GBV Strategic Partnership Advisor

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world’s largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 50 countries and more than 25 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you’re a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.

We aim to make our programs a model for the highest global standards and to cultivate power and lasting change not just for our clients but for all people affected by humanitarian crises. To achieve that vision, the IRC’s Technical Excellence (TE) group, located within the Crisis Response, Recovery and Development (CRRD) Department, provides technical assistance to IRC’s country program staff and shares what we learn to influence policy and practice.

IRC’s Technical Excellence team is comprised of five teams or sector “Units” which have deep expertise in their respective fields: Education, Economic Wellbeing, Governance, Health, and Violence Prevention and Response, as well as teams which provide measurement and finance/grant management support. Technical teams are also matrixed with a team that focuses on the quality and content of cross-sectoral programming in emergency responses. IRC’s Technical Excellence teams offer five core services to IRC country programs and the wider organization:

**1. Program Design:**We support country and regional teams to design state of the art programming, incorporating the best available evidence, cost data, and expertise of what has worked elsewhere, with the knowledge that country teams, partner organizations and our clients bring to the table.

**2. Quality Assurance:**We partner with our measurement teams to design and drive the use of indicators to measure progress towards outcomes; we partner with regional and country teams to review program delivery progress and help address implementation challenges and adapt interventions to changed circumstances.

3. Business Development: We partner within and outside the IRC to design winning bids and identify winning consortia; we deploy technical expertise in public events and private meetings to position IRC as a partner of choice.

**4. Research & Learning:**We partner with our research lab to design cutting edge research to fill evidence gaps, and with country teams to learn from implementation such that we continuously improve our future design and delivery.

**5. External Influence:**We showcase the IRC’s programs, technical insights and learning in order to influence and improve the humanitarian sector’s policy and practice.

The Violence Prevention and Response Unit at the IRC – The Violence Prevention and Response Unit (VPRU) is one of IRC’s five Technical Units alongside Health, Education, Economy Recovery and Development and Governance. Technical Units provide support to our country programs in the design, delivery, quality assurance and continuous learning for programs advancing the outcomes areas the IRC supports and driving thought leadership around those areas of work. Programming addressing violence, abuse and exclusion in crisis situations represents the organisation’s second largest programmatic portfolio.

The VPRU brings together the disciplines of Child Protection, Women’s Protection and Empowerment, and Protection- Rule of Law. We seek to reduce people’s vulnerability to violence and support them to recover from the consequences of violence through programs tailored to individual needs and contexts, as well as strategies addressing systemic gaps which contribute to the perpetuation and exacerbation of violence in crisis and conflict environments. Our prevention work focuses on programs that shift power dynamics, promote human rights, and empower people affected by violence and inequality to transform their future. Our response work focuses on ensuring lifesaving and survivor-centered services for people affected by violence and inequality in all their diversity. We work with the people most at risk and seek to address the needs of populations of all ages and backgrounds through a context-relevant, client-centered, intersectional approach.

We also know from evidence and experience that in most contexts women and children are disproportionally impacted by unequal power, and therefore those at greatest risk of violence. For this reason, we are committed to specialized approaches for these populations.

To advance IRC’s delivery of Violence Prevention and Response programming across over 45 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America, we rely on team of more than 70 professionals committed to provide best-of-class expertise, evidence-based insights based on continued attention to sectoral developments and learning from cross-regional programming insights in order to realize our ambitions for safer, more inclusive lives for our clients. They are supported in this by an intentional and strategic use of research and evidence, a commitment to the highest quality standards and continued engagement in industry-wide development including coordination mechanism, policy to promote innovation and high-impact, cost-efficient interventions. We partner with IRC country program teams and local actors to create and capture innovations in protection programming which can be used by humanitarian actors to improve the protection and empowerment of women and girls, children and adolescents, people with disabilities, with diverse Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) and other people at risk.

Job Overview

The GBV Strategic Partnership Advisor will lead IRC’s Strategic Partnership with Irish Aid to prevent and respond to GBV and empower women and girls in humanitarian crises. The Strategic Partnership was established between IRC and Irish Aid in 2014 and has provided 16 million Euro in GBV programming, policy and learning initiatives, with a focus on East Africa. The Advisor will provide technical leadership and oversight to the Strategic Partnership which includes a multifaceted portfolio of GBV programming in acute emergency and protracted crises, and global learning, policy change, and influencing activities.

Reporting into the Global Practice Lead for Women’s Protection and Empowerment, the Advisor will focus on advancing the quality, scale, and impact of programming, learning and influencing within the Strategic Partnership. The role will have a consistent focus on advancing feminist partnership across all pillars of the Strategic Partnership. This will include advancing the scale of women and adolescent girls led WPE programming and partnership within country programming and emergency response pillars, as well as leveraging opportunities for collective influencing with women-led and women’s and girls’ rights organizations and networks at global and regional levels.

