Access to Justice Assistant – Ukraine
For over 30 years, and through our work in more than 100 countries, the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) has sought to strengthen legal institutions, support legal professionals, foster respect for human rights, and advance public understanding of the law and citizen rights. In collaboration with government agencies, the judiciary, lawyers, bar associations, legislatures, and civil society, we design programs that are responsive to local needs and that prioritize sustainable solutions to pressing rule of law challenges.
To learn more about our work in Ukraine, please visit https://www.americanbar.org/advocacy/rule_of_law/where_we_work/europe_eurasia/ukraine/
Job Summary
This is a full-time position based in Kyiv, Ukraine.
ABA ROLI is looking to hire a local Ukrainian expert to serve as the Access to Justice Assistant for the new five-year “Healing & Accountability through Human Rights Activity” funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The purpose of this new activity is to help Ukrainians use human-rights-based approaches to achieve justice and address social divisions resulting from Russia’s full-scale invasion. The program will support processes aimed at accountability for war crimes, and foster dialogue on difficult questions related to post-conflict recovery.
Reporting to the Access to Justice Lead, the Access to Justice Assistant will support one of the program’s three objectives, specifically “Objective 3: Increasing access to victim-centered, gender-responsive transitional justice.” The Assistant will help develop and implement programming aimed at reinvigorating national conversations on a transitional justice framework, strengthening locally relevant transitional justice processes in all occupied areas, and improving coordination among stakeholders on redress for victims of war crimes at the domestic and international levels. The Assistant will help manage interventions designed to increase access to victim-centered, gender-responsive transitional justice; enhance public communication and education about reparations and war crime documentation; and help ensure that investigative data can be safely and securely compiled, stored, and analyzed.
Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

• Ensure adherence of Objective 3 program activities to USAID’s articulated program strategy.
• Aid in the design and implementation of relevant programmatic activities under Objective 3, in collaboration with USAID, ABA colleagues, partner organizations and other key stakeholders. This includes but is not limited to:
  • Holding focused dialogues in the communities of Ukraine’s regions to discuss existing proposals for transitional justice and the future of de-occupied territories and their populations, including various groups in such discussions, including veterans, internally displaced persons, relatives of victims, businesses, and representatives of other marginalized groups as well as local and national authorities.
  • Using input from local partners to create sustainable national and regional platforms for stakeholder coordination on transitional justice (including government, civil society, and private sector).
  • Supporting stakeholders in Ukraine to create and apply judicial and non-judicial mechanisms through which victims can seek redress and communities will be able to move toward reconciliation, using effective existing methods and creating new victim-centered reparative and retributive (e.g. prosecutions) justice approaches.
  • Developing media products targeted at different audiences (residents of frontline regions, people who left Ukraine due to the armed conflict, veterans, other groups classified as victims of war) regarding the need to approach law enforcement agencies or NGOs to document war crimes.
  • Conducting a review of registers containing information on persons affected by the armed conflict and help create a mechanism to allow for the inclusion of data from human rights NGOs documenting war crimes during the registration of victims.
  • Identifying local grass-roots initiatives supporting survivors of torture and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and providing them with technical support in organizational development, management and operations, and fundraising.
  • Mapping the efforts of various actors presently collecting war crimes data to determine who the players are, what information they are collecting, how their platforms operate, and what their baseline skill level is. Ensure that the data being collected can be safely and securely compiled, stored, and analyzed, as a coherent whole.
  • Working with existing working groups to integrate information about victims and survivors of international crimes documented by CSOs into the process of obtaining reparations.
• Help identify and develop small grant activities, and support subsequent monitoring of implementation of the small grants’ activities implemented under Objective 3.
• Use Monitoring & Evaluation tools and processes to assess and report on the status and efficacy of Objective 3 initiatives.
• Contribute to quarterly and annual programmatic reports on the activities implemented under Objective 3.
• Contribute to annual workplans for the activities under Objective 3.
• Conduct monitoring and analysis of relevant legislative, political, social and other developments.
• Perform other duties and activities as required by the Access to Justice Lead, Chief of Party, and Deputy Chief of Party for successful implementation of the USAID program.

Required Qualifications:

• Excellent oral and written English language communication skills required.
• Minimum of three (3) years of professional experience in international project implementation, preferably with USG-funded programs, or small grants programs.
• Minimum of two (2) years professional experience in political transition, human rights advocacy, social cohesion, protection and support to vulnerable groups or with transitional justice programming.
• Relevant experience working with NGOs, grassroots organizations, and/or local communities.
• Undergraduate degree (or higher) with minimum of two (2) years of experience showing increased responsibility in the areas of law, political science, social sciences, psychology, or other relevant fields.
• Ability to work under difficult conditions while maintaining security awareness.

Please apply by August 29, 2024.