Re-advertisement: Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance Adviser - HR - Afghanistan

Do you want to help lead one of the world’s largest and longest-running humanitarian legal aid programmes?

We are looking for a legally-trained professional with a high capacity for strategic and innovative thinking, who excels in programme development and is passionate about access to justice for refugees and internally displaced people. The successful candidate will have three to six years’ experience working on access to justice/legal aid in an advisory or management capacity, ideally in early recovery, post-conflict or humanitarian contexts, and is looking to step up to a senior leadership role with one of the world’s most reputable humanitarian organisations.

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NRC in Afghanistan

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) established operations in Afghanistan in 2003. One of the first programmes we established was our global access to justice programme for displaced people, which is referred to as ‘ICLA’ (Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance). Afghanistan remains a protracted and complex emergency. Conflict-induced displacement and recurrent natural disasters occur at the same time as ongoing return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan and Iran. We respond, carrying out legal assistance work from ten offices across Afghanistan, including in hard-to-access provinces, working in together with our other Education, Shelter, Food & Livelihoods, Camp Management and Emergency programmes.

Through our access to justice programme (ICLA), we promote durable solutions for internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugee-returnees in Afghanistan, and contribute to the rule of law. We do this by focusing on two of NRC’s global thematic areas of legal expertise, within humanitarian contexts. That is, housing, land and property (HLP) rights and legal identity, including civil documentation (LCD).

About the position

Our ICLA programme is currently expanding in Afghanistan, thematically, geographically and with further human resources. Currently we have around 145 national employees, many of whom are experienced legal staff. This new role is being introduced to support the ICLA Specialist, who leads the nation-wide programme. As Adviser, you would take over management and supervision of at least three of the current nine projects, which include two NRC-led consortium. These are funded by DFID, EU, DANIDA, CHF, NORAD, NMFA, BPRM, GIZ and Dutch MFA. You would also support the Specialist and Project Manager's with proposal development and fundraising work.

While the Specialist leads strategic development and expands ICLA’s work within the two thematic areas of HLP and LCD, one of your key roles is to strategically evaluate and strengthen several key current modalities of work, including the way the programme builds the capacity of customary justice leaders, and state decision-makers; the ways in which our staff use and teach collaborative dispute resolution skills; and the content and method of information provision and raising rights awareness – looking at new technologies such as videoed role-plays and hotlines. You would also take the lead on increasing the programme’s access in ‘hard-to-reach’ areas of Afghanistan, and consider how we might best reach beneficiaries in contested areas, and/or areas controlled by opposition armed groups.

The ICLA Adviser reports to ICLA Specialist.

Generic responsibilities:

1. Responsible for supporting the implementation of ICLA projects and ensuring high technical quality consistent with ICLA Afghanistan strategies.
2. Contribute to the development of country, area and ICLA strategies. Initiate and participate in the development of relevant ICLA projects.
3. Coordinate and support the management ICLA project implementations (activities, budget and project documentation) in line with proposal, strategies and donor requirements.
4. Provide technical direction and ensure high technical quality of projects and synergies with other core competencies.
5. Ensure that projects target beneficiaries most in need of protection. Explore and assess new and better ways to assist.
6. Build the capacity of staff and transfer key skills.
7. Liaise and collaborate with relevant local authorities and other key stakeholders and represent ICLA at external fora.
8. Contribute to fundraising, develop funding proposals, budgets and donor reports.
9. Promote the rights of IDPs/returnees in line with the advocacy strategy.

Specific responsibilities

• Strategically develop, strengthen and monitor new activities relating to capacity building of duty-bearers; collaborative dispute resolution; and new modalities for information provision and awareness raising.

• Oversee the implementation of these activities and build the capacity of national ICLA staff, particularly in these areas.

• Coordinate and oversee several multi-area ICLA projects. This requires field trips to support project implementation, and being the focal point for leading and reviewing budget revisions, logframes activity plans and donor reporting.

• Strengthen the programme’s access in ‘hard to reach’ areas and in relation to target populations.

• Support field Project Managers and Coordinators to develop detailed project work plans and facilitate recruitment as necessary.

• Strengthen and consolidate systems and standardisation within the national ICLA programme, including reporting, database management, assessments, beneficiary selection and outreach work.

• Understand the changing context of IDP and refugee returnee trends and work with the ICLA team to ensure the programme responds to the changing needs.

Our ideal candidate has

• Minimum 3 years’ experience working as an Advisor or Manager on access to justice/legal aid, ideally in a humanitarian/recovery context

• Holds a Law degree and/or relevant Masters degree

• Solid programme development and project management skills

• Strong understanding of customary justice, capacity building and collaborative dispute resolution

• Experience working in complex and insecure contexts         

• Fluency in English, both written and verbal
  
  

Additional Information

Contract period: 12 months

Salary/benefits: According to NRC’s salary scale and terms and conditions.

Duty station: Kabul, Afghanistan

Grade: 8 (See attached for NRC Grade Structure) 

Travel: Approximately 50% travel to field offices in Afghanistan

This is an unaccompanied post/non family duty station, with shared housing/ accommodation of moderate standard.
Due to the unstable security situation, recreational and social facilities are limited.
All international staff working and residing in Afghanistan are obliged to pay income tax to the Afghanistan authorities.
Approved health certificate will be requested before contract start.
Selected candidate need to provide certified University diplomas prior to applying for visa to Afghanistan.

Please note that you are required to enter the geographical location for all your previous positions while registering your CV. There is no specific field for this information in our CV form, but you can use the "Company name" field for both company and location.