Head of Advocacy

Cohere is committed to providing equitable opportunities to candidates and welcomes all candidates to apply, without discrimination based on age, disability, ethnicity, origin, political belief, race, religion, sex or gender, sexual orientation, language, and culture.

Position: Head of Advocacy
Location: East-Africa or remote position. Remote candidates should be flexible regarding working hours in order to take  calls and meetings with international colleagues.
Type of contract: Full-time
Salary: 2,000 to 3,500 USD gross monthly according to experience and location cost of living.

Cohere particularly encourages candidates who have experienced forced displacement and who have experience in advocacy or a closely related field to apply.

About us

Cohere is an international NGO of 50+ employees registered in Uganda, Kenya, and the United Kingdom that specialises in building holistic partnerships with Refugee-Led Organisations (RLO) in refugee-hosting areas. Currently, we operate in 5 different locations across East Africa and have partnered with more than 40 RLOs. We support RLOs in strengthening their professional capacity, establishing social enterprises and accessing resources to implement, sustain and scale-out humanitarian response activities. With our RLO partners, we aim to support refugees to lead fulfilled and dignified lives and transform the humanitarian and development sectors towards more community-led responses.

In recent years, RLOs have finally received some recognition for the critical work they do as first responders to refugee crises as well as crises faced by the wider community, such as COVID19, Ebola, and famine. RLOs are also key actors in promoting the integrated development of refugee hosting areas all over the world. Recognition of their work, however, and the number of new RLOs emerging as key players humanitarian actors has not been enough to shift meaningful humanitarian funding to RLOs. RLOs still receive less than 1% of the international aid allocated to refugee responses. What is more, there are systemic barriers preventing refugees from playing a meaningful role within the refugee response as a whole, such as within humanitarian organisations, and within decision making processes where decisions are made about the futures of refugee communities. Beyond allocating funding to refugee leaders there are numerous opportunities for reforming the humanitarian sector as a whole so that the way we respond to forced migration crises globally is more appropriate, effective and sustainable.

Cohere is one organisation that also needs to reform to be fit for purpose in playing a key role in these critical changes. We are part way through a five year process that will enable our organisation’s work to be informed, guided and led by the people whose lives we affect through our work. We are committed to continuing this journey in a transparent manner so that we can share the process with the rest of the sector.

We are recruiting for a new position at Cohere, the head of advocacy, to play a leading role in helping Cohere to reform in the ways that are needed, to create a platform to share and challenge the sector on much needed changes, to advocate for these changes, and to advocate for a global refugee response that is more meaningfully led by refugees.

Position description

You will act as the Head of Advocacy for the organisation by:

• Leading the development of Cohere’ positioning, strategic engagements, and recommendations in line with mission objectives.
• Collaborating with the Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) team to support Cohere’s synergy between its operation and advocacy.
• Collaborating with RLO partners in advocacy, through joint action or other forms of support according to their expressed needs.
• Collaborating with the Head of MEAL in generating and analysing programmatic data available for advocacy objectives.
• Collaborating with the Head of Communication to ensure that communications strategy is advocacy-driven.

Key Responsibilities

Lead Cohere’s advocacy strategy development

• Co-design Cohere’s advocacy strategy with RLO partners, while ensuring

  • Accessibility and inclusivity of all different refugee identities in the process
  • Accountability, transparency, and equal share of decision-making with RLOs over Cohere’s advocacy strategy.

• Work with partners to integrate and position Cohere within the existing advocacy ecosystem on refugee leadership.

• Monitor learning opportunities and developments relevant to Cohere’s advocacy objectives.

Pilot the implementation of Cohere’s advocacy strategy

• Take a lead in ongoing advocacy projects (Community of Practice around barriers to meaningful refugee participation in humanitarian decision-making)
• Elaborate and execute Cohere’s advocacy strategy and ensure its complementarity with the existing initiatives, alliances and coalitions.
• Lead the work of influencing decision-makers around the advocacy strategy championed by Cohere.
• Ensure external representation at events related to Cohere’s advocacy strategy : local, national conferences and meetings organised by other networks, INGOs, donors, UNHCR, government bodies, academics, and ensure RLO participation to these same events.
• Lead the direction of publications and interventions linked to Cohere’s advocacy.
• Lead the editorial consistency of Cohere’s communications strategy elements that relate to advocacy.
• Lead the M&E and reporting of Cohere’s advocacy strategy.

Ensure Cohere’s exemplarity and synergy between its operations and advocacy.

• Actively contribute to the synergy between Cohere’s four strategic objectives (advocacy, funding, coordination, capacity-sharing).
• Along with DEI consultants and the DEI officer, actively contribute to ensuring the synergy between Cohere’s internal transformation and its advocacy.
• Strengthen Cohere’s strategy to support and collaborate, and complement RLO partners’ advocacy.

Contribute to the operational direction of Cohere

• Contribute to Cohere’s broader strategies, leadership initiatives and operations.
• Contribute to ensuring accessibility to diverse and relevant refugees in Cohere’s leadership.
• Contribute to organising and facilitating internal meetings.
• Ensure coordination of Cohere’s advocacy department with other departments.

Manage the resources of the Advocacy department

• Monitor the budget of the advocacy department.
• Support the DEI officer in gaining competences in advocacy (mentorship, information sharing, professional development)
• Secure legal counsel when necessary

Your profile

• You have a robust experience working for a refugee-led organisation or a community-based organisation working with displaced communities, and/or a masters’ degree in international relations, social sciences, development studies or similar fields. 

• You have a robust and demonstrated experience in policy analysis, data collection, qualitative and quantitative analysis and interpretation, writing and production of reports, policy briefs and publications.

• You have a demonstrated experience in being exposed, influencing and negotiating with high-level stakeholders (NGO leadership, UN agencies, governments)

• You have a good knowledge of the localisation and “meaningful refugee participation” agendas, of the DEI principles, and of the stakeholders from the refugee leadership advocacy ecosystem. Ideally, you have previous experience working in those fields.

• You also have:

  • Exceptional interpersonal skills, with an ability to develop and maintain relationships according to interests.
  • A passion for systemic change, particularly to dismantling top-down approaches and unequal power distribution in the humanitarian and forced displacement fields.
  • A demonstrated ability to lead a department (management, budget tracking).
  • An ability to lead in broader initiatives around diversity, equity and inclusion at Cohere.
  • You have excellent writing skills and oral communication skills in English. Kiswahili, Luganda, or a language spoken by one or more refugee communities around the world is an asset.

How to apply

Please be sure that the application includes:

• Your answers to this application form
• A CV of 3 pages maximum
• One or more relevant work samples that demonstrate your past work in advocacy

CVs and work samples can be sent to Julia Zahreddine j.zahreddine@wearecohere.org and to jobs@wearecohere.org, with the title “Application - Head of Advocacy [your full name]”.

Please be sure to send the answers to the application form and all documents at the same time, and to respect the application process thoroughly. Please also note that applications with missing elements will be disqualified. Candidates shortlisted will have to go through a written test to be completed within a three hour window according to their availability. Candidates having succeeded to the test will attend an oral interview (in person or remote).

Application deadline - January 20 - 00h EAT