Main Roles and Responsibilities
Strategic Leadership and Technical Guidance:
- Provide strategic direction for integrating Safe and Inclusive Programming (SIP) across Concern’s programming in Afghanistan to ensure alignment with Concern’s global safeguarding, protection, and equality policies and strategies.
- Lead on the incorporation of protection risk analysis, gender and inclusion analysis, Do No Harm assessments, and safeguarding considerations in programme design, proposal development, implementation, and MEAL.
- Provide quality technical guidance during programme design, implementation, reviews, donor reporting, and when emerging risks require mitigation measures.
- Establish and lead a SIP Network for the country programme, consisting of project focal points, to embed safeguarding, protection and equality principles and measures across programming, including with respect to both sensitivity and transformative approaches.
- Contribute to organizational and programme-level strategies, CSP revisions, and thematic guidance documents related to SIP, safeguarding, gender equality, and inclusion.
- As a member of the Country Management Team (CMT) for Concern Worldwide in Afghanistan, you will actively participate in CMT meetings, contributing to decisions on policy and strategic direction.
Safeguarding and PSEA:
- Provide strategic and technical guidance to ensure safeguarding and Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) standards are fully integrated and effectively implemented across all programmes, partnerships, and organizational systems.
- Provide expert technical support to ensure safeguarding and PSEA policies are fully operationalized across all locations, partnerships and programming.
- Support implementation and periodic review of safeguarding tools, action plans, training materials, and reporting mechanisms.
- Strengthen partners’ safeguarding systems, including risk assessments, capacity-building, and monitoring.
- Support investigations of safeguarding or Code of Conduct breaches, using survivor-centered and ethically sound processes.
- Work with HR and Programme teams to ensure safe recruitment, safe programming, and safe workplaces across all Concern offices in Afghanistan.
Inclusion:
- Lead the implementation of Concern’s Inclusion Strategy for Afghanistan.
- Provide advisory support to strengthen gender, age and disability-sensitive and inclusive programming, ensuring the needs and abilities of women, men, boys, girls, older adults, and people with disabilities are adequately incorporated into programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
- Lead on the integration of gender, age and disability equality transformative approaches in programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
- Support the integration of disability-inclusive approaches using the best global practices (e.g., Washington Group Questions, accessibility principles).
- Develop checklists and tools to support inclusion within programming and in monitoring and evaluations.
Do No Harm and Protection Mainstreaming:
- Guide teams to identify and mitigate unintended negative consequences, including exclusion risks, barriers to participation, discrimination, or protection concerns.
- Advise programme teams on integrating protection-sensitive approaches in sectoral interventions such as health, nutrition, WASH, livelihoods, DRR.
- Develop checklists and tools to support protection mainstreaming and to ensure application of Do No Harm principles within programming and monitoring and evaluations.
Emergency Preparedness and Response:
- Provide technical leadership to ensure safe programming and protection-sensitive approaches are integrated into rapid assessments, emergency response plans, and implementation during crises.
- Support the programme team in ensuring that safeguarding and inclusion standards are upheld during emergency response projects.
Institutional Culture and Organizational Development:
- Foster an organizational culture that upholds equity, dignity, respect, and inclusion by influencing policy, systems, and behavior change across teams.
- Champion a diverse, inclusive, and empowering workplace culture that promotes equity, wellbeing, and respect, ensuring all staff can thrive and contribute effectively.
- Work with leadership to create an inclusive workplace and programme environment and support partners in developing leadership capacities that champion equality.
Capacity Strengthening and Organizational Learning:
- Design and lead training, mentoring, and coaching for Concern colleagues and partners on safe programming, safeguarding/PSEA, protection mainstreaming, gender equality, and age and disability inclusion.
- Provide technical guidance to strengthen Concern colleagues and partner capacities on safeguarding, managing complaints, and its investigation procedures, the Code of Conduct, and related policies through training, mentoring, and technical support, ensuring contextualized and practical application.
- Build the capacity of programme teams to conduct risk assessments, equality and inclusion analyses, community consultations, and context monitoring.
- Develop and disseminate practical tools, checklists, guidance notes, and job aids to assist field teams.
- Collaborate with MEAL and programme teams to develop and use analytical tools, frameworks, and indicators that measure progress toward equality outcomes.
- Facilitate organizational learning by documenting best practices, lessons learned, and innovations in equality and inclusion, and disseminate them within and beyond the organization.
Coordination, Partnership, and Representation:
- Collaborate closely with internal departments including HR, MEAL, Programmes, as well as Technical Advisors at head office to ensure coherent, integrated approaches to SIP.
- Represent Concern in external coordination mechanisms, working groups such as GiHA, Protection, GBV, PSEA, inter-agency forums, and donor meetings as relevant.
- Strengthen relationships with NGO partners and networks working on protection, safeguarding, and inclusion.
Core Humanitarian Standards (CHS):
- The concern is committed to CHS to ensure downward accountability. CHS standards guide Concern activities in all stages both emergency and development projects /programs. In Afghanistan, we also bounded our activities by Accountability framework and therefore any Afghanistan employees is responsible to comply with CHS principles and benchmarks as instructed by its policies and therefore make sure that all accept and implement CHS standards in all our activities.
- To give full support in relation to emergencies/ humanitarian operations when occurring in any area that Concern Afghanistan will respond. This can include but is not limited to participation in the Concern Afghanistan Rapid Deployment Unit (CARDU) and deployment on emergency response teams.
