Job Details

Description

AWF is an international organization whose  mission to ensure wildlife and wild lands thrive in a modern Africa. AWF has been implementing biodiversity conservation programs in Africa since 1961. AWF has been focusing on building African capacity for wildlife management because AWF believes that conservation success relies on African ownership. No one can speak for African spaces better than the people who occupy them. AWF thus sees it as its primary responsibility to support those African governments and people willing to chart futures that embrace wildlife and wild lands, and in particular local communities who live in wildlife-rich areas. AWF wants to ensure that local communities benefit from conservation and that their priorities’ guide its interventions.

AWF is in the process strengthening its social safeguarding system. As part of this effort AWF aims to continue to socialize it safeguarding policy and standards, implement training programs, set up a grievance mechanism, as well as formal rights-based support handling mechanism. The grievance mechanism will allow Indigenous peoples and local communities that feel affected by AWF’s conservation interventions to submit a complaint. And the support handling mechanism will allow program staff to formally report and request support for rights-based concerns in order to get high-level decision-making support in handling sensitive issues. To ensure the smooth running of these two mechanisms, AWF is looking to recruit a full time Environmental and Social Safeguards Manager. This position  may be based at any of AWF’s offices  Yaoundé, Cameroon Kinshasa , DRC or Nairobi, Kenya.

Position Description

The Environmental and Social Safeguards Manager (ESSM)  will oversee the implementation of and serve as the focal point for the IPLC grievance mechanism meaning s/he has to capture complaints and concerns from IPLCs and other third parties systematically, address issues that can be readily resolved, refer issues to a complaint owner within the operation/company when substantive expertise is necessary, and follow up with both the complaint owner and community member(s) to ensure that the issue is resolved in a fair and timely manner. The position will also lead on designing and implementing training for all staff on “ Rights Based Conservation policy and standards” and ensure that training is conducted and documented and that modules are fit-for-purpose to the diverse needs of staff throughout the organization. The incumbent will play a key role in supporting teams across AWF to ensure they have the capacity and tools they need to deliver on the commitments set out in AWF’s policy and standard and will  serve as a point of contact for country and landscape offices to lodge formal requests for support to address any concern related to rights of IPLCs and draft the AWF annual report.

The Environmental and Social Safeguards Manager  will play a lead role at AWF in advising programme design and implementation as well as other departments regarding social policies and safeguards, screening, and capacity building. The advisor will work with a range of staff and stakeholders across our countries’ priority landscapes to:

• Improve AWF’s understanding of the perspectives of local communities and potential ESS issues in the priority landscapes, including in relation to the rights of communities as concerns land, access to resources, human rights, Indigenous people’s rights amongst others.
• Facilitate greater ownership and effective participation of relevant IPLCs and vulnerable groups in Natural Resource Management, through equitable and locally appropriate governance structures based on mutual respect and equitable collaboration within countries,
• The Environmental and Social Safeguards Manager  will also oversee the development of an IPLC grievance mechanism
• Co-create jointly with communities, initiatives that will enhance coexistence between people and wildlife and contribute to the improved wellbeing of communities.

Key Responsibilities

• Advise and support landscape leads and project teams in conducting essential initial steps of the Environmental and Social Safeguards Screening, such as stakeholder analysis and context analysis and providing quality assurance for these products.
• assist in social screening for all programme work, including the development of whistleblowing and IPLC grievance mechanisms for the different countries/programmes.
• For programmes requiring ESS risk analysis, lead in the development of associated mitigation plans together with the project teams and when appropriate, the affected stakeholders
• Provide technical support from safeguarding perspective during funding proposal development, design, appraisal, and resource mobilization plans.
• Lead on assisting and delivering capacity building for staff at the country offices as well as partners to build knowledge and skills on ESS and minimize the likelihood of risks arising.
• Prepare plans associated with ESS (e.g., stakeholder engagement, mitigation, collaborating with Indigenous peoples etc) and ensure that such plans are approved by relevant authorities before implementation.
• Conduct regular spot checks to ensure staff implement safeguarding policies staff at the grassroots  level in line with AWF guidelines.
• Prepare reports (monthly, quarterly, bi-annual, field monitoring) on the Safeguarding risks and make recommendations on the appropriate actions to ensure timely resolution on issues
• Work with the knowledge management team to incorporate learnings and ensure proper filing and accessibility of documents.

Other specific duties:

Manage the grievance mechanisms

• Manage relationship with the platforms of grievance lodging (community officers and whistleblowing service)
• Receive community complaints and concerns and record them in a database.
• Classify complaints and concerns
• Define the process pathway to address each concern.
• Resolve complaints and concerns as appropriate.
• Escalate complaints per the established protocols
• Follow up with complainants to ensure speedy and fair resolution
• Update complaint information in the database regularly.
• Review complaints regularly and close them out when appropriate.
• Monitor any resolutions to grievances to ensure their implementation
• Ensure evaluations and revisions of the grievance mechanism

Engage with Stakeholders

• Ensure landscape leadership provide information about the grievance mechanism to community stakeholders.
• Facilitate community officers to prepare disseminating information about the grievance mechanism.
• Adapt the grievance mechanism according to landscape/country team needs.
• Inform management of concerns and complaints received by the grievance mechanism.
• Communicate with complainants to inform them about complaint registration, agree on the process pathway for complaint resolutions and ensure the complainant is updated on the progress and any decisions.
• Organize and manage third party support in grievance handling (technical experts, professional facilitators, or mediators).
• Work with staff tasked with community engagement to understand community issues before, during, and after community engagement events.
• Ensure that landscape/country programs have the tools and processes to secure free and prior informed consent from rights-holders.
• Establish AWF processes and systems for documenting FPIC.
• Retrieve FPIC information in cases of question/challenge.
• Ensure that relevant MOU’s and contracts comply with AWF rights standards

Formalize human rights support handling mechanism

• Receive concerns and record them in a database.
• Classify concerns.
• Define the process pathway to address each concern.
• Escalate concerns as per established protocols.
• Follow up with concern owners to ensure response to concern is advancing in a timely manner.
• Update information with regards to the concern regularly in the database.
• Review concerns regularly and close them out when appropriate.

Staff and stakeholders training

• Compile all training materials in English and French
• Supervise all training related to RBC report
• Ensure the production of an RBC training report annually

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Conservation, Social Sciences or Development Studies, conflict management, human rights, rural development, or similar field.
• At least 7 years of active engagement and experience of collaborating with communities on social development.
• Previous experience in collaborating with communities on environmental and social safeguarding in a Conservation setting
• Ability to work effectively in a multi-cultural and diverse setting.
• Experience of dealing with power differentials and inequalities within and across communities is desirable
• Ability to build good relationships and work collaboratively with diverse stakeholders
• Firsthand experience in developing, administering, and/or overseeing RBC policies and standards
• Multidisciplinary background
• Bachelor’s Degree in Social Sciences or Development Studies, conflict management, human rights, rural development, or similar field.
• Knowledge of international donor expectations on rights and conservation
• Excellent intercultural communication skills
• Experience collaborating with Indigenous peoples and local communities in Africa
• Fluency in English and French
• Ability to work independently and with teams
• Ability to work on issues that may lead to conflict or are emotive
• Strong knowledge of computer skills sufficient to maintain a database of community complaints, and prepare reports and presentation of results
• Computer savviness

Apply here: https://recruiting.ultipro.com/AFR1000AFWI/JobBoard/20e4eecc-c532-4e6a-bb5f-39ea79059f29/OpportunityDetail?opportunityId=c80b756f-8e1b-4dba-9af5-2bcf7122c517