Emergency Shelter Assistance Specialist

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 worldwide. 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 (www.unhcr.org).
The UNHCR has been working in Ukraine for almost 25 years, mainly with refugees and asylum-seekers, as well as in the area of statelessness prevention and reduction. Since the beginning of the conflict in 2014, UNHCR has been assisting Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and responding to the humanitarian situation in the east of the country together with other actors.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been present in Ukraine since 1994 and substantially increased its presence and response after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The geographical presence within Ukraine has significatively expanded to deliver the emergency
response.

The country office is located in the capital, Kyiv, and sub- and field offices are currently located
in Dnipro, Kyiv, L’viv, Odesa and Kharkiv. The war in Ukraine has caused death and suffering on a dramatic scale. In 2025, more than 12.7 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and protection, according to the 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan. Some 3.7 million people are internally displaced, while around 6.8 million refugees from Ukraine are recorded across Europe and beyond. Some 75,000 people, including some of the most vulnerable notable older people and people with disabilities, live in collective sites spread across the country. Ukraine also hosts asylum-seekers and refugees and is home to thousands of people who are stateless or at risk of statelessness.
The massive destruction of civilian infrastructure, with the energy sector being particularly targeted, has made life extremely challenging for millions of people who have lost their homes and livelihoods, and has severely disrupted access to electricity, water, heating as well as critical services, including healthcare, education and social protection services. Humanitarian access continues to be hampered, particularly in frontline areas as well as to areas under temporary occupation of the Russian Federation. Civilians
remain exposed to serious risks to their physical security and integrity, particularly in eastern and southern regions of Ukraine. The risk of GBV, including sexual violence, continues to prevail, alongside family separations, loss of housing and properties, as well as identity and civil documentation.

Currently, UNHCR has MOUs with five-line ministries, the First Lady’s foundation as well as the Office of the Ombudsman, 19 regional state administrations and agreements with 14 partners to deliver assistance and support the localization of the response.
Under the leadership of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, UNHCR operates as part of the Inter-agency humanitarian response, working in close coordination with local authorities and humanitarian partners.

UNHCR is leading three clusters - Protection, Shelter and NFIs, and CCCM. The strategic orientation of UNHCR’s response is to reach people, particularly those with specific vulnerabilities, who remain in frontline and heavily affected areas with immediate relief while supporting displaced people and those who have remained in their homes, or returned, with protection advice, housing support, livelihoods advice and cash assistance to enable their recovery and attainment of durable solutions.

As the war continues, new urgent humanitarian needs are created every day, alongside protracted ones and peoples’ and communities’ efforts to recover and rebuild their lives in war-torn communities. Among the IDPs and refugees from Ukraine, the majority express a hope and desire to return to their homes as soon as the security situation allows. The protection needs of the population thus need to be analysed and addressed both from a humanitarian as well as from an early recovery and durable solutions perspective, with UNHCR playing a leading role in this work.

Technical Guidance

• Assist in data collection and keeping the up to date trackers on weekly and/or ad-hoc
requests from partners and/or UNHCR Field offices for deliveries of ESK and ESM
• Preparation of consolidated weekly/ad-hoc requests for ESK and ESM deliveries as the
draft for the hiring manager to certify and forward to the logistics for actual shipments
• Preparing draft payment requests to arrange payments to UNHCR suppliers for the construction materials (constituting ESK and ESM) delivered to UNHCR warehouse
(including accumulation of the relevant supporting documentation from suppliers and
UNHCR logistics focal points).
• Monitoring completeness and compliance of the documents uploaded by the implementing
partners to UNHCR online server (sharepoint) as required by UNHCR SOP
• Communicate with focal points at UNHCR Field offices (FO) to plan and coordinate own
or his/her manager field visits for post-distribution monitoring.
• Benchmarking and providing the hiring manager with the feedback on the correlation of
data reported by partners at the different reporting platforms of UNHCR (Activity Info,
RAIS+ etc) and the distribution reports uploaded by partners to UNHCR online servers .
• Support the technical evaluation of the provided proposals from the bidders for procurement
of construction materials for ESKs/ESMs
• Support processing of the weekly and ad-hoc requests and their tracking for securing
shipments of ESK and ESM to partners in case the manager absence (i.e. during his sick
or annual leaves).

Coordination

- Provide technical support to UNHCR Country office focal point covering emergency shelter
assistance in (whenever required) coordination with focal points at field offices and logistics
manager(s) at the country and field offices.

Collaboration

- Assist in the preparation of draft weekly and ad-hoc requests for shipments of ESK and ESM from UNHCR to partners and/or UNHCR field offices and warehouses
- Assist in the preparation of draft payment requests (including the collection of supporting documentation).
- Initial review of the technical proposals from the bidders for the supply of construction materials for ESK/ESM in terms of their compliance with UNHCR bidding requirements.
- Perform other related duties as required by the manager.