Deadline: 29 February 2016
Location: Serbia
Organization: International Rescue Committee
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the
world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their
lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers
lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from
war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we
restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to
endure. The IRC provides lifesaving direct services to women and children in
emergencies and is a global leader in developing best practice and
evidence-based approaches to programming for the protection and empowerment of
women, girls and boys. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.
This is true of our response to the European refugee crisis
that captured the world’s attention from mid-2015 and on. While refugees
and migrants have been entering Europe for years, due to a change in migration
patterns since mid-2015, the number of people entering Europe, mainly via
Greece but also through other border crossings surged to unprecedented levels.
According to numbers from the UNHCR and European Union, more than one million
people arrived in Europe during 2015. Although men initially made up the
majority of refugees arriving in Europe, that trend shifted and by early
January women and children made up more than half of overall arrivals.
Approximately 35% of arriving refugees are children under the age of 18
according to UNICEF.
From Greece, refugees and migrants continue onwards, moving
through the Balkans to final destinations in Europe, with often varying
movements due to border closures and restrictions. Currently, governments in
the Balkans continue to allow border crossing of Syrian, Iraqis and Afghan
nationals. Other nationals, unable to travel onward along established routes,
have been forced back into the hands of smugglers, in desperate attempts to
make it to northern Europe.
Throughout the journey from countries of origin to Greece
and beyond, refugees and migrants face high risks of violence, extortion and
exploitation, sexual violence, transactional sex, and human trafficking. Women
and girls face particularly high risks of certain forms of violence, including
sexual violence by smugglers, criminal groups, and others they encounter along
the route. Unaccompanied and separated children travelling through Europe face
increased risk of violence, abuse and exploitation as well as falling into
trafficking and smuggling networks.
Background
The IRC first responded to the unfolding European refugee
crisis in July 2015, when it deployed an Emergency Response Team to the Greek
island of Lesvos. The island was and has since continued to be the epicenter of
the crisis. Lesvos has received between fifty percent to two-thirds of all
arrivals to Greece – which, roughly coincides with the same percentage of all
arrivals to Europe.
The infrastructure on the island, and public entities lacked
the wherewithal to respond to a crisis of this magnitude and complexity. The
IRC responded by providing emergency water and sanitation programming, and
protection programming in Kara Tepe – a notoriously underserved overflow
camp. Since July 2015, the IRC’s presence and programming has expanded to
include a headquarters office in the island’s capital, Mytilini; a field office
on the north of the island where the majority of refugees arrive, in Molyvos;
and, more recently established a first of its kind transit site along the island’s
northern coast.
Programmatically, IRC has expanded its WASH and women and
children’s protection programming across the island. This includes supporting
safe transportation for refugees from points of arrival to registration
facilities. With support from Google and in partnership with Mercy Corps, the
IRC established a web-based information platform that empowers refugees with
much-needed information about the registration process and related
considerations associated with the journey from Greece and across the Balkans.
In late September 2015, the IRC assessed the plight of
refugees in Serbia, and the capacity of government and civil society
organizations to provide effective assistance to those in need. While the
official posture vis-à-vis refugees transiting the country was accommodating,
entities – official, local civil society and the international community – were
struggling to cope with the influx of refugees that only continued to grow
throughout the fall.
As a result, the IRC established a presence in Serbia, in
part to provide support – funding, and technical expertise – to an array of
high-caliber local organizations mobilized to aid refugees. The decision
was also driven by fear that border closures, e.g. in Hungary and the temporary
close of the Croatia border, would result in significant numbers of refugees
being stranded in Serbia.
With these local partners, the IRC has developed a
protection-focused approach drawing on the presence of these organizations at
key border crossing and/or based on their depth of experience with human rights
and related areas. The IRC is providing women’s protection and
empowerment (WPE) and child protection technical expertise to bolster the
capacity of key local partners, and is in the final stages of negotiating with
UNHCR to expand the scale and scope of the IRC’s support to local organizations
focused on assisting women and children.
