National Humanitarian Affairs Specialist/Field support

Details

Mission and objectives

OCHA is part of the United Nations Secretariat responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies. OCHA’s mission is to coordinate the global emergency response to save lives and protect people in humanitarian crisis advocating for effective and principled humanitarian action by all and for all. OCHA core functions are:
Coordination: Coordinate humanitarian response to expand the reach of humanitarian action, improve prioritization and reduce duplication, ensuring that assistance and protection reach the people who need it most.
Advocacy: Raise awareness of forgotten crises, promote respect for international humanitarian law (IHL), bring the voices of crisis-affected people to the forefront, and help people obtain access to humanitarian assistance.
Policy: Support setting the agenda for humanitarian sector reform and effectiveness in response to a shifting global landscape, new global frameworks, and increased capacities of national Governments and local actors.
Humanitarian Financing: Mobilize and engage the full range of financing instruments, mechanisms, and partners to ensure that growing humanitarian needs are met and the large array of global humanitarian financing mechanisms are complementary among themselves and coherent with development funding.
Information Management: Provide information management services to the humanitarian community to inform a rapid, effective, and principled response.
OCHA’s country office in Myanmar was established in 2008 to respond to cyclone Nargis. The overall aim of the office is to assist humanitarian action undertaken by the Humanitarian Country Team, which comprises UN agencies, international and national non-governmental organizations, and observers (i.e. Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, donors). OCHA Myanmar has a network of sub-offices around the country.

Context

Non-Family Duty Station

Task description

1. Ensures effective coordination of preparedness, relief/recovery response
 Supports/Leads in emergency preparedness and response activities, including elaboration/updating contingency plans, assessment tools elaboration and administration capacity building on disaster management; and simulation exercises;
 Supports the planning, implementation and strengthening of inclusive coordination in his/her area of responsibilities (AOR), identifies gaps and suggests corrective actions and ensures inclusion of cross-cutting issues, such as gender mainstreaming, etc.
 Establishes/maintains effective communication, including translation, on a regular basis with stakeholders, including de facto government officials, UN agencies and NGOs to foster coordination in preparedness and response efforts; and advises on solutions to operational challenges.
 Supports/organizes area-based coordination meetings; takes notes; prepares readouts etc during formal and informal; internal/external meetings with partners/stakeholders.
 Support Mandalay sub-office in coordinating with different stakeholders.
 Depending on situation, supports inter-agency/Inter-Cluster Coordination forums as well as other internal and external meetings, as required.
 Support/facilitates building sector-specific strategies and institutions that will address is-sues at the field level in collaboration with relevant stakeholders.
 Depending on situation, support Field Office’s access negotiation efforts, including building of actors/partners contacts database.
 Conduct field missions as required.
2. Ensure effective support in the areas of humanitarian access and coordination and liaise with relevant stakeholders
 Contribute to the preparation of regular updates, reports, and briefing notes that highlight key access issues and developments for internal and external stakeholders.
 Collect and compile data on operational constraints from humanitarian partners and other credible sources. Conduct access-related analyses, as needed.
 Provides inputs to regular internal updates and analysis on the security and political environment. Contributes to collective analysis and advocacy on humanitarian access within the area of responsibility (AoR).
 Supports dedicated information sharing mechanisms and maintains close contact with the Access Unit.
 Supports advocacy for the broader humanitarian community for humanitarian access at local and central level, including principled access to hard-to-reach areas.
 Supports OCHA’s engagement with CSOs/LNGOs, with a specific focus on facilitating principled humanitarian access.
 Supports the strengthening of engagement with all relevant stakeholders to facilitate access to hard-to-reach areas.
3. Provides/elaborates/disseminates and translation of relevant information on humanitarian/recovery activities, in close consultation with stakeholders and facilitates knowledge sharing;
 Monitors developments in the AOR, collects, analyzes information to identify trends, challenges and solutions;
 Prepares internal/external reports/analysis/daily updates/translation of the situation, sup-ports information collection and development of information products such as the ‘who does what where’ database and resulting map products;
 Supports monitoring, identification of gaps, lessons learned and evaluations, in collabo-ration with stakeholders;
 Contributes to knowledge networks and communities of practice.
4. Performs other duties that may be required by the supervisor