Individual Contractor on Innovation Norway

Hardship Level (not applicable for home-based)

H (no hardship)

Family

CONTR Local Professional Level

2024-03-01

February 17, 2024

GENERAL BACKGROUND OF THE ASSIGNMENT:
UNHCR is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. Every year, millions of men, women and children are forced to flee their homes to escape conflict and persecution. We are in over 125 countries, using our expertise to protect and care for millions.
The growth in the use of digital channels offers many opportunities for the forcibly displaced and stateless, but also brings new risks. Misuse of digital technologies and online harms such as misinformation, disinformation and hate speech cause direct and indirect harm to forcibly displaced and stateless people and can hamper humanitarian action and protection. Strengthening digital protection is a priority under UNHCR’s Digital Transformation Strategy 2022-2026.
As a key step to achieve this goal, UNHCR in 2023 launched a new ‘digital protection’ capacity to better understand, mitigate and help prevent the harms caused by misinformation, disinformation and hate speech (“MDH”) in the form of a two-year project. The project sits in UNHCR’s Digital Service within the Division of External Relations.
The project is practical, field-based and highly collaborative. The outputs will aid UNHCR and partners in their understanding and mitigation of these challenges and offer vital contributions to preventative efforts, including across the UN system.
Under the overall guidance of the Senior Strategic Planning Officer leading the project, this assignment will lead a new and exciting 12 – 16-month project which focuses on piloting interventions aimed to tackle misinformation, disinformation and hate speech in a field setting. The project will be developed together in close collaboration with partners external to UNHCR. It will also involve extensive documentation of the project in each of its phases, project evaluation and writing recommendations for the wider humanitarian space looking to strengthen information integrity. The contractor will collaborate with relevant UNHCR teams at country, regional and global levels, and help strengthen relationships with operational and implementing partners and other stakeholders. This is a unique opportunity to join a high performing team and develop a career working in digital protection for the furtherance of humanitarian goals.

CONTRACT DURATION: TEN(10) MONTHS
CONTRACT LOCATION: Home-based
WORKING ARRANGEMENT: FULL-TIME, 100%

OVERALL PURPOSE OF ASSIGNMENT:
Project management duties including:
– Planning, organizing and strategic support to the HQ and field-based activities of the project, collaborating closely with internal teams to ensure work is carried out in an efficient, aligned and consultative way, in line with the broader organizational strategy and programs.
– Support the development of a digital approach and/or tool or toolkit to strengthen information integrity, including prototyping, testing and iterative product design.
– Help establish, strengthen and systematise strategic engagement with digital platforms, tech companies, academic institutions, and other UNHCR consultants, leveraging their expertise and networks to enhance the impact of the project.
– Participation in and organization of events and external outreach opportunities.
– Provide continuous and systematic project documentation to ensure replicability of the designated project.
– Act as a focal point with external stakeholders including funding bodies and local NGOs, this includes leading contracting work, project kick-off and various consultation processes.
– Assess options, review proposals and make sound judgements when contracting service providers and suppliers as needed.
– Review and amend activities as needed in collaboration with the project leads and undertake additional activiites as required.

Research and analysis duties including:
– Drive in-depth research and analysis efforts to expand the evidence base and provide insight for evidence-based decision making on information integrity.
– Lead on effective, empirically driven design and testing of interventions aimed to strengthening information integrity.
– Provide detailed documentation on methodological decisions and steps undertaken in data collections and analysis, used to assess the efficacy of the intervention which the project aims to test.
– Engage with users, forcibly displaced communities and potential suppliers or partners to ensure robust assessment of options and inform design decisions.
– Collaborate with others to support conducting user experience research and user centred design approaches.
Reporting duties including:
– Preparation of donor reports, and internal reporting as required.
– Preparation of internal briefing documents, project presentations and talking points as needed.

Overall Purpose and Scope of Pilot
• Co-create an approach and scope tools for pre-bunking strategies with private sector partners and forcibly displaced people
• Test the tools in a humanitarian setting impacted by MDH
• Develop and validate digital tools to implement pre-bunking strategies

The Individual Contractor will work collaboratively with the Digital Services and Innovation Service teams co-leading the project.

JOB EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:
Essential
• Minimum of six years of work experience relevant to the function.
• Relevant undergraduate degree.
• A minimum of four years’ experience of working in one of more of the following areas: trust and safety, online harms, digital strategy, digital literacy, digital policy or tech regulation.
• Experience of contributing to large, complex projects for a diverse international organisation.
• Familiarity with user centred design approaches and methodologies
• Experience engaging with forcibly displaced people or others impacted by humanitarian crises is valued highly.
• Quantitative and qualitative research experience including in misinformation, disinformation or hate speech on digital platforms; experience working with experimental research methods and interventions is valued highly.
• Experience of preparing and writing donor reports, progress reports and impact stories. 
• Strong organisational and time-management skills.

Desirable
• Knowledge of the UN, UNHCR and humanitarian sectors, as well as forced displacement, asylum and statelessness broadly.
• Online Trust and safety experience/knowledge of the digital information ecosystem (market)
• Demonstrated ability in managing data and information, including design, processing, analysis, publication and evaluation.
• Excellent research and analytics skills using statistical processing software.

Language
• Fluency in English (required)
• Knowledge of other languages is an asset
Competencies
• Technical familiarity with social media platforms, algorithms, content moderation, community management etc
• Experience with statistical processing software.
• Experience using Microsoft Office (World, Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint and Outlook).
• Ability to manage two reporting lines, including working remotely
• Works well in a multicultural team and has a strong work ethic; strives to deliver high-quality, error-free deliverables potentially targeting different types of users e.g., senior management, fundraising specialists and database managers.

Standard Job Description

Required Languages

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Desired Languages

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Additional Qualifications

Skills

Education

Certifications

Other information

This position doesn’t require a functional clearance

Home-Based

No