Irish Aid, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is seeking applications from suitably qualified persons - including engineers - to join the humanitarian Rapid Response Corps. Completed application forms will be accepted until May 16, 2018. For full details on how to apply, please click here.
Rapid Response Initiative
Under Ireland’s Rapid Response Initiative, Irish Aid regularly deploys highly skilled and experienced individuals from the Rapid Response Corps roster to work as surge capacity with Ireland’s UN standby partners as part of their humanitarian and emergency response efforts.
The Rapid Response Corps (RRC) currently comprises more than 80 experts with specialised skills in logistics, engineering, water and sanitation, humanitarian co-ordination, protection and other areas. Most have worked extensively overseas in humanitarian and/or development settings.
Individual members of the corps are deployed at the request of those UN humanitarian agencies with which Ireland has concluded formal bilateral standby agreements under the UN Standby Partnership Programme.
These four UN agencies are the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Available at short notice for deployment where gaps exist
The Standby Partnership Agreements commit Irish Aid to maintaining a standby roster of personnel with general skills profiles and other specialised qualifications that match the requirements of the UN partner agencies and who can be available at short notice for deployment where gaps exist.
A total of 31 roster members were deployed in 2017 to Ethiopia, DRC, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Kenya, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Greece, Malawi, Haiti, Ghana, Myanmar and Bangladesh. During 2016, 37 members were deployed, while 32 members were deployed in 2015.
See the chart and map, above and right, setting out the types of profiles and locations of deployments during 2017.
Irish Aid provides pre-departure training to roster members, in conjunction with the Defence Forces’ UN Training School Ireland (UNTSI) in the Curragh Camp.
Training on humanitarian reform and architecture
This includes a general orientation on humanitarian response, and training on humanitarian reform and architecture, and on humanitarian codes, standards and best practice. It also includes training on personal safety and security to prepare rapid responders for the challenging and difficult environments they will work in.
Irish Aid also encourages and supports roster members to participate in UN and other donors’ specialised training courses from time to time, for example, in civil-military co-ordination, child protection in emergencies, emergency preparedness and response, cluster co-ordination and gender-based violence in emergencies.
Rapid responders usually receive a daily stipend during their deployment. Public servants who are also roster members may, subject to their employer’s approval, be deployed on assignment from the roster and retain their salary and benefits.
Irish Aid also meets basic costs while on deployment including travel to and from the RRC member’s duty station, food and accommodation, visas, vaccinations and insurance. Rapid responders receive medical check-ups prior to departure and are provided with advice and assistance in case of illness or emergency while in the field.
Find out more
Read about the
experience of members of Irish Aid's Rapid Response Corps. For further information:
click here.
To apply for the Rapid Response Corps, please contact the Rapid Response Initiative using the following email address to request an application form:
rapidresponseroster2018@dfa.ie. Please note the closing date for receipt of completed application forms is May 16, 2018.