Regional Emergency Director - West Africa at the International Rescue Committee (IRC)

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

We are recruiting to fill the position of:

Job Title: Regional Emergency Director - West Africa

Reference No.: req14152
Location: Nigeria
Employment Type: Full-Time
Sector: Emergency Response
Employment Category: Fixed Term
Open to Expatriates: Yes

Job Overview

• As Regional Emergency Director (RED), you will provide strategic and operational leadership to building emergency response capacity and implementing high quality responses in the West Africa Region.
• In close collaboration with technical and operational counterparts, you will advise and guide decision making for Country, Regional and Emergency and Humanitarian Action Unit (EHAU) leadership around where, when, and how IRC will build capacity and respond to emergencies and you will coordinate and lead support to emergency responders at country level.
• You will be responsible for ensuring that IRC’s work on emergency capacity strengthening, preparedness and response meet both IRC’s and international standards.
• The RED is a senior position within regional and EHAU management teams. In this role, you are responsible for assuring quality of IRC’s emergency response and preparedness activities within their region. A central component of this role is to facilitate collaboration and coordination between country, regional and EHAU technical and operational counterparts, assuring cohesive and connected support to country programs.

Responsibilities
Response Management (approximately 40% of time): The RED will lead the regional and HQ support for emergency response management led by countries within your region. With support from regional and EHAU leadership, and in collaboration with country teams, you will coordinate resources, guide strategy, and serve as the primary support for emergency responders. This includes:

• Ensure the timely planning and implementation of contextualized emergency responses, which are aligned with IRC standards, policies, and global best practice.
• Promote and support high-quality emergency needs assessments to inform response decisions and strategies.
• Promote decisions and strategy development that are informed by analysis of humanitarian context.
• Advise go, no-go response decisions, provide guidance and sign-off on response strategies.
• Advise and support on securing funding opportunities, donor compliance, and donor engagement to execute response strategies.
• Coordinate technical, operational, financial, and human resources to support response activities.
• Lead on response evaluation, information sharing and knowledge management around emergency responses to promote learning within and across regions.
• Deploy as needed to lead emergency responses e.g. for start-up, for large or particularly complex responses, or as a gap fill in ongoing responses.
• Support deployed EHAU Emergency Country Directors and Team Leads, e.g. through sharing of contextual knowledge, coordination, information sharing with regional colleagues, facilitation of donor conversations, strategic guidance etc.& security inputs and support to emergency responses.
• Support Emergency Response team-led (ERT) responses as needed.
• Collaboratively work with country programs and EHAU to ensure smooth management and operational transition to country programs after response.

Emergency Preparedness and Capacity Strengthening (approximately 40% of time): The RED will be the lead for coordination and implementation of emergency preparedness and capacity strengthening initiatives. This includes:

• Support development of an overarching IRC global emergency capacity building and preparedness framework.
• Using IRC’s global framework, lead the development of a region-specific plan for emergency capacity building.
• Assure the quality implementation of the regional plan by providing direct support and coordinating with technical and operational counterparts within country, regional and EHAU teams.
• Lead in measuring and tracking progress against preparedness and capacity goals, information sharing and knowledge management to promote learning within and across regions.
• Coordinate the provision of mentorship from various functional areas to CPs, including direct deployment to build emergency capacity/readiness as required.
• Support country programs to achieve partnership objectives by providing capacity strengthening to partners in areas related to emergency preparedness and response.

Strategic Leadership (approximately 20% of time): In support of regional and organizational priorities the RED will:

• Serve as the primary focal point in the region to coordinate across relevant technical units, country teams and partners to drive our efforts to strengthen capacity, competencies and to grow the impact of DRR, DP and Resilience programming across the region.
• Assure effective community of practice and learning across the IRC country teams in the region to information, share learning, build on strengths, and support continuous improvement.
• Ensure that the IRC remains responsive to emerging humanitarian issues and maintains its position as a leading humanitarian agency.
• Oversee the process to identify and monitor the regional humanitarian environment against key indicators and provide regular updates on the regional situation to EHAU, regional and country program leadership.
• Represent the IRC in relevant humanitarian meetings, fora and workshops at regional level, ensuring collaboration with other humanitarian agencies, the UN, etc. and coordinate information sharing on current and emerging humanitarian methodologies, approaches, techniques and policies.
• Act as focal point for emergency-related crisis analysis.

Key Working Relationships and Accountability:

• Position Reports to: The RED will report to the Deputy Regional Director and the Director of Delivery EHAU, through a management in partnership relationship.
• Position supervises:  Emergency Focal Person in Country Programs (Management in Partnership) where relevant.
• Works closely with: Country Program Senior Management Teams, Regional Senior Management Teams and the Emergencies and Humanitarian Action Unit Response Management Team.

Qualifications
We are looking for:

• A leader with specific geographic experience in delivering complex humanitarian emergency preparedness and response programs within the West Africa Region.
• A professional with substantial experience in senior (regional) management roles and dynamic levels of responsibility.
• Extensive lived experience and deep understanding of the West Africa Regional context.
• Proven operational analysis and management skills, including project management.
• A thorough and critical problem solver, who can think analytically, plan strategically and implement long term goals while remaining adaptive and flexible to changing circumstances.
• A strong communicator who is committed to open and transparent communication.
• High integrity and ethical standards with excellent interpersonal skills, collegial behavior, high energy, positive and creative leader.
• A consistent record serving as a role model, empowering others to translate vision into results; effective at delegating the appropriate responsibility, accountability, and decision-making authority.
• A receptive and collaborative team leader who adaptively manages and supports development of direct and indirect reports.
• High dedication to cultivate and maintain positive, safe and protective working environment of gender equality, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Demonstrated ability to successfully work in fast-paced, often insecure, and stressful environments.
• Professional fluency in written and spoken English and French required.
• Ability to travel up to 60% of the year.

The IRC strives to build diverse and inclusive teams at all levels who as individuals, and as a group, embody our culture statement creating a working environment characterized by critical reflection, power sharing, debate, and objectivity for us to achieve our aspirations as a unit and deliver the best possible services to our clients.

The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.

We are committed to closing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including flexible hours (when possible), maternity leave, transportation support, and gender-sensitive security protocols.

Application Closing Date
Not Specified.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online