Humanitarian Access Leadership Consultant

In support of a USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance funded award on “Enhancing accountability, inclusivity, and capacity for frontline aid workers and humanitarian leadership to improve operations in hard-to-reach areas”, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) works to strengthen the humanitarian community’s capacity for operate in hard-to-reach areas.

As part of this work, NRC conducts research to inform evidence based decision making and is now planning to conduct research on how humanitarian access structures, frameworks, and tools support humanitarian leadership address access constraints and dilemmas. The research intends to provide a better understanding on how humanitarian access structures, efforts and initiatives can be strengthened to ensure humanitarian actors can operate in a more principled and effective manner.

The consultant will be expected to provide an in-depth overview of existing policies, frameworks, etc. for in country humanitarian leadership and requirements to lead on humanitarian access engagement, as well as lead one field mission to a country operation, holding interviews with key stakeholders on matters related to humanitarian access at operational and strategic levels.

The consultancy is expected to take place over a period of 27 days between August and September 2024.

Candidate Criteria

An individual consultant will be recruited for this home-based consultancy. Candidates should have:

• Minimum 10 years of professional, operational experience in humanitarian settings
• Experience in conducting access negotiations
• Experience in engaging with non state armed groups, state armed forces and other armed actors
• Excellent understanding of the humanitarian architecture and humanitarian access coordination structures
• Solid understanding of the applicable legal frameworks in conflict settings
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Fluency in English. Competency in an additional language – French, Spanish or Arabic – would be advantageous.

Expected Outputs

The consultant will be expected to:

• Produce a desk review of existing policies, frameworks, structures, products, and tools pertaining to humanitarian access
• Conduct remote interviews with current and former senior humanitarian leaders
• Conduct one in-country research trip (exact location to be confirmed)
• Draft one initial findings paper

Background

The humanitarian operational landscape has significantly deteriorated over the past decade. Increased humanitarian needs, decreased funding and an erosion of basic humanitarian norms and frameworks in conflict settings have led to a deterioration of the operational environment and subsequently pose key challenges for humanitarian access, especially in hard-to-reach areas.

While humanitarian access functions, tools, strategies are now common in most humanitarian responses, resulting in increasing knowledge and capacity to overcome and manage constrained environments, this does not necessarily lead to successful engagement at a strategic level.

Humanitarian access coordination structures in humanitarian responses at country level have become more prominent, including advisory bodies to Humanitarian Country Teams (HCT) on humanitarian access, namely Humanitarian Access Working Groups and/or Civil-Military Advisory Groups. These bodies provide technical expertise and support to help ensure high level engagement and decision making is informed and based on thorough analysis of access challenges.

NRC will therefore analyse in what ways existing humanitarian access structures, products, frameworks, tools and mechanisms are facilitating and contributing to increased humanitarian leadership on humanitarian access at country level.