Job Description

The Position:

The primary objective of this consultancy is to support the United Nations Country Team (UNCT) and the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) in relation to an AAP workstream. Specifically to provide neutral inter-agency leadership, coordination and technical advisory support to strengthen and sustain the collective Accountability to Affected People (AAP) architecture in Syria, ensuring that community feedback, perceptions and priorities systematically inform humanitarian and developmental coordination, planning and decision-making.

The Incumbent will work under the overall supervision of the Resident Coordinator/ Humanitarian Coordinator and the daily supervision of the Head of Resident Coordination Office and the Head of OCHA Damascus. S/he will also have a dote line report to the UNFPA M&E Officer.

The administrative reporting line will be to the UNFPA Syria Country Office through the end of contract.

How you can make a difference:

UNFPA is the lead United Nations agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is intended, every childbirth is safe, and every young person's potential is fulfilled. The UNFPA Strategic Plan for 2026-2029 articulates the organization’s response to a complex global environment, providing a roadmap for resilience and renewal. It is designed to accelerate the implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. This mandate is pursued through a focus on four interconnected outcomes: ending the unmet need for family planning; ending preventable maternal deaths; ending gender-based violence and harmful practices; and adapting to demographic change through evidence and rights-based policies.

In a world where fundamental human rights are at risk, we need principled and ethical staff who embody these international norms and standards and will defend them courageously and with full conviction.

UNFPA is seeking candidates who transform, inspire, and deliver high-impact sustained results, ensuring effective external relations, communications, partnership-building and resource mobilization in a rapidly changing development and funding landscape. We need staff who are transparent, exceptional in how they manage the resources entrusted to them, and who commit to delivering excellence in programme results

Job Purpose:

Under the overall supervision of the Resident Coordinator/ Humanitarian Coordinator and the daily supervision of the Head of the Resident Coordinator Office and the Head of OCHA, the Accountability to Affected People Coordinator will be based at the Resident Coordinator Office/UNFPA Office and will work in partnership with international, national and community-based organizations, community leaders and mediators, authorities and the UN system. In his/her work, the incumbent will be guided by the Core Humanitarian Standard, the Grand Bargain commitments; the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Commitments on Accountability to Affected People and Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA). S/he will maintain close coordination with the PSEA Coordinator, the Gender Focal Point, AAP WG co-chairs and the Inclusion Technical Working Group (TWG) to undertake the following tasks:

Lead and Strengthen the Collective AAP Architecture

• Provide neutral inter-agency leadership and coordination for the collective AAP architecture in Syria, ensuring that AAP priorities and collective mechanisms are guided by the needs of affected communities and the humanitarian response as a whole, rather than by the priorities of any individual organization.
• Lead, together with the AAP Working Group co-chairs, the implementation and periodic review of the Syria AAP Strategy and support its operationalization at national and sub-national levels.
• Strengthen the Damascus-led national AAP Working Group and its linkages with sub-national coordination structures, ensuring that collective AAP priorities are increasingly nationally and locally driven.
• Strengthen the participation and leadership of national NGOs, local organizations, community-based structures and other national actors within the AAP architecture, ensuring that local perspectives meaningfully influence collective priorities and decision-making.
• Support appropriate engagement and coordination with relevant national authorities and ministries on collective AAP issues, in coordination with humanitarian and development leadership and in line with AAP principles.
• Maintain strong linkages between the AAP Working Group and humanitarian and development leadership and coordination structures, including the HCT, UNCT, PMT, ISCG and relevant sectoral, thematic results groups, and sub-national coordination mechanisms, ensuring that community perspectives systematically inform strategic discussions and decision-making.

Lead and Coordinate Collective AAP Mechanisms

• Provide strategic oversight and day-to-day coordination of SafeLine as a collective inter-agency feedback and complaints mechanism, ensuring the quality, consistency and effectiveness of its operations, referrals, follow-up and accountability to affected communities.
• Oversee the daily functioning of SafeLine, including coordination with the SafeLine team, monitoring caseload and referral performance, supporting quality assurance, addressing operational bottlenecks and ensuring appropriate escalation of issues requiring inter-agency action.
• Co-lead the governance and strategic development of SafeLine with designated representatives of the collective/inter-agency mechanism and relevant governance structures, ensuring shared ownership and maintaining SafeLine's neutral and collective character.
• Represent SafeLine, together with relevant inter-agency representatives, in humanitarian coordination and strategic forums as a collective mechanism rather than as a mechanism belonging to any single agency.
• Support the continued country-wide development of SafeLine, including appropriate complaints-handling processes, referral pathways and interoperability with agency, sector and other feedback mechanisms, ensuring that new initiatives build on SafeLine rather than create parallel or duplicative systems.
• Lead and support the continued development of the collective Rumour Tracker and other joint community feedback and perception-analysis mechanisms, ensuring that findings are regularly communicated to humanitarian leadership, sectors and operational actors.
• Strengthen systems for joint analysis of community feedback across mechanisms and geographical areas to identify trends, protection concerns, information gaps and opportunities for programmatic and operational course correction.

