Accountability Officer

General Responsibilities (Overall purpose)

Terre des hommes Foundation – Helping children worldwide (Tdh), is the leading Swiss foundation for children’s aid, with its headquarters in Lausanne, and registered in Iraq. Tdh aims to create a positive impact on children’s lives in almost 40 countries around the world, through our Health, Access to Justice, Migration and Child Protection transversal programmes.

Tdh started its operations in Iraq in Dec 2014 responding to the needs of children and youth between the age group of 9-24 years, affected by the ISIL driven crisis of 2014-2017. Due to high unmet needs of children, youth, and their families affected by the crisis, Tdh scaled up its interventions to 22 districts within 5 governorates (Anbar, Kirkuk, Ninewa, Baghdad & Salah al-Din), providing assistance in child protection, juvenile justice, education and WASH assistance in emergency.

In the long-term, through its Multi-year Country Strategy 2022 – 2024 and its long term Vision for the Country Programme, Tdh plans to reinforce and expand interventions due to the persistent overwhelming needs of children, youth and families through a    NEXUS approach, responding to the protracted humanitarian needs while contributing to achieving durable solutions for the most vulnerable and at-risk population groups in the sectors of Child Protection, Education, WASH and Access to Justice for children, youth and women.

Quality and Accountability at Tdh

At Tdh, quality and accountability (Q&A) principles are underpinned by the organisation’s goals and values, project management methods as defined in manuals and thematic policies, as well as the steering committee’s decision to adopt Core Humanitarian Standard criteria. The Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning (MEAL) team provides support to operation teams helping them to develop projects and programmes that meet Tdh’s quality and accountability requirements. The responsibility for the quality and accountability of projects and programmes mainly falls under the programme team led by the Programme Coordinator. The MEAL team is responsible for the quality of methodological support provided to operation teams, and for ensuring they are adopted under optimal conditions. It is also in charge of following up on MEAL related assignments. The Team actions feed into a collective learning approach, and in doing so,

promote a culture of openness, dialogue and critical thinking.  Challenges, Errors, failures are capitalized on to continuously improve activities.

The Accountability officer is a member of the Programme department, and s/he responds directly to the MEAL Manager.

She/he is responsible for mainstreaming Accountability towards Affected Populations (AAP) principles, approaches and tools throughout all programs and operational processes, with the support of the MEAL manager and in coordination with the program team.

She/he will ensure information sharing channels are established and functional to provide community stakeholders, including children better understanding on their rights, entitlements, access other services, complaints & response mechanisms. 

She/he will ensure that proactive and reactive Complaints, Feedback & Response Mechanisms (CFRM) are established, functional and reach out to all segments of the affected population. Ensure these channels are age, gender, nationality, and ethnicity appropriate. Ensure that internal systems and processes are in place to receive and act on operational feedback as well as sensitive complaints, especially on child safeguarding, protection issues, staff misconduct, corruption, and fraud. 

She/he will advise and facilitate the consultation and participation of community stakeholders at different stages of the project, with appropriate and ethical methods, in compliance with the CHS.

She/ he will ensure beneficiary feedback and concerns are brought into Tdh learning and reflection events, and to inform design, planning and strategic decision-making processes.

At Tdh, we value diversity, and we are committed to promoting Gender and diversity. We strongly encourage female candidates to apply for this position.  

Specific Responsibilities / Context  

1. Information, Participation and Empowerment of the Communities

• Work in collaboration with project teams (or programme units) and partners to ensure consultation and participation of children, communities happen throughout the project cycle, program & strategy cycles through appropriate methods, with Gender and Diversity lenses.
• Advise teams on the best methodological approaches to consult communities and children in particular.
• Impulse / collaborate to set up child participatory activities (eg. Consultation, advisory group) in collaboration with the programme team and partners.
• Ensure that up-to-date programming & other relevant information is available and shared with people in need through hotlines, helpdesk, outreach, and other information sharing platforms.
• Guide beneficiaries seeking help through hotlines, field visits, and other complaints and feedback mechanisms OR supervise staffs / partners involved in this process.
• Coordinate the delivery of independent translation if the situation requires it. Ensure that communication material use language and rely on format that are appropriate and accessible to all.

