Job Title Technical Advisor for Peacebuilding, Professional
Reports to: Head of Project, Strengthening the Resilience of Dealing with Conflicts and
Crisis in Ninewa project
Deputy: -
Duty Station: Erbil
Ninewa Governorate in Northwestern Iraq continues to be severely affected by the aftermath of the occupation by the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) and the subsequent liberation struggles. The public social and productive infrastructure is still partially or completely destroyed. Reconstruction has so far only taken place to a limited extent and only in certain areas. There is no strategic planning for physical and economic reconstruction at neither a local nor national level. The local administrative structures are largely incapable of action and cannot fulfil the state's obligations to care for the population. As a result, access to public social services is very limited. Formerly existing economic structures, which provided the basis for livelihoods and income generation opportunities, have been destroyed by the harsh consequences of the conflict. The GIZ project “Strengthening resilience in dealing with crises and conflicts in Ninewa, Iraq (SRN)” aims to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable populations through the construction and rehabilitation of basic public social infrastructure, livelihood activities, as well as peacebuilding measures. Furthermore, the project adopts a context and conflict-sensitive approach in all fields of action. Thereby, the project aims at conceptualizing the relevant connection between so called “hard components” e.g., construction and “soft components” including programming in conflict transformation, promoting peaceful coexistence, and strengthening social cohesion in Ninewa, particularly on a local level
A. Responsibilities - The Peacebuilding Advisor will be responsible for:
1. Designing, organizing and conducting project activities directly, without implementing partners or service providers, such as capacity development measures for local peace structures and civil society organizations. This includes the responsibility to:
- Ensure that capacity development is contributes to local peace processed or to broader Iraqi and international strategies to support social cohesion and peaceful coexistence.
- Ensure that activities are aligned with the overall SRN project objectives and carried out in a participatory manner, always involving the target population’s point of view.
- Ensure that new activities that support social cohesion interlink with the project’s other intervention areas, such as livelihood/employment creation and the construction of infrastructure
2. Management of peacebuilding project activities, including the management of service contracts with local and international consultants, companies and consortiums. This involves to:
- Ensure that projects are designed, planned an implemented in an effective, time- bound manner
- Ensure that project activities yield planned results and achieve intended impacts
- Ensure that project activities are carried out in compliance with GIZ standards and regulations
- Ensure that projects are conducted aligned with the project methodologies, such as conflict sensitivity, target group orientation and do-no-harm
- proactively build and strengthen networks and relationships with local stakeholders
- By ensuring that concepts are in line with local needs and supportive of local peace and reconciliation efforts
- By fostering active coordination with other organizations, especially those working in Mosul and outside the capital of Ninewa.
B. Tasks - The Peacebuilding Advisor will perform the following tasks:
1. Advisory on technical approaches on local peacebuilding and conflict sensitive methodologies.
- Support the peacebuilding team and the head of component through advisory on peacebuilding approaches, such as dialog, mediation, negotiation, peace education, peace media, etc.
- Support the peacebuilding team through community liaison and advisory on approaches to community consultation, including participatory methodologies and including marginalized and vulnerable community groups and all genders
2. Conducting different types of short-term and longer activities in Ninewa province, often several days per week or certain weeks of a month
- Conduct and facilitate trainings and other types of activities that aim at building the capacities of local community members and local government officials
- Facilitate workshops and stakeholder consultations, including community consultation sessions
- Facilitate consultation sessions with community members to identify suitable project interventions, such as infrastructure to be built or rehabilitated
3. Networking with relevant stakeholder in Ninewa
- Meet regularly with the most relevant local stakeholders, including mayors, employees of directorates, but also influential figures from academia and civil society
- Facilitate introductory meetings or ad-hoc meetings together with the SRN peacebuilding team, in order to discuss specific project interventions with relevant authorities or traditional leaders, such as tribal and religious leaders.
4. Management of project activities
- Conceptualize new project activities in cooperation with the head of component
- Tender new project activities to be contracted and select suitable implementing partners
- Steer, advise and monitor project implementation, ensuring regular reporting and disbursement of the allocated budget is happening timely
5. Other tasks as per the needs of the project and specified by the line manager
C. Qualifications – Candidates shall have the following competencies and experience:
1. General work experience
- 10 years of work experience in the humanitarian, development, or peacebuilding sector in Iraq
2. Specific work experience
- 5 years of experience, supporting local peace processes, peace building, and social cohesion work in Iraq, in relation to Ninewa province.
- Proven experience in having worked in both an advisory, technical capacity, as well as in the capacity of a trainer and facilitator.
- Technical knowledge on negotiation, mediation and conflict sensitivity are a must and need to be proven by specific work experience, involvement in the facilitation of local peace dialogs/negotiations or successful peace process outcomes
3. Language skills
- Excellent Arabic skills, with proven ability to adjust to different contexts from a local, rural level to higher-level political stakeholder discussions
- Very good English skills (B2)
4. Soft skills
- Impartial and objective approach towards working in a sensitive environment with many conflicts of interests between different identity groups and the capacity to intervene as an independent stakeholder
- Team player, willingness to coordinate and collaborate with all members of the peacebuilding component, the overall SRN project team, horizontally (between colleagues of the same level) as well as vertical (with head of project and head of component)
- High motivation to contribute to peacebuilding in Ninewa and to achieve high quality impacts under tight timelines
- Willingness to contribute to a fast-paced team and being flexible to ever-changing contextual implementation context and the associated challenges
- Being open to learn and to keep learning new skills, being able to innovate and conceptualize new project activities in a creative way
D. Required documents
- Cover letter
- CV, max. 4 pages, no work certificates shall be provided
- A letter, (max. 3 pages) answering three guiding questions:
- What do you identify as the biggest challenges to social cohesion in Ninewa and;
- How would you like to contribute to addressing this challenge in order to increase resilience of the communities in Ninewa and;
- What would you like to contribute to the GIZ SRN team, thereby utilize this position to achieve the objective you specified?
Requirements for application:
- The reference number and position must be mentioned in the subject line of the email, Ref: (EBL-SRN21-145) Technical Advisor for Peacebuilding, Professional
- Subject line of the application should clearly indicate the vacancy applied for.
- CVs and motivations letters that are in the form of IMG, pictures, screen-shots and links will not be accepted.
- Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
- Applications passed the expiration date of the advertisement will not be considered.
