Background
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are core principles at UNDP: we value diversity as an expression of the multiplicity of nations and cultures where we operate, we foster inclusion as a way of ensuring all personnel are empowered to contribute to our mission, and we ensure equity and fairness in all our actions. Taking a 'leave no one behind' approach to our diversity efforts means increasing representation of underserved populations. People who identify as belonging to marginalized or excluded populations are strongly encouraged to apply. Learn more about working at UNDP including our values and [inspiring stories.](https://www.undp.org/careers)
UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the UN Development System and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP's policy work carried out at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels, forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan.
Within the GPN, the Crisis Bureau guides UNDP's corporate crisis and fragility related strategies and vision for crisis prevention, response, and recovery. The Bureau has the responsibility for support to prevention, crisis response, resilience, recovery, and peacebuilding work under the auspices of UNDP's Strategic Plan. Crisis Bureau staff provide global strategic advice to UNDP management and technical advice to regional hubs and Country Offices; advocate for UNDP corporate messages, represent UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora, and engage in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas. As part of the Global Policy Network (GPN), the Crisis Bureau works in an integrated manner with UNDP's Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) ensuring that issues are fully integrated into UNDP's development programmes. Peace outcomes are delivered in a coherent manner, working across the GPN that includes the Governance team in Bureau of Policy and Programme Support.
The Crisis Bureau (CB) is galvanizing UNDP's efforts to support countries to build resilience by strengthening capacities to anticipate, prevent, respond to, and recover from the impacts of crises and shocks on progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These efforts are geared towards reducing countries' reliance on external humanitarian relief and peace interventions while risk-informing development planning and decision-making to minimize the creation of new risks. UNDP seeks to ensure that development perspectives are introduced as early as possible in response and recovery cycles, including approaching recovery as an opportunity to reset development practices onto more resilient, green, and equitable pathways.
UNDP's corporate Crisis Offer seeks to consolidate and upgrade UNDP's crisis mechanisms to break the cycle of protracted crisis and fragility, to get ahead of the crisis curve through anticipating and preventing crises, and to sustain development throughout crisis by investing in hope – from jobs to justice. These efforts seek to mitigate potential shocks and disruptions, protect hard-won development gains, provide sustained accompaniment throughout crises, pursue pathways out of crisis and build longer-term resilience. The CB supports Regional Bureaux (RBx) and Country Offices (COs) to ensure risk-informed and preventive approaches are integrated into development plans, priorities, and programmes.
In this context and to prepare for, respond to, and support recovery from major crises, UNDP Country Offices (COs) have often to meet multiple demands and pressures in addition to their usual workload. Under these circumstances, COs often have a critical need for additional capacity to help them meet these demands and facilitate essential roles in these areas. UNDP has, through the Country Support Management Team (CSMT) of the CB, several deployable capacities that can be drawn upon, including SURGE Advisors, external programme and operations experts from the GPN/ExpRes roster and from Stand-by Partners. UNDP periodically commissions reviews of its SURGE support and deployments mechanism to ensure systems remain up to date and new technology and ideas are brought on board.
Job Purpose and Organizational Context
Under the supervision of the Head of the Country Support Management Team, the Team Leader for Africa manages and oversees the Crisis Bureau interventions in the Africa Region in close collaboration with GPN Teams and the Regional Bureau for Africa (RBA). S/he is responsible to planning and allocating resource in line with GPN's vision and agreed priorities and to provide strong, coherent, and coordinated support to COs in the Africa region. S/he provides advice and guidance for UNDP's positioning for crisis-related programming at global level, lead and manage the Africa Team, including knowledge management and undertakes partnerships, representation, and advocacy as required.
UNDP adopts a portfolio approach to accommodate changing business needs and leverage linkages across interventions to achieve its strategic goals. This is a recognition of interconnected nature of development risks & crises that the world is facing and that call for assembling of multidisciplinary teams for an integrated & systemic response. Therefore, UNDP personnel are expected to work across issues, units, functions, teams and projects in multidisciplinary teams in order to enhance and enable horizontal collaboration
Duties and Responsibilities
1. Strategic country support coordination and timely delivert of technical assistance, programme, and operational support.
- Ensure timely application of agreed business processes to guarantee predictable country support for COs on crisis prevention, response and recovery issues.
- Stay abreast of developing crisis in the Africa region and identify/understand the regional and country support needs as it relates to crisis and fragility.
- Conduct prioritisation exercise with RBA to determine region priorities, taking into account local needs, capacities and resources, as well as corporate and partnership crisis related commitments.
- Proactively contribute to the roll out of the New Way of Working at country level.
