Protection Manager at Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)

Background / Context

• NRC has been present in Nigeria since 2015 and has been working to help displacement affected communities meet their basic needs, improve their livelihoods, access essential services, and enhance their resilience to future shocks through our six core competencies: Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Shelter, Education, Information-Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA), Livelihoods and Food Security (LFS), Camp Management, and Protection.
• NRC provides immediate assistance during the onset of emergencies through the Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM). With a workforce of 370 staff and presence in key locations such as Maiduguri (in Borno State), Yola (in Adamawa state) and JOS (in Plateau state), NRC is able to respond to the needs of those affected by the conflict across North-East, and North Central Nigeria.
• These strategic locations have allowed NRC greater reach from the north and south parts of the North-East and North Central region, and allowed NRC to contribute to bridging the gap between humanitarian aid and development cooperation, including through focusing on equitable access to basic services and strengthening the rights of displaced people and returnees. In addition to the Country Office, and the above mentioned Area Offices, NRC has sub-offices structures in Dikwa, Monguno, Biu, Mubi, Pulka and Gwoza.

Role and Responsibilities

• The role of the Protection Manager is to develop, lead and support the protection programming. This includes providing strategic direction, contributing to fundraising, and capacity building of a protection team.

Generic Responsibilities (Max 10):

• Develop Protection strategy, technical guidance and Macro LFAs (Logical Frameworks).
• Compliance with and adherence to NRC policies, guidance and procedures.
• Contribute to fundraising, develop and revise funding proposal, budgets and donor reports Identify trends technical standards and donor priorities.
• Follow up on compliance with contractual commitments across Core Competencies (CCs), ensure high technical quality and synergies in project implementation.
• Provide technical direction and project implementation support
• Ensure that key learnings are extracted from CC implementation, and incorporate them in CC and staff development processes.
• Provide systematic training and build capacity of technical staff.
• Represent NRC in relevant forums/clusters, including with national authorities and donors.
• Promote the rights of IDPs/returnees in line with the advocacy strategy

Specific Responsibilities:
These responsibilities shall be adapted to the particularities of the job location and context, phase of operation, strategic focus and type of programme intervention. This section shall be revised whenever a new employee is hired or the context changes significantly:

• Provide protection inputs on proposals from other sectors to ensure safe programming is taken into consideration from the design phase across NRC programming.
• Lead on the design and delivery of capacity building activities to strengthen the capacity of field staff to understand and deliver safe programming, based on NRC Protection Policy, Roadmap and training materials.
• Ensure that protection monitoring, and evaluation systems are effectively designed and integrated into all stages of the NRC programs.
• Develop briefing notes, reports and strategies on protection issues and engagement with duty bearers to fulfil their responsibilities in collaboration with the Advocacy Manager.
• Design and technically oversee protection-focused projects, strengthening community-based protection mechanisms and specialized service provision as relevant, ensuring protection is a strong, evidence-based element of NRC’s country program.
• Work with the protection cluster lead agencies to ensure coherence and harmonization of humanitarian protection standards and interventions in Nigeria.
• Responsible for the development and the finalization of policies and systems and to the setup of an in country PSEA (Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse) framework and structure.
• Support the roll-out of SIP (Safe Inclusive Programming) framework together with the Head of Programme and the Regional Consultant.

Critical Interfaces:

• By interfaces, NRC means processes and projects that are interlinked with other departments/units or persons. Relevant interfaces for this position are:
• Programme development: Head of Programme, Grants Manager, M&E Manager and Core Competencies Specialists
• Proposal development: Area Managers, Project Managers.
• Quality control/ support: Area Managers.
• Capacity development: Project staff, Area Managers

Scale and Scope of Position

• Staff: Numbers and titles of staff directly managed by the postholder, and numbers of staff and daily workers/incentive staff responsible for overall in the unit (e.g., 5 project officers and 2 education assistants, 34 staff in total)
• Stakeholders: Key external stakeholders the post has relationships with (e.g., UN agencies, INGOs, local NGOs, civil society, governmental bodies)
• Budgets: List of budgets covered by postholder, and size of budget
• Information: Brief description of the information resources the postholder is responsible for at CO level (e.g., GORS, Agresso, Webcruiter, Intranet).
• Legal or compliance: Brief description of any legal or compliance responsibility the postholder has (term of employment, vendors, donors)

Competencies
Competencies are important in order for the employee and the organisation to deliver desired results. They are relevant for all staff and are divided into the following three categories:

Professional Competencies
These are skills, knowledge and experience that are important for effective performance.

Generic Professional Competencies for this position:

• Minimum of 4 years of experience within technical expertise area in a humanitarian / recovery context.
• Experience from working in complex and volatile contexts.
• Core competency expertise.
• Documented results related to the position’s responsibilities
• Knowledge about own leadership skills / profile
• Fluency in English, both written and verbal.

Context / Specific Skills, Knowledge and Experience:

• Knowledge of the North-Eastern Nigeria context specifically
• Experience with start-up or expansion of new programmes
• Experience in team capacity building
• Advanced computer skills, especially in Word, Excel, Power Point and Outlook
• Experience in community based and participatory programme planning approaches, with operational based experience in supporting camp and out of camp projects,
• Good understanding of key technical standards (SPHERE, Inter-Agency Standing Committee , gender mainstreaming, International Humanitarian Laes, humanitarian principles etc.) with the ability to integrate into programming.

Behavioral Competencies (Max 6):

These are personal qualities that influence how successful people are in their job. NRC’s Competency Framework states 12 behavioral competencies, the following are essential for this position:

• Handling insecure environments
• Strategic thinking
• Empowering and building trust
• Influencing
• Initiate action and change
• Analysing.

Performance Management:
The employee will be accountable for the responsibilities and the competencies, in accordance with the NRC Performance Management Manual. The following documents will be used for performance reviews:

• The Job Description
• The Work and Development Plan
• The Mid-term/End-of-trial Period Performance Review Template
• The End-term Performance Review Template
• The NRC Competency Framework.

What We Offer
Female candidates are strongly encouraged to join our work culture that empowers every employee to share ideas and take responsibility: At NRC we think outside the box. We encourage ideas and give responsibility to all employees at all levels, to help solve the complex issues that we face. You will have many opportunities to be heard and take the initiative:

• 12 months fixed term contract with possibility of extension
• Grade 9 in NRC's grade structure
• An opportunity to match your career to a compelling cause
• A chance to meet and work with people who are the best in their fields.