Associate Programme Officer

Details

Mission and objectives

The Office of the UNHCR was established on 14 December 1950 by the UN General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country (www.unhcr.org).

Context

Over six-year since the latest exodus from Myanmar in August 2017, the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh is a protracted situation, with almost one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh still reliant on humanitarian assistance for their daily needs, sheltered in Cox’s Bazar, in the world’s largest refugee settlement, and on the island of Bhasan Char. While facing funding shortfalls, the humanitarian community continues to work toward achieving durable solutions for the Rohingya refugees which focuses on the voluntary and sustainable return in safety and with dignity when conditions in Myanmar are conducive, while developing the resilience of the refugees while they remain in exile.
The Programme Unit based in Cox’s Bazar manages an envelope of USD 150 million annually, overseeing the development and amendment of 19 partnership agreements with values ranging from USD 500k to 15 million per agreement. Additionally, the Programme Unit oversees a Direct Implementation budget of USD 45 million, necessitating a meticulous setup and an adequate level of staffing. Moreover, the Unit takes the lead in the Multi-Functional Team (MFT) monitoring, participates in financial verification, prepares analytical reports, and consistently reviews resources to ensure the implementation of activities remains on track. Considering the overarching responsibility for managing Operations’ resources of a sizeable amount, maintaining an appropriate level of international staff and oversight is crucial.
The Associate Programme Officer is a member of the Programme team in Cox’s Bazar, and under the overall supervision of the Programme Officer who will monitor the performance of the incumbent and provide regular guidance. The incumbent may also receive guidance from Senior Programme Officer and other Senior staff in the Operations.
The annual budget for UNHCR Bangladesh is 275 million and activities are either implemented directly by UNHCR personnel or through partnership arrangements. Project Partners are selected through a transparent and competitive process and currently there are 19 national and international partners with whom UNHCR Bangladesh has partnership agreements. In addition, UNHCR has operational partnership with other UN agencies, national and international organizations.

Task description

Under the direct supervision of Programme Officer, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:
• Support in assessing and analysing the needs of persons of concern in a participatory manner, using an Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD) perspective as basis for planning.
• Provide support on programmatic aspects of developing multi-year protection and solutions strategies and annual plans with corresponding priorities taking into account corporate priorities.
• Support Results Based Management and programme capacity in light of evolving requirements, programming approaches and gaps.
• Assist the planning process in compliance with planning parameters outlined in the Programme Manual and the planning instructions.
• Support the revision and analysis of plans, mid-year and year-end reports of UNHCR office(s) in the Area of Responsibility AoR), ensure quality assurance and compliance with established policies, guidelines, procedures and standards.
• Assist in the provision of overall direction to broaden partnerships with key stakeholders in order to maximize the protection and solutions response for persons of concern.
• Provide support to ensure a consistent application of the framework for implementing with partners, including the effective implementation of the policy on selection and retention of partners, management of partnership agreements, risk-based project performance monitoring, and risk-based project audits, among others.
• Contribute to ensure consistent and coherent monitoring approaches, tools and systems across the region, in line with global standards and polices.
• Actively contribute to UNHCRs programming of community of practice and continuously contribute to improvements of programming tools and processes.
• Oversee a timely and effective follow-up of internal and external audits observations and recommendations that relate to programmatic issues.
• Contribute to explore possibilities of further collaboration with JICA/the Government of Japan.
• Support the identification and management of risks and seek to seize opportunities impacting objectives in the area of responsibility. Ensure decision making in risk based in the functional area of work. Raise risks, issues and concerns to a supervisor or to relevant functional colleague(s).
• Perform other related duties as required.
Furthermore, UN Volunteer is required to:
• Strengthen his/her knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for in-stance in events that mark International Volunteer Day);
• Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country;
• Reflect on the type and quality of voluntary action that they are undertaking, including participation in ongoing reflection activities;
• Contribute articles/write-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publications/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.;
• Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly-arrived UN Volunteers;
• Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering, or encourage relevant local individuals and organizations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technically possible.