Senior Protection Assistant

Organizational Context

The Senior Protection Assistant operates within UNHCR, a global organization dedicated to protecting refugees and stateless persons. This role supports the delivery of protection services, ensuring adherence to international standards and contributing to comprehensive protection strategies. The incumbent will engage with persons of concern, local authorities, and partners to uphold the rights and well-being of those UNHCR serves.

Job Purpose

The Senior Protection Assistant's primary purpose is to provide essential protection support to persons of concern (PoC) by monitoring and implementing protection standards, operational procedures, and practices in line with international norms. This role involves offering functional protection guidance to information management and programme staff, ensuring timely and effective protection services. The incumbent actively identifies opportunities to integrate protection methodologies into operational responses and contributes to the development of a robust protection strategy. A key aspect of the role is fostering meaningful engagement with PoC, ensuring their voices are heard in decisions affecting their rights and well-being. This involves building and maintaining strong relationships with communities of concern, local authorities, and various protection and assistance partners to advocate for and safeguard the rights of PoC.

Responsibilities

The Senior Protection Assistant is responsible for consistently applying International and National Law, along with applicable UN/UNHCR and IASC policies, standards, and codes of conduct. This includes providing direct counseling on protection issues to PoC and liaising with relevant authorities to facilitate the issuance of essential personal and other documentation. The role supports protection-related activities based on Age, Gender, and Diversity (AGD) programming in collaboration with implementing and operational partners. Key duties involve conducting preliminary information gathering and interviews to support eligibility assessments, status determination, durable solutions, and social needs evaluations. The incumbent contributes to initiatives aimed at identifying, preventing, and reducing statelessness, and participates in developing country-level child protection and education plans as integral parts of the overall protection strategy. Monitoring Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all protection and solutions activities is crucial, as is participating in individual case management, including cases involving Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and child protection. The role involves monitoring and reporting on protection incidents such as refoulement and expulsion, and assisting in identifying durable solutions like voluntary repatriation, local integration, and resettlement. Furthermore, the Senior Protection Assistant contributes to the design, implementation, and evaluation of protection-related AGD-based programming, drafts reports and correspondence, updates databases, and compiles statistics. Enhancing national and local protection capacities through various initiatives is also a responsibility, as is selecting PoC for preliminary interviews and determining appropriate information sharing. The role also entails enforcing integrity in protection service delivery by local implementing partners and managing risks and opportunities impacting the area of responsibility.

Work Experience

2 years of relevant experience with a High School Diploma, or 1 year of relevant work experience with a Bachelor's degree or equivalent.

Skills

IT-Computer Literacy PR-Protection-related guidelines, standards and indicators PR-Refugee Protection Principles and Framework

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