 2.Establishing and maintaining Complaint Feedback Response Mechanism

A- Assessment / identification and planning

• Lead on the assessment of strategic questions about purpose, scope and approaches prior to establish or review a CFRM: assessment of types of channels, communication modalities suitable in the context, type of feedback, existing CFRM already in place, connection with M&E plans, contextual (socio-cultural) barriers and enablers, perceptions.
• Lead on the identification of most suitable modalities for communication, reception and response to feedback and complaints, through namely the organization of community consultations. Identify modalities that are child-friendly, make sure that Gender, Age, Diversity are taken into account
• Participate in the development of the M&E plan to ensure strategic and operational connection with CFRM – support the development of measurement modalities for quality / process indicators and assist the definition of data collection methods and approaches – to make sure that they are participatory, appropriate, ethical.
• As a safeguarding focal point, ensure that internal systems and processes are in place to receive and act on sensitive complaints, especially on child protection issues, staff misconduct, corruption, and fraud and liaise with Concern Team.

       B- Implementation of CFRM

• Answer/Listen, register, process and respond to complaints and guide beneficiaries that seek help through feedback channels.
• Channel the feedback, complaints internally and to partners and follow up on them, to ensure that the complaints are resolved on a timely and accurate manner according to Tdh CFRM SOP.
• Provide feedback to the complainants when complaints are resolved / feedback addressed.
• Ensure that sensitive feedback and complaints are channeled through the right process immediately. (Feedback & Complaints especially on child protection issues, staff misconduct, corruption, and fraud)
• Ensure that all complaints that are not addressed within two weeks, or sensitive feedback / complaints are followed up and escalated to management as outlined in the standards.
• Maintain an effective record and filing system for all complaints solved and pending issues including correspondences and other related documents for quick and easy reference.
• Manage and accurately maintain a central database to document complaints and feedback received from all channels. Update and utilize the database daily.
• Compile data and submit internal and accurate reports to the concerned programs/projects on a weekly basis.
• Ensure that confidentiality of data is respected.
• Build staff and partners awareness and commitment to accountability, ensuring that all SOPs and Tdh policies are respected.
• Work with program teams and partners to ensure Tdh information on program activities is shared with beneficiaries and communities and provide for beneficiary feedback in line with relevant guidelines and frameworks
• Inform line manager about troubleshoots in the CFRM feedback system across Tdh Programmes.

        C- Monitoring and Review

• Conduct frequent spot-checks and verification visits to dialogue with project actors, ensure the channels are functioning, resourced and meet the CHS / AAP standards.
• Review all complaints, feedback & response mechanisms on a periodic basis to ensure systems are accessible, relevant, and efficient. This will include review meetings & assessments with community and partners.
• Participate actively in project review meetings by sharing trends and concerns of the affected populations.
• Compile key findings & trends and submit reports to the programs focal point for further consolidation and management decision making.

    2. Staff, Partners, and other Stakeholders     Capacity Development

• Provide training to Tdh & partner staff on safeguarding, CHS / AAP concepts, tools, and systems. Ensure that they know and understand how CFRM work and what is their role.
• Develop program / project specific Information and awareness packages and facilitate dissemination of this information with beneficiaries through established community, partner & public structures.
• Analyze and provide CFRM trends to facilitate learning & reflection events such as ‘before action’, ‘action learning’ and ‘after action’ learning events.
• Provide Technical support and guidance (Mentoring) to the staff in charge of / or playing a role in the operationalization of CFRM and accountability activities in the field/bases.
• Provide technical support with regards to safeguarding in the delegation.

      Other

• Engage in other M&E tasks if necessary and as required by the line manager.
• Conduct any other duties as required by the line manager.
• Participate in team meetings internally and externally with partners when required. 

SALARY:

•     Gross Salary is (1904$), before Income tax and Social Security deduction 

Qualification:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree on Social/human sciences, psychology, social work, law or other related fields.
• Language: Excellent oral and writing skills in English and Arabic. Kurdish is an asset

Previous experience:

• At least 2 years of experience in a similar position.
• Experience in community mobilization in programming and MEAL work

Knowledge and skills:

• Knowledge of quality and accountability standards in the development and humanitarian sector
• Knowledge of PCM and MEAL approaches and methodologies
• Knowledge of Gender & Diversity, Inclusion, child-friendly methods
• Knowledge of participatory action research methods, qualitative and quantitative data analysis
• Ability to travel to delegation operational areas on a regular basis.

If you are interested in apply on this position , please submit your application through the following link:

Accountability Officer – Terre des hommes Iraq – Hiring (tdh.ch)