- Support the formulation of Country Programme Documents in priority countries in consultation with the GPN Teams, ensuring that programmes are crisis/conflict sensitive and reflect crisis-related priorities in fragile contexts.
- Ensure effective coordination across the GPN to ensure the provision of crisis and fragility-related synchronized, consistent, coherent, and comprehensive support and advisory services.
- Working with the GPN Teams, contribute to ensuring quality assurance and relevance of crisis prevention, response, stabilisation, and recovery programmes and ensuring alignment with corporate strategies and policies through the review of substantive inputs to established country programming processes (e.g. CCA, UNDAF, CPD, Integrated Strategic Framework and other joint analysis and programming tools).
- Ensure continuous liaison with RBA, Regional Hub and the Sub-Regional Platforms and GPN focal points to ensure alignment with regional priorities, integration of RBA inputs into GPN/CB country support, and coherence with related development practices.
- Ensure that the country information databases are up to date on crisis and fragility related matters and informed by steady observation and monitoring of events, regular communications with RBA, internal analysis and outside specialized source.
- Support initiatives to strengthen the capacity of COs for crisis preparedness, response and recovery through organizational learning activities in collaboration with GPN Teams (e.g., training packages and modules, workshops, web-based materials, webinars, etc.).
- Ensure the continuous collation of lessons learned and best practices in crisis preparedness, response and recovery.
2. Timely management and coordination of crisis response
- Ensure effective leadership in coordination and in recovery programming in times of crisis, the implementation of timely, sequenced and appropriate UNDP response and recovery activities, safe and sustainable response actions and timely and commensurate funding allocations.
- Supervise the secretariat function of temporary support structures, timely organization of coordination meetings, information sharing and proper record of decisions.
- Advise on Level Declaration, composition of the SURGE Planning Team, deployment of First Responders, selection of SURGE Advisors, etc.
- Coordinate the preparation of all background material submitted to the Crisis Board, including the Exigency Memo, the SURGE Plan, Business Cases and After-Action Reviews.
- Manage crisis response allocations and ensure timely delivery of the funds.
- Support the establishment of the Crisis Management Support Team when L2 or L3 crisis have been declared.
- Follow UNDP rules and procedures and agreed internal business processes for the sourcing, selection, deployment, management and exit of advisor deployed in response to crisis.
- Support country level post-crisis assessment processes (e.g. recovery and peacebuilding assessments / post disaster needs assessments) from a process design and coordination perspective, working closely with GPN technical teams and RBA.
- Advise and guide the development of recovery plans, recovery frameworks, strategic response plans, etc.
- Lead or be part of the SURGE planning team.
3. Partnership and collaboration with UN and non-UN partners
- Strategic engagement and effective liaison with relevant partners, including UN entities, in relation to operational country specific issues in close collaboration with RBA.
- Maintain strong relationships within the UN System and collaborates closely with UN system partners on country specific crisis situations, in particular with : (i) DPPA and DPO on issues of integration and mission transition, and in the context of countries with peacekeeping and special political missions; (ii) DPPA/PBF in relation to peacebuilding project development and implementation support; (iii) OCHA on issues related to humanitarian response plans, humanitarian planning at country level and the operationalization of the New Way of Working at country Level; (iv) UN Agencies, Funds and Programmes, to ensure coherent responses.
- As appropriate, liaise and collaborate with the WB and other IFIs on country-specific issues in particular on PDNA and RPBA in close collaboration with the Crisis Bureau Policy, Knowledge and Partnerships Team.
- As agreed with RBA, support the participation of UNDP in Inter-Agency Task Forces and in Peacekeeping or Special Political Mission Planning.
- In close coordination with RBA, BERA and relevant GPN teams, keep track of the organization of country specific and crisis related International Pledging Conferences and ensure CSMT support as required.
4. Planning for the Africa region and deployment for immediate crisis response
- Brokers prioritization / organizational focus on high-impact crisis support vis-à-vis the broader GPN and Regional Bureau and aligns the use of resources behind these priorities.
- Leads the establishment of a work plans for Africa and internal collaboration practices, role modeling how integrated work approaches are translated in UNDP's crisis support.
- Management of the programme support function for Africa, ensuring that robust systems are in place to monitor the status of Crisis Bureau support together with financial and risk management obligations (i.e. associated budgets and expenditure reports in QUANTIUM, etc.).
- Overseeing the contracting and supervision of consultants to support programme development in the Africa Team.
