Protection Associate

POSITION SUMMARY:

HIAS Kenya seeks a Protection Associate to provide comprehensive protection services to vulnerable refugee populations. This role supports HIAS’s protection programs through assessments, case management, referrals, and follow-up to ensure timely and appropriate services for clients in need. The position strengthens HIAS’s overall protection response by promoting and protecting the rights of the most vulnerable refugees, asylum seekers, and other forcibly displaced persons.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Provide legal protection services using a protection case management approach, ensuring client-centered, rights-based, and survivor-informed legal assistance for refugees, asylum seekers, and other forcibly displaced persons.
• Conduct legal-focused protection assessments as part of case intake to identify legal risks, documentation gaps, detention concerns, custody issues, and access-to-justice barriers.
• Open, manage, and follow up legal protection cases in accordance with HIAS Protection Case Management SOPs, ensuring clear case objectives, informed consent, confidentiality, and safe information sharing.
• Develop legal case plans in collaboration with clients, outlining legal actions, referral needs, timelines, responsible actors, and risk mitigation measures, and regularly review progress.
• Provide legal counseling, information, and representation (where applicable), including:
  • Child custody and child protection–related legal matters
  • Legal support for survivors of violence against women, girls, men, and boys
  • Civil documentation, asylum procedures, and arrest or detention-related cases
• Ensure regular client follow-up on legal cases, providing timely feedback on case status, court processes, referrals, and outcomes, and adjusting case plans as circumstances evolve.
• Facilitate safe and confidential referrals between legal services and other protection subsectors, ensuring continuity of care and coordinated response.
• Provide legal services through Huduma Mtaani and other outreach/service delivery points, integrating legal screening into broader protection case identification and tracking.
• Conduct border and detention monitoring, documenting legal protection risks, and initiating individual or group case management interventions where rights violations are identified.
• Maintain accurate legal case documentation and case notes within the data management system, ensuring compliance with data protection and ethical standards.
• Provide technical guidance and supervision to protection monitors, ensuring they identify, refer, and document legal protection cases correctly using standardized tools.
• Review, analyze, and validate protection monitoring reports to identify emerging legal protection trends and translate findings into case referrals, advocacy priorities, and program adjustments.
• Develop legal protection training curricula and deliver capacity-building sessions for protection monitors, community structures, and partners on legal rights, referral pathways, and case management principles.
• Participate in inter-agency legal and protection coordination forums, contributing case-level insights to inform advocacy, system strengthening, and policy engagement.
• Contribute to legal protection and advocacy reporting, using aggregated case data and trends to support efforts aimed at improving the legal and operational environment for refugees and asylum seekers.
• Support community-based legal protection interventions, strengthening community awareness, early identification, and referral of legal protection cases.
• Assist in resource mobilization efforts by providing technical inputs, case statistics, and impact narratives drawn from legal case management outcomes.
• Assist in protection mainstreaming by providing insight into protection interventions for vulnerable refugees
• Facilitate stakeholder training on refugee protection.

Reporting

• Prepare accurate weekly and monthly activity reports highlighting protection trends, challenges, and service gaps.
• Monitor legal protection trends through data analysis and prepare summaries for presentation in psychosocial panels.
• Produce monthly analyses on emerging protection issues to inform programming, referrals, and community awareness activities.

QUALIFICATIONS & REQUIREMENTS:

• Bachelor’s degree in law and an advocate to the High Court of Kenya.
• Minimum of 1-2 years’ previous job experience related to refugee protection.
• Demonstrated experience working directly with refugees.
• Good knowledge of human rights and protection mainstreaming principles.
• Knowledge of Accountability to Affected Population.
• Knowledge in PSEA and Anti-Fraud

Remuneration: Gross of 79,875 per month.

HIRING PROCESS:

We are committed to a fair and respectful hiring process, and we do our absolute best to respond to every applicant. We prioritize communication and transparency with all candidates, even those who are not moving forward. Here’s a snapshot of our hiring process:

Step 1: Submit your application!

Step 2: Phone screen with a HIAS recruiter.

Step 3: Video interview with the hiring manager.

Step 4: Video interview with a panel of HIAS employees.

Step 5: Online reference check with SkillSurvey.

Step 6: Offer and background check with Shield Screening or ESR.

Step 7: Start your professional journey with HIAS!

Note: Some of our hiring processes may vary, and not all candidates will advance to each step.

ABOUT US:

Over one hundred years ago, the Jewish community founded HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) in New York City, the immigrant gateway to America. Supporting Jews fleeing persecution and poverty in Eastern Europe, our founders were guided by the traditions, texts and history of the Jewish people—a history of oppression, displacement and diaspora. HIAS has since helped generations of Jews facing violence because of who they were, and HIAS remains committed to helping Jewish refugees anywhere in the world. Today, our clients at HIAS come from diverse faiths, ethnicities and backgrounds, as do our staff. We bring our experience, history and values to our work across five continents, ensuring that refugees today receive the vital services and opportunities they need to thrive.

HIAS is a learning community, committed to diversity and inclusion. We do our work with integrity, accountability, transparency, and a commitment to the highest ethical standards. We seek employees from diverse backgrounds and life experiences to join our teams located in the United States and across the globe. People who identify as BIPOC, people with disabilities, people from the LGBTQ+ community and people with lived experiences of forced displacement or immigration are all encouraged to apply. We are committed to building a diverse workforce that reflects our vision, mission and values.

VISION:

HIAS stands for a world in which refugees find welcome, safety, and opportunity.

MISSION:

Drawing on our Jewish values and history, HIAS provides vital services to refugees and asylum seekers around the world and advocates for their fundamental rights so they can rebuild their lives.

VALUES:

Welcome • Acogimiento • Hospitalité • (Hachnasat Orchim)

We Welcome the Stranger

Justice • Justicia • Justice • (Tzedek)

We Pursue Justice

Empathy • Empatía • Empathie • (Chesed)

We Approach our Clients with Empathy

Partnership • Compañerismo • Coopération • (Chevruta)

We Believe in Changing the World through Partnership

Courage • Coraje • Courage • (Ometz)

We Act with Courage to Build a Better World

Resilience • Resiliencia • Résilience • (Ruach)

We Adapt and Thrive, Continuously Demonstrating our Resilience

DIVERSITY:

HIAS is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. As an equal opportunity employer, all qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, ethnic background, ancestry, citizenship status, religious creed, age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, registered domestic partner or civil union status, familial status, pregnancy, childbirth, military status, protected veteran status, political orientation or other legally protected status.

SAFEGUARDING:

HIAS is committed to the protection of children, vulnerable adults and any other person from any harm caused directly or indirectly due to their coming into contact with HIAS. We will not tolerate sexual exploitation, abuse or any form of child abuse or neglect by our staff or associated personnel. Any candidate offered a job with HIAS will be expected to sign and adhere to HIAS’ Code of Conduct and Safeguarding policies. All offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks, which can include criminal records. HIAS also participates in the Inter-Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. In line with this Scheme, we will request information from job applicants’ previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. Likewise, HIAS will share this information when other organizations inquire about current and former HIAS staff as part of their recruitment process. By submitting an application, the job applicant confirms their understanding of these recruitment procedures.

Note: Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Important: Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

HIAS is an equal opportunity employer, does not charge candidates for recruitment, and dissociates itself from any entity defrauding candidates.