA working groups, ensuring the insights and guidance of local actors is valued and actively sought, and by providing training and mentoring to local partners to strengthen their coordination, CEA and advocacy capacity.

· Supporting and building the capacity of humanitarian actors to design and implement effective approaches to community participation, communication, and managing feedback and complaints. This includes advocating internally to leadership and colleagues to integrate CEA in plans and budgets, providing training and capacity building, and implementing and monitoring CEA activities and approaches.

· Designing and leading risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) approaches as part of epidemic and pandemic responses, such as COVID-19. This includes coordinating with other actors to plan assessments, social science research, risk communication activities, feedback and perception monitoring, and how to support community-led solutions to controlling the spread of infection.

· Documenting and sharing examples of CEA best practice both with NORCAP and externally with partners and humanitarian networks.

Qualifications and experience

· An advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in behavioural or social sciences (e.g., anthropology, sociology, psychology), international or development studies, communications or health education, or related field is required. A first-level university degree in combination with relevant qualifying experience will be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

· A minimum of eight year’s experience in the humanitarian, development or peacebuilding sectors, including recent operational experience.

· A minimum of three years of experience implementing and/or coordinating CEA/AAP approaches in a humanitarian, development or peacebuilding context is required, with demonstrable experience in establishing and managing approaches that support community participation, communication, and feedback and complaints mechanisms.

· Knowledge of global commitments and efforts to strengthen accountability to crisis-affected populations.

· Knowledge of the UN Cluster System

· Fluency in English language

· Working knowledge of a second official UN language such as: Arabic, French or Spanish would be an asset.

Personal qualities

Together with the qualifications listed above, you should also have:

· Strong analytical abilities

· Excellent advocacy and negotiation skills, able to convince colleagues at all levels on the importance of integrating CEA within ways of working

· Strong leadership and coordination skills, able to bring a range of partners together and motivate and guide them towards common goals

· Highly developed communication and interpersonal skills

· Ability to work in a collaborative manner with team members and multiple stakeholders a various levels

· Demonstrated ability to work effectively in highly stressful situations and contexts

· Ability to think methodically, to design, plan and manage projects

· Ability to think creatively, solve problems, to explore, harness and translate innovative concepts into practice

· The ability to work independently when needed

· A high degree of flexibility that enables you to adapt to change

· Willingness to deploy and be based at field level for a minimum of three months, ideally six months plus.

We can offer

· A great opportunity to work in an international setting for a world recognized organisation

· Personal and professional growth which will be spurred by the challenging work you will undertake

· Access to a unique network of humanitarian and development professionals, including an active CEA community of practice

· A rewarding opportunity in which you will meet some of the world’s challenges head on

Based on what you have read in the above, would you like to help strengthen the quality, relevance and impact of humanitarian response? If so, you are encouraged to apply to join NORCAP’s pool of CEA experts.

[1] Community Engagement and Accountability (CEA) is the same as Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP), which is the term most commonly used within the UN system. NORCAP and NRC adopted CEA as it reflects both the process of, and commitment to, being accountable to people and communities affected by crisis and disasters.