MRELA & CARM Senior Officer EALBSP Full Time NEW

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is a leading global organization powered by the belief that a better world is possible. In disaster, in hardship, in more than 40 countries around the world, we partner to put bold solutions into action helping people triumph over adversity and build stronger communities from within. Now, and for the future.

About Mercy Corps Ethiopia

Mercy Corps has been present in Ethiopia since 2004 working to drive bold and transformative ideas, working closely with government, the private sector and civil society actors to build a more resilient country, ensuring that programs are responsive to and influenced by participants and stakeholders. Our vision is to enhance the resilience of climate and conflict-affected communities through market systems development for improved livelihoods, access to food, and safe and clean water to thrive in the face of crises. Our strategy focuses on the four outcome areas of: 1) Economically marginalized populations have improved and diversified livelihoods, income, and assets; 2) Pastoralists, farmers, and households have access to sustainably produced, safe, nutritious food; 3) Social cohesion and inclusive governance processes are built in crisis-affected communities; and 4) People have equitable, sustained access to clean water and sanitation for domestic and productive use. Currently we operate in the regional states of Afar, Amhara, Gambella, Oromia, Somali, Sidama, Southern Ethiopia, Tigray and Addis Ababa city administration working with a diverse base of donors that includes the U.S. Department of State, the European Union (EU), the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Global Affairs Canada (GAC), the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the United Nations (UN), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN), Jersey Overseas Aid (JOA), and a range of other institutional and private foundations.

Position Title: MRELA & CARM Senior Officer EALBSP

Duty Station: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with regular travel

Open Position: 1

Risk Level: Level 3

The Program / Department / Team

Border Security Programme – Ethiopia

The Border Security Programme (BSP) is an FCDO-funded regional programme designed to disrupt organised immigration crime (OIC) and contribute to safer borders and safer communities. The programme works through four mutually reinforcing outcome areas: evidence and analysis; stronger law-enforcement capability; community engagement, reporting and early warning; and witness support and protection.

In Ethiopia, BSP is implemented as a dedicated country component aligned with the regional programme, Ethiopian law and institutions, Government of Ethiopia priorities, and the realities of selected border and migration corridors. Mercy Corps works with relevant government institutions at federal, regional and local levels, consortium partners, Ethiopian civil-society and specialist partners, communities and other stakeholders to strengthen existing systems and locally grounded responses rather than establish parallel structures. Programme implementation is evidence-led, conflict-sensitive, rights-respecting and adaptive to changing border, migration and operational dynamics.

The Position

The MRELA & CARM Senior Officer is responsible for the day-to-day implementation and quality of BSP-Ethiopia’s Community Accountability Reporting Mechanism (CARM) and provides senior operational support to programme monitoring, reporting, data quality, learning and evidence-management processes. Reporting to the MRELA Advisor – BSP, the Senior Officer ensures that participant and stakeholder feedback is safely captured, categorised, analysed, referred, responded to and closed, and that emerging feedback trends are systematically used to improve programme quality and accountability.

The role also supports routine MRELA implementation across BSP programme locations and partners, including progress-marker evidence collection, indicator tracking, field monitoring, data-quality checks, partner submissions, dashboards, reporting inputs and learning processes. Working with the MRELA Advisor, Mercy Corps Ethiopia Country MEL Manager, programme leadership, partners, Safeguarding and Ethics functions, the Senior Officer helps ensure that community feedback and programme monitoring evidence are considered together in reflection, adaptation and decision-making.

Essential Responsibilities

CARM SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION AND QUALITY

• Operationalise, maintain and continuously improve BSP-Ethiopia’s Community Accountability Reporting Mechanism (CARM) in line with Mercy Corps standards, programme needs, responsible-data requirements and the operating context.
• Maintain safe, accessible and context-appropriate feedback channels and procedures, ensuring they are responsive to language, gender, age, disability and protection considerations.
• Maintain and apply CARM procedures, categorisation protocols, escalation routes, service standards and complaint-handling workflows, updating them as programme risks or delivery arrangements evolve.
• Ensure participants, communities and partners understand available feedback channels, confidentiality limits, response processes and alternative safeguarding or ethics reporting options; integrate CARM requirements into programme and partner implementation.

