Associate Protection Officer (Community Based)

The Office of the UNHCR was established on 14 December 1950 by the UN General Assembly. The agency is mandated to lead and coordinate 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).

In line with this mandate UNHCR supports the Republic of Uganda in protecting individuals who seeks asylum in the country as well as those in the country at risk of being stateless or who already are considered stateless. UNHCR also provides direct assistance through implementing partners to refugees and asylum seekers in Uganda.
UNHCR puts strong effort into identifying durable solutions for all refugees in Uganda and to reduce the risk of persons in the country becoming stateless.

Uganda currently hosts more than 1.9 million refugees around the country making it Africa’s largest refugee hosting country and one of the five largest refugee hosting countries in the world. The refugee protection environment in Uganda is progressive and provides refugees with freedom of movement, the right to work and establish businesses, the right to documentation, access to social services, and allocation of plots of land for shelter and agricultural production. The UNHCR FO Kyangwali manages refugee operations in a refugee settlement in Kyangwali (Kikube District) that hosts 151,690 refugees and asylum seekers 97% of the overall population is of Congolese Nationality from DRC, followed by South Sudanese (2.7%); other nationalities include Rwandese, Sudanese, Burundian, and Kenyan. The population comprises of 53% female, 47% male, and 3% elderly. The FO provides technical guidance to partners in Kyangwali settlement. The Kyangwali refugee settlement has 43 partners (4 UN partners, OPM, 6 UNHCR IPs, 6 RLOs, 26 OPs) operating in the settlement providing protection and assistance services. Kyangwali is a receiving settlement with 4,375 individuals received as of 25th June 2025. The FO had 24 staff until 30th June 2025 coordinating the refugee response and providing technical guidance. With the staffing review, effective 1st July 2025, the office will remain with 14 staff to coordinate the refugee response. The Protection sector has been greatly affected by the reduction with the dis-continuation of 4 positions including the Protection leadership (Protection Officer), thereby creating a gap in Protection leadership and guidance. The Protection unit coordinates all protection interventions in the settlement collaborating with both implementing and Operational partners. There are 10 protection Operational partners in the settlement which require strong coordination and leadership in order to realize efficiency in the operation and to mobilize resources effectively. An oversight role in ensuring integrity in protection delivery (Fraud, PSEA) in the absence of a protection Officer is also required. The Associate Protection Officer position is required to coordinate the Protection response in the settlement, provide technical support and guidance to partners and maintain effective interfaces with the forcibly displaced population and other stakeholders who can contribute to enhancing protection.

Under the direct supervision of the Head of Field Office, the UN Volunteer will undertake the following tasks:

• Be fully informed about community structures and the protection and security situation of the population of concern and develop strong links with a cross-section of members of refugee/Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)/stateless communities, using an Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD) approach;
• Through relationships with persons of concern and network of partners stay abreast of political, social, economic and cultural developments that have an im-pact on the protection environment and provide advice to senior management.

• Ensure that the perspectives, capacities, needs and resources of the persons of concerns are reflected in the protection strategy, planning processes and operations plan addressing the specific protection needs of women and men, children, youth and older persons, persons with disabilities, minority groups such as sexual minorities and persons living with HIV/AIDS;
• Ensure through direct action and advocacy with more senior protection staff that the necessary resources are allocated to enable community work to identify and address protection and assistance gaps;
• Assist in supporting consultative process with government counterparts at local levels, partners and persons of concern to develop and implement integrated strategies that address the key protection priorities, including, for example, child protection, education and SGBV, and solutions approaches;
• Provide technical guidance and support to UNHCR and partners and implement and oversee Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on all community-based protection related issues;
• Support the design, implementation and evaluation of protection centered and solutions oriented programming with implementing and operational partners guaranteeing that community-owned activities are integrated;
• Support communities in establishing representation and coordination structures
• Promote confidence building and conflict resolution among populations of concern, authorities and host communities;
• Maintain protection presence through regular field missions and reports, making direct contact with persons of concern, host communities, local authorities and partners. In operations applying the humanitarian cluster system, 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;
• Support the Operation's work to ensure the protection strategy is fully integrated into the Country Operations Plan, the UN Development and Assistance Frame-work (UNDAF), the Humanitarian Country Team’s common humanitarian action plan where applicable;
• Contribute to the Protection team's information management component which: provide disaggregated data on populations of concern and their problems; re-searches, collects and disseminates relevant protection information and good practices to enhance protection delivery and provide technical advice if necessary;
• Ensure participatory, community-based protection and AGD approaches are included in, strategies and plans in the country operation;
• Ensure community understanding of UNHCR's commitment to deliver on account-ability and quality assurance in its response;
• Support persons of concern to develop structures that enhance their participation and protection.