Title: Director of Documentation

Location: Remote

Reports To: Executive Director

The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) is a Syrian human rights organization that pursues meaningful justice and accountability for crimes committed in Syria. SJAC’s documentation team is responsible for collecting a wide variety of documentation from across Syria to feed into justice processes as well as SJAC’s publications and policy work.

Position Summary

SJAC seeks a staff member with a deep understanding of human rights in the Syrian context to lead the organization’s documentation efforts as it adapts to work in a post-Assad context. The Director of Documentation will set strategic priorities for the team, ensuring team members are collecting documentation (including open-source information, interviews, and documents) that effectively captures current human rights violations in the country, while also supporting SJAC’s long term investigations into past crimes. The Director will ensure that information collected in the field is available across all program team.

As a member of SJAC’s leadership team, the Director will work across the organization to ensure that the team’s work is integrated appropriately across SJAC’s programs.

General Duties and Responsibilities

• Work with the Executive Director to set clear thematic priorities for documentation efforts and ensure that each team member understands and meets their individual objectives.
• Oversee the daily work of a ten-person documentation team in and around Syria, with the support of a deputy team lead.
• Review incoming documentation to ensure high quality, and design new templates or policies as needed to raise quality.
• Periodically offer trainings to the team to build their knowledge of human rights and documentation skills.
• Closely follow human rights news from within Syria, ensuring that the team is capturing new violations.
• Collaborate with partner organizations publishing on Syrian human rights documentation, ensuring that SJAC’s work is not duplicative and is creating added value.
• Assist other SJAC teams in their requests for documentation or information on current violations. Create clear points of contact and workflows to support these efforts.
• Draft short articles or sections of reports based on SJAC’s documentation.
• Represent SJAC publicly at events and external meetings, including providing briefings on the current human rights situation on the ground to policy makers.
• Build/refresh SJAC’s network of local partner organizations inside Syria to refer interviews and other documentation.
• Ensure that field documentation is quickly transferred and uploaded to SJAC’s database, according to clear, documented workflows.
• Develop and implement policies to ensure that the documentation team receives the psychosocial support needed to maintain their health under trying conditions.
• Ensure that SJAC’s documentation team follows appropriate digital and physical security policies.
• Oversee the collection of necessary M&E indicators, so that SJAC has clear records of documentation collected.
• Participate in SJAC’s leadership team, helping to shape organizational strategy, and ensuring that the work of the documentation team is appropriately integrated across all projects.

Skills and Experience

• University degree (advanced degree preferred) in human rights, law, international affairs, or another relevant field.
• Knowledge of the Syrian conflict, associated human rights violations, and transitional justice processes.
• Experience in human rights documentation, with experience in training on documentation skills preferred.
• 2+ years as a manager, with experience managing teams working in the MENA region preferred.
• Sensitivity to dangers of secondary trauma and working with graphic materials
• Experience designing and implementing gender sensitive projects, including projects seeking to document violations experienced by women, girls, and other communities with barriers to access, is a plus.
• A strong commitment to the principles of impartiality and do no harm.
• English and Arabic (Syrian dialect) proficiency, written and spoken.

Pay and Benefits:

Salary: Salary will be dependent on the location in which a candidate is hired, based on education and experience within established bands of compensation. For SJAC’s DC office, starting salary will range between $102,000 and $110,000.

Other Benefits and/or Policies include:

The below describes SJAC’s benefits package in its DC office. Precise benefits will differ for remote employees.

SJAC has a hybrid work policy. While employees are occasionally expected to report to the office for in person events or meetings, they are otherwise free to split their working time between our DC office and their home within the Washington metropolitan area according to their preferences

• Vacation Leave: 15 days in years 1-3 of employ; 20 days in years 4+; Flex Fridays, every other Friday
• Family and Sick Leave: 10 days/year
• Annual Holidays: At least 13 holidays including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day
• Parental leave: 20 days of paid leave + 40 days of unpaid leave
• Medical, Dental and Vision Insurance
• Savings and Retirement Plans: automatic 2% employer contribution, and up to 7% matching contribution
• Pre-tax commuter benefits
• Short-term disability and life insurance
• Worker’s compensation insurance and unemployment insurance

SJAC is a diverse organization made up of 40+ team members around the globe. We pride ourselves in our ability to implement programming that is inclusive and responsive to the needs of all Syrians and believe that our own team’s diversity of viewpoints and experiences helps us to achieve that goal. We encourage all interested applicants to apply, regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or age.