The Purpose of the Role

The GBV Strategic Partnership Advisor is responsible for technical leadership of the Strategic Partnership with Irish Aid. The role works as co-lead for the partnership with the IRC’s Frameworks and Global Awards team (Irish Aid) who provides overarching coordination of the partnership to provide effective management of activities, ensure compliance with Irish Aid contractual requirements, and enhance communication and collaboration between Irish Aid and the IRC.

Scope and Authority:

The GBV Strategic Partnership Advisor is IRC’s Technical Lead for the Irish Aid IRC Strategic Partnership. Under the Strategic Partnership, the advisor holds responsibility related to Strategy Development, Program Implementation and Technical Assistance, Business Development, and external/internal representation in coordination with relevant stakeholders.

Key Accountabilities:

Strategic Development

• Work closely with the IRC’s Frameworks and Global Awards team (Irish Aid) to provide technical guidance and strategic direction to the Irish Aid GBV Strategic Partnership.

• Develop strategies to advance evidence generation and use, accountability to women and girls in all their diversity, and scaling through feminist partnership and localization within the GBV Strategic Partnership.

• Support IRC’s WPE technical advisors, emergency response and country program teams and partners to understand and apply the scaling, evidence, inclusion and accountability strategies.

• Lead regular analysis of outcomes and learning across the Strategic Partnership, in collaboration with the VPRU MEL team.

• Every third year, organize the external evaluation of the partnership in collaboration with Irish Aid.

Program Implementation & Technical Assistance

• Implement the Irish Aid GBV Strategic Partnership learning activities (Pillar 4), including:

o Lead the organization and facilitation of the annual WPE learning forum which engages 100 WPE and VPRU teams and partners from 45 countries.

o Capture learning from the forum to produce and disseminate the WPE learning brief each year in English, French, Arabic and Spanish.

• Provide technical guidance and quality assurance across all pillars of the partnership:

• Lead a community of practice for WPE technical teams and partners in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan, together with regional WPE Technical Advisors, to promote quality programming and partnership within the Strategic Partnership (Pillar 1).

• Review all emergency response requests, proposals, and reports together with the EHAU VPRiE STA (Pillar 2).

• Provide technical guidance to WPE P&A Pillar priorities, strategies and report design and delivery (Pillar 3).

• Work closely with the VPRU MEL advisor to strengthen monitoring, evaluation and learning activities across all pillars.

• Participate in annual country program visits with Irish Aid and the IRC’s Frameworks and Global Awards team (Irish Aid).

• Oversee, in coordination with the TechEx grants and operations team, the appropriate grant and financial management of Learning Pillar activities.

Business Development

• Work closely with the IRC’s Frameworks and Global Awards team (Irish Aid) to deliver a high-quality design for the next phase of the Strategic Partnership from 2025-2027.

• Lead the technical design process for the next phase of the partnership engaging WPE pillar leads and partners in country programs, emergency response, Partnerships and policy teams.

• Work with VPRU WPE technical advisors and the MEL team to create a monitoring, evaluation and learning framework for the next phase of the strategic partnership.

• Support the Frameworks and Global Awards team in communication with Irish Aid related to the continuing partnership.

External Representation

• Represent VPRU in external meetings and coordination for anything related to the GBV Strategic Partnership.

Key Working Relationships

• Position Reports to: Global Practice Lead for WPE.

**• Direct Reports:**None

Key Internal Relationships:

• Irish Aid Frameworks and Global Awards team

• VPRU WPE Technical Advisors

• VPRU MEAL Specialist for the Strategic Partnership

• VPRU Policy and Advocacy Lead and WPE Policy Officer

• EHAU VPRiE Senior Technical Advisor

**Key External Relationships:**Irish Aid. Women-led and women’s rights organizations engaged in programming, emergency response, policy, and learning within the Strategic Partnership.

Desired Experience and Skills

• Over 6 years of progressive experience designing, leading and GBV response, prevention and empowerment programming in humanitarian emergencies and protracted, recovery contexts.

• Strong grant and project management experience.

• Experience leading teams to deliver high quality, context driven programming and learning.

• Strong record working with women and girls organizations and movements to shift power and resources to local actors in humanitarian response.

• Experience driving uptake of evidence-based, accountable practices.

• Demonstrated experience in strategic design and planning.

• Excellent communication, influencing, and storytelling skills.

• Demonstrated ability to successfully lead business development opportunities.

• Demonstrated ability to influence across a wide range of diverse stakeholders internally and externally.

• Ability to work, manage, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment; outstanding business acumen, critical thinking, problem solving and decision-making skills required.

• Superb inter-personal, written and verbal communication skills with ability to collaborate across countries, cultures, and departments.

• Fluency in English required; and French preferred.

• Ability to travel globally up to 25% of the time.

Compensation:

Posted pay ranges apply to UK-based candidates. Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.

Standard of Professional Conduct: The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.

Commitment to Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: The IRC is committed to creating a diverse, inclusive, respectful, and safe work environment where all persons are treated fairly, with dignity and respect. The IRC expressly prohibits and will not tolerate discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or bullying of the IRC persons in any work setting. We aim to increase the representation of women, people that are from country and communities we serve, and people who identify as races and ethnicities that are under-represented in global power structures.