Job Description

Title: Programme Officer

Company Name: ARTICLE 19 Bangladesh

Vacancy: Not specific

Job Location: Dhaka

Employment Status: Contractual

Educational Requirements:
∎ Post-graduate degree, preferably relating to Communication and Journalism, Media Development, Law, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Sustainable Development Studies, Human Rights, Social Science or relevant discipline.

Experience Requirements:
∎ At least 5 year(s)

Job Context:
∎ Reporting to : Programme Manager, ARTICLE 19 Bangladesh and South Asia
∎ Key Relationships : Programme Team, Finance Team, HR Team, ARTICLE 19 International Office and Project Partners/Stakeholders
∎ Project Title : Journalists with Enhanced Safety and Security (JESS)
∎ Contract Type : Fixed term (Full-time) Employment Contract
∎ Working Hours : Full-time, 37.5 hours per week (working week from Sunday to Thursday)
∎ Location : Dhaka, Bangladesh with field visits
∎ Working in the field of human rights is a challenging but rewarding career choice. With ARTICLE 19 you will find an international community of activists, legal specialists, and subject experts working together to protect the basic freedoms of many communities throughout the world.
∎ Project Summary:
∎ Journalists in Bangladesh face external and internal threats. Externally, they face a hostile legal and policy environment, rife with police brutality, intimidation, online and offline harassment, lawsuits, arbitrary arrests, bullying, and extrajudicial killings routinely. Internally, media houses lack internal security and protection protocols, rendering their staff, and in particular women journalists and journalists from marginalized communities (LGBTQI, persons with disabilities, minority religious faith groups) vulnerable to outside threats along with workplace harassment and discrimination. While the media sector has expanded in the country in the last decade, repressive laws and an inhospitable environment for critical voices have increased, leaving journalists vulnerable to harassment and impunity. One of the most contentious laws in vigor is the 2018 Digital Security Act (DSA), which replaces the ICT Act and expands on existing restrictive provisions that are in breach of international human rights law. The lack of State protection, repressive legislation, and State-sanctioned persecution under the DSA have led to increased censorship and put media freedom at risk. Such oversights from the State caused a development of accountability crisis within media houses which resulted in the failure to the protection and safety of their journalists, and in particular women journalists and journalists from marginalized communities. These scenarios lead to the vulnerabilities of the journalists through physical assaults, sexual harassments, psychological abuse, added with a lack of directives to seek help and zero protection mechanism from their media houses.
∎ With the proposed project, ARTICLE 19 Bangladesh and South Asia (A19) and Free Press Unlimited (FPU) of the Netherlands aim to protect media freedom in Bangladesh by improving the safety of journalists in the country. This goal will be realized through increasing the resilience of journalists to address both internal and external threats, the creation of safety mechanisms for journalists in media houses, and the formation of a national and international coalition of informed, committed civil society actors who are able to protect and expand media freedom in Bangladesh through advocacy.
∎ This project addresses these threats, both internal and external, through three objectives:
∎ Objective 1. Bolster the resilience of journalists, especially women and marginalized journalists;
∎ Objective 2. Make media houses safer workplaces and increase their protection mechanisms for journalists to mitigate external threats; and
∎ Objective 3. Advocate for the Government of Bangladesh to comply with its responsibility of upholding the safety of journalists and media freedom.
∎ ARTICLE 19 along with the partner agency Free Press Unlimited will implement these twenty-four months long project in different regions of Bangladesh.

