Country Director, Yemen

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world's largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you're a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.

CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has worked across the Middle East, North Africa, and Ukraine (MENAU) region for more than twenty years, responding to some of the world’s most complex and protracted humanitarian crises.

Today, more than 75 million people across the MENAU are in need of humanitarian assistance, as conflict, displacement, climate change, and economic instability continue to disrupt lives and limit access to essential services. Vulnerable groups—especially women, children, and people on the move—remain most at risk.

With more than 1,000 staff working across Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine, the IRC delivers integrated programs that meet both immediate and long-term needs improving access to health, safety, education, and economic wellbeing, and helping those affected by crisis to survive, recover, and rebuild their lives.

The IRC launched an emergency health response in Yemen in 2012. Since then, and despite continued instability and conflict, the IRC has extended its presence throughout the country, implementing a diverse, integrated program of health, nutrition, WASH, protection, and cash programs. These programs prioritize local partnerships with both public institutions and civil society, and span emergency response, humanitarian, and recovery modalities, while serving vulnerable Yemenis including IDPs and returnees, migrants and refugees, women, children, and youth.

SCOPE OF WORK

The Country Director (CD) sets the strategic direction, leads all programs, emergency response, financial and operational matters, and oversees humanitarian access and the adherence to and application of security measures, as well as external relationships and partnerships in Yemen. As lead of the Senior Management Team (SMT), the CD ensures accountability of the SMT for the overall leadership and supervisory management of approximately 120 IRC staff and more than 400 incentive workers, programming, and operations, including program quality and accountability, stewardship of resources, staff safety and security, performance management, and external representation, for which the CD remains accountable.

Success in this position requires an individual with exemplary, demonstrated leadership abilities who deploys strong communication and interpersonal skills effectively, both internally and externally. The successful candidate will demonstrate strong contextual analytical skills and an ability to translate the impact of geopolitical developments and rapidly changing humanitarian conditions into operational priorities and effective responses. They will build a network of partnerships, diversify program resources, and ensure organizational readiness to respond to emerging and escalating emergencies while maintaining continuity of critical humanitarian services. They will be directly responsible for the overall coordination and strategic direction of the country program; providing oversight and coaching for directly supervised senior managers; leading country program teams to identify, design, and deliver responsive, high-quality humanitarian, emergency response, early recovery, and development programs; ensuring the efficient management of public grants and private funds for results, compliance, and focused, timely reporting; and overseeing financial management and compliance systems.

Major Responsibilities:

Leadership and Representation

• •Lead the country program by maintaining open and professional relations with colleagues, promoting a strong team spirit, and providing guidance, oversight, and resources to enable staff to perform successfully.
• •Lead strategic representation and positioning with national and local authorities at various levels; donors (including institutional, non-institutional and private), European Union; UN and other international organizations; international and local NGOs; and networks such as INGO coordination mechanisms and appropriate working groups. Develop and maintain a high level of understanding of donor priorities and planned funding.
• •Play a leadership role in efforts to improve humanitarian response coordination in Yemen
• •Provide leadership for strong, mutually beneficial, and effective partnerships with Yemeni organizations.
• •Seek out and pursue respectful and safe opportunities to raise the profile of the work of the IRC and its partners in Yemen, as well as the lives and the needs of the people the IRC seeks to serve.
• •Lead country program collaboration with colleagues in the IRC’s MENAU region to deliver regional programming and advocacy.
• •Ensure leadership and management processes enable the IRC to effectively adapt to contextual changes and fully leverage opportunities to expand humanitarian access and assistance.
• •Collaborate closely with regional leadership and neighboring country programs to address cross-border and regional issues coherently and effectively.

Strategic Direction, Program Quality and Growth

• •Set the strategic vision and direction of the country program is aligned with IRC’s strategy to serve more people with the most responsive and highest quality programming possible and secure the resources necessary to do so.
• •Ensure the strategy action plan is of quality, implemented and guides decision making, to achieve IRC’s ambitions in Yemen and contribute to IRC’s strategic objectives globally.
• •Ensure program quality through consistent use throughout the country program of rigorous assessment, design, and proposal development and review processes; comprehensive monitoring & evaluation, accountability and learning systems; staff development investments; and partner organization capacity strengthening.
• •Actively seek out and pursue opportunities to expand, in line with the IRC’s mission, humanitarian, resilience and development programming in Yemen, in terms of populations and areas served.
• •Develop a deep understanding of the geopolitical landscape and remain current on context analysis and develop responsive strategies to ensure the IRC mission can be carried out appropriately in case of contextual changes.
• •Ensure timely submission of competitive, responsive, and high-quality proposals, and support colleagues in negotiations with donors.
• •Lead implementation of IRC’s objective of expanding partnerships with Yemeni civil society organizations, and ensuring strong collaborative, principled partnerships that deliver effective and efficient program outcomes.
• •Remain current on national and regional issues impacting the country program and partners and develop responsive strategies to changing contexts.
• •Ensure the SMT delivers the leadership, management structures, staffing skills and approaches, and operational systems required to ensure a coherent “one IRC” approach to achieve Yemen and regional objectives.
• •Identify opportunities for appropriate expansion and growth of programs, supported by the acquisition and investment of human resources.

Emergency Response Management

• •Take primary responsibility for overall strategic and operational emergency response readiness and action for the country program.
• •Lead Country Context Analysis, Emergency Response Planning and