SENSITIVE FEEDBACK, REFERRALS AND PROTECTION OF COMPLAINANTS

• Receive, categorise and route feedback in accordance with approved protocols, distinguishing routine programme feedback from safeguarding, ethics, fraud, security and other sensitive matters requiring specialist handling.
• Refer sensitive complaints promptly through the appropriate Mercy Corps channels, maintain strict need-to-know access and do not investigate sensitive cases unless formally authorised.
• Apply heightened confidentiality, informed-consent, data-minimisation and protection measures where feedback involves victims, witnesses, at-risk migrants, children, survivors or others who could face harm.
• Track referrals, response commitments and closure status without duplicating sensitive case records, and escalate delays, unresolved concerns or systemic barriers to the MRELA Advisor and appropriate functional owners.

CARM DATA MANAGEMENT, ANALYSIS AND FEEDBACK LOOPS

• Maintain accurate, timely and secure CARM records and assigned feedback channels, ensuring appropriate access controls, documented actions and follow-up against agreed service standards.
• Analyse feedback by theme, geography and other safe characteristics to identify recurring concerns, barriers to access, unintended effects and opportunities for programme improvement.
• Prepare concise CARM dashboards and trend analyses for programme leadership, protecting confidentiality while highlighting response timeliness, referral status and priority actions.
• Support teams to act on CARM findings, track agreed improvements and, where safe and appropriate, close feedback loops with participants and stakeholders.

MRELA IMPLEMENTATION, MONITORING AND DATA QUALITY

• Support routine implementation of the BSP-Ethiopia MRELA system, including indicator tracking, monitoring schedules, partner submissions, evidence repositories and programme-performance updates.
• Collect, organise and verify quantitative and qualitative evidence for the Progress Marker Framework, including Expect to See, Like to See and Love to See markers.
• Conduct monitoring visits and support approved surveys, assessments and qualitative enquiries to verify progress, assess implementation quality and gather contextual evidence.
• Carry out routine data-quality checks, review partner submissions for completeness and traceability, follow up corrective actions and maintain secure evidence that supports reported results.

LEARNING, REFLECTION AND ADAPTIVE MANAGEMENT

• Prepare CARM and monitoring evidence for programme reflection and management review, including quarterly BSP evidence reviews.
• Work with the MRELA Advisor to identify lessons, evidence gaps, unintended outcomes and assumptions requiring review, and document resulting programme adaptations and follow-up actions.
• Contribute to learning briefs, case studies and evidence summaries and promote the use of participant feedback alongside monitoring and implementation evidence for learning and adaptation.

PARTNER CAPACITY STRENGTHENING AND COORDINATION

• Assess implementing-partner CARM and MRELA capacity needs and contribute to proportionate capacity-strengthening plans.
• Provide training, coaching and practical guidance to partner focal points and programme staff on feedback mechanisms, complaint handling, responsible data, monitoring, data quality and reporting.
• Support partners to maintain safe, accessible feedback channels and practical MRELA systems without creating unnecessary parallel or overly complex processes.
• Coordinate with partner focal points, the Regional BSP MRELA team and relevant Mercy Corps functions to review data quality, feedback trends, reporting needs, referral pathways and outstanding actions.

REPORTING AND PROGRAMME SUPPORT

• Contribute verified monitoring data, CARM analysis and concise evidence-based narrative to internal, regional and donor reporting.
• Maintain practical dashboards, trackers and evidence summaries that help teams understand performance, participant feedback and emerging management priorities.
• Support reporting deadlines and data submissions from field teams and partners, following up gaps or inconsistencies promptly; perform other relevant MRELA and accountability duties as assigned.

SAFEGUARDING RESPONSIBILITIES

• Actively learns about safeguarding and integrates it into their work, including safeguarding risks and mitigations related to their area of work.
• Practices the values of Mercy Corps including respecting the dignity and well-being of participants and fellow team members.
• Encourages openness and communication in their team; encourages team members to submit reports if they have any concerns using reporting mechanisms e.g., Integrity Hotline and other options.

