SWAN regional Advocacy Officer
Part-time position (2 years term)
Application Deadline: April 10, 2012
Start date:May 10, 2012
About SWAN
SWAN Foundation is a non-profit organization that seeks to unite sex workers and their allies to defend sex worker rights and improve sex worker quality of life, including their social, economic, legal and health status in Central-Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Launched in 2006, SWAN will continue to build from the foundation it has established, intensifying advocacy demands which promote the human rights of sex workers across the region. In 2012 and 2013 SWAN will advocate to governments for safer and non-discriminative legal and social environments in which sex workers are empowered to protect their rights. To do this, SWAN will expose and take action against violence against sex workers, assess environments in 1-2 countries where decriminalization or depenalization efforts are strategic, advocate for increased investment in services and advocacy which address sex workers’ needs, and strengthen leadership and involvement of sex workers and their groups in decision making (more information on www.swannet.org).
Summary
The Advocacy Officer is primarily responsible for managing and implementing SWAN’s advocacy work, based on the strategic objectives outlined in SWAN’s 2011-2013 strategy. This includes but is not limited to contributing to SWAN’s annual planning, advancing SWAN’s advocacy priorities and projects, fundraising for advocacy work in collaboration with SWAN’s Executive Director, contributing to advocacy capacity building of SWAN’s staff and members, proactively monitoring and responding to advocacy openings for SWAN and its members as they arise, building and maintaining advocacy-related partnerships and representing SWAN in external human rights, sex worker, HIV, sexual and reproductive health and rights and other relevant forums as needed for the implementation of SWAN’s strategic objectives.
The Advocacy Officer will be managed by and report to SWAN’s Executive Director and will work closely with SWAN’s Communications Officer.
Duties and Responsibilities
1. Identify, monitor, and access advocacy opportunities for SWAN and its members
- Keep current and up to date on conferences, meetings, roundtables and other advocacy opportunities of interest to SWAN in the region and internationally;
- Facilitate SWAN members’ participation in regional and international meetings and events;
- Represent SWAN and raise SWAN priority issues in regional and international meetings and events.
2. Advance the advocacy goals of SWAN and its members
- Provide intensive support to member organisations for proactive and reactive advocacy work, including drafting open letters, drafting advocacy messages and requests, preparing UN treaty body submissions, holding meetings with the press and other national and regional bodies;
- Create, collect and/or edit the content of advocacy related internal and external documents and publications of SWAN;
- Work with SWAN and its members to ensure the inclusion of sex work issues into national and regional agendas and decision making of international organizations ( e.g. UNAIDS, Global Fund, etc);
- Work with SWAN members in 4 countries to implement SWAN’s Human Rights Abuse Documentation Project, supporting and facilitating the using of evidence and statistics coming out of this work for advocacy targeting national authorities and international agencies;
- Participate in identifying 1-2 additional countries where documentation and advocacy projects could be supported;
- Support SWAN members’ work with law enforcement officials at a national level in 2 countries;
- Advise advocacy efforts for creating national policy guidelines to help address violence against sex workers, for instance HIV guidelines including stipulations on how police must interact with marginalized groups;
- Identify criteria including partnerships, legal frameworks, political viability, and level of engagement of local sex workers which should be used to determine when decriminalization or depenalization efforts should be undertaken by SWAN and its members.
- Provide technical assistance to 1-2 countries which meet the criteria for developing and pursing strategies toward decriminalization or depenalization;
- Participate in organizing a multi-city advocacy/visibility action on December 17th each year, the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers, together with SWAN’sCommunication Officer and member organisations.
3. Serve as a resource person for SWAN and its members for information and publications on sex work and human rights.
- Manage, collect and organise reports, studies and other publications on sex work and human rights, making them available to the membership.
- Prepare and hold advocacy trainings for SWAN members
- Assist in developing advocacy materials (video, audio, text) for SWAN’s international, regional and national use.
- Advise on building advocacy partnerships in the region and member-countries
- Develop, maintain and adjust a policy binder that contains the positions and stances of SWAN and those taken by its member organisations and analysis of current sex work situation in SWAN countries.
Qualifications
- Minimum bachelor’s degree in Public Policy, Human Rights Studies, Public Relations, or a related field
- At least 4 years of professional experience in human rights advocacy
- Project management experience and strong management skills
- Fundraising experience preferred
- Sharing the SWAN core values
- Experience in sex worker rights advocacy preferred, experience working with marginalized communities required
- Strong written and oral communication and presentation skills
- Skilled Office/internet explorer/mail user
- Regular Internet access required
- Excellent oral/written English and good oral/written Russian
- Knowledge of written/spoken language of one of the languages in SWAN region is a plus
- Ability to work under pressure and respect deadliness
- Willingness to travel abroad as needed.
Location
Home based with potential to move to Budapest, Hungary to work full-time in SWAN headquarters.
Start date
May 10, 2012
Compensation
SalaryRange$1000 to $1500 per month commensurate with qualifications and experience.
To apply:
Please email you CV and letters of interest to SWAN Coordinator, Aliya Rakhmetova at Aliya.rakhmetova@swannet.org .