Position:                           Protection Officer 

Number of Positions:    1

Reports to:                       Protection Team Leader

Duty station:                   Wau

All NRC employees are expected to work in accordance with the organization’s core values- dedication, innovation, inclusivity, and accountability. These attitudes and beliefs shall guide our actions and relationships.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is an independent humanitarian organization. Our task is to improve international protection of refugees and internally displaced persons, and to offer humanitarian assistance regardless of race, nationality or political views. Our efforts are founded on the principle that all human beings are entitled to a life in peace, liberty, safety and equality, as this is expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. NRC has been working in South Sudan since 2004. Our core activities include Education, Shelter & WASH, Food Security & Livelihoods (FSL), and Information, Counselling & Legal Assistance (ICLA).

All NRC Employees are expected to work in accordance with the organization’s values. to be dedicated,innovative, inclusive and accountable are attitude and believe that shall guide our actions and relationships.

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) Project, which is being implemented in Wau, like other NRC programmes, is designed to provide community engagement to facilitate realistic programming for IDPs and returnees in South Sudan, thereby contributing to the improvement of their living conditions and the development of viable and sustainable solutions.

1. Role and responsibilities

The Protection and Gender Officer will ensure that activities are implemented in non-discriminatory ways that promote access to services for all, safety and dignity of the people receiving humanitarian assistance in strict adherence to protection principles and minimum standards on inclusion of age, gender and diversity.

General responsibilities 

1. With reference to the NRC Protection Policy and Inclusion Guidelines and Tools, the Protection team will assist, the Protection and Gender Officer in the integration of protection and inclusion components within project proposals, strategies, activities and reports.
2. Represent NRC at field level cluster meetings or other coordination forums thus: Protection cluster, GBV sub-cluster, Child Protection sub-cluster or any other forums deemed necessary.
3. Participate in NRC assessments, joint cluster or inter-agency assessments, with specific focus on conflict sensitivity, integrating protection and inclusion outcomes within the assessment tools, beneficiary targeting tools and then support analysis of the final reports.
4. Highlight and flag protection issues observed during activities with the project staffs and report to line manager to ensure that issue are tackled in timely manner and sufficiently incorporated into ongoing and planned responses.
5. Design, prepare for and deliver/facilitate trainings, workshops and dialogues under the technical supervision of the protection specialist.
6. Contribute to and pursue regular lesson learning within the protection team, continuously advance protection analysis and build productive relationships with stakeholders

Specific responsibilities:

1. Stakeholders Analysis: Map and analyze the stakeholders, their interrelationships, roles, influence and their potential impact on the safety, dignity and access to services for beneficiaries during the intervention.
2. Referral Mechanism: Support the establishment or strengthen referral of beneficiaries with specific needs by establishing an internal NRC referral mechanisms and pathway for NRC internal projects and then external referrals to NRC partners or collaborating organization.
3. Protection Advocacy and Context Analysis: Undertake a protection context analysis with support of Protection Specialist to identify the potential protection risks, analyze Do No Harm considerations for NRC interventions, and support preventive and responsive measures to address or reduce these threats with specific focus on persons with specific needs. In line with the context analysis support and contribute to protection advocacy efforts at all levels.
4. Beneficiary Identification Tools and Guidelines: Support or review the selection criteria for the targeting NRC beneficiaries thereby ensuring the sex, age, disability and diversity components are taken into considerations. Furthermore, support NRC teams in defining and getting a shared understanding on who are beneficiaries are by compiling and sharing a comprehensive list of the different categories of persons with specific needs or extremely vulnerable individuals in accordance with NRC Protection, Inclusion Guideline and Tools.
5. Community Based Committees: Ensure gender principles of equitable participation in community based committees is encouraged and supported.
6. Participation of Persons with Specific Needs in NRC activities: Ensure that persons with specific needs are identified proactively and equally participate in NRC activities.
7. Complaint mechanisms: Support M&E teams in establishing and maintaining inclusive complaint mechanisms as well as developing a database to register and address complaints from the beneficiaries thus ensuring accountability to the beneficiaries.
8. Trainings and workshops: Design, prepare for and facilitate trainings for NRC staff, community members/leaders and community structures whilst undertaking implementations on Gender, SGBV, Child Protection, inclusion and protection principles with support from Inclusion and Protection advisors.
9. Sensitisation and Awareness raising: support, integrate and deliver inclusion and protection components into sensitisation and awareness sessions.
10. Information, Education and Communication Materials: Participation or leading in the development of IEC materials.
11. Reporting: Drafting weekly and monthly reports as well as project and donor reports whilst highlighting the needs, response, gaps and recommendations for persons with specific needs disaggregated by sex, age, disability and diversity.
12. Ensuring sound security and safety measures during all fields missions
13. Take responsibility for any materials, tools, vehicles, communication equipment provided by NRC
14. Any other duty that will be assigned by the Project Manager or Protection Specialist.
15. Competencies 