Job Responsibilities:
∎ Role Summary
∎ The Programme Officer is responsible for the overall implementation of the project with support from the Programme, Finance, HR and MEL teams of ARTICLE 19. Under direct supervision of the Regional Director (RD), S/he will develop project implementation work plan, will recruit consultants for delivering capacity development interventions and will coordinate with project partners, stakeholders and beneficiaries for timely implementation of all activities. Working closely with ARTICLE 19's global programme implementation teams and with the partner agency Free Press Unlimited, the Programme Officer will maintain and guide the finance team in ensuring the US government's compliance standards in the programme and financial management. The Employee will be responsible to address the following key responsibilities.
∎ Key Responsibilities:
∎ a. Project Implementation and Management
∎ 1. Responsible as the project focal person of the assigned projects.
∎ 2. Oversee the day-to-day work of implementation phase in line with global and other regional progress of activities if required under the projects.
∎ 3. Plan and implement project activities, develop detailed work plans to monitor and track progress.
∎ 4. Ensure that all activities are delivered on-time, within scope and within budget.
∎ 5. Ensure coordination and collaboration within the programme team assigned to the projects.
∎ 6. Coordinate and plan with internal resources and external consultants for the flawless execution of the projects.
∎ 7. Support the Media Houses for preparation of action plan for development/implementation of protection protocols for the journalists.
∎ 8. Ensure compliance with donor policies and requirements, including those relating to financial and narrative reporting for donor and local govt. bodies.
∎ 9. Ensure project activities monitoring by providing supportive supervision to the beneficiary agencies when and as required for quality delivery of the activities and submit written update report to the Line Manager.
∎ 10. Ensure and maintain close coordination and working relationship with project partners, beneficiary journalists, media agencies and other government and non-government stakeholders.
∎ 11. Preparing fact finding documents for assessing the aid requirements (medical, legal and others) of the beneficiary journalists.
∎ 12. Ensure upload timely progress of assigned projects to ARTICLE 19's central Aid Information Management System (AIMS) and any other relevant framework.
∎ 13. Represent ARTICLE 19 in online and off-line meetings with project related partners and stakeholder.
∎ 14. Prepare the internal quarterly narrative reports and other internal reports for the organization both hard copy and soft copy, according to the contribution agreement with donors and Bangladesh Government's obligations.
∎ 15. Play the role of focal point and lead for the assigned thematic areas representing ARTICLE 19 Bangladesh and South Asia.
∎ b. Campaigns, Advocacy, Communication and MEL Support
∎ 1. Contribute to the assigned projects development and implementation of campaigns activities, advocacy and communications related activities for the delivery of key outcomes.
∎ 2. Participate in national and international events for sharing status of safety and protection of journalists in Bangladesh.
∎ 3. Based on the assigned projects communication strategy, update and deliver communication outputs regularly (including press releases for media, as well as posts on various SNS such as Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram/ LinkedIn/A19 Websites) with relevant contents, under guidance of the Line Manager and Communications & Campaign Team.
∎ 4. Provide relevant support to the MEL team to develop tracking tools to measure impacts and progress, by ensuring ethical and practical data collection, periodical progress report of implementations and sharing the case studies of the assigned projects.
∎ 5. Contribute to public advocacy interventions, with the support of the Communication and Campaign team.
∎ c. Finance and Administration Support
∎ 1. Maintaining budget, budget tracking, fund burning and financial forecasting. Delivering accurate and timely financial reporting of project expenses in line with assigned projects implementation plans (DIP) , as well as according to the clauses mentioned in the Contribution Agreement with the donor
∎ 2. Ensure expenditures are consistent with organizational and grant budgets
∎ 3. Develop event related expense reports and payment requests
∎ 4. Ensure timely submission of monthly and other reports to the donor as per donor contract and adhering to donor compliance standards.
∎ 5. Contribute to ensuring compliance mechanisms, including ensuring accountability in the financial management of the project.
∎ d. The above-mentioned tasks to be performed are intended as a guide and should not be viewed as an inflexible specification as it may be modified following discussion with the Employee. Expected deliverables from the Employee throughout this employment period are as follows;
∎ 1. Provide a clear and detailed project life cycle, (yearly, quarterly and monthly) work plan and timeline to the Line Manager.
∎ 2. Maintain documentations in hard and soft copy files of each project.
∎ 3. Maintain Digital Contact Database of stakeholders of the assigned project.
∎ 4. Archive all analytical and research reports, tools, documents, meeting minutes, decision summaries, audios, videos, pictures including the consent papers collected during the data collection and research for the assignments during the project life cycle must be collated with timesheet as deliverables.
∎ 5. Maintain close contact to partners and provide assistance to them in the design, implementation and reporting of their components. Assist implementing partners upon need basis in development of documents, presentations and other appropriate means of communication.
∎ 6. Coordinate and contribute to donor reporting by compiling, drafting, and editing information and narrative materials.

Additional Requirements:
∎ At least 5 years' experience in working with development organization in project implementation and management level. Proven experience in working with Digital safety and protection, prevention of violence against women, especially women journalists and gender mainstreaming projects with human rights organizations will be given preference.
∎ Experience of working in US government funded projects at various capacities will be preferred.
∎ Experience working with the media, journalists and freedom of expression aspects will be considered as an advantage.
∎ Experience in conducting advocacy campaigns on social issues at national and international level will be considered as an advantage.
∎ Experience in external communications to broad audiences, particularly in dealing with national and regional media.
∎ Substantive experience in drafting of written materials including TOR for consultant recruitment, writing and/or editing materials for publication.
∎ Experience in monetary management of project interventions including record keeping, financial document management and others following the compliance standards of US government.
∎ Knowledge:
∎ Understanding of protection issues impacting journalists or Human Rights Defenders, in particular women.
∎ Knowledge of international human rights standards and mechanisms, on freedom of expression, protection of journalists - especially female journalists.
∎ Knowledge and understanding of key approaches to gender analysis tools and methodologies.
∎ Knowledge and experience working with human rights organizations.
∎ Language Skills:
∎ Fluent in English both in Writing and Verbal communication.
∎ Ability to write contents both in Bangla (using Bijoy keyboard and SutonnyMJ font) and English.
∎ Good communication skill with an ability to quickly understand and absorb new topics, issues and disciplines.
∎ Skills and Abilities:
∎ Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
∎ Ability to work effectively under pressure, and to respond positively to challenges and time pressures.
∎ Ability to backtrack technical mishaps and to provide appropriate solutions.
∎ Flexibility to adapt to any subsequent/relevant changes in the work responsibilities.
∎ Commitment to excellence and attention to detail.
∎ Other Requirements:
∎ Positive attitude and practice towards diversity.
∎ Cultural sensitivity and commitment to equal opportunities and non-discrimination.
∎ Ability to take initiatives, work independently as well as a team member.
∎ Willingness to work outside normal working hours including weekends and evenings when necessary.
∎ Recruitment Policy:
∎ ARTICLE 19 is striving to be an equal opportunities employer. This policy aims to ensure that no job applicant or employee receives less favorable treatment on grounds such as race, color, ethnic or national origins, religion, sex or gender identity, marital status, age, disability, or health status, sexual orientation or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justified. We actively encourage applications from all sections of the community.

Salary:
∎ Circa BDT 60,000 per month.

Job Source: Bdjobs.com Online Job Posting.

Application Deadline: 11 Jun 2022

Company Information:
∎ 5 Jun 2022
∎ ARTICLE 19 Bangladesh

Category: NGO/Development