UN Refugee Agency is Recruiting Junior Professional Officers [2024]
Junior Professional Required
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1950 in the aftermath of the Second World War to help the millions of Europeans who had fled or lost their homes. We were given three years to complete this work, and then disband.
As new refugee crises unfolded across the globe, our mandate was extended multiple times throughout the 20th century until a General Assembly resolution in 2003 made the agency permanent.
Today, we are a global organization dedicated to protecting people forced to flee. We lead international action to protect refugees, deliver life-saving assistance, help safeguard fundamental human rights, and develop solutions that ensure people have a safe place to call home where they can build a better future.
Over the years, our scope has widened to also include supporting refugees returning home, people forcibly displaced within their own country, and those denied a nationality and left stateless.
UNHCR now has 20,305 personnel working in 136 countries. We have helped more than 50 million refugees to successfully restart their lives, and continue to protect and provide support for the 117.3 million people currently displaced.
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Filippo Grandi is the 11th United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
He was first elected by the UN General Assembly on 1 January 2016 for a five-year term. The General Assembly has since twice re-elected him to serve, and he will now complete his term on 31 December 2025.
Challenges of forced displacement and statelessness have grown in scope, scale and complexity, and displacement numbers reached unprecedented levels. During Grandi’s tenure, UNHCR has striven to better protect, empower and seek inclusion and solutions for displaced and stateless people, and to enable a better response to emergencies.
Refugees are exposed to stress at every stage of their displacement. Pressures include separation from families, xenophobia, lack of livelihood opportunities, perilous journeys and exposure to conflict and persecution. A recent survey conducted by UNHCR and the World Bank in Uganda found rates of depression among refugees were markedly higher than among people living in host communities.
Today, UNHCR’s Executive Committee adopted a conclusion acknowledging the mental fortitude of forcibly displaced people, urging increased availability of mental health and psychosocial support services to refugees and other displaced and stateless people, including access to national health and social services.
Junior Professional Officers (JPOs) are young professionals who are interested in the UN and humanitarian work, who prove able to contribute to UNHCR’s future and its work on behalf of refugees, internally displaced people and the stateless.
The areas of expertise that the organization looks for in particular are: law, public administration and social sciences.
Most JPOs are between ages 25 and 35, depending on donor country policy, and are recruited as professional staff members at the P2 level. While most JPOs are citizens of their donor countries, the Netherlands may also sponsor citizens of other countries under the Developing Countries Scheme (JPO/DC). Nearly 69 per cent of JPOs continue in UNHCR as regular staff at the end of their assignment. UNHCR manages around 60 JPOs yearly sponsored by 15 Governments. Most JPO assignments last from two to three years.
Eligibility
- Degree equivalent to a Bachelor’s Degree or a Master’s Degree in a field relevant to the functions requested in the job description.
- At least two to four years of relevant work experience (two years with a Master Degree – or higher – or four years with a Bachelor Degree).
- Proficiency in English (spoken and written) and working knowledge of a second language of the United Nations is strongly recommended asset (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish).
- Keen and demonstrated interest in the United Nations and humanitarian issues, in particular, and ability to live and/or serve in hardship locations.
