Protection from Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (PSEA) Officer

Job Description

Protection from Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (PSEA) Officer | World Food Programme

The Tone:
This is an International Consultant, Level II role at the World Food Programme, located in Kinshasa, DRC. The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, dedicated to saving lives in emergencies and building pathways to peace and prosperity through food assistance. This critical position ensures the implementation of WFP’s Zero Tolerance Policy to Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, protecting beneficiaries’ rights to dignity, respect, and integrity amidst a major food security crisis.

The TL;DR
• Role: Full Time
• Type: Contract
• Location: In-person Kinshasa

• Team: Reports to the Deputy Country Director – Enabling Services, with cross-functional work with Programme, Monitoring & Evaluation, and VAM units.
• Mission: Develop and implement WFP DRC’s PSEA Action Plan to scale up prevention and response efforts against sexual exploitation and abuse.

What You’ll Actually Do
• Strategic Planning & Risk Management: Lead a comprehensive risk assessment of WFP’s presence, operations, and activities to identify existing and emerging PSEA risks, presenting mitigations for adoption and integrating them into relevant country office documents and approaches. Update the Country Office PSEA Action Plan, ensuring it reflects the current context and WFP capacities, complemented by a costed implementation plan and revised Standard Operating Procedures.
• Implementation & Mainstreaming: Oversee the implementation of PSEA prevention activities, ensuring a survivor-centred approach in collaboration with communities and humanitarian stakeholders. Identify existing good practices, gaps, and opportunities for mainstreaming PSEA across all WFP programmes and activities, supporting progress in collaboration with related cross-cutting topics like protection, gender, and accountability to affected populations.
• Capacity Building & Partnership: Develop and support a network of WFP DRC PSEA Focal Points across all offices and field locations, defining clear roles and responsibilities and regularly reviewing and delivering capacity development needs. Oversee the implementation of Interagency PSEA Partner Assessment Tools, including developing and following up on partner capacity support plans, streamlining assessments through interagency collaboration where possible.
• Interagency Coordination & Advocacy: Represent WFP in the PSEA Strategic Advisory Group, ensuring the needs of WFP’s affected population are addressed in interagency forums, plans, and outputs. Ensure alignment between WFP and interagency practice on PSEA risk, prevention, mitigation, response, and support, including alignment with community-based complaint mechanisms.
• Awareness & Reporting: Design and deliver innovative PSEA awareness campaigns tailored to the audience, reflecting their communication, information, and language needs and preferences, targeting WFP staff, cooperating partners, vendors, authorities, and communities. Support and advise management on reporting SEA allegations through corporate mechanisms, ensuring all staff and implementing partners clearly understand the reporting mechanism and protocols, and that all information is handled strictly in line with agreed global SOPs and survivor-centred standards.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Advanced University degree in social sciences, psychology, public health, law or related field.
• Experience: At least eight (8) years of experience in PSEA, gender, Protection, GBV, or related areas.
• Skills:
1. Demonstrated knowledge of working with communities in deep-field locations and strong familiarity with UN policies and practices around gender, PSEA, Protection, and GBV.
2. Excellent research, analytical, writing, and interpersonal skills.
3. Proven integrity, objectivity, professional competence, and demonstrated ability to lead and motivate multi-cultural, cross-functional teams.
• Bonus: Understanding of Swahili.