Advocacy and Policy Director

With over 70 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 33,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

 

Employee Contract Type:

Local – Fixed Term Employee (Fixed Term) 

Job Description:

PURPOSE OF POSITION:

While living in radically different contexts, children in Iraq and Afghanistan face complex and mutually compounding challenges related to food insecurity and precarious family livelihoods, lack of access to essential services, exposure to protection risks and other threats to well-being. Both contexts bear the marks of recent conflicts that have caused immeasurable visible and invisible harm, and both are increasingly impacted by climate change. Moreover, in both contexts, resources that would enable children to begin to secure their rights and meet their most fundamental needs are woefully inadequate.

 

Both countries are at a crossroads, where proper resourcing for appropriate interventions could create a virtuous cycle of relief and resilience, while ongoing failure to support relief and resilience will increase the number of children requiring that dwindling emergency support and further entrenching structural problems.

 

At this critical juncture, the successful candidate will hold key positions in World Vision Afghanistan and Iraq, acting internally as a thought leader who shapes messaging that advocates for evidence-grounded policies that help secure children’s rights and protection and strengthen responses across the Humanitarian, Development and Peace Nexus. Internally they will harmonise the representation of WV Afghanistan and WV Iraq through colleagues’ in-country engagements with decision-makers. They will be responsible for ensuring that a shared approach to advocacy across each office is at once responsive to audiences and authentically expressive of the respective identities of these national offices.

 

Reporting to the National Directors, the Advocacy and Policy Director will shape an advocacy strategy for each office, help to create a sense of shared ownership over this strategy across the two national office teams, and oversee the implementation of this strategy, through a combination of in-country and/or remote work.

 

In this role, the successful candidate will identify opportunities and seek to influence policy and practice of humanitarian actors, key duty bearers, power holders and relevant international institutions, working collaboratively with World Vision Afghanistan and Iraq team members through whom much of this advocacy will be delivered.

 

The successful candidate will be deeply committed to principled humanitarian action and adherence to key humanitarian law and policy, especially as it pertains to access to affected populations, children’s rights and protections, addressing humanitarian needs, and promoting access to basic services, economic recovery, resilience and development. Moreover, they will be passionate about the cultural resources that Iraqis and Afghans, not least children most affected by recent and ongoing crises, bring to the table, seeking every opportunity to give their experiences voice.

 

Moreover, the successful candidate will be capable of engaging with, commissioning and contributing to the design of research that informs policy as it impinges upon World Vision Afghanistan and World Vision Iraq’s operational environments.

 

Time in country will enable the development of a firm understanding of each office’s programming portfolio and team capacity, while creating the opportunity to support colleagues with harmonizing and maximizing the impact of external messaging at all levels.

 

This role consists of building internal policy and advocacy capacity across World Vision Afghanistan and World Vision Iraq’s programs and operations teams, as well as the following core areas of work:

 

 

• Leading the design, internal adoption and implementation of World Vision Afghanistan and World Vision Iraq’s advocacy strategies
• Developing a policy and advocacy identity for both offices
• Expressing these through the development of appropriate proactive and reactive messages
• Overseeing the development of tools and products that foreground children’s experiences, needs and voices.
• Identifying gaps in World Vision’s available evidence base that inhibit policy engagement, and conducting, commissioning or engaging with new research to inform policy positions, in dialogue with MEAL teams
• Identifying opportunities for influencing stakeholders, including by liaising with relevant humanitarian coordination mechanisms, networks and platforms in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in regional contexts
• Engaging, or appropriately delegating engagement, with key in-country and global stakeholders for the purpose of advancing collective and bilateral advocacy agendas
• Providing support, advice, and technical assistance to WVA’s senior leadership and other WV entities to advance the fulfilment of children’s rights and needs in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially for the sake of securing positive engagement from governments and multilateral institutions via WV Global Capitals and Support Offices
• Harmonizing advocacy messaging to influence duty-bearers’ policy and practice across sub-national, national, regional and international levels, ensuring the consistent expression of distinctive World Vision Afghanistan and World Vision Iraq’s identities, grounded in our programming experience and relationships with affected communities, for the sake of the children we seek to support
• Line managing heads of Communications in both teams

