Associate Monitoring and Reporting Officer – NOB – BEY126 – UNOPS Contract - Beirut, Lebanon

Organizational context

The Government of Lebanon (GoL) estimates the total number of Syrian refugees at 1.5 million, of which close to one million are registered as refugees by UNHCR. Lebanon is also host to around 20,000 refugees of other nationalities, in addition to the Palestinian refugees. This makes Lebanon the highest refugee-hosting country per capita in the world. There are no approved camps in the country and refugees are living in over 2,000 localities.  The presence of such a large refugee population, in a small country that is struggling to maintain its own delicate balance and regain its pre-crisis economic growth, is seen as affecting the social stability in many municipalities.

Pressure on infrastructure and services, competition over jobs and other factors are trying the patience and hospitality of the host community. At the same time, the refugees are facing a multitude of protection problems in their daily lives due to factors such as restricted access to legal stay and documentation, and limited opportunities to work and become self-reliant coupled with insufficient assistance to meet all of their essential needs, which increases risks of exploitation and other harm. The Lebanon Crisis Response Plan 2017-2020 (2018 update), developed jointly by the GOL and its international and national partners, seeks to provide a framework for an integrated humanitarian-development response in which the needs of the refugees are – to the extent possible – met by strengthening the capacity of national institutions and civil society to deliver services, and the impact of the refugee presence is mitigated through support to host communities and vulnerable Lebanese. Simultaneously, it provides for a robust, complementary humanitarian response, given the Government’s policy against any local integration and the consequent limitations on refugees’ ability to work and fully access national institutions, as well as on humanitarians’ ability to support sustainable shelter and WASH interventions.

At the core of UNHCR’s work are efforts to identify, analyse and respond to the impact of wider-environmental and individual risk factors on the refugees’ protection situation. This requires a continuous assessment and analysis of how different factors, such as legal residency, access to livelihoods and access to cash assistance, impact on refugees’ ability to resist exploitation and harmful coping strategies, coupled with robust monitoring and evaluation of how the programmes in place and activities undertaken prevent and respond to protection risks. It is also essential for UNHCR to be able to report, in a clear and compelling way, on the findings from these assessments, analyses, monitoring activities and evaluations in order to inform future prioritisation and resource allocation. Importantly, UNHCR needs to be able to demonstrate, and clearly report on the impact of its programmes on the refugees’ protection and solutions situation in order to convince donors of the importance of (continuing) funding UNHCR’s operation in Lebanon. 

UNHCR’s operation in Lebanon is managed at the country-level by a Representation Office in Beirut, and at field level by four offices, located in Mount Lebanon, Tripoli, Tyr and the Bekaa. In light of the magnitude and specificity of the crisis, UNHCR has separated its responsibilities within coordination of the overall response and the partners involved, and the implementation of UNHCR’s own programmatic response. To facilitate this delineation of tasks, the staff responsible for coordination report to the Senior Inter-Agency Coordinator while the staff responsible for the programmatic aspects of UNHCR’s response report to the Assistant Representative (Programme) and those on protection – to Assistant Representative (Protection).

The Associate Monitoring and Reporting Officer will support UNHCR to strengthen its M&E and reporting capacity of the operation.

The Associate Monitoring and Reporting Officer will be part of the UNHCR operation’s team and will report to the Monitoring and Reporting officer. He/she will work closely with the UNHCR Programme and Technical Units, External Relations, Protection and Inter-agency units in a multi-functional approach, both in Beirut as well as in the field locations.

Purpose and Scope of Assignment

Planning, Maintaining, and Implementing M&E Systems 

Contribute to developing data collection tools, and systems for on-going data analysis

Lead (in conjunction with the Monitoring and Reporting Officer, Heads of Office) the roll-out of established and revised program level M&E systems across all field offices;

Facilitate the update of core M&E tools and provide top-up trainings on key M&E principles and skills 

Periodically review programme implementation of M&E activities as per agreed M&E plans to identify gaps in implementation and provide support as necessary;

Ensure data management and information flows within programs remains aligned with the M&E SOPs. 

Ensure where possible, in line with the AGD policy, the availability of disaggregated data on populations of concern in support of enhancing protection and solutions delivery. 

Data Collection, Analysis, and Reporting

Support (and lead as necessary) the design and implementation of assessments and other data-driven products related to refugees, forcibly displaced persons and host communities;

Supports the Monitoring and Reporting Officer in making methodological decisions for robust data collection and analysis;

Manage or support data collection activities, as appropriate. This may take place at all stages of data collection (procurement, survey design, sampling and supervision and quality assurance);

Consolidate raw primary and secondary datasets into final datasets to be used for analysis, as needed. This could involve creating and merging various sources of data and may also require linking up with field staff for additional information or performing manual matching.

Support in the analysis of data using statistical programs, as appropriate (e.g., SPSS, R, Stata);

Support the M&R Officer on research initiatives as well as in utilizing existing M&E data to study the impact of UNHCR programming;

Prepare and visualise data, including formatting and creating tables, graphs, and related analysis.

Backstop and support field offices, in conjunction with BO units, in conducting outcome monitoring activities; 

Support the M&R Officer to identifying needs and gaps within the M&E system and developing an action plan for improvement with clear roles and responsibilities for implementation;

Capacity Building

Actively build the capacity of UNHCR staff in quantitative and qualitative analytical methods;

Support the development and roll-out capacity building and training to UNHCR staff on M&E technical and conceptual areas;

Participate in official missions and deliver capacity building and training activities for UNHCR staff, partners and other stakeholders as needed.

Support and/or lead in conducting regular health checks on M&E systems and data analysis;

Communication/Other

Work with M&R Officer to roll out strategic initiatives (e.g., LogAlto, digitization of surveys/monitoring tools) to Beirut and Field Offices;

Disseminating UNCHR M&E standards and guidelines as needed or directed by M&E management;

Weekly updates to the M&R Officer highlighting areas of concern and collating supporting documentation for review, as required.

Coordination

Contribute to the effective coordination of UNHCR research, evaluations, and any other learning activities.

Support the drafting and writing of presentations, analytical reports and research and policy briefs. 

Monitoring and Progress Controls

UNHCR Office has its impact monitoring plan(s) and is enabled to reflect and report on impact of its programmes on the refugees’ protection and solutions situation in order to convince donors of the importance of (continuing) funding UNHCR’s operation in Lebanon; 

UNHCR has analytical and progress reports on its programme to inform planning and prioritsation thus better able to meet the needs of persons of concern.

Reports to promote UNHCR programmes and projects are prepared and distributed in a timely manner.

Delivery of specifc milestones as reflected in responsibilities.