Regional Safety & Security Director

The Regional Safety and Security Director (RSSD) provides strategic leadership for safety, security, and humanitarian access across the East Africa region. The role involves advising senior leadership, managing security risks, ensuring humanitarian access, and leading regional safety and security teams to safeguard staff and operations in complex environments.

Responsibilities

• Contribute as a senior leader to regional strategy, priority-setting, and decision-making, bringing a risk-informed perspective to program, operational, and resourcing choices.
• Serve as principal safety and security advisor to the Regional Vice President, enabling timely, risk-informed decisions and leading crisis management when required.
• Partner with Country Directors to align safety, security, and humanitarian access with country Strategy Action Plans and operational priorities.
• Lead and supervise identification, analysis, and mitigation of safety and security risks across the region, ensuring alignment with IRC’s global standards.
• Guide and support Country Directors and field leaders to implement context-specific security risk management strategies.
• Review, monitor, and encourage compliance with Security Minimum Standards in all country programs.
• Drive development and roll-out of global and regional initiatives on duty of care and safeguarding.
• Shape and strengthen safety and security policies integrating Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion principles.
• Extend security capacity to partners, ensuring tailored risk management support and access to systems.
• Build and maintain an active network of IRC security focal points and cultivate external relationships with peer agencies and security counterparts.
• Enable and safeguard principled, secure, and sustained humanitarian access across country programs.
• Strengthen and expand humanitarian access teams and capabilities across the region.
• Develop and implement context-specific guidelines for humanitarian access and engagement with state and non-state actors.
• Advise country programs on operational and programmatic contingency plans for sudden shifts in political, security, or conflict dynamics.
• Collaborate with IRC units to ensure follow-up to violations of IRC’s Code of Conduct and breaches of humanitarian principles.
• Lead recruitment and selection of key positions with safety and security responsibilities.
• Co-manage and mentor direct-report staff, setting expectations and conducting performance reviews.
• Promote and safeguard staff well-being and support interventions for national and international staff.
• Directly supervise and develop the Regional Humanitarian Access and Safety Coordinator.
• Design and supervise implementation of regional capacity-building plans and training programs.
• Embed gender-sensitive approaches into capacity development and learning initiatives.
• Lead and facilitate critical incident management trainings and simulations.
• Support country programs in incident notification, reporting, analysis, and dissemination of lessons learned.
• Serve as member of the Regional Incident Management Team supporting management and resolution of Tier 2 and Tier 3 incidents.
• Facilitate After-Action Reviews and ensure corrective measures are implemented.
• Oversee and monitor the SHIELD incident database producing quarterly trend analyses.

Requirements

• At least 10 years’ experience in international humanitarian assistance, with proven ability to plan, organize, and lead security management operations.
• Prior experience in East Africa with strong knowledge of regional and country dynamics is essential.
• Fluency in English required; proficiency in a relevant regional language (e.g. Arabic, Amharic, Somali, or Swahili) is an asset.
• Demonstrated grounding in humanitarian principles, codes of conduct, NGO culture, and proven success in gender-sensitive security management and gender equality.
• Skilled at influencing without authority and building effective relationships across multinational teams, partners, and stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to transfer knowledge through mentoring, coaching, and non-formal methods.
• Strong capacity to analyze and present complex security dynamics and incidents clearly and on short notice, highlighting implications for operations.
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 40% of the time.

Skills

• Security Management
• Humanitarian Assistance
• Regional Security Knowledge
• East Africa Expertise
• Humanitarian Principles
• Codes of conduct
• NGO Culture
• Gender-Sensitive Security Management
• Gender Equality
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Coaching and Mentoring
• Security Risk Assessment
• Incident Reporting
• Strategic Leadership
• Humanitarian Access
• Multi-national Team Leadership
• Travel readiness

Languages

English