Supervisory Responsibility

No permanent direct reports. Provides technical supervision to enumerators, temporary data-collection personnel and designated partner CARM/MRELA focal points as required.

 Accountability

Reports Directly To: MRELA Advisor – BSP Program

Functional Coordination With: Mercy Corps Ethiopia Country MEL Manager

Works Closely With: Ethiopia Country Lead; Regional BSP MRELA team; BSP programme and outcome leads; implementing partners and CARM/MRELA focal points; Safeguarding and Ethics functions; Finance and Subaward Specialist; Mercy Corps Ethiopia programme-quality and support teams; and relevant technical stakeholders.

Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders

Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.

Minimum Qualification & Transferable Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in Monitoring and Evaluation, Social Sciences, Development Studies, Statistics, Public Policy, International Development or a related field; a Master’s degree is an advantage.
• At least five years of progressively responsible MRELA/MEL, accountability, programme-quality or community-feedback experience with an INGO, including hands-on responsibility for feedback and complaints mechanisms.
• Demonstrated experience establishing or strengthening CARM/feedback systems, including safe intake, categorisation, referral, follow-up, closure and trend analysis.
• Strong understanding of confidentiality, informed consent, safeguarding and ethics referrals, responsible data and protection of complainants and others connected to sensitive feedback.
• Demonstrated experience with quantitative and qualitative monitoring, data-quality checks, progress/outcome monitoring, learning and evidence-based reporting in complex donor-funded programmes.
• Experience strengthening implementing-partner MRELA/accountability systems and competence with digital data-collection, database, spreadsheet or visualisation tools.
• Strong analytical, facilitation and report-writing skills; experience with FCDO or another major donor and relevant migration, trafficking, protection, governance or security programming is an advantage; excellent written and spoken English and Amharic, with additional Ethiopian languages an asset.

 Success Factors

The successful MRELA & CARM Senior Officer will combine discretion, empathy and sound judgement with strong attention to detail and analytical skills. They will protect confidentiality, recognise when sensitive matters require escalation, use community feedback as programme evidence, and communicate data-quality limitations and emerging trends clearly. They will be organised, collaborative and able to manage multiple deadlines while maintaining trust with participants, partners and colleagues.

Living Conditions / Environmental Conditions

The position is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with regular travel to BSP programme locations, partner offices and field sites across Ethiopia, including remote and border areas. Team members must comply with Mercy Corps safety, security, movement and access procedures and respect local laws, customs and organisational policies.

Ongoing Learning

In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development

Team Engagement and Effectiveness 

Achieving our mission starts with how we build our team and collaborate. By bringing together individuals with a variety of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives, we strengthen our ability to solve complex challenges and drive innovation. We foster a culture of trust and respect, where every team member is valued for their contributions, empowered to reach their full potential, and motivated to do their best work.

We recognize that building a strong and effective team is an ongoing process, and we remain committed to learning, improving, and growing together.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Mercy Corps is an equal opportunity employer committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, religion or belief, national origin, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, or any other characteristics protected under applicable law.

Safeguarding & Ethics

Mercy Corps is committed to ensuring that all individuals we come into contact with through our work, whether team members, community members, program participants or others, are treated with respect and dignity. We are committed to the core principles regarding prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse laid out by the UN Secretary General and IASC and have signed on to the Interagency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. We will not tolerate child abuse, sexual exploitation, abuse, or harassment by or of our team members. As part of our commitment to a safe and inclusive work environment, team members are expected to conduct themselves in a professional manner, respect local laws and customs, and to adhere to Mercy Corps Code of Conduct Policies and values at all times. Team members are required to complete mandatory Code of Conduct elearning courses upon hire and on an annual basis.

As an applicant, if you witness or experience any form of sexual misconduct during the recruitment process, please report this to Mercy Corps Integrity Hotline (integrityhotline@mercycorps.org).