Background/IRC Summary:

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 20 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity, and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

IRC has been working in Pakistan for over 40 years, and manages and delivers large, complex programs to meet the needs in health, education, protection, WASH, and livelihoods for displaced, poor, and disaster-affected communities. IRC works in partnership with local government and non-governmental organizations and is currently present in four provinces including Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and the newly Merged Districts of KP.

Job Overview: The Integrated Protection Coordinator leads the IRC’s efforts to create and manage a robust Violence Prevention and Response (Protection) team able to meet safety and protection needs of people affected by conflict, displacement, and COVID-19, reducing risk and responding to cases of violence, child abuse, coercion and deprivation, as well as mainstreaming protection throughout the IRC and partners’ response in Pakistan. This includes supporting IRCs three protection specializations: Protection and Rule of Law (PRoL), Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE), and Child Protection (CP). This role will include mainstreaming and training to IRC and partners’ staff. Protection is a signature Outcome of the IRC’s strategy and the Integrated Protection Coordinator will set and lead a clear direction/strategy, build the capacity of the team, drive forward implementation and ensure qualitative data is produced and analyzed effectively.

  Major Responsibilities:

Program Strategy & Design

• Provide strategic direction, leadership, and overall technical and management support to protection programming in Pakistan, ensuring it is needs-based, context-appropriate and conflict-sensitive, meets IRC and international standards for programming, responsive, coherent, collaborative, and operationally feasible.
• Proactively continue to grow the Pakistan protection portfolio through development of concept notes and proposals to existing and new donors, maintaining a coherent strategy across IRC’s areas of intervention.
• Ensuring and strengthening the integrated approach of Protection with Economic Recovery and Development, Education, Health (inclusive of MHPSS and health sector).
• Lead assessments and context-appropriate research aimed at generating a strong evidence base for IRC protection programming, as well as informing IRC advocacy.
• Support the greater sharing and use of ethical research and learning within IRC’s program sectors, including by contributing to program development and design with the three specializations, to ensure interventions are responsive to needs and informed by a sound understanding of the environment(s).
• Responsible to ensure that programs meet stated objectives within the timeframe and budget, with specific attention to ensuring quality interventions.
• Develop budgets and spending plans and monitor project expenditure through BvA (Budget versus Actual) reports and other tools, with support from the grants and finance teams.
• Ensure that all new budgets accurately reflect program activities and required staffing levels.
• Coordinate design and budget between PRoL, CP and WPE in line with each sectors specialty and standards.

Program Management

• Ensure projects and activities are of high technical quality, meet humanitarian standards, mainstream protection, align with IRC’s Outcomes and Evidence Framework, and respond to client’s feedback.
• Collaborate closely with Technical Unit advisors to ensure relevant support, tools and resources are being provided and integrated into programming.
• Lead on the development of a Protection Integrated Work Plan to ensure programming reflects standards for the best quality and modalities of integration and joint work remain context and need-appropriate where applicable while maintaining specialization of each sector (WPE, CP, ProL).
• Ensure close alignment and coherence with IRC country, regional and global strategy.
• Proactively identify, assess, supervise and implement measures to reduce or control risks that may impact program delivery, quality or compliance
• Identify initiatives for integrated / joint programming, and promote joint work across all protection teams (CP, WPE and PRoL) to improve the quality of programming, ensuring specialization remains for greater response, and a holistic approach to addressing safety risks.
• Develop of the internal Standard Operating Procedures for integrated protection on referrals.
• Provide technical backstopping to partners through specialized managers/deputy coordinators ongoing capacity building and field monitoring support.

Staff Management & Development

• Plan, recruit, supervise and develop the team and individuals needed to achieve program goals.
• Coach, train, and mentor IRC and partner staff with the aim of strengthening their technical capacity, exchanging knowledge within the team, and providing professional development guidance.
• Supervise and mentor direct-report staff, including communicating clear expectations, setting performance objectives, providing regular and timely performance feedback, and performance reviews.
• Promote and monitor staff care and well-being.

Reporting

• Ensure that all internal and external reporting requirements are met; promote confidentiality, dignity, and safety our clients in the way statistics are reported; that reports are of a high quality and are submitted on time
• Ensure technical quality and accuracy of PRoL, WPE, and CP program reports.
• Lead the compilation and analysis of protection monitoring information for sharing with partners and donors.
• Ensure that protection information is used effectively and ethically in line with data standards to advocate on important issues as well as longer term planning for target populations

Coordination and Representation

• Represent IRC in National Protection, GBV and Child Protection working groups
• Attend relevant coordination forums in country.
• Collaborate with INGO, LNGO, governmental and other non-governmental stakeholders as and when required.
• Explore the potential of the IRC to address unmet needs of vulnerable groups in client communities within the parameters of the Strategic Action Plan and sector priorities.

Key Working Relationships

Position Reports to: Head of Technical Excellence (Pakistan)

Position directly supervises: Protection Manager, Signpost Editorial Manager, Women Protection and Empowerment Deputy Coordinator, Child Protection Manager

Indirect Reporting: Other Program staff in Protection team.

Job Requirements:

Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in social work, human rights, international law, social science or related field.
• Five to seven years’ experience implementing PRoL, CP and GBV programming in an emergency or complex emergency context and demonstrable understanding of the relevance of international humanitarian law and human rights law to humanitarian action;
• Demonstrable knowledge of and commitment to women’s protection, empowerment and gender-based violence, Child Protection and Protection Rule of Law.
• Applied experience in Gender-Based Violence, Child Protection or Protection and Rule of Law case management;
• Knowledge and applied experience in the GBV Guiding Principles;
• Ability to lead and influence others to mainstream protection across units;
• Strong team and people leadership, management, organizational and development skills;
• Strong program and budget management skills including planning and reporting across multiple grants;
• Strong written and oral communication skills, effective in representation and liaison with external parties;
• Works well in and promotes teamwork, comfortable in a multi-cultural environment, flexible and able to handle pressure effectively and productively;
• Fluent in spoken and written English

Others: Strong computer literacy: must be competent in the use of Windows MS office programs (Word, Excel), email programs, etc.

Professional Standards

The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.