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AWF is an international organization that has the mission to ensure wildlife and wild lands thrive in a modern Africa. AWF has been implementing biodiversity conservation programs in Africa since 1961. Thereby AWF has been focusing on building African capacity for wildlife management because AWF believes that conservation success relies on African ownership. No one can speak for African spaces better than the people who occupy them. AWF thus sees it as its primary responsibility to support those African governments and people willing to chart futures that embrace wildlife and wild lands, and in particular local communities who live in wildlife-rich areas. AWF wants to ensure that local communities benefit from conservation and that their priorities’ guide its interventions.
Therefore, AWF is currently in the process strengthening its social safeguard system. And as part of this effort AWF sets up an AWF-wide grievance mechanism, as well as formal human rights support handling mechanism. The grievance mechanism will allow indigenous peoples and local communities that feel affected by AWF’s conservation interventions to submit a complaint. And the support handling mechanism will allow program staff formally report and request support for human rights related concerns in order to get high-level decision-making support in handling sensitive issues. To ensure the smooth running of these two mechanisms, AWF is looking to recruit a full time Senior Social Safeguards Officer based at AWF’s office in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Position Description
The Senior Social Safeguards Officer will serve as the focal point for the IPLC grievance mechanism and has to capture complaints and concerns from IPLCs and other third parties systematically, address issues that can be readily resolved, refer issues to a complaint owner within the operation/company when substantive expertise is necessary, and follow up with both the complaint owner and community member(s) to ensure that the issue is resolved in a fair and timely manner. The position will also ensure that the training agenda for all staff of “ Rights Based Conservation policy and standards” is done and documented, serve as a point of contact for country and landscape offices to lodge formal requests for support to address any concern related to rights of IPLCs and draft the AWF annual report.