- As required, support post-crisis assessment processes (e.g. RPBA / PDNA) from a process design and coordination perspective, working closely with GPN teams and RBA;
- Participate in inter-agency mission and coordinate inputs from various GPN teams;
- Support country level preparedness planning and programme criticality;
5. Knowledge Development and Management
- Actively contribute to community of practices to ensure wide dissemination of best practices and lessons learned from the implementation of programmes related to crisis and fragility in Africa;
- Influence and promote the advance of policy dialogue in thematic relevant to the Africa Region such as stabilisation and prevention through synthesis of knowledge emerging from the implementation of programmes in-country;
- Oversee the knowledge extraction, analysis, documentation, codification of results/lessons learned in the implementation of programmed in priority countries, in line with guidelines and corporate tools, including After Action Reviews.;
- Support the capacity development of UNDP staff in the Africa region in application of tools and practices related to crisis and fragility.
The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organisation.
Supervisory/Managerial Responsibilities:
Supervision of the Africa Team staff and ensuring that performance management practices contribute to continuous improvement in team cohesion and individual staff development.
Competencies
Core:
Achieve Results:
- Set and align challenging, achievable objectives for multiple projects, have lasting impact.
Think Innovatively:
- Proactively mitigate potential risks, develop new ideas to solve complex problems
Learn Continuously.
- Create and act on opportunities to expand horizons, diversify experiences.
Adapt with Agility:
- Proactively initiate and champion change, manage multiple competing demands.
Act with Determination:
- Think beyond immediate task/barriers and take action to achieve greater results
Engage and Partner:
- Political savvy, navigate complex landscape, champion inter-agency collaboration.
Enable Diversity and Inclusion:
- Appreciate benefits of diverse workforce and champion inclusivity.
Cross-Functional & Technical competencies
2030 Agenda: Engagement & Effectiveness Crisis management / Country Management
Support:
- Crisis Coordination.
2030 Agenda: Engagement & Effectiveness - Crisis management / Country Management
Support:
- Crisis Deployment Capacity.
2030 Agenda: Engagement & Effectiveness - Crisis management / Country Management
Support:
- Crisis Programming.
2030 Agenda: Engagement & Effectiveness - Crisis management / Country Management
Support:
- Humanitarian inter-agency coordination.
Business Development - Knowledge Generation:
- Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for content, or responsive to a stated need.
2030 Agenda: Engagement & Effectiveness - Crisis Policy and Tools:
- Ability to lead integral work of teams utilizing expertise, vision, problem-solving capacity, and collaborative energy in professional area of expertise.
Required Skills and Experience
Education:
- Advanced university degree (Master's or equivalent) in international development, law, international affairs, Public administration, business administration, development economics, or other related field or a first-level university degree (Bachelor's or equivalent) in a relevant field plus two additional years of relevant work experience
Experience:
- 10 years of professional work experience leading teams, providing policy and programming advice, and pioneering approaches in results-based management, knowledge generation, and dissemination to advance sustainable agenda at the international level. Candidates in possession of only a first level university degree require 12 years of relevant work experience in order to be eligible for consideration.
- First-hand expertise in crisis response, including managing rapid response in crisis settings and complex emergencies;
- Strong knowledge of crisis prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery (both disasters and conflicts); resilience, stabilization, transition, etc.); international crisis response architecture (including humanitarian system; peacekeeping operations, special political missions, etc.); gender equality in the context of programming in humanitarian and early recovery settings);
- Proven ability to coordinate crisis response with UN entities, including knowledge of UN policies and procedures on crisis response and complex emergencies, as well as related management of information;
- Knowledge of UN/UNDP's crisis response, prevention and recovery mandate, policy, and tools is highly desirable.
- Strong and relevant experience working in crisis-affected countries is an asset. Experience working as part of UN management in this context highly desirable.
- Knowledge of and relevant work experience in the Africa region is an asset.
Language requirement:
- Fluency in English, both written and oral.
- Good command of French highly desirable.
- Working knowledge of another UN language is an asset.
Note:
Please note that continuance of appointment beyond the initial 12 months is contingent upon the successful completion of a probationary period.
Disclaimer
[Important information for US Permanent Residents ('Green Card' holders)](https://jobs.undp.org/cj_us_permanent_card_holders.cfm)
Under US immigration law, acceptance of a staff position with UNDP, an international organization, may have significant implications for US Permanent Residents. UNDP advises applicants for all professional level posts that they must relinquish their US Permanent Resident status and accept a G-4 visa, or have submitted a valid application for US citizenship prior to commencement of employment.
UNDP is not in a position to provide advice or assistance on applying for US citizenship and therefore applicants are advised to seek the advice of competent immigration lawyers regarding any applications.
Applicant information about UNDP rosters
Note: UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement. We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.
Non-discrimination
UNDP has a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual exploitation and misconduct, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.
UNDP is an equal opportunity and inclusive employer that does not discriminate based on race, sex, gender identity, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, age, language, social origin or other status.
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