Humanitarian Policy, Advocacy, Influencing and Campaigns at Plan International

Reports To: Global Humanitarian Director
Grade: GH5
Travel required: Up to 40% travel required

Role Purpose

• Humanitarian scale up is an ambitious agenda in Plan International’s new global strategy (2022-2027). During the strategy period, we are determined to increase the impact, influence, identity and income related to our humanitarian work.
• The objective of this role is to provide thought leadership and direct Plan International's global humanitarian policy and advocacy strategy, external representation, manage humanitarian advocacy team and support deployments and to strengthen Plan International’s reputation as a principled and influential humanitarian agency.

Dimensions of the Role

• Manages one core deployable specialist.
• Matrix management - one education advocacy advisor.
• During large scale emergencies and deployments for RED alerts/ ‘corporate priority emergencies’: Coordinate and ‘task manage’ the humanitarian advocacy expertise

Accountabilities
Thought leadership and representation:

• Engages with the humanitarian eco system, identifies new opportunities and leads the humanitarian influencing and advocacy agenda in relevant global policy processes, including the G7, G20, African Union et al. Contributes to key UN events.
• Monitors emerging hot button humanitarian issues and informs and guides the organisation.
• Leads and mobilises collective actions with humanitarian external organisations and networks, including Advocacy Working Group led by OCHA, Global Protection Cluster or Famine Compact.
• Develops new and strengthens existing partnerships.
• Provides strategic guidance to the CEO, Global Humanitarian Director and Senior Leadership in high level humanitarian events and representation.
• Provides country, liaison, regional and country offices with the necessary support in their high-level representation with humanitarian donors, teams, donors, governments and UN agencies.
• Strategically represents Plan International, the CEO, Global Humanitarian Director and leadership team in crucial humanitarian networks, with decision-makers, donors, diplomatic bodies as needed.

Humanitarian Advocacy and Policy:

• Leads Plan International’s position in humanitarian discourse, topics and global agendas to increase the reputation and profiling of Plan International and promote gender and age approaches in the sector.
• Leads the Girls in Crisis Advocacy plan, the humanitarian component of the Global Advocacy Strategy and its monitoring.
• Drives measurable advocacy results and impact.
• Guides and when necessary, leads Plan International’s position in escalating or unexpected crises to ensure high impact advocacy and the promotion of children’s rights and gender equality in fragile and conflict settings.
• Coordinates the humanitarian influencing work across the organisation, setting up priorities and inspiring collective actions.
• Works in collaboration with liaison, national, regional and country offices, as well as Gender Transformative Programming and Policy unit (GTPP) and other teams in the Global Hub (GH).
• Works in close partnership with the Research and Knowledge Management team and ensures that all humanitarian advocacy is evidenced-based and reflects the priorities of girls and young women living in fragile and conflict settings.
• Guarantees the high-quality standards of humanitarian influencing positioning and products as well as the support to communication and GTPP teams of the GH.

Leadership and management:

• Effective management of the humanitarian advocacy and policy GH team, deployable specialists and roster members.
• Constant guidance and professional growth of the humanitarian advocacy team.
• Supports different offices across the organisation in the recruitment of humanitarian advocacy professionals when necessary.
• Support to recruit appropriate professionals in other teams (specifically recruitment of advocacy and influencing positions).
• Develops humanitarian influencing training for inductions and professional development as needed.
• With delegated responsibility, represents the Global Humanitarian Director in internal and external fora.
• Ensures that Plan International’s global policies for Safeguarding Children and Young People and Gender Equality and Inclusion are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility.
• This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures

Key Relationships

• External: ICVA, IASC, ECHO, African Union, OCHA and key UN agencies, humanitarian organisations. This is to foster collaborative action.
• Internal: Media and communications team, UN liaison offices, African Union liaison office, Relevant country offices and regional offices, Gender Transformative Programming and Policy team, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning team. This is to mobilise and foster collaborative action.

Technical Expertise, Skills and Knowledge
Essential:

• First-hand experience in leading global and country humanitarian policy and advocacy strategies and its implementation.
• Senior leadership and high-level representation experience.
• Experience of working in and on active conflicts and different forms of complex emergencies.
• Extensive experience in the humanitarian system, including leading inter-agency initiatives.
• Deep understanding of International Humanitarian Law and human rights, refugee law
• Extensive record of advocacy successes in crises settings
• Previous experience in external communications and media engagement.
• Strong examples of written humanitarian policy and advocacy briefs.
• Fluent written and spoken English skills
• Ability to analyse policy and complex data and to convert them into crisp advocacy asks.
• Proven experience in providing strategic direction and clear recommendations to deliver on advocacy aims.
• Proven experience in providing strategic direction and clear recommendations to deliver on advocacy aims.
• Excellent networking and coordination skills.
• Excellent communication skills, inter-personal skills and diplomatic skills.
• Ability to think strategically in the short, medium, and long-term
• Skills in coordinating and facilitating advocacy implementation efforts by a large group of actors

Desirable:

• Fluent written and spoken French, Spanish or Arabic
• Experience managing geographically dispersed teams.

Physical Environment:

• The nature of this role means that there may be occasions when you will be required to work outside of typical working hours. This will be reasonably compensated, typically as time off in lieu.
• This role will typically involve 40% or more travel which will sometimes be at short notice to humanitarian contexts that may be insecure or with limited facilities. Staff wellbeing, safety and security is of upmost importance to us and time taken travelling over non-working hours will be reasonably compensated, typically as time off in lieu.

Level Of Contact With Children:

• Low contact: No contact or very low frequency of interaction