Media and Communications Assistant

Details

Mission and objectives

Established in 1951 as the leading inter-governmental organization in the field of migration, International Organization for Migration (IOM) works closely with governments, international organizations and non-governmental partners to ensure humane and orderly migration for the benefit of all. With 173 member states, a further 8 states holding observer status and offices in over 100 countries, IOM works in four broad areas of migration management: migration and development, facilitating migration, regulating migration and forced migration. IOM established an office in Suva in 2016 after Fiji became an IOM member state in 2013. IOM Fiji works with the Government of Fiji and the neighboring Pacific Island Countries on mi-gration issues concerning climate change, labour mobility, development, counter-trafficking, disaster resilience, emergency and preparedness and migrant protection.

Context

Fiji faces a number of environmental challenges because it is highly vulnerable to climatological, hydrological, and meteorological hazards, as well as geophysical events. These vulnerabilities are exacerbated through the effects of climate change causing extreme weather events to occur with greater frequency and intensity. The impact of disasters on Fiji continues to undermine the country's development objectives and poses several risks across communities. The risks posed by disasters have the biggest impact on women and children, and other vulnerable groups – particularly in displacement settings (e.g. evacuation centres). Research shows that gender-based violence (GBV) increases in prevalence and severity in communities experiencing a disaster or humanitarian emergency, and the environment in the aftermath of these events puts women at an even greater risk of GBV, especially where crises result in displacement. IOM recognises that a natural hazard results in a disaster when the event exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. Consequently, IOM is prioritising building Fijian communities’ resilience to minimise the impact of hazards through a multi-year project. Through this prioritisation on resilience, IOM aims to strengthen, support, and build on the preparedness and capacity of communities and families to break recurrent cycles of displacement. By utilising a humanitarian development nexus approach, IOM will address the systemic drivers of vulnerability resulting from natural disasters by reducing the adverse impacts of cyclical stresses, and consequently promote sustainable development. While the occurrence and severity of natural hazards cannot be reduced in Fiji, mitigating vulnerability of evacuees is one of the key opportunities for decreasing the disaster risk and enhancing the resilience of Fiji’s communities and systems. The Media and Communications Officer will be responsible for overseeing media, communications and advocacy tasks for the Strengthening National and Community Resilience to Disaster and Displacement Risks in the Republic of Fiji project for IOM in Fiji. He/she will be responsible for developing, planning, managing and coordinating media, communication and advocacy tasks related to strengthening national and community resilience to disaster and displacement risks.

Task description

Under the direct supervision of the Humanitarian Programme Manager and overall supervision of the Chief of Mission Fiji, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks: 1. With the guidance of the Humanitarian Programme Manager, support the development of a Communications Strategy for the project and manage the implementation of the IOM Communications Strategy by overseeing and monitoring the strategy workplan and calendar of activities, coordinating content production, and managing information flows. 2. Contribute to media liaison efforts and organize media briefings for the CoM to enhance the visibility of IOM’s activities. 3. Support the media and communications focal point for the IOM Fiji Mission. 4. Work closely with the Humanitarian Programme Manager and coordinate the development of media releases in consultation with Regional Office of Asia Pacific (ROAP) media unit on sensitive and emerging issues. 5. Support the preparation of draft talking points and statements for the CoM. 6. Assists with collecting timely and accurate data and ensure alignment with Country Of-fice and global key messages and terminology 7. Proactively suggest opportunities and provide input to the development of content for public communication such as op-eds, joint articles with partners, posts for CoM’s social media, etc.). 8. Support the Humanitarian Programme Manager in contributing to the drafting of high-quality English material for IOM products, the media (e.g. press releases, op-eds etc.), periodicals, reports and books and edits and quality controls drafts prepared by other officers. 9. Coordinate with ROAP to support the production of materials for electronic/voice/visual and social media outreach. 10. Undertake duty travel in the field to support media outreach activities, gather material for multi-media projects and provide support to media training to individuals and teams as required. 11. Increase the impact of IOM Fiji’s overall online and offline presence and brand recognition by participating in developing innovative communications campaigns for the project. 12. Coordinate, update, and monitor the impact of project and IOM Fiji’s communications via media monitoring, as well as social media and Google analytics. 13. Perform such other duties as may be assigned.