“UNOPS plays a critical role in providing management services for our life-saving, peace-building, humanitarian and development operations. I have seen many examples of how these activities help suffering people in troubled parts of the world.”
-Ban Ki-moon, former United Nations Secretary-General
The United Nations Office for Project Services’ (UNOPS) mission is to expand the capacity of the UN system and its partners to implement peace building, humanitarian and development operations that matter for people in need. UNOPS mandate is to act as a project delivery platform for UN system agencies, funds and programmes, international and regional financial institutions, intergovernmental organizations, donor and recipient governments, and non-profit non-governmental organizations. As a self-financing entity within the UN system, UNOPS must ensure that the projects it delivers meet client expectations in terms of cost, quality and time, while at the same time ensuring that these projects collectively meet a broader array of success criteria.
2. Kenya Multi-Country Office (KEMCO) and Mozambique Country Office
UNOPS KEMC helps partners achieve their project goals in sectors including: governance, education, health, the environment, grant management and rural development. UNOPS KEMCO has over twenty years of experience working in Africa, including on large scale infrastructure projects. With a flexible and responsive presence throughout the region, UNOPS is able to scale up rapidly, through various mechanisms into high risk areas which have proven to be beneficial to partners.
As part of the IDP crisis response, the Republic of Mozambique is preparing the Mozambique Northern Crisis Recovery Project (P176157) to be financed by the International Development Association (IDA) in the amount of US$100 million. The Project Development Objective is to improve access to basic services and economic opportunities for internally displaced persons and host communities in targeted areas of Northern Mozambique. The Project will be implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADER) through the National Sustainable Development Fund (FNDS). The Project will retain and make use of existing Financial Management (FM) capacities and project oversight systems at FNDS.
The Government intends to contract UNOPS to provide overall technical support to Project implementation, including through the preparation of Environmental and Social Safeguards instruments, based on the World Bank’s Environmental and Social Frameworks (ESF); as well as support in M&E. UNOPS is further tasked with the implementation of distinct project components.
The proposed Project has four components:
- Component 1 – Building social cohesion and resilience to conflict;
- Component 2 – Provision of livelihoods and economic opportunities for IDPs and host communities;
- Component 3 –Rehabilitation of public infrastructure and
- Component 4 – Project management and oversight.
UNOPS is looking for a Senior Security Officer (SSO) to assist with security risk management for all project workers and beneficiaries through the implementation of a Security Management Plan that has been prepared specifically for the project.
3. Purpose and Scope of Assignment
As part of the World Bank’s requirements set out in the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF), project implementation needs to be supported by a rigorous Security Risk Assessment and Security Management Plan (SMP). The SMP is to set out the ways in which the Government of the Republic of Mozambique will ensure security protection, emergency responses and duty of care to all project workers and project-affected parties.
Given that the Project will be implemented across a broad geographical scope, and in a highly fragile environment, the SMP is based on a detailed Security Risk Assessment.
Potential security risks and impacts of the Project are related to ensuring security for project operations including the protection of project workers, beneficiaries and other project-affected persons; challenges in access to beneficiaries for meaningful stakeholder and community engagements as well as grievance redress and monitoring due to insecurity; and risks emanating from the deployment of armed security guards in project interventions.
UNOPS is looking for the services of a highly skilled Senior Security Officer that will be contracted to implement the Project’s SMP as well as monitor its implementation by Implementing Partners.
The Senior Security Officer will be operating as part of the project management team, and will report to the Project Manager. The Senior Security Officer will collaborate closely with the UNOPS Environmental and Social safeguards team and other Implementing partners in the implementation of the Security Management Plan.