Hardship Level (not applicable for home-based)B
Family Type (not applicable for home-based)
Family
Staff Member / Affiliate TypeUNOPS LICA8
Target Start Date2025-10-01
Deadline for ApplicationsJuly 27, 2025
Terms of Reference1. General Background
The Assistant Government Liaison Officer is placed under the overall guidance and supervision of the Senior Policy Officer of the Regional Bureau for West and Central Africa in Dakar, Senegal.
S/he provides liaison support between UNHCR and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) of respectively ECOWAS and ECCAS. The position will support the progress and collaborative efforts from UNHCR’s perspective to advance on protection and solutions issues for refugees and internally displaced persons.
The UNHCR Regional Bureau is accredited to ECOWAS and ECCAS and works in close coordination with UN regional entities. The region includes both English- and French-speaking countries, requiring strong bilingual communication skills.
The WCA region is home to about 21 million forcibly displaced and stateless persons, with DRC, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Chad hosting the largest populations, primarily displaced by conflict, intercommunal violence, and persecution, and other severe human rights violations. Humanitarian needs continue to grow due to expanding insecurity in the Sahel, mixed migration movements, and political shifts in several countries. Additionally, the Sudan crisis has led to significant refugee flows into Chad and the Central African Republic. While there have been some small-scale returns, displacement trends are expected to persist through 2025 and 2026 ; all this in a global complex operational and geopolitical landscape, including emerging trends in the Sahel, changes in the humanitarian landscape, with unique regional dynamics.
2. Purpose and Scope of Assignment
Overall Responsibilities
The Assistant Government Liaison Officer is usually located in respectively Abuja, Nigeria the Headquarters for ECOWAS and Libreville, Gabon the Headquarters for ECCAS. S/he plays a crucial support role in ensuring UNHCR’s approach and collaborative work with ECOWAS and ECCAS to ensure the consistent, strategic and coherent objectives of the partnership are achieved. The Assistant Government Liaison Officer will support UNHCR’s collaborative work with the technical counterparts in ECOWAS to advance the activities/workplan with the ECOWAS Directorate for Humanitarian Affairs, ECOWAS Parliament and ECOWAS Community Court of Justice. In parallel, S/he will also work collaboratively with technical counterparts in ECCAS Commission to the achieve the objectives of UNHCR’s partnership with the ECCAS Commission. Typically, this technical work involves joint coordination arrangements, partnership with various entities to advance the objectives of the aforementioned partnerships as pertains to UNHCR’s protection and solutions mandate. The main aim is to assist senior management to ensure that UNHCR and the Regional Economic Communities of ECOWAS and ECCAS will work together jointly to achieve the objectives in line with UNHCR’s work on protection and solutions for refugees and the forcibly displaced. These joint work between UNHCR and the Regional Economic Communities of ECOWAS and ECCAS should be done in line with UNHCR’s Mandate, the Global Compact for Refugees, the IDP policy, and agreed inter-agency commitments. More specifically, s/he advises the senior management on issues and processes concerning the relationship with ECOWAS and ECOWAS and related positioning, coordination, advocacy, information, resource allocation, fundraising, reporting, and communication with other UN agencies, NGOs, civil society actors, private sector, media and other relevant actors through strong engagement in humanitarian inter-agency processes, but also with a focus on development processes as they impact on UNHCR. The overall goal of the position is to support the effectiveness of UNHCR’s leadership roles and responses to situations affecting people of concern to UNHCR (refugees, asylum-seekers, IDPs, stateless persons, returnees, host communities) through an open and transparent partnership approach with the technical counterparts within ECOWAS and ECCAS.
The Assistant Government Liaison Officer ensures that support is provided for specific activities related to UNHCR’s workplan with specific entities of ECOWAS and ECCAS mentioned above. The Assistant Government Liaison Officer will support the supervisor with all planning, policy and reporting activities. The incumbent will support the supervisor in maintaining a constant dialogue with the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) of ECOWAS and ECCAS on the overall protection context in the region and activities in line with the workplans of the respective ECOWAS and ECCAS entities. A key tool in this regard will be the facilitation and support of periodic meetings with the RECs as well as to support the broadening of mutual information through meeting reports, situation updates, organizing joint workshops and development of policy(ies) in coordination with the technical colleagues at the Regional Bureau and at the country level.
Detailed responsibilities
- Assist in the establishment of close working relations with the relevant Managers and technical staff of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) of ECOWAS and ECCAS and/or other external parties.
- Ensure that the respective workplans and activities in line with the respective budgets are undertaken and implemented in accordance with the agreed timeline between UNHCR and the RECs.
- In coordination with the Supervisor, he/she will provide suggestions for promoting UNHCR’s protection policies in the respective countries covered by ECOWAS and ECCAS and liaising with the ECOWAS and ECCAS technical officials on issues related to latest humanitarian and development processes.
- Support coordination meetings as required, including by preparing meetings and background information, drafting minutes, talking points and follow-up documentation.
- Manage the flow of information to/from the supervisor and other senior staff; identifies priority matters that need to be urgently addressed by the supervisor.
- Draft correspondence, policy documents and reports, and prepares tables and ensures follow-up.
- Assist in ensuring appropriate links with ECOWAS and ECCAS officials through establishment/maintenance of appropriate coordination and information exchange on a regular basis.
- Act on behalf of the supervisor to convey, clarify and explain UNHCR’s positions to the ECOWAS and ECCAS officials or other external parties as applicable
- Inform the supervisor on a continuing basis of relevant information on the outcome of discussions with external parties.
- Act as interpreter during meetings held by the supervisor with senior officials or other external parties.
- Accompany the supervisor and Headquarters visitors to camps, border missions and provincial cities.
- May be required to coordinate the work of lower-level staff.
- Perform other related duties as required.
3. Monitoring and Progress Controls
The incumbent provides strong and timely technical guidance to UNHCR senior management and partners.
4. Qualifications and Experience
a. Education (Level and area of required and/or preferred education)
Law/International Law;
Political Science;
Social Science;
Business Administration;
or other relevant field.
b. Work Experience
1-year relevant experience with Undergraduate degree; or no experience with Graduate degree; or no experience with Doctorate degree
c. Skills
MS-Drafting, Documentation, Data Presentation; Preparation of workshops and conference documents.
MG-Negotiation;
CL-Multi-stakeholder Communications with Partners, Government & Community
MS-Networking;
d. Key Competencies
Core Competencies:
Accountability
Communication
Organizational Awareness
Teamwork & Collaboration
Commitment to Continuous Learning
Client & Result Orientation
Managerial Competencies:
Empowering and Building Trust
Cross-Functional Competencies:
Stakeholder Management
Political Awareness
Negotiation and Conflict Resolution
UNHCR strongly encourages qualified female applicants to apply. UNHCR seeks to ensure that male and female employees are given equal career opportunities.
UNHCR is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms gender, disability, marital or civil partnership status, race, color, or ethnic and national origins, religion or belief, or sexual orientation. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality.
Reasonable accommodation may be provided to applicants with disabilities upon request, to support their participation in the recruitment process.
A written test may be administered for this function.
Kindly be informed that this is a local UNOPS position in Nigeria, as such, candidates must demonstrate proof of residency and/or work permit at the time of application.
Standard Job Description
Required Languages
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,
Desired Languages
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Additional Qualifications
Skills
Education
Certifications
Work Experience
Other informationThis position doesn't require a functional clearance
RemoteNo