UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.  UNFPA’s strategic plan (2022-2025), reaffirms the relevance of the current strategic direction of UNFPA and focuses on three transformative results: to end preventable maternal deaths; end unmet need for family planning; and end gender-based violence and harmful practices. These results capture our strategic commitments on accelerating progress towards realizing the ICPD and SDGs in the Decade of Action leading up to 2030. Our strategic plan calls upon UN Member States, organizations and individuals to “build forward better”, while addressing the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women’s and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, recover lost gains and realize our goals.

In a world where fundamental human rights are at risk, we need principled and ethical staff, who embody these international norms and standards, and who will defend them courageously and with full conviction.

UNFPA is seeking candidates that transform, inspire and deliver high impact and sustained results; we need staff who are transparent, exceptional in how they manage the resources entrusted to them and who commit to deliver excellence in programme results.

In Afghanistan, UNFPA maintains a strong focus on the centrality of Accountability to Affected People (AAP) and inclusive programming in humanitarian action. UNFPA ensures its humanitarian interventions are guided by crisis affected communities, particularly women, girls, young people and persons with disabilities. In doing this, UNFPA uses accountable, protection-sensitive, gender-responsive and inclusive approaches to allow meaningful community participation and accountability across the programmes. Through working with implementing Partners, UNFPA ensures outreach to rural communities is conducted through preferred and trusted means, via localised communication and community engagement mechanisms, which ensures the inclusion of vulnerable and marginalised groups. Additionally, UNFPA leads the PSEA Network and co-leads the AAP and Inclusion Working Group within the Afghanistan humanitarian architecture, mandated to support addressing response-wide accountability. Within this scope, UNFPA works with a wide range of partners/stakeholders to amplify community voices and aspirations in humanitarian response.

The AAP Programme Consultant will perform an inter-agency function and support UNFPA humanitarian programming. UNFPA plays a key role in the coordination of AAP throughout the humanitarian response in Afghanistan through its role as co-lead of the AAP and Inclusion Working Group. UNFPA led the establishment of the Afghanistan Community Voices and Accountability Platform, an interagency system for collecting and collating feedback from communities to inform the humanitarian response across Afghanistan. 
The AAP Programme Consultant will support the AAP coordination as well as implementation of AAP and inclusive approaches and programming in UNFPA’s humanitarian assistance, through supporting the roll-out of collective strategies, response-wide AAP initiatives and programme monitoring in local communities including rural areas.

You will report to Humanitarian Coordinator.

The AAP Programme Consultant will:

I. Support inter-agency coordination on Accountability to Affected People (AAP) and Inclusion

• Support the coordination of AAP and Inclusion at the regional/sub-national level by ensuring strong linkages and intersections with other cross-cutting issues such as gender, disability inclusion, and the centrality of protection, and ensuring that collective needs from humanitarian and BHN partners are regularly addressed.
• Provide technical advice and support to inter-agency coordination of AAP and Inclusion  across the humanitarian response and Basic Human Needs interventions. This includes supporting clusters, regional/provincial coordination mechanisms, and other relevant partners and stakeholders in  integrating and operationalizing AAP and Inclusion within humanitarian and BHN programming.
• Conduct regular mapping of AAP mechanisms, including 4Ws matrices, capacity gaps, and coverage analysis, in coordination with Working Group members and clusters, and engage partners on findings and agreed corrective measures.
• Support the exchange and documentation of good practices and lessons learned, as requested by coordination group members, to strengthen learning and enable innovation in AAP and Inclusive implementation.
• Implement capacity-building and outreach sessions on AAP and Inclusion for clusters and relevant coordination mechanisms.
• Provide technical advice and support to the implementation of inter-agency community feedback and complaints mechanisms, including the Community Voices and Accountability Platform. This includes supporting the communication of results and actions back to affected communities and documenting corrective actions taken by humanitarian and BHN actors.
• Support the establishment and functioning of AAP and Inclusion sub-working groups at the sub-national level, ensuring that community insights are systematically tabled as coordination agenda items and used to advocate for programmatic and operational changes.
• Conduct regular field monitoring missions to rural and hard-to-reach communities (up to 75% of overall responsibilities) to strengthen evidence-based AAP and inclusive  systems and practices.
• Engage with clusters and relevant partners to track and report on AAP indicators within the Humanitarian Response Plan and other BHN coordination frameworks.

