GICHD Opens Amman Office, Seeks Senior EORE Advisor
International mine action coordination has historically been directed from Geneva, with advisors rotating through affected countries on short-term missions—but the scale and persistence of explosive ordnance contamination across the MENA region now compels the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining to establish its first permanent regional office and recruit a senior Explosive Ordnance Risk Education specialist on the ground.
Geneva Moves East: A Structural Shift in Mine Action Coordination
The Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) is establishing a permanent office in Amman, Jordan—a move that represents a significant departure from the organisation’s traditional operating model. Since its founding in 1998, the GICHD has functioned as a Geneva-based technical hub, deploying advisors to approximately 50 countries annually on rotational missions. The decision to plant a fixed regional presence in Amman suggests the MENA region’s explosive ordnance contamination challenge has grown beyond what a rotational advisory model can service.
The Centre has posted a vacancy for an Explosive Ordnance Risk Education (EORE) and Conflict Preparedness and Protection (CPP) Advisor, offered on an initial one-year national contract based in Jordan’s capital. The role requires a minimum of 10 years’ experience in the EORE/CPP sector, a Master’s degree in a relevant field such as Social and Behavioural Change Communication (SBCC), anthropology, or sociology, and fluency in both Arabic and English. The advisor is expected to travel up to 50% of working time, including to countries affected by explosive ordnance in medium and high-risk conflict areas.
The specification tells its own story. This is not a junior monitoring post. The GICHD is recruiting a practitioner capable of designing national EORE standards, conducting system-level assessments, and advising national mine action authorities directly—someone who can translate the International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) into context-specific guidance across multiple MENA states simultaneously.
Why Amman, Why Now: The MENA Contamination Picture
Jordan sits at the geographic centre of several of the world’s most heavily explosive ordnance-contaminated countries. Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories all fall within the MENA region and each carries distinct contamination profiles—from legacy minefields along the Syrian-Jordanian border to widespread cluster munition remnants (CMR) across southern Lebanon, improvised explosive device (IED) contamination in post-Islamic State territories in Iraq and Syria, and ongoing conflict-generated explosive remnants of war (ERW) in Yemen and Gaza.
The EORE discipline has evolved considerably since its origins as simple “mine awareness.” Modern EORE operates on Social and Behavioural Change Communication (SBCC) principles—the same methodologies used in public health campaigns. The shift recognises that telling communities “don’t touch unexploded ordnance” is insufficient when those communities live alongside contamination daily and face economic pressures that drive scrap metal collection, agricultural activity on contaminated land, and children’s play in areas riddled with Explosive Remnants of War (ERW). Effective EORE requires understanding local decision-making, power structures, information flows, and behavioural drivers at a granular, community-by-community level.
The job posting’s explicit reference to EWIPA—Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas—is also telling. The 2022 Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences of the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas was endorsed by over 80 states. The CPP component of this role suggests the GICHD is positioning itself to support national authorities in operationalising that declaration across the MENA region, where urban warfare and the use of explosive weapons in populated areas have been defining features of every major conflict since 2011.
ISC Assessment: The GICHD does not open regional offices casually. This move signals a structural assessment within Geneva that the MENA explosive ordnance burden—spanning at least six active or recently active conflict theatres—requires a permanent advisory presence rather than periodic rotational support. For the wider WOME community, the 10-year experience threshold and SBCC qualification requirement reflect how far Explosive Ordnance Risk Education has professionalised. This is applied behavioural science in contaminated environments, not pamphlet distribution. The Arabic language requirement narrows the candidate pool sharply and underlines the intent to embed within, rather than parachute into, national mine action systems.
Personnel and Capacity Implications for the WOME Sector
The GICHD recruitment is part of a broader trend in the mine action sector: growing demand for senior EORE/CPP practitioners at a time when the global pool of qualified personnel remains thin. The International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) framework, IMAS 12.10 specifically, sets out requirements for EORE but does not mandate a formal competency accreditation pathway equivalent to, for example, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) competency framework used by national military forces. The result is that experience is the primary qualification metric—hence the 10-year minimum—and the sector competes for a small cohort of practitioners who have both the technical mine action background and the behavioural science skills the role demands.
The requirement for Results Based Management (RBM) competence, budget preparation, and donor reporting capabilities further indicates this is a role that bridges the operational and programmatic. The advisor will be expected to design interventions, secure funding, and measure impact—a combination that requires fluency in both the technical WOME vocabulary and the humanitarian programme management lexicon used by institutional donors such as the European Commission, United States Department of State Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement (PM/WRA), and the United Kingdom’s Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF).
The position’s travel requirement—50% to medium and high-risk conflict areas—places it in the same operational category as deployed EOD team advisors and ammunition technical assessment missions. Personnel operating in these environments require security awareness training, hostile environment awareness training (HEAT), and insurance coverage that adds significant programme cost. That the GICHD considers this travel tempo necessary for an EORE advisory role reflects the proximity to active contamination that the work demands.
Data Gaps and Confidence Assessment
The GICHD has not published a public statement explaining the strategic rationale for the Amman office, and the job posting does not specify which MENA countries the advisor will prioritise. It is not confirmed whether the Amman office will host additional staff beyond this initial recruitment, or whether this represents a broader regional hub strategy. The relationship between this new office and the existing GICHD partnerships with national mine action authorities in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Lebanon, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories has not been detailed publicly.
The application deadline is 25 April 2026. The contract is described as fixed-term with the possibility of extension, which is standard for donor-funded positions in the humanitarian mine action sector.
AI-assisted analysis based on open-source material. Source reliability: GICHD job posting B–1 (official organisational publication, confirmed). Contextual analysis based on ISC assessment of the MENA contamination landscape—confidence: MODERATE. No classified or restricted material consulted.
ISC Commentary
Further analysis pending.