Cyclone Ditwah made landfall on 28 November 2025, triggering severe flooding and landslides across all 25 districts and creating a rapidly evolving humanitarian emergency. A state of emergency was declared, and the Government had requested international assistance. An ‘Advisory’^[1] for Northeast monsoon conditions indicated heavy rains above 100 mm likely in Northern, Eastern and North Central provinces.
The National Disaster Management Organisation (Disaster Management Centre (DMC)) reports 607 deaths, 214 missing, and 2,082,195 people affected. 4,164 houses were  fully damaged, and  67,505 were  partially damaged.^[2] Phase 2 of the Joint Rapid Needs Assessment (JRNA) is ongoing to fill immediate data gaps.^[3] 
Within 24 hours after the cyclone hit, UNFPA and its partners were on the ground providing maternity and dignity kits to affected communities, followed by cash assistance distributions. UNFPA was the first UN agency to provide cash assistance to pregnant women after the cyclone hit the country. A safety audit [in Sri Lanka, called GBV Safety Verification] was also conducted in two shelters to understand the protection needs of the affected women and girls. UNFPA and its partners are scaling up and continuing to deliver lifesaving interventions, particularly for women and girls, including adolescents, youth, and older women.
To address this crisis, UNFPA activated a 6-month internal Level 2 (L2) emergency response on 4 December 2025, enabling the CO to scale up operations, enhance coordination and mobilize resources to meet the immediate lifesaving needs of affected women and girls, and provide support to restore SRH and GBV services, while laying the foundation for early recovery and strengthened preparedness. The CO launched an appeal for US$8,336,000 on 5 December 2025.^[4] The Appeal has two components: Emergency response and Relief Recovery outputs to be implemented until December 2026.
UNFPA is seeking a profile of an Emergency Response Coordinator to continue coordinating the implementation of UNFPA’s emergency response plan. He/she will support to ensure timely, coordinated, and effective delivery of UNFPA’s emergency interventions. The role is critical for supporting strategic planning, inter-agency coordination, and operational scale-up while ensuring compliance with the UNFPA’s EPPs. He/she will also support strengthening resource mobilization, information management, and country office capacity, enabling UNFPA to effectively prioritize and deliver life-saving SRH and GBV interventions.

All staff must adhere strictly to established security protocols. Humanitarian access challenges due to daage to roads and bridges, as well as remaining debris from the floods and landslides, may hinder both aid delivery and the ability of affected communities to reach essential services. UNFPA will implement targeted mitigation measures, including strengthened security planning, movement restrictions where necessary, and close coordination with UNDSS and partners, to ensure safe and uninterrupted service delivery.

Role Description: Under the overall supervision of the UNFPA Sri Lanka  CO Humanitarian Emergency Coordinator will be responsible for leading and coordinating UNFPA’s L2 emergency response in Sri Lanka. The incumbent will ensure a coherent, strategic, and effective response, working closely with the Country Office (CO), Regional Office (RO), and EPP Secretariat.

Key Responsibilities

1. Coordination and Strategic Response Planning

• Support managing and tracking/updating of UNFPA’s emergency response plan that has two main components, namely emergency response and relief recovery outputs, as well as updating the EPP tools and documenting relevant lessons learnt.
• Contribute to positioning UNFPA in inter-agency coordination mechanisms, including the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), inter-cluster coordination group, and relevant sectoral clusters (Health, Protection, GBV Sub-Cluster) as well as in early recovery and its post disaster needs assessment process/working group.
• Strengthen UNFPA’s engagement with humanitarian partners, government authorities, and donors to advocate for SRH and GBV as priority components of the response.
• Contribute to UNFPA SitRep as well as other communications’ products and ensure that correct data and information  are made available by ensuring the IM tracking is updated by the concerned UNFPA teams for communication, advocacy and fund raising purpose by UNFPA

2.  Operational and Programmatic Scale-Up

• Develop concrete proposals and write relevant reports in line with the emergency response plan to scale up UNFPA’s operations in disaster-affected areas.
• Support operations and programme colleagues in budgeting and financial tracking.
• Ensure supply plan, procurement plan, and ConOPs are updated and tracked, in close coordination with supply chain focal points at the CO and RO.
• Coordinate and work closely with focal points of SRH, GBV, AAP, PSEA, GBV AoR, CVA, and others at CO and RO.
• Set up the emergency response plan that entailed operational and programmatic interventions in alignment with the EPPs to ensure an effective After Action Review once the response is deactivated.

3.  Resource Mobilization and Advocacy

• Identify funding gaps and support resource mobilization efforts through proposal development and donor engagement.
• Provide advocacy support by developing key messages, briefing notes, talking-points and presentations for engagement with UN agencies, donors, and government counterparts.
• Work closely with RM/P focal points at CO and RO to update and tracked the RM/P plan/strategy.

4.  Information Management and Reporting

• Ensure timely and quality reporting on UNFPA’s humanitarian response, including situation updates, donor reports, and internal briefings.
• Contribute to the consolidation of lessons learned and best practices for future emergency responses.
• Coordinate the data collection and analysis from IPs to UNFPA, ensure IM related to UNFPA programming and inter-agency, including GBV AOR/Sub Cluster are updated.

5. Capacity Building of the Country Office

• Strengthen CO capacity on the EPPs tools and processes, ensuring alignment with UNFPA global humanitarian standards.
• Conduct orientation sessions and knowledge-sharing activities for CO staff on EPP implementation, humanitarian coordination, response planning, and other relevant topics around emergency response.
• Support the mainstreaming of humanitarian action within UNFPA’s regular programming.

6. Any Other Duties
 

• Perform any other duties as required by the Representative and/or Head of Office

Expected Deliverables

• A UNFPA L2 emergency response plan is updated/tracked and lessons learnt documented.
• Effective representation of UNFPA in humanitarian in interclusters coordination systems, PDNA, and relevant assessments.
• The capacity of the CO on emergency response, including familiarisation of EPPs, is developed.
• Resource mobilisation and communications are supported.
• Emergency response programming and budgeting/financing are well tracked.

Qualifications and Skills Required:
 

• Advanced degree in disaster management, medicines, public health, and/or legal or equivalent relevant professional certification in areas such as SRH, or GBV or public health.
• 5 to 7 year field experience in humanitarian/emergency settings
• Managing emergency responses of UNFPA is a must.
• Experience and knowledge with INGO and UN systems, especially UNFPA is an advantage.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work in stressful environments, strong leadership skills are also highly desired.
• Familiarity of Asia Pacific region is highly desired.
• Good knowledge of humanitarian response.
• Proficiency in English and in other official languages or the UN required.

 

 

CANADEM and its partners have a no-tolerance policy for inaction to prevent, respond to and follow up on alleged cases of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Harassment (SEAH). For this reason, we adhere to all policies, procedures and training of the United Nations on The Prevention of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Harassment (PSEAH). CANADEM mandates all deployees successfully complete the PSEA online course. This e-learning course is composed of a set of lessons designed to raise awareness about SEAH, become familiar with a range of measures to combat SEAH, understand the impact on victims and the consequences for UN Personnel who commit Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Harassment.