II. Support UNFPA humanitarian interventions on AAP and Inclusion

• Collaborate with programme leads and Field Units  to plan, utilize, monitor, and report on AAP-related funds and other programmatic resources with strong cross-cutting accountability and inclusion  components allocated to field offices.
• Provide technical advice and oversight to ensure the effective integration of AAP and inclusive approaches into Area Office programmatic documents, donor proposals and reports, situation reports, and other key planning and reporting tools, ensuring quality assurance, monitoring, and results-based reporting.
• Advise evaluation and M&E colleagues on integrating AAP into data collection, tracking, analysis, and reporting processes, ensuring that AAP indicators, benchmarks, and performance measures are embedded within M&E systems.
• Provide regular field monitoring support to UNFPA programme locations, particularly in hard-to-reach and underserved communities.
• Follow up on, document, and report corrective actions and programme adaptations made in response to community feedback and insights.
• Actively participate in and support UNFPA field office management teams to ensure the strategic integration of AAP and disability inclusion across all field-level programming.
• Ensure that youth community engagement activities are implemented in ways that are responsive to community needs and aligned with UNFPA principles, values, and procedures.
• Ensure that UNFPA Implementing Partners’ management and field staff understand the technical requirements for youth engagement within AAP activities, including youth volunteer network mobilization, capacity building, and budget planning.
• Provide required capacity-building and orientation sessions for youth volunteers involved in AAP activities.
• Proactively engage with youth to strengthen youth networks and promote their meaningful participation in community engagement and accountability processes.
• Perform any other related duties as required or assigned by the supervisor.

Qualifications and Experience: 

Education:  

• Advanced   (Master’s)   degree   in   humanitarian   action, international development, disaster management, social science or related field; A Bachelor’s degree plus 2 years of experience in lieu of Master’s degree will be accepted;

Knowledge and Experience: 

●    At  least  3  years  of  professional  work  experience  in humanitarian  coordination,  cross-cutting  issues,  disaster management, AAP, PSEA, gender, inclusion;
●    Specific experience in AAP, PSEA and Disability Inclusion in disaster response or complex emergencies is desirable;
●    Experience   working   in  the   UN  or  other  international development organisation is an asset;
●    Excellent   oral   and   written   skills;   excellent   drafting, formulation, reporting skills;
●    Accuracy and professionalism in document production and editing;
●    Excellent interpersonal   skills;   culturally   and   socially sensitive; ability to work inclusively and collaboratively with a   range   of   partners,   including   grassroots   community members, religious and youth organisations, and authorities at different levels; familiarity with tools and approaches of communications for development;
●    Ability to work and adapt professionally and effectively in a challenging environment; ability to work effectively in a multicultural team of international and national personnel;
●    Solid  overall  computer  literacy,  including  proficiency  in various MS Office applications (Excel, Word, etc.) and email/internet; familiarity with database management; and office technology equipment;
●    Self-motivated, ability to work with minimum supervision;
●    ability to work with tight deadlines;
●    Sound security awareness;
●    Have affinity with or interest in reproductive health, gender, protection, adolescent and youth, volunteerism as a mechanism for durable development, and the UN System.
 

UNFPA Work Environment:

UNFPA provides a work environment that reflects the values of gender equality, diversity, integrity and healthy work-life balance. We are committed to ensuring gender parity in the organization and therefore encourage women to apply. Individuals from the persons with disabilities, and other underrepresented groups are highly encouraged to apply. Reasonable accommodation may be provided to applicants with disabilities upon request, to support their participation in the recruitment process. UNFPA promotes equal opportunities in terms of appointment, training, compensation and selection for all regardless of personal characteristics and dimensions of diversity. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is at the heart of UNFPA's workforce - click here to learn more.

Disclaimer:

Selection and appointment may be subject to background and reference checks, medical clearance, and other administrative requirements. 

UNFPA does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process and does not concern itself with information on applicants' bank accounts.