Community Based Protection Associate

The Office of the UNHCR was established on 14 December 1950 by the UN General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems world-wide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country.
The UNHCR Representation Office in Rwanda principally consists of a refugee population mainly refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo who have been on the Rwandan territory since 1996 and Burundian refugees who moved to Rwanda due to the volatile situation in Burundi since April 2015.
There is also a small population of Rwandan refugees returning after many years in exile. The UNHCR Rwanda Operation is composed of the Country Office in Kigali, Sub Office Kirehe, Field Office Karongi, Field office Huye, Field Office Kabarore, and two Field Units Gashora and Rubavu.

Refugee communities, particularly those in urban areas like Huye, face challenges in staying connected and have limited awareness of their own networks. The scarcity of resources forces them to prioritize seeking livelihood opportunities over community engagement. To address these challenges and enhance community protection mechanisms, UNHCR Rwanda has implemented a Community-Based Protection Project. This initiative, combined with an im-proved accountability framework and feedback mechanisms, aims to empower refugees to communicate more effectively with UNHCR. Concurrently, the operation seeks to enhance the quality of protection services, including targeted support for vulnerable refugees in both urban and camp settings. The UNV (Community Based Protection Associate) will support the project activities, facilitate communication channels between UNHCR and refugee communities and facilitate the roll-out of the project in urban settings and camps in Rwanda.

Under the direct supervision of Associate Protection Officer, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:
• Draft preliminary assessment for individual case and peasant to Head of protection unit for review and further processing.
• Morning and evaluate Community based protection partners to ensure community-based protection activities are delivery timely to PoCs and enable the referral procedure for dealing with individual case referrals.
• Conducted protection desk/reception at urban setting and in the camp by Identifying person with specific need and refer them to HI for further assistance.
• Maintain protection presence through regular field missions and reports, making direct contact with persons of concern, host communities, local authorities and partners. Contribute to ensuring that the response of the Protection Cluster is grounded in an AGD-compliant strategy which covers all assessed and prioritized protection needs of the affected populations
• Provide advice on protection issues to persons of concern; liaise with competent authorities to ensure the issuance of personal and other relevant documentation.
• Ensure that UNHCR’s policies, standards and procedures are constantly and coherently ap-plied in the Area of Responsibility (AoR).
• Assist in ensuring that the needs of persons of concern in the AoR are assessed and ana-lysed in a participating manner and using an Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD) perspective to form a firm basis for planning.
• Assist in ensuring that protection incidents and gaps in assistance are immediately identified and addressed.
• Assist in identifying vulnerable groups or individuals who may need special attention or special arrangements and make recommendations on the needs of different groups of refugees.
• Contribute to asset mapping of existing public facilities in area of responsibility and share the gathered information with the COVs and supervisor accordingly.
• Contribute to continuous capacity building of the COVs and participate in various assessments and initiatives (Cash-based interventions, Livelihoods, etc.).
• Assist, accompany and monitor the activities of the COVs on daily basis.
• Assist the COVs in case management, referral and reporting.
• Draft weekly and monthly reports and provide the statistics on case management.
• Assist in developing and assist in maintaining relations with local authorities ensuring smooth negotiations in all aspects of UNHCR's mandate for the benefit of refugees.
• Convey appropriate information to the refugee community as per UNHCR guidelines and take active part in raising community awareness campaigns.
• Provide orientation for newly identified COVs.
• Case follow-up in Huye urban programme, as needed based on vulnerabilities identified by partners, executive committee members or other UNHCR staffs.
• Coordination with partners, monitoring and reporting on implementation of youth activities in Kigeme and Mugombwa camps including Mind leaps project.
• Assist in identifying durable solutions for the largest possible number of persons of concern through voluntary repatriation, local integration and where appropriate, resettlement.
• Undertake other relevant duties as required