Challenges: To date, the crisis has provided
significant challenges to all those responding to urgent needs along the
route. In particular, governments and other key actors – including, the
IRC – have struggled to contend with the following challenges, among others:
Magnitude: The magnitude of the crisis has
routinely surprised even the most informed observers. When the IRC first
responded to the crisis, the total number of daily arrivals for all of Greece
was roughly 1,000 people per day. Within six weeks, the number of arrivals each
day for Lesvos alone was 3,000. And, in October 2015, between 5-7,000
arrivals landed on the island daily on a regular basis. While numbers
have tapered off during the winter months, arrivals are still at unprecedented
numbers, with children making up around 35% and women making up more than 20%
according to the latest figures from UNHCR. Critically, numbers of daily
arrivals are widely expected to reach staggering figures in the spring. Despite
much progress in the overall relief effort, infrastructure, staffing –
including, technical expertise for WPE and child protection, and programming
for women and children is not in place to meet the challenges expected in the
coming months.
Complexity: The complexity of the crisis is
widely misunderstood. While the attention of the media and other key
stakeholders is mostly focused on the impact of refugees on individual members
states across Europe, and the challenges posed by the crisis to the European
Union, the crisis is impacted by developments in at least three regions.
In addition to political and security-related developments across Europe, dynamics
inside Syria and countries surrounding it have direct impact on the flow of
refugees into Greece and beyond. As do developments elsewhere in North
Africa and the Middle East. And, the deteriorating security conditions in
Afghanistan have also played a significant part in an increasingly large
percentage of Afghans fleeing the country and attempting to make it to northern
Europe. Moreover, though during the middle to latter half of 2015 saw
what became a relatively regular route by which refugees made their way from
Turkey to Greece and through the Balkans to Europe, there are presently a
proliferation of other and new routes coming into play. Political and security
related developments – i.e., an increasingly less-welcoming reception in many
EU countries, including border closers and threats of more to come, and
selective admission of only certain nationalities – have only forced refugees
back into the hands of smugglers in hopes of finding other routes to Europe.
Transitory nature: Refugees wish to move as
quickly as possible along the route to their intended final destination. This
presents the entire relief effort with significant challenges, including the
IRC. Refugees with serious injuries, for example, have refused assistance
believing that to accept would result in slowing their journey, separating them
from the group they are traveling with, and keeping them from ultimately
reaching northern Europe. Much more needs to be done – and, innovative new
approaches better tailored to the uniqueness of this crisis need to be
developed – to put in place and administer programming to assist women and
children through the continuum of care, and to provide a referral pathway
across Europe.
Lack of capacity: While many countries along the
route lack the political will to provide support, the fact is that even those
inclined to welcome refugees lack the capacity to meet a crisis of this
magnitude and complexity. Also, though many European countries have
experienced admitting and assisting refugees from the former Yugoslavia as a
result of the wars that ravaged the Balkans, they lack the technical expertise
to effectively administer aid to this new caseload – notably for women and
children.
Lack of attention to the specific needs of women and
children: From the outset of the crisis humanitarian assessments
rarely included any meaningful focus on the experience of women and children,
or on the nature of programming tailored to their needs. The persistent lack of
attention to the specific needs of women and children gave humanitarian actors
a false perception that the problem did not exist, and therefore drastically
delayed action. In early 2016 several reports finally highlighted the dearth of
services specifically targeting and addressing the needs of women and children.
Response services and safe spaces are lacking and do not facilitate access for
women and children; humanitarian teams do not include an adequate number of
technically qualified staff to provide appropriate intake, care and referral;
and violence prevention programming almost non-existent.
