POSITION SUMMARY
The Regional Team Coordinator (RT) supports ACBAR’s role as Secretariat to the Regional Teams (RTs), which serve as the primary sub-national coordination platform under Afghanistan’s Area-Based Coordination (ABC) and Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus (HDPN) framework. The RT Coordinator will ensure effective, inclusive, and well-documented coordination among Humanitarian and Basic Human Needs (BHN) actors, facilitating evidence-based planning, information sharing, and follow-up on priorities of the RT, in cooperation with two RT co-chairs per region. As part of the ACBAR team, the RT Coordinator will also engage with ACBAR’s full regional team to support the central role that ACBAR plays to strengthen NGO engagement, supporting transition from humanitarian to resilience-oriented programming, and ensuring alignment with national coordination structures.
ESSENTIAL TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE POSITION
Secretariat and Coordination Leadership
- Serve as the primary focal point for secretariat functions of the Regional Team (RT), which will be responsible to organize and coordinate monthly (and ad hoc) RT meetings, including developing priorities and agendas for meetings in consultation with RT co-chairs.
- Draft and circulate meeting minutes of the RT meetings to co-chairs and all participants for further follow up on key discussions, decisions taken, and action points and engagement with responsible parties
- Maintain updated RT membership lists and track regular participation by RT members to ensure robust engagement, facilitating inclusive participation of members, including remote/online engagement as required.
- Track follow-up actions and monitor implementation of RT decisions, being the key point person to ensure that decisions taken by the RT are operationalized.
- Manage integration of various other coordination platforms into the work of the RT, including the OCT (humanitarian coordination), national coordination structures (ICCT, HCT, PMT), and NGO forums. This will include actively identifying and resolving duplication, gaps or inconsistencies, and ensuring alignment with national priorities.
External Engagement and Access Support
- Serve as the main focal point for external engagement on behalf of the RT, including direct engagement with provincial and local authorities, community leaders and other stakeholders required to support an enabling environment for implementing humanitarian and basic needs programs. While leading external engagement, the RT Coordinator will engage with the co-chairs, NGOs and UN partners to successfully facilitate the engagement on behalf of the RT.
- Escalate and report ongoing access and implementation challenges to the national level management of ACBAR, HAWG, and corresponding coordination mechanisms.
Strategy, Planning and Information Management
- Lead the development of the RT annual action plan in cooperation with the co-chairs and members, with clear objectives and deliverables that can be tracked and monitored to demonstrate the contributions and value-add of the RT to members.
- Lead information management and communication for the RT, including distribution of monthly summaries of activities to members, maintaining regular communication with co-chairs and members to carry forward RT priorities and strategies, and provide regional briefings to national coordination platforms, as needed.
- Support regional-based data collection, assessments, and analysis to inform both regional and national level strategic planning, including providing support to data collection for the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) and the UN Strategic Framework for Afghanistan (UNSFA) and other analytic and research-oriented products and reports at the regional and national level. This will include data collection related to coordination of activities, including support for maintain an accurate 3W’s.
- Support preparation of reports, updates, presentations, etc. on the ongoing work of the RT for HCT, UNCT, ACBAR Steering Committee, Donors and other interested external stakeholders.
Durable Solutions, Nexus Integration and Early Response Coordination
- Support leadership of a Durable Solutions Technical Sub-Group of the RT that will support priorities of BHN programs within the region and provide support in transitioning from humanitarian to early recovery strategies.
- Support coordination between the RT, ACBAR and the OCT in the event of rapid onset emergencies to streamline activities of the RT and emergency response coordination, and to ensure planning for transition from immediate response to early recovery priorities. This will include facilitating rapid information sharing, initial situational overview, and regular coordination between all actors, in alignment with OCT coordination.
Cross-Cutting Priorities
- Support strategic initiatives to promote better community engagement, accountability to affected populations (AAP), support for disability inclusion, and principled programming.
- Ensure integration of key cross-cutting issues in RT coordination, including protection and centrality of protection, equality, GBV risk mitigation, PSEA reporting, and conflict sensitivity and Do No Harm principles.
- Support strategic initiatives to promote Localisation, including facilitation of strong presence, participation and leadership of national and local NGOs, CSOs and WLOs within the work of the RT.
- Engage with and support the ongoing work of the ACBAR Regional Office to ensure alignment with ACBAR strategic priorities and the ongoing work of the RT.
