Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Specialist for DCA South Sudan

Job advert for Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Specialist for DCA South Sudan

Are you a visionary and passionate professional within the space of Conflict Prevention, Conflict Sensitivity, and Peacebuilding efforts? Have you got solid experience in the humanitarian sector, that you can bring into the DCA Country Programme and ensure quality programming? Do you have experience in capacity strengthening of partners?

Then you might be our new Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Specialist in DCA South Sudan!

DanChurchAid (DCA) is an International Non-Governmental Organisation with headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. The organisation was founded in 1922, and have country offices in 19 countries across Africa, the Middle East, Ukraine, and Asia.

DCA has been active in South Sudan since 2007 and works within the three Global Goals of DCA – Save Lives, Build Resilient Communities, and Fight Extreme Inequalities. We work across Upper Nile, Jonglei, GPAA, Central Equatoria, and Eastern Equatoria States primarily through national partners.

The Role:

The role will lead in strengthening conflict prevention, conflict sensitive programming, and peacebuilding efforts as both crosscutting themes and stand-alone activities across the programme portfolio including supporting the growth of the overall programme through enhancing programme quality, compliance and supporting proposal development. The incumbent will be an expert in conflict and peacebuilding issues in South Sudan with in-depth knowledge of best practices and tools and will provide advice and guidance to implementation partners and the DCA teams. Additionally, the role will lead our work on preventing conflict, delivering trainings and working with partners to establish policies and practices within conflict sensitivity.

The Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding specialist will strengthen capacity and coordination among staff and partners through establishing and leading relevant task forces. A primary responsibility will be the capacity building of staff and partners in conflict prevention and peacebuilding principles, including conflict sensitivity/ do no harm, and incorporation of these into project design, implementation and monitoring. The role also involves assessing partners’ adherence to guidelines and providing targeted capacity strengthening based on these assessments. Furthermore, serving as a focal point for both headquarters and in-country INGO networking and cluster coordination mechanisms, where relevant, helps ensure effective communication and collaboration.

Specific duties and responsibilities

The duties include, but are not limited to the following:

Strategy and Vision

• Ensure conflict prevention principles are incorporated into country program strategy and annual planning efforts.
• Periodically update the conflict situation analysis at pace with contextual shifts and modify strategy accordingly

Programme Quality and Compliance

• Support to grow the Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding portfolio of work through strengthening programme quality and implementation of ongoing projects.
• Provide technical input into proposal development and support proposal design processes and project quality assurance processes to ensure conflict sensitivity and conflict prevention and peacebuilding are effectively and responsibly incorporated.
• Support the development/develop SOPs and workflows for peacebuilding and conflict prevention programming with partners.
• Support the programme team to identify potential donors to engage with in line with the country programme and building on our existing strengths and experience.
• Lead on the development of specific conflict prevention indicators for new proposals where relevant and support the MEAL team to effectively integrate conflict sensitivity and conflict prevention indicators into project results framework.
• Stay abreast of conflict-related issues in South Sudan and identify good practice, tools and approaches relevant for the programme.
• Lead on documentation, assessments and training across all projects and partners within conflict prevention and peacebuilding
• Support DCA and partner organization leadership to ensure necessary resourcing considerations are incorporated into project design and partnership agreements.
• Undertake regular project site visits to provide technical guidance and supervision as well as regular monitoring of activity progress to ensure that activities are implemented according to international best practice standards.

Capacity Strengthening and Coordination

• Lead and nurture relevant task forces and groups to stimulate thematic and technical collaboration and coordinate capacities across the teams
• Provide structured supervision and technical support to staff/partnerson conflict sensitivity principles, mainstreaming and integration of these for programme quality.
• Lead on the assessment and follow up with partners on the mainstreaming checklists and tools and provide targeted capacity building to partners based on assessments. Adjust and add to existing tools and training material as needed and according to DCA and international best practices.
• Proactively participate and represent DCA as focal point for both HQ and in-country INGO networking and cluster coordination mechanisms.

The position will be reporting to the Programme Manager.

The position will work closely together with the programme team, the MEAL team, the implementing partners, and advisors at HQ.

Required Competencies:

To be successful in this role the ideal candidate has:

• Expertise and at least 5 years of experience working in conflict prevention, peacebuilding and conflict sensitivity.
• A bachelor degree within a relevant field
• Expertise in design and implementation of conflict prevention and peacebuilding activities, as well as conflict sensitivity as a cross-cutting commitment
• Experience mainstreaming conflict prevention into other types of projects such as livelihoods or emergency assistance.
• Excellent command of written and spoken English
• Good understanding of Project Cycle Management, humanitarian and do-no-harm principles, HRBA and Protection Mainstreaming
• Experience in working with and capacity strengthening of local partners, including design and implementation of adult learning and Training of Trainer concepts, and adjustment and development of training material, tools and guidelines
• Team player with excellent communication and strong participatory leadership skills
• Willingness to travel to remote areas in South Sudan and internationally when required
• Ability to plan and coordinate several concurrent processes without losing the oversight

What we can offer you:

The successful applicant will be offered a contract until December 2024 with the possibility of extension dependent on both funding and performance.

The position is for South Sudanese nationals. Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply.

Expected starting date: 01.03.2024 or at earliest possible date after this.

Working hours: 40 hours per week.

Interested candidates should apply through: Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Specialist – Intranet DCA (emply.com)

All interested candidates irrespective of age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, abilities or ethnic affiliation are encouraged to apply for the vacancy. DCA conducts an anti-terror check as part of the recruitment process. It is a prerequisite that you can pass this check and maintain this status throughout your employment with us. Everyone applying for a job with DCA must be ready to comply with our Code of Conduct, Staff Policy on Prevention of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment and our Child Safeguarding Policy.

Deadline for applications as described above are the 23rd of February 2024.

For further information regarding DCA, please visit our website at: https://www.danchurchaid.org/

Only applications following the abovementioned procedures will be considered and only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.