Strategic Advisory and Technical Support

• Participate, together with the AAP Working Group co-chairs, in inter-agency coordination forums, advisory boards and strategic steering mechanisms to present priority community perspectives and AAP issues and advise humanitarian leadership on appropriate courses of action.
• Provide strategic and technical advice to the HCT, UNCT, PMT, ISCG and other relevant leadership and coordination bodies on collective accountability, community engagement and the systematic use of community feedback in humanitarian and development decision-making.
• Advise on tools and approaches to ensure that AAP commitments and community perspectives are integrated throughout all stages of the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC) and development programs such as joint programmes, in line with relevant global standards and good practice.
• Maintain connections across the collective accountability architecture, including the HCT, UNCT, ISCG, PMT, AAP Working Group, sectors, sub-national coordination structures, collective feedback mechanisms and community-based structures.
• Advocate for the sustainability, institutionalization and appropriate resourcing of collective AAP mechanisms and ensure that collective approaches remain neutral, coordinated and complementary.

Strengthen National and Sub-National AAP Coordination

• Coordinate and facilitate the national AAP Working Group and support its co-chairs in setting strategic priorities, developing annual workplans and following up agreed actions.
• Strengthen linkages between the national AAP Working Group and sub-national coordination structures through designated AAP focal points and locally driven coordination arrangements.
• Support national and sub-national actors to identify and lead AAP priorities relevant to their operational context, while maintaining coherence with the national collective AAP framework.
• Support inter-agency AAP missions and engagement with different stakeholders, including the government to strengthen connections between national coordination, field-level actors and affected communities.
• In coordination with the AAP WG, maintain and periodically update the mapping of feedback and community engagement mechanisms across Syria and promote interoperability, joint analysis and coordinated referral pathways between them.

Build and Sustain AAP Capacity

• Strengthen the capacity of UNFPA, UN agencies, national and international NGOs, sectors and AAP focal points to apply collective accountability approaches and meaningfully use community feedback in programme and operational decision-making.
• Strengthen the capacity and leadership of national organizations, local actors and community-based structures to participate in and increasingly lead collective AAP initiatives.
• Support AAP focal points at national and sub-national levels to represent community perspectives within coordination structures and facilitate two-way linkages between affected communities and humanitarian decision-makers.
• Promote shared learning, tools and good practices across the response and ensure that lessons from SafeLine, the Rumour Tracker and other collective mechanisms contribute to stronger and more sustainable accountability systems.

Duration and working schedule: 6 Months

Place where services are to be delivered: RCO/OCHA/UNFPA office in Damascus

Delivery dates and how work will be delivered (e.g. electronic, hard copy etc.):The incumbent will be required to develop a clear work plan with clear deliverables for the duration of the assignment.

The timeline for the deliverables will be based on the agreed workplan with the supervisors (Head of RCO and Head of OCHA) upon the start of the assignment . The incumbent is required to submit a monthly progress report with all tasks and deliverables produced during the previous month.

Monitoring and progress control, including reporting requirements, periodicity format and deadline: The Incumbent will submit monthly progress reports to UNFPA reflecting agreed deliverables as detailed in this TOR. The monthly reports should be reviewed and cleared by the direct supervisors (Head of RCO and Head of OCHA) before submission to UNFPA. The Monthly reports should be submitted to UNFPA no later than the 5th of the following month

Qualifications and Experience:

Education:

Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in social work, law/human rights, international relations, development studies, or another relevant social science discipline.

Languages: Fluency in Arabic and English is required

Knowledge and Experience:

• A minimum of five years of progressively responsible experience in the humanitarian sector, with significant experience in Accountability to Affected People (AAP), community engagement, collective feedback and complaints mechanisms, or related areas.
• Demonstrated experience in inter-agency AAP coordination and in working with humanitarian coordination and leadership structures.
• Demonstrated experience engaging with senior humanitarian leadership and strategic decision-making bodies, with the ability to translate community feedback, AAP evidence and operational findings into concise strategic analysis, recommendations and decision points relevant to senior leadership.
• Strong understanding of humanitarian leadership and coordination structures, including the HCT, UNCT, ISCG, PMT and other senior inter-agency forums, and the ability to communicate AAP priorities using strategic language appropriate for these bodies.
• Proven ability to advise senior leadership, influence strategic discussions and advocate for the integration of affected people’s perspectives into humanitarian priorities, planning and decision-making.
• Experience leading or supporting collective AAP mechanisms, including feedback and complaints mechanisms, referral systems, community feedback analysis and collective accountability approaches.
• Strong experience working with national and local actors and supporting locally led approaches to accountability and community engagement.
• Demonstrated ability to operate as a neutral inter-agency actor, facilitate consensus among diverse stakeholders and safeguard the collective nature of AAP mechanisms and initiatives
• Excellent interpersonal skills complemented by the ability to conceptualize ideas and advocate consensus.
• Demonstrated ability to work under pressure to achieve multiple deadlines.

Required Competencies:

Values:

• Exemplifying integrity,
• Demonstrating commitment to UNFPA and the UN system,
• Embracing cultural diversity,
• Embracing change

Core Competencies:

• Achieving results,
• Being accountable,
• Developing and applying professional expertise/business acumen,
• Thinking analytically and strategically,
• Working in teams/managing ourselves and our relationships,

Disclaimer:

Selection and appointment may be subject to background and reference checks, medical clearance, visa issuance and other administrative requirements.

UNFPA does not charge any application, processing, training, interviewing, testing or other fee in connection with the application or recruitment process and does not concern itself with information on applicants' bank accounts.

Applicants for positions in the international Professional and higher categories, who hold permanent resident status in a country other than their country of nationality, may be required to renounce such status upon their appointment.