UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people.

We work to ensure that everybody has the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge, having fled violence, persecution, war or disaster at home.

Since 1950, we have faced multiple crises on multiple continents, and provided vital assistance to refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced and stateless people, many of whom have nobody left to turn to.

We help to save lives and build better futures for millions forced from home.

The Office of the UNHCR was established on 14 December 1950 by the UN General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country (www.unhcr.org).
The crisis in northern Mozambique remains fundamentally a protection crisis, now in its ninth year since the conflict began in 2017, and is shaped by persistent insecurity, fluid displacement patterns, and growing humanitarian strain. Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) continue to operate across wide areas of Cabo Delgado and Nampula, shifting locations and tactics in a highly dynamic security environment that generates simultaneous new displacement, ongoing returns, and prolonged displacement. These overlapping movements often affect the same households and communities, creating chronic instability and evolving protection risks. The population affected by the crisis is increasingly diverse and vulnerable. Children, women, older persons, and persons with disabilities face distinct and compounding risks, including family separation, gender-based violence, child protection violations, mobility constraints, exclusion from assistance, and loss of civil documentation. Persons with disabilities and older people are particularly affected by repeated displacement and return, often struggling to access shelters, latrines, water points, health services, and humanitarian distributions, and facing heightened isolation and protection risks in both displacement sites and areas of return.


Northern Mozambique therefore remains in a protracted non-international armed conflict, where civilians face both direct violence and systemic protection risks driven by forced mobility, climate shocks, and insufficient service coverage. Protection needs now cut across all phases of displacement — emergency flight, protracted displacement, and fragile or premature return —, requiring a flexible, area-based, and protection-centered response capable of adapting to a volatile, under-resourced, and climate-exposed operating environment. In this volatile, and rapidly changing environment, the Protection Cluster plays a central role in ensuring that civilian safety, rights, and dignity remain at the core of the humanitarian response. It provides the primary platform for coordinating protection actors, analyzing risks, and aligning responses across displacement, return, and protracted settings, and serves as the main interface with authorities and other clusters on protection-sensitive planning.

The Cluster’s effectiveness is critical for navigating fluid population movements, access constraints, and shrinking humanitarian footprints, and for ensuring that the most at-risk are identified, referred, and supported. In this context, the candidate will be expected to lead protection analysis and prioritization, strengthen area-based coordination, ensure meaningful integration of the Humanitarian Reset, advocate for protection-centered decision-making on displacement and returns, and support partners in operating safely and coherently across rapidly changing operational conditions.

Within the delegated authority and under the supervision of the Senior Protection Cluster Coordination Officer or his/her designated mandated representative(s), the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks.
•Assist the Protection Cluster Coordinator (PC) with a particular emphasis on information management and communication among Cluster members and other relevant partners, as well as training and capacity –building for members and partners;

•Interact with PC members and maintain close contact with OCHA for the collection and transmission of periodic reports and documents required; elaborate routines for the timely production of these reports;

•Ensure liaison with thematic working groups (Area of Responsibility - AoRs) under the PC (SGBV, Child Protection, House Land and Property Issues), as well as Protection working groups /focal points at the territorial Level and national protection cluster to ensure follow-up of recommendations and alerts, input into joint analysis and advocacy initiatives, and into protection strategies.

.Compile and review thematic information/data from PC members with a view to drafting a consolidate Protection Cluster periodic newsletters on a monthly basis;

•Assist in the collection of information and analysis of protection data, in the form of reports and/or maps, in particular in view of advocacy with the UN Peace-Keeping Mission on priority protection areas;

•Alert and consult with nuclear PC members in case of emergency and assist in organizing joint evaluation protection missions;

Assist in the research of data and analysis in support to the Protection Cluster advocacy initiatives, organize advocacy for a with relevant target groups as deemed appropriate;

Coordinate the promotion of international refugee law principles and standards and IDP legislation or policies ensuring that all sectors and clusters fulfill their responsibilities mainstreaming protection;

•Refer PC recommendations to members and UN Agencies/NGOs concerned and ensure/follow-up their implementation;

•Coordinate the development of Protection strategies in context of Pooled Fund process, ensure timely information of PC members of applicable rules and procedures, ensure that submissions are timely received and ensure review of submission as per Pooled Fund procedure;

•Ensure that the perspectives, capacities, needs and resources of the persons of concerns are reflected in the protection strategy, planning processes and operations plan addressing the specific protection needs of women and men, children, youth and older persons, persons with disabilities, minority groups such as sexual minorities and persons living with HIV/AIDS;

•Ensure legal assistance is accessible to persons of concern; liaise with competent authorities to ensure the issuance of personal and other relevant documents to persons of concern (civil documentation, in particular birth certificates).

•Maintain protection presence through regular field missions and reports, making direct contact with persons of concern, host communities, local authorities and partners. Contribute to ensuring that the response of the Protection Cluster is grounded in an AGD-compliant strategy which covers all assessed and prioritized protection needs of the affected populations.

Support the follow-up of all matters linked to resource mobilization, including the Humanitarian Action Plan.

•Design, plan and deliver training in coordination with order actors for target audience as per PC recommendations, in particular with regard to protection mainstreaming, age & gender issues, Protection Monitoring and advocacy, follow-up the impact of training in accordance with indicators.

•Elaborate essential documents for the Cluster, as well as preparatory documents, draft agenda and convene Protection Cluster meetings, and draft meeting minutes.