 

 

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

 

Thought leadership

• Support both office’s external engagement with context specific, timely and relevant messaging, talking points, policy positions or pertinent statements and evidence.
• Represent, and delegate where necessary, WV Afghanistan and Iraq engagement with strategic advocacy networks and alliances in-country
• Represent, or support Partnership colleagues representing, WV by developing strategic and sustained relationships with platforms, networks, and other NGO groups working on influencing international actors such as interagency groups and UN agencies, funds, and programmes
• Work with each office’s SLT and the WV Partnership to prioritise and capitalise on new and ad hoc advocacy opportunities in-country and externally
• Represent WV Afghanistan and Iraq on all internal advocacy fora and meetings to ensure regular positioning of advocacy work.

 

Capacity building and reporting

• Develop and deliver Staff Training on advocacy that increases their capacity to contribute to their office advocacy strategy, and understand the relationship of the advocacy strategy to their programming- or external engagements
• Lead the Advocacy Strategic Measures (annual reporting on the efficacy and effectiveness of advocacy and policy) reporting process to the RO
• Engage collaboratively with field staff and partners to strengthen local advocacy capacity
• Collaborate with resource development and program teams to ensure integration of advocacy activities in program design and proposal development
• Where appropriate, integrate policy and advocacy to grant proposals, in alignment with strategy and donor requirements.

 

 

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

Demonstrated ability to build evidence, develop advocacy products/research/policy positions to influence humanitarian or development policy or practice, ideally with a focus on WV Afghanistan and Iraq priority areas of intervention (child rights and protection, health, WASH, food security and livelihood recovery, climate change, education) Firm understanding of IHL, IHRL, IRL and child rights, humanitarian principles, humanitarian architecture, humanitarian response and development in fragile contexts including the UN system, with a passion to learn and develop this knowledge further Master’s degree in law, Advocacy, humanitarian policy, Child Rights, Child Protection, Humanitarian Aid, International Development, Social Sciences or related field Keen sympathetic attentiveness to context and cultural specificity Proven research, policy analysis and writing skills. Experience as a spokesperson in public and private briefing formats.  Experience leading or heavily contributing to strategic planning and delivery (e.g., Advocacy strategy, country office strategy and plan, cluster strategy or work plan process). Proven ability to self- manage and collaborate and network superbly well with colleagues and partners Demonstrated ability to think strategically, proactively manage a plan and meet deadlines Fluency in English is required, Arabic, Dari, Pashto or Kurdish are advantageous At least five years of progressive work experience in advocacy and international exposure/external engagement on humanitarian emergencies or fragile country contexts Experienced in external engagement/lobbying with various levels of stakeholders Experienced in the area and discipline of child rights or a relevant thematic area. An energetic team player, capable of successfully managing their own broad portfolio of work, while demonstrating a keen eye for an opportunity to position successfully for influence Dynamic, self-motivated, able to think creatively and proactively to seize initiatives to pursue shared, agreed objective Demonstrated ability to work and deliver independently if needed Comfortable in a research, listening posture as much as a representing, spokesperson posture Understanding of and ability to integrate gender, age, and diversity considerations in strategic decisions and daily work A keen follower of all issues and updates related to the context and ability to adapt and react accordingly Ability to work in difficult, insecure and sometimes stressful environments Prior experience with World Vision i.e., its programs, operations, structures, policies, etc. is desirable.

 

 

Work Environment Requirement

• The position is offered on a Work from Home basis, with preference for a location near a World Vision Support Office, in Geneva or in New York.
• Additionally, it requires ten weeks in total in-country per annum, including at least two weeks per six months in each national office, permissions allowing
• The position requires ability and willingness to travel domestically to the field locations across World Vision Afghanistan and Iraq’s programmes within that ten weeks
• The position requires engagement with support offices and global capitals, with occasional international travel.

 

Note: International & Local applicants are acceptable.

 

Applicant Types Accepted: