This position is open to candidates based in the United States with legal right to work in the United States, as well as candidates living in or willing to relocate to Amman, Jordan.
Summary:
The Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) is seeking a Holistic Security Advisor familiar with the nuanced intersections between digital, psychosocial, and physical dangers associated with various forms of human rights action. These include both internal vulnerabilities as well as external threats facing civil society organizations (CSOs) and human rights defenders (HRDs). The Advisor will provide guidance in the design, preparation, and delivery of holistic safety and security training and mentorship, helping build the capacity of CVT and its partners to effectively plan, recover, innovate, and prosper in the face of sustained and dynamic adversity. In doing so, the Advisor will take a trauma-informed approach to overcoming safety barriers, understanding how stressors impact threat-related decision-making and how traumatic experiences can impact well-being, while leveraging individual and organizational strengths to navigate threat environments more safely and effectively. The Advisor will research, analyze, and share information about new and persistent threats facing CSOs and HRDs, incorporating this information into project design, communications, and planning. This position will have a special focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Responsibilities:
- Capacity Development: Design and implement impactful, interactive, and innovative holistic security curriculum for human rights actors, and contribute to integrated strategies to safely sustain their work. Effectively engage in risk analyses, and explain issues and potential mitigation measures to a wide range of actors with varying levels of relevant expertise. Contribute to the development of comprehensive measures of organizational safety and well-being practices and policies, and guide holistic audits and remediation plans in close collaboration with CVT and project partners. Offer awareness, training, and mentoring – including using remote technology and e-Learning platforms. Collaborate with other safety and security experts – including resilience programming trainers, digital security specialists, legal advisors, and consultant risk management professionals – to iteratively refine CVT’s approach to holistic security. Identify and manage consultant scopes of work in support of these activities.
- Resource Development: Analyze existing holistic security resources and identify areas for improvement and adaptation, including ways to enhance relevance and accessibility for at-risk CSOs and HRDs operating under volatile and hostile conditions. Stay up-to-date on digital, physical, and psychological security threats, current best practices, and emerging innovations. Contextualize best practices to design and develop locally relevant, conceptually accessible, and trauma-informed resources. Participate in security activities and briefings within the NGO, diplomatic, UN, and CSO communities to stay informed of current trends. Develop and moderate a tool and resource library.
- Integrated Program Development: Ensure progress of holistic security programming and activities to ensure achievement of project goals and quality of services provided. Work closely with internal and external team members, including other experts, to: cultivate understanding of the role and importance of holistic security in program development; design an integrated and collaborative approach to project implementation that balances security considerations with context-specific usability and budget constraints; respond to evolving project and partner needs and recommend changes in project activities as necessary; and, to support implementation of project adaptations. Foster a culture of exchange and knowledge-sharing among partners; promote collaboration among all stakeholders, facilitate communication, and serve as a project liaison who upholds the organization’s values.
- Needs Assessments: Conduct needs assessments to identify organizational strengths and vulnerabilities, informed by local context, evolving threat environments, network analyses, and individual HRD/CSO organizational profiles. Follow-up with CVT teams and partners to identify and address ongoing gaps, and to track progress toward risk treatment plans and sustainability goals. Integrate needs assessment findings into other areas of program activity, including holistic capacity development planning, crisis response planning, and ongoing program design.
- Risk Management: Conduct ongoing threat analysis, advising on all aspects of risk management for current and prospective programming. Provide crisis response guidance to partners and staff on an as-needed basis, with a particular focus on rapid resource and information mobilization, focused and contained threat mitigation, streamlined communications, and minimization of harm.
- Other Duties: Participate in other program and organization-wide activities, meetings, and trainings. Complete administrative responsibilities and support donor report writing. Perform other duties as assigned.
Qualifications:
Required education, experience, certificates, licenses or registrations
- Bachelor’s degree in relevant field
- 5 years of experience working in project management, operations, or security capacity in the Middle East and high-risk countries
- Experience offering trainings and/or mentorship to local nongovernmental organizations, human rights defenders, or similar
Preferred education, experience, certificates, licenses or registrations
- Experience working in an NGO or nonprofit environment
- Experience developing online curriculum and training
- 3 years of experience working in physical security or risk management
- Certifications related to security and risk leadership in any relevant field
- Understanding and experience with digital security will be an significant asset
Competencies (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities)
- Strong knowledge of digital safety tools and holistic security training strategies; experience with innovative remote technologies and online learning platforms an advantage
- Exceptional ability to facilitate discussions about emotionally challenging material and bring diverse perspectives to consensus through mediation and negotiation
- Demonstrated capacity to rapidly mobilize teams, streamline communications, and organize resources in response to immediate security concerns, including ability to contain and re-direct team dynamics as appropriate
- Excellent ability to monitor and manage all aspects of their own individual risk profile as it is impacted through interaction with people at risk
- Excellent self-awareness and capacity to identify personal self-care needs and resilience factors while conducting difficult work, including the emotional impact of guiding and caring for others at risk
- Excellent written, verbal and interpersonal communications skills, including the ability to communicate and train cross-culturally
- Excellent skills in organization, attention to detail and time management (including the ability to meet deadlines)
- Excellent skills in curriculum development and high-engagement training delivery with the ability to match level of content to the audience.
- Experience developing accessible, appropriate safety and security policies and protocols and supporting related implementation and behavior/culture change
- Knowledge of diverse capacity development methods and designs.
- Awareness and sensitivity to cultural, political, social and economic contextual factors.
- Demonstrated flexibility to work across multiple projects at the same time, and adapt to changing program requirements and political climate.
- Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office suite (Outlook, Word, and Excel)
- Written and spoken fluency in English and Arabic is required; French language skills an advantage.
- Ability to travel up to 20% time internationally to developing countries. Some work sites may be located in politically unstable areas with limited amenities.
- Demonstrated commitment to human rights.
How to apply:
To Apply: Submit resume, cover letter and salary expectations via this posting on https://cvt.simplicant.com/