Legal Officer

LEGAL OFFICER: SYRIA PROGRAMMES

BACKGROUND

Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) focuses on providing creative legal assistance in fragile and conflict-affected states.  Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) is a unique non-profit organization which provides creative legal assistance in conflict affected states. LAW works in Africa, South- East Asia and the Middle East and has offices in the UK and Switzerland. LAW Syria is starting a new project in Syria to address human rights violations since the beginning of the war.

The Syria conflict has provoked “the world's largest humanitarian crisis since World War II”. By January 2018, 14 million people were estimated to be in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria, 6.6 million displaced within Syria (United nations office for coordination of humanitarian affairs UNOCHA) and more than 5.6 million registered refugees beyond Syria’s borders, the great majority hosted by neighbouring countries. Civilians continue to be the main victims of the conflict. Extreme forms of violence such as rape and sexual violence, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, forcible displacement, and summary executions persist from all parties to the conflict. Today there is evidence and knowledge that women are targeted differently than men during military conflict and wars. Women in Syria were and are subject to multiple gender-based discriminations and violence, which should not obscure the role they have played and are playing in the popular uprising, nor their active organising to resist violence and enhance their participation in negotiation, peace-building and engendering constitution processes. Men are also subject of a violence that in many occasions is invisible.

Syria Programme

From October 1st 2019, a consortium led by Euromed Feminist Initiative will implement Enhancing women´s participation in decision making and peace building processes in Syria. The overall objective is to contribute to gender-sensitive and inclusive peace-building process in Syria, through promoting women´s participation, empowerment and women´s rights.

Through the Project: Enhancing women´s participation in decision making and peace building processes in Syria LAW will support a victim centered approach to justice. It will support victims associations, build the capacity of Syrian lawyers and work towards victim  centered accountability for serious human rights violations.  The programme will focus on violence against women and girls and LGBTQI communities. The programme will review the needs of individuals and communities including issues related to housing, land and property.

LAW is currently looking for a Legal Officer to implement the Syria Project. The Legal Officer must be able to work individually and remotely as well as be able to coordinate and work closely within a team. The Legal Officer will be based in Beirut, Lebanon. The Legal Officer will be responsible for mapping women's organizations, documenters, working in the refugee camps to create survivor associations, capacity building of Syrian lawyers and coordination with relevant mechanisms.

POSITION DESCRIPTION

Reports to

Senior Programme Manager

Functions/Key Results Expected

The Legal Officer has the following responsibilities: 

• General coordination of the project, including overseeing work done by lawyers such as quality control of witnesses and victims statements, ensuring safety of information and legal casefiles, regularly briefing the Head of the Middle East programme on progress, attending meetings with donors and troubleshooting logistical and technical difficulties with project rollout;
• Research and participation in workshops and panels to identify partners and champions;
• Putting together training materials and agendas and assisting in running trainings on international legal standards on CRSV, transitional justice and  other frameworks relevant to this project; and
• Assistance in managing project budgets.

In carrying out these responsibilities, the Legal Officer will perform the duties and tasks outlined below:

Legal:

• Undertake field and theory-based legal research;
• Identify and support survivor associations. Develop legal documents including position papers, reports and legal briefs;
• Undertake meetings with women’s and LGBTQI organizations on survivors’ associations
• Organize and facilitate roundtables on survivors’ association;
• Organize and facilitate capacity-building of Syrian lawyers with supervision from a legal expert;
• Organize and attend meetings with survivors’ associations;
• Facilitate video-conferencing sessions between survivor associations and relevant mechanisms;
• Develop and organize advanced and intensive training courses;
• Manage partner organization and implementation of activites;

Managerial and admin:

• Supervision of partners;
• Managing budgets and contributing to financial reporting;
• Writing donor reports;
• Attending meetings, taking minutes and other project logistics.

Skills and Qualifications Required:

• Qualified lawyer with minimum of 5 years practice experience in human rights, criminal, family or refugee law. Experience working with cases of sexual and gender based violence preferred;
• Excellent written and oral Arabic AND English, research and drafting skills;
• Experience advising government or judicial institutions preferred;
• Experience working in, and demonstrated understanding of protection challenges within the region;
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite and strong technical literacy;
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills and ability to work on own and take initiative;
• Ability to meet deadlines;
• Flexibility; someone who is familiar with the volatile and unpredictable nature of working in post conflict environments;
• Ability to manage relationships at all levels, possess excellent negotiation skills and will demonstrate excellent communication skills.

Travel will be required.