Gender & Climate Change Specialist
Ref: JKMLUNDP/1904/202651
Bamako, Mali
Job Context
This is a newly created position. The countries of the East Africa Region are characterised by overlapping humanitarian and development challenges, including armed conflict, displacement, epidemics, food insecurity, and climate-related shocks. The region hosts approximately 3.8 million refugees, representing around 10% of the world’s refugee population; while ongoing crises in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia continue to strain already fragile health systems.
These intersecting crises disproportionately affect people facing marginalisation, including persons with disabilities, who experience higher health needs and significant barriers to accessing services. Evidence from the World Health Organization Global Report on Health Equity for Persons with Disabilities (2022) highlights persistent inequities in access, quality of care, and health outcomes, particularly in fragile and humanitarian settings.
In this context, Humanity & Inclusion (HI) works across the humanitarian-development nexus to strengthen inclusive, equitable and resilient health systems, improving sustainable access and health outcomes for populations facing intersecting forms of discrimination.
HI’s integrated health programming brings together multiple, interrelated domains:
Equitable Health Systems and Services (EHSS): Strengthening inclusive, quality and resilient health systems aligned with Universal Health Coverage and primary health care, including in humanitarian emergencies. This includes advancing disability-inclusive health systems in line with the WHO Guide for Action on Health Equity for Persons with Disabilities, with a focus on governance, service delivery, workforce capacity, financing, access to essential products, and health information systems.
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR): Sexual and reproductive health and rights in Africa face significant challenges, including high adolescent pregnancy rates, limited access to modern contraception, and rising levels of gender-based violence. While regional frameworks such as the East African Community SRH Bill (2021) aim to address these issues, substantial gaps persist between policy and implementation due to sociocultural barriers, weak health systems, inadequate financing, and the compounding impacts of climate change, which further exacerbate existing inequalities.
Early Childhood Development (ECD): Many children are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential due to poverty, malnutrition, disability and limited access to services. The World Health Organization, UNICEF and World Bank Nurturing Care Framework underscores the importance of integrated interventions across health, nutrition, responsive caregiving and early learning.
Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS): Conflict, displacement and crisis exposure are driving significant mental health needs across the region, with populations affected by emergencies at increased risk of mental health conditions. HI supports MHPSS across diverse contexts—including emergency responses in countries such as Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda, and more structured approaches in Rwanda—through social, rights-based and community-based models that strengthen local capacities and integrate MHPSS within broader health and community systems.
Climate and Health (Planetary Health): Climate change is intensifying health risks across the regions through rising heat stress, flooding, drought, and extreme rainfall, which increase illness and mortality and disrupt already fragile health systems. These changes are expanding the transmission of vector- and water-borne diseases—including malaria, dengue, chikungunya, and Rift Valley fever, including in previously unaffected areas—and contributing to malnutrition and conflict over scarce resources, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable populations.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and World Health Organization identify Sub-Saharan Africa as highly vulnerable to climate-sensitive health impacts. In response, HI is strengthening evidence and programming on climate and health, including research on the impacts of climate change on the health of women with disabilities, and translating these insights into inclusive, climate-resilient health system approaches.
HI promotes integrated, person-centred approaches that strengthen primary health care systems, ensure continuity of care, and responds to both immediate humanitarian needs and public health emergencies, as well as longer-term system strengthening priorities.
HI’s approach is grounded in human rights, community participation, and a twin-track strategy, combining the mainstreaming of disability inclusion across health systems with targeted actions to address specific barriers faced by persons with disabilities, including through engagement with organisations of persons with disabilities (OPDs).
With approximately 350–400 staff and an annual budget of around €20 million, HI
Additional Information
At Handicap International-Humanity & Inclusion, we truly believe in the importance of inclusion and diversity within our organisation. This is why we are engaged to a disability policy to encourage the inclusion and integration of people with disabilities. Please indicate if you require any special accommodation, even at the first interview.
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