Prospect of refugees getting ‘stuck’: All
along the route, and for the duration of the crisis, there has been a tacit
agreement between host governments and communities on the one hand, and
refugees on the other: that as long as refugees are allowed to continue
along the route from Greece through the Balkans at pace, the flow can continue
to move. In the coming months, it is widely feared that additional border
closures could result in refugees being stuck for extended durations. No
country along the route to northern Europe is prepared for such a possibility,
presenting new and significant challenges to the relief effort.
Dearth of funding from tradition donors: Despite
the high-profile nature of the crisis, a confounding lack of traditional donor
support has been available for organizations responding to the crisis.Many
organizations responding to the crisis, including the IRC, have received
significant funds from an outpouring of generosity and support from an array of
private donors. Despite this generosity, serious questions need to be asked
about the medium-to-long term viability of relief efforts in an environment so
lacking in traditional donor support.
Opportunity
Despite – and, in part, because of – these challenges, the
IRC is in a strong position to begin more fully exploring region/crisis-wide
programming to assist women and children. To date, even though the crisis
is regional in nature, responses have been atomized and disjointed. The
IRC, given our now more appropriately scaled presence on Lesvos and in Serbia,
has the opportunity to begin connecting our assistance along the route (from
Greece through to destination countries) to provide direct services, safe
spaces, case management and a referral mechanism for women and children, in
part to better ensure a continuity of care for them. Protection teams on
the ground are expanding existing programming, but more needs to be done.
In particular, the IRC is now well positioned to exert
leadership – including, thought leadership, operational savvy and programmatic
expertise – with regard to better meeting the needs of women and children in
this unique crisis. The senior leadership of the IRC’s response to the
European refugee crisis, and that of the senior leadership of the organization
as a whole, believe this to be the critical window of opportunity for IRC to
establish itself as the key service provider for WPE and child protection
programming in this context.
In order to do so, the IRC is searching for a high-caliber,
widely respected, recognized expert in women and children protection-focused
programming to lead our development of a regional strategy to support women and
children and our significant expansion of such programming. The Initiative
Director for Women and Children in the European Refugee Crisis reports directly
to the IRC Regional Director, with a dotted line to the IRC Technical Director
for the New Technical Unit focused on protection.
Scope:
- Rapidly
map the current landscape of women and children’s programming, and key
considerations that will impact strategy and implementation;
- Make
recommendations for the establishment of mechanisms through which
women and children can safely inform and provide feedback on the IRC’s
protection programming and wider response in the region;
- Develop
and articulate a strategy for the IRC’s expanded women and children
protection programming in collaboration with IRC’s regional protection
team;
- Develop
an implementation plan – including with specific timeframe for rollout,
staffing plan, and approach to connecting programming efforts across the
region/route – to rapidly put in place expanded services and programming
for women and children, in line with international standards and best
practices;
- Meet
donors and other key stakeholders to determine opportunities for the IRC
to engage, and to understand the funding landscape;
- Identify
and support the development of strategic and operational partnerships
focused on strengthening the overall humanitarian response to the needs of
women and children in the region;
- Guide
and actively participate in related business development, and related
fundraising efforts; and,
- Develop
communications strategy to announce the IRC’s expanded women and children
protection programming;
- Liaise
with the IRC’s HQ-based technical experts on protection to inform
programmatic approaches.
Requirements
- Education:
University degree and technical accreditation or equivalent
- Experience:
5+ years of experience developing and implementing technical protection
programming, including in emergencies or complex contexts
- Experience
leading women’s protection and empowerment and/or child protection
programming, with demonstrated ability and understanding of both fields
- Demonstrated
ability to work effectively with government, UN, NGO and community
stakeholders to develop support for humanitarian priorities and advocacy
initiatives
- Experience
developing and managing large, complex humanitarian programs, including
oversight of budget and staffing structures, and input into resource
development strategies and funding proposals
- Demonstrated
experience with strong representation and negotiations skills and ability
to bring together partners to discuss complicated and sensitive issues
across international borders.
IRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer. IRC considers
all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color,
national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran
status or disability.
How to apply:
Apply online, here.
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