PSEA and Workplace Safeguarding Specialist

At the core of the IRC’s work is a commitment to protection, gender equality, and survivor-centered practice. The IRC has deep expertise in addressing gender-based violence, exploitation, and abuse across humanitarian and displacement settings, with a strong emphasis on prevention, ethical response, accountability, and the leadership of women-led and community-based organizations. This experience has generated robust approaches to safeguarding, case management, referral systems, and risk mitigation that are grounded in local realities and aligned with international standards.

Increasingly, the IRC is applying this expertise beyond traditional humanitarian programming, recognizing that many drivers of harm such as power asymmetries, labor mobility, informality, and weak accountability mechanisms are shared across crisis, recovery, and global value-chain contexts. Through innovative partnerships with private-sector actors, brands, and suppliers, the IRC supports the adaptation and transfer of humanitarian protection and safeguarding practices to settings where workers face heightened risks of exploitation, harassment, and abuse.

In this project, the IRC works to strengthen PSEAH systems within garment factories while reinforcing the leadership of women-led organizations as primary actors in survivor response. The IRC’s role is not to replace local expertise, but to help bridge corporate safeguarding commitments with trusted, community-anchored support, ensuring that prevention and reporting mechanisms translate into meaningful, ethical, and survivor-centered outcomes.
This approach reflects the IRC’s broader ambition to position humanitarian protection practice as a transferable system asset, capable of informing risk reduction, accountability, and survivor support across sectors and geographies where patterns of vulnerability and harm are structurally similar.

JOB OVERVIEW/SUMMARY
The GBV Specialist will provide technical leadership to strengthen the design, implementation, and sustainability of PSEAH systems within factories, while mentoring and supporting women-led organizations (WLOs) to deliver survivor-centered, ethical, and confidential remedial care for survivors of sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEAH)..
The role bridges corporate safeguarding, worker protection, and community-based survivor support, ensuring that prevention, reporting, response, and accountability mechanisms are functional, accessible, and aligned with international safeguarding standards and local legal frameworks.

The GBV Specialist will provide technical leadership to support innovative programming that strengthens the design, implementation, and sustainability of PSEAH systems within garment factories, while working in partnership with women-led organizations (WLOs as lead actors in survivor response) to ensure the availability of survivor-centered, ethical, and confidential remedial care for survivors of sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEAH).
The role sits at the intersection of technical assistance, model adaptation and transferability, and mobility-informed GBV risk reduction within global value chains. It supports WLO-led responses by helping translate factory-based safeguarding commitments into trusted, community-anchored survivor support pathways, and by mitigating SEAH risks linked to labor mobility, subcontracting, and power asymmetries across factory and community contexts. Prevention, reporting, response, and accountability mechanisms are strengthened to be functional, accessible, and aligned with international safeguarding standards and national legal frameworks.

The role requires a high degree of professional judgment to navigate complex power dynamics between brands, factory management, workers, and community-based organizations, and to balance safeguarding integrity with private-sector engagement. It contributes to positioning humanitarian protection practice and strategies as transferable assets across sectors and geographies where drivers of risk, vulnerability, and harm share common characteristics, enabling learning, adaptation, and potential scale beyond a single project or context.

Key Responsibilities
1. PSEAH Systems Strengthening in Garment Factories

• Conduct organizational PSEAH risk assessments within garment factories, with specific attention to power dynamics, subcontracting, migrant and casual labor, and gender-based risks.
• Support factories to develop, adapt, and implement PSEAH policies, Codes of Conduct, SOPs, and reporting mechanisms aligned with international standards (e.g., ILO, UN, OECD Due Diligence Guidance).
• Build the capacity of factory management, supervisors, HR teams, and worker representatives on:
  i. PSEAH principles and survivor-centered approaches
  ii. Safe and ethical complaints handling
  iii. Confidentiality, non-retaliation, and whistleblower protections
• Support the establishment or strengthening of worker-accessible, gender-responsive reporting and referral pathways, including anonymous and informal reporting options.
• Promote worker awareness and empowerment, ensuring information on rights, reporting options, and support services is accessible, culturally appropriate, and inclusive of women, young workers, and marginalized groups.

2. Survivor-Centered Response and Remedial Care through WLOs

• Work with women-led organizations to ensure the availability of safe, confidential, and survivor-centered remedial care, including:
  i. Psychosocial support and counseling
  ii. Medical referrals
  iii. Legal information and accompaniment
  iv. Safety planning and case management (where appropriate)
• Support WLOs to strengthen case management systems, ethical data handling, informed consent processes, and referral protocols.
• Ensure that survivor response mechanisms uphold the “do no harm” principle, prioritize survivor choice, and are responsive to workplace-related SEAH risks.
• Facilitate referral agreements between factories and WLOs, ensuring clear roles, survivor consent, and safeguards against retaliation.

3. Capacity Building and Technical Support

• Design and deliver tailored PSEAH training curricula for factory staff, workers, and WLO partners, adapting content to literacy levels, language needs, and cultural contexts.
• Provide ongoing coaching and mentoring to safeguarding focal points within factories and partner organizations.
• Support WLOs to engage effectively with private-sector actors while maintaining independence, survivor trust, and feminist principles.

4. Coordination, Compliance, and Accountability

• Liaise with brands, buyers, factory associations, labor inspectors, and relevant government authorities (where appropriate) to align PSEAH efforts with broader ethical labor and compliance frameworks.
• Ensure PSEAH systems are aligned with national labor laws, national GBV legislation, and safeguarding standards.
• Support the documentation of learning, challenges, and good practices to inform program improvement and advocacy.

