Operational Security Advisor at Human Rights Watch

Responsibilities:

• Lead safety and security planning: Conduct safety and security risk assessments, develop recommendations for associated mitigation measures, and where applicable, facilitate the development of security plans, for HRW staff, high-risk offices, travel, research and events to ensure we are minimizing safety and security risks in our work. This includes regular reviews of location-specific threats aligned with HRW’s threat matrix, and may involve travel.
• Support development of, and promote, security processes and systems: Support the Safety, Security and Staff Care Director in the development of security processes and systems. Educate staff on proper use of, and adherence to, these security processes and systems, and elevate any gaps in compliance to relevant lines of management.
• Conduct research and analysis on security-related issues and trends: Stay abreast of new developments in the international security sector, as well as security developments and trends relevant to respective regional and thematic areas of work, and escalate developments that signify a heightened level of risk to staff or HRW to the Safety, Security and Staff Care Director and relevant divisions/line management chains.
• Support incident management: Support security incident management through person-, research-, and location-specific contingency planning; engagement in incident management and crisis management teams; and providing incident management cover for the Safety, Security and Staff Care Director during her leave.
• Contribute to curriculum development, and facilitate security-related training: Support the Safety, Security and Staff Care Director in providing input into security-related training curriculum and facilitate trainings offered by the Safety, Security and Staff Care Team, including but not limited to HEFAT, training for events, and onboarding sessions.
• Represent HRW in broader security fora: Engage in peer networking and conferences for sharing of lessons learned, strengthening HRW’s security reputation amongst peers, and maintaining strong information networks
• Other: Engage in and support other security team projects and needs as requested

Qualifications:

Education: A level of education that when combined with your professional experience will adequately show you have the capability to contribute meaningfully to the security team.

Experience:  

• You have a minimum of 5 years of work experience supporting colleagues to engage in high-risk work in high-risk locations, preferably in the human rights, media or humanitarian sectors, conducting risk assessments and context assessments, developing security plans and contingency plans, and supporting incident responses.
• You have 3-5 years of work experience or lived experience in high risk locations around the world
• You have past experience in training facilitation, preferably with regards to facilitating advanced security trainings (hostile environment awareness and first aid), although we will accept other forms of training experience provided the training was experiential in nature.