Regional Humanitarian Manager - Middle East and Asia; MEA)

Position: Regional Humanitarian Manager - Middle East and Asia (MEA)
Regional Humanitarian Manager
- Middle East and Asia (MEA)

Cordaid is an international organisation for development and humanitarian assistance, working especially in fragile and conflict-affected regions. Guided by Christian values of human dignity, justice and compassion, we work towards a world without poverty and with equitable opportunities for all.

More than 1.9 billion people live in fragile contexts where access to essential services and opportunities is limited. Together with our partners, we support locally led programmes that strengthen healthcare, education, agrifood and justice systems. When crises occur, we work alongside local organisations to provide humanitarian assistance worldwide. Cordaid has Regional cores in Europe, West Africa, East, Central and Southern Africa and in the Middle East and Asia.

In our development work we work with 15 country offices, in our humanitarian work we operate worldwide and needs based, mainly through our networks of ACT Alliance and Caritas.

Our organisation operates through a domain-based model, where regional teams work closest to partners and context, supported by specialised domains that provide technical expertise, quality standards, donor engagement and compliance. This interdependent way of working enables us to combine local ownership with strong organisational standards and deliver effective, context-driven programmes.

Regional Humanitarian Manager
- Middle East and Asia (MEA)

(Fulltime, home-based in the MEA region)

• As our Regional Humanitarian Manager for MEA, you provide strategic leadership for humanitarian action, emergency preparedness, and crisis response across the Middle East and Asia. Working at the interface between the MEA Regional Core and the global Humanitarian Assistance Platform, you ensure that humanitarian responses are principled, locally led, conflict-sensitive, and effectively integrated into regional strategies and Country Engagement Models (triple nexus approach).
  
  Rather than managing direct programme implementation, you enable local partners to lead, by strengthening preparedness, technical quality, and organisational readiness in highly volatile environments. You report directly to the MEA Regional Director.
• What you do
• Humanitarian Leadership & Strategy:
  Provide strategic leadership and expert advice on humanitarian action across the MEA region, supporting Regional Directors and country teams in rapid crisis decision-making while upholding humanitarian principles, CHS, and SPHERE guidelines.
• Emergency Preparedness & Response:
  Strengthen regional preparedness and crisis readiness in high-risk contexts by coordinating regional contingency planning, supporting emergency response activations, promoting anticipatory action, and coordinating with regional ACT Alliance and Caritas fora.
• Humanitarian Partnerships & Localisation:
  Foster equitable partnerships with national and local humanitarian partners across MEA, supporting partner preparedness, capacity sharing, and local leadership in complex emergency settings.
• Triple Nexus & Conflict Sensitivity:
  Spearhead the humanitarian-development-peace nexus approach, linking emergency response and recovery to longer-term systems strengthening, protection, and peace building while ensuring robust conflict-sensitive programming. Sectoral interventions focus on life-saving support like FSL, WASH and Shelter, but extend to other sectors where needed.
• Technical Quality & Accountability:
  Ensure compliance with international humanitarian standards, accountability to affected populations (AAP), protection, and safeguarding across regional responses in close coordination with the Global Humanitarian Assistance Platform.
• Resource Mobilization & Positioning:
  Support strategic engagement with institutional humanitarian donors (ECHO, BHA, UN agencies, Country-Based Humanitarian Funds) and collaborate with the Business Development Manager to build a healthy regional humanitarian funding pipeline. Coordination with the Global Humanitarian Assistance Platform on Dutch and Europe based funds (SHO, DRA, START) and with ACT Alliance and Caritas at regional and country level to pursue funding opportunities.
• Networking, Representation & Advocacy:
  Represent the Regional Core in humanitarian coordination clusters, UN/OCHA meetings, INGO platforms, and donor forums to advance strategic priorities and advocate for principled, locally led responses. ACT Alliance and Caritas country fora are instrumental for Cordaid to channel its…