5. Monitoring, Learning, and Reporting

• Develop and track PSEAH performance indicators across prevention, reporting, and response components.
• Support Brands to safely and ethically collect and analyze data, ensuring survivor confidentiality at all times.
• Contribute to internal and external reporting, learning products, and recommendations for scale-up or adaptation.

6. PSEAH Systems Design and Risk Mitigation in Garment Factories

• Provide technical leadership to assess, design, and strengthen PSEAH systems within garment factories, with a focus on identifying and mitigating SEAH risks linked to power asymmetries, labor mobility, subcontracting, migrant and casual labor, and gendered workplace hierarchies.
• Support factories to adapt and operationalize PSEAH policies, Codes of Conduct, SOPs, and reporting mechanisms in line with international safeguarding standards and national legal frameworks, ensuring they are practical, worker-accessible, and contextually appropriate.
• Advise factory management, HR teams, supervisors, and worker representatives on survivor-centered, ethical, and non-retaliatory approaches to prevention, reporting, and complaints handling, including safe escalation and accountability pathways.
• Support the establishment or strengthening of gender-responsive, worker-accessible reporting mechanisms, including confidential, anonymous, and informal options, with particular attention to women workers, young workers, and marginalized groups.
• Promote worker awareness and agency by ensuring information on rights, reporting options, and available support services is accessible, culturally appropriate, and inclusive.

7. Enabling WLO-Led Survivor Response and Remedial Care

• Work in partnership with women-led organizations (WLOs as lead actors in survivor response) to ensure the availability of survivor-centered, ethical, and confidential remedial care for survivors of workplace-related SEAH.
• Support an enabling environment for WLO leadership by strengthening referral pathways, coordination protocols, and agreements between factories and WLOs, ensuring survivor consent, confidentiality, and safeguards against retaliation.
• Provide technical support to WLOs on ethical case management standards, informed consent, safe data handling, referral protocols, and survivor choice, without assuming direct responsibility for individual case management.
• Ensure that survivor response mechanisms prioritize “do no harm” principles, respect survivor autonomy, and are responsive to risks emerging from workplace and mobility-related contexts.
• Support WLOs to engage with private-sector actors in ways that preserve organizational independence, survivor trust, and feminist and rights-based principles.

8. Capacity Building, Coaching, and Model Adaptation

• Design and deliver tailored PSEAH capacity-building initiatives for factory staff, worker representatives, and WLO partners, adapting content to literacy levels, language needs, and cultural contexts.
• Provide ongoing coaching and technical accompaniment to safeguarding focal points within factories and partner organizations to support sustained implementation.
• Contribute to the adaptation and documentation of PSEAH and survivor-response models that demonstrate potential for transferability across sectors, geographies, or value chains facing similar risk profiles.
• Support learning on how humanitarian protection and safeguarding practices can be effectively translated into private-sector and supply-chain contexts.

9. Coordination, Judgment, and Safeguarding Integrity

• Engage with brands, buyers, factory associations, labor actors, and relevant authorities, as appropriate, to align PSEAH systems with broader ethical labor, safeguarding, and compliance frameworks.
• Exercise professional judgment to identify safeguarding risks that may compromise survivor safety or organizational integrity, and advise on mitigation measures, escalation, or non-engagement where necessary.
• Support alignment of factory-level PSEAH systems with national labor law, GBV legislation, and international safeguarding standards, without undermining survivor-centered principles.
• Document learning, challenges, and good practices to inform program improvement, institutional learning, and responsible advocacy.

10. Monitoring, Learning, and Ethical Use of Data

• Contribute to the development and ethical use of PSEAH indicators across prevention, reporting, and response components, ensuring that monitoring does not compromise survivor confidentiality or safety.
• Support partners and brands to collect and use data responsibly to inform risk mitigation, learning, and system improvement, without incentivizing under-reporting or harmful metrics.
• Contribute to internal and external reporting, learning products, and recommendations for adaptation or scale, with a focus on responsible transferability rather than replication.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as Gender Studies, Social Work, Human Rights, Law, Labor Relations, Industrial Relations, Public Health, International Development, Business Ethics, or a related discipline.
• Equivalent professional training or demonstrated applied expertise in workplace safeguarding, ethical trade, labor standards, or PSEAH systems may be considered in lieu of a specific academic background.
• A postgraduate qualification in a relevant field is an asset, particularly where it demonstrates applied expertise in safeguarding, labor rights, protection systems, or risk mitigation in complex, multi-actor environments.
  Language Requirements:
• Fluency in English (spoken and written) is required.
• Ability to communicate safeguarding concepts clearly and sensitively across different literacy levels and cultural contexts is essential.
• Strong written communication skills, including the ability to develop and refine PSEAH policies, grievance procedures, referral protocols, and guidance documents that are operationally usable by factory management, workers, and partner organizations.
• Basic proficiency in digital tools for documentation, reporting, and secure information management, with sensitivity to data protection and confidentiality requirements.

Experience:

• Minimum 5 years of progressive professional experience in one or more of the following areas: workplace safeguarding or harassment prevention, PSEAH or safeguarding systems, ethical trade or labor standards, supply-chain risk mitigation, or GBV or survivor-centered response programming, with experience in contexts linked to global value chains., including demonstrated responsibility for the design, implementation, or oversight of prevention, reporting, and response mechanisms.
• Demonstrated experience working in countries and labor ecosystems characterized by large mobile, or subcontracted workforces, including familiarity with risks associated with recruitment practices, workers’ gendered experi...