a. Value driven competencies

NRC’s values are: Dedicated, Innovated, Inclusive and Accountable.

b. Behavioral competencies

• Ability to work under stressful conditions, meet deadlines and be thorough and detail-oriented
• Be highly reliable, mature and able to work collaboratively in a team as well as be able to work independently
• Proven communication, interpersonal, representation, and negotiation skills
• Proven facilitation and presentation skills in trainings, workshops and dialogues to elicit participation and foster community-driven processes.
• Ability to mobilize local communities and work closely with local leaderships and authorities
• Ability to act as an interpreter in conveying information from one language to another
• Ability to work within different cultural contexts requiring cultural sensitivity
• Flexible, creative and co-operative, and a sense of humor is an asset
• Transparent and accountable
• Handling insecure environments
• All employees of the Norwegian Refugee Council should adhere to our Codes of Conduct and the four organizational values: Dedicated, innovative, inclusive and accountable
  • Relevant higher education (Law, Social Science) with Protection and Gender background

c. Professional competencies, interpersonal, skills and experience

Generic professional competencies for this position: 

• Minimum 3 years of working experience in a humanitarian/recovery context within Protection, preferably with an international NGO
• Proven experience in emergency relief operations and recovery with focus on protection, food security and livelihoods as well as education is essential.
• Experience working in complex and volatile contexts
• Computer skills (primarily MS Office applications), especially Microsoft Excel.
• Knowledge of the context in South Sudan, particularly in Western Bahr el Ghazal and the former Greater Bahr el Ghazal.
• Experience with project start up.
• Fluency in English, both written and verbal, and Arabic is essential. Knowledge in other local languages is a strong advantage.
• Valid national identity documents are a requirement

1. Performance Management

The employee will be accountable for the responsibilities and the competencies, in accordance with the NRC Performance Management Manual. The following documents will be used for performance reviews:

• The Job Description
• The Work and Development Plan
• The Mid-term/End-of-trial Period Performance Review Template
• The End-term Performance Review Template
• The NRC Competency Framework

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Geneva leads NRC’s representation with the IASC and UN agencies, and coordinates donor engagement with the UN and Swiss donors. NRC strives to assist and protect vulnerable and displaced people during crises, especially in situations of conflict. Established in 1946, NRC is an independent, humanitarian, non-profit, non-governmental organisation working in around 31 countries with approximately 14’000 staff. NRC employs a rights based approach, challenging those with responsibility to uphold the rights of displaced people set out within national and International Laws. NRC endeavors to secure the acceptance of local stakeholders for activities and is committed to the principles of humanity, neutrality, independence and impartiality.

NRC seeks to engage with all relevant actors in order to promote the full respect for the rights of displaced and vulnerable people; secure and maintain access for humanitarian operations and promote the achievement of durable solutions. NRC Geneva, with the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), are NRC’s primary presence in Geneva.