Livelihoods Consultant, Betou

UNHCR is a global organisation dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. Every year, millions of men, women and children are forced to flee their homes to escape conflict and persecution. We are in over 125 countries, using our expertise to protect and care for millions.

UNHCR is mandated to lead and coordinate international action to protect and assist refugees and other persons of concern. It is constantly seeking talented, compassionate candidates with high integrity to strengthen its capacity to respond urgently to crises with the right skills. Given the nature of UNHCR’s work, it is essential that its workforce has the right mix of skills and qualities to fulfil its mandate.

UNHCR’s mandated responsibility for finding solutions to refugee situations has long required stronger cooperation with development partners and the inclusion of persons of concern within development planning and programming instruments, including national development programmes. Due to a variety of factors, the proportion of refugees and internally displaced persons in protracted displacement situations remains high. Moreover, the diminishing number of forcibly displaced people who have access to so-called durable solutions constitutes a worrying trend that has persisted in recent years. The increasing scale of irregular migration, large scale refugee movements, internal displacement and the costs of responding to humanitarian situations have placed forced displacement high on the global agenda.

Given the complexity and protractedness of many of today’s forced displacement situations, often occurring in fragile contexts, awareness is growing that the humanitarian model of care and maintenance is unsustainable in the longer term and that forced displacement requires a development response to complement humanitarian assistance, address poverty and other development challenges in a sustainable and inclusive manner. The SDGs provide a yardstick for inclusive development based on the principles of Leaving No One Behind and Reaching the Furthest Behind First. It is also acknowledged that extreme poverty and human suffering associated with refugees and other forcibly displaced people need to be systematically taken into account when addressing development challenges and development prospects of host communities, countries, and regions.

The Global Compact for Refugees frames this new approach towards a more predictable and equitable responsibility-sharing, recognizing that more sustainable approaches to refugee situations cannot be achieved without the systematic engagement of a broader set of stakeholders, including development partners.

Duty Station: Betou, Republic of Congo
Duration: Four months with expected start date of 1 May 2022 until 31 August 2022
Contract Type: Individual Consultancy Contract
Closing date: 17 April 2022
Start date: 1 May 2022

Organisational context

In the Republic of Congo, UNHCR is operated from three locations: CO Brazzaville, FO Bétou, and FO Gamboma supporting the protection needs of refugees (protracted situation and L1 emergency), IDPs, host communities, and people at risk of statelessness. The majority of refugees/asylum seekers come from CAR (47%) and from the DRC (38%) and 47% of the 62,821 refugees in RoC are located in the northern part of the country under the FO Bétou. UNHCR is in parallel leading the response to the CAR Situation in the North with an influx of 8,000 individuals having arrived in 2021 following the post-electoral violence in CAR.

UNHCR works at the crossroads of emergency response, protracted situations, and development within the framework of the Global Compact for Refugees. In 2017, the Government committed to promote the socio-economic inclusion of refugees and to enhance basic social services delivery to their host communities and has since shown interesting results. In this context, UNHCR strongly seeks to enhance partnerships with government, humanitarian actors, development partners and the private sector, to continue strengthening the inclusion of refugees into national systems and their access to solutions.

The Likouala Department, the northernmost department of the Republic of Congo, is located near the borders with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. Of the 40,838 refugees residing in the Congo as a whole, 77 percent (31,404) are located in Likouala. In 2021, over 8,000 additional refugees arrived in the region, having fled post-electoral violence in the Central African Republic. Likouala also hosts 23,590 internally displaced persons and 1,708 asylum seekers. The vast majority of the department’s persons of concern are to be found in and around Bétou.

Likouala is relatively isolated and difficult to access, while high levels of poverty and vulnerability are observed among all populations. Basic social services infrastructure is lacking.

UNHCR is a global organisation dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. Every year, millions of men, women and children are forced to flee their homes to escape conflict and persecution. We are in over 125 countries, using our expertise to protect and care for millions.

The position

In 2014, the Government of the RoC launched its US$17 million IDA co-financed social safety net project ‘Lisungi’ with the aim of “establishing key elements of a national safety net program and piloting a cash transfer (CT) program to improve access to health and education services for the poorest households in participating areas.” The coverage was expanded with €8 million in 2016 and $10 million in 2017. Income-generating activities (IGA) were included as part of the first Additional Financing obtained from the World Bank in 2017. The first cycle of IGA support started in mid-2019.

In 2019, an extra 22 million USD of additional funding for the Lisungi Project was mobilized via the IDA 18 Refugee sub-window. This additional funding aims to expand the project’s activities to include refugees and host communities in the departments of Likouala, Brazzaville and Pointe Noire. It operationalizes the engagement of the government to support refugee-hosting communities and include refugees in social services in line with the recommendations of the Global Compact on Refugees.

The additional funding allows the GoC to implement conditional transfer payments to 2,000 refugee households and 2,000 households in host communities, as well as to support 4,000 refugee households and 4,000 households in host communities with income-generating activities. Implementation of conditional cash transfers started in Sept 2021, while IGA payments to beneficiaries began in March 2022 with the first intake.

Since April 2014, at the request of the Government, UNHCR provides technical assistance to the Project Management Unit to support implementation during the first months of deployment, particularly in the Likouala department, where UNHCR has long been present supporting refugees and host communities. In particular, UNHCR supports the strengthening of monitoring and evaluation capacities.

Duties and responsibilities

Technical assistance

• Lead field missions, in consultation with the Government and the IGA implementing partner, to assist with the IGA’s M&E activities, identifying bottlenecks to implementation/success and proposing and implementing innovative solutions, with a primary focus on sustainability with sensitivity to the displacement context.
• Provide technical inputs and advice to the Lisungi Project’s stakeholders on international best practice for cash-based and livelihoods interventions in remote, impoverished areas, as well as related UNHCR corporate guidance and standards, to strengthen IGA programming and improve its long-term sustainability.
• In co-ordination with Lisungi stakeholders, implement IGA M&E activities, assisting with development of data collection tools, conducting data analysis and improving understanding of the IGA’s possible bottenecks, as well as gathering information through household interviews and focus groups.
• Provide technical assistance to the collection of complaints from IGA beneficiaries and advise/support the Lisungi Project and its partners’ response.
• Develop training materials and provide technical input as required by IGA beneficiaries, advising on and providing innovative and sustainable solutions in areas such as supply chain, value chain, sustainability, cash and inventory management.

Coordination

• Coordinate with Lisungi stakeholders to ensure complementarity and efficiency gains in the design and implementation of IGAs
• Coordinate planning, budgeting and implementation of M&E activities of the IGA component
• Work closely with the Government’s implementing partner in Bétou to assist with database and knowledge management, ensuring that records and databases are up-to-date and harmonized with UNHCR’s and UGP’s own databases, supporting the establishment of standardized data management and data sharing while ensuring data protection compliance.
• Work closely with UNHCR colleagues (both in Bétou and Brazzaville), the government and the IGA implementing partner to support coordination of the M&E activities.
• Liaise with other teams in UNHCR (both in Bétou and Brazzaville).

Reporting

• Provide written and data-related inputs (in the context of the IGA) to both the IGA implementing partner’s reporting requirements and UNHCR’s regular Lisungi reporting requirements, and weekly and monthly updates

Capacity building

• Identify skills and knowledge gaps among all stakeholders (IGA beneficiaries, IGA implementing partners, UGP and UNHCR) and support related capacity building activities and exercises.
• Deliver training/capacity building activities and exercises to implementing partner’s ‘coaches’ in charge of accompanying beneficiaries with project preparation and implementation
• Perform other duties as required

Essential minimum qualifications and professional experience required

Essential skills and experience

• Minimum of 5 years of experience setting up IGA activities for an an internationally recognized organization
• Relevant experience in the design and implementation of M&E activities
• Relevant international work experience with an international agency/organisation implementing livelihoods/social protection programmes in field operations in a rural context of extreme poverty
• International experience in designing and implementing cash-based interventions

Desirable skills and experience

• Excellent functional competencies relevant to the operation
• Excellent interpersonal, networking and coordination skills
• Experience in primary data collection and results-based management
• Experience in negotiation and advocacy with the government
• Proactivity and innovation in seeking new solutions
• Prior exposure working in the peace-humanitarian-development nexus
• Prior experience working in remote areas

Education

Master’s degree (equivalent of an MSc), in agricultural studies, agronomy, business, economics, engineering, project management or related field

Languages

Proficiency in French is required. Knowledge of English is desirable.

Location

The successful candidate will be based in Betou, Republic of Congo

Conditions

It is a full-time role with working hours starting from 8.00 am to 17:00 pm Monday to Friday.