Paul Critchley MA

Experience

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  HM Forces

  Aug 1991 - Aug 1998

  Army Officer
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  International Medical Corps

  Nov 1999 - Jul 2000

  Transport/Logistics Manager
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  Merlin

  Jun 2001 - Mar 2003

  • Project Coordinator and Logistician

    Dec 2001 - Mar 2003

  • Logistician

    Jun 2001 - Dec 2001
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  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

  Jun 2003 - Jul 2004

  Project Coordinator
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  Merlin

  Nov 2004 - May 2005

  Project Coordinator
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  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

  Jul 2005 - Aug 2006

  Project Coordinator

  Managed a programme spread across Government and rebel held areas subject to routine insecurity including major ceasefire violations initiated by all parties to the conflict.Led staff of 12 expats and 300 national staff conducting primary healthcare, inpatient care, ANC/PNC, safe delivery, surgical, nutritional, and WASH interventions with a budget of over 1.9 million Euros.Programme development using the team’s knowledge to steer and develop programme activities and direction to address needs while using programme design as a tool to enhance the team’s security.Constant advocacy to maintain the belligerents understanding of, and respect for, MSF’s neutrality whilst providing health care to an isolated population within a rebel held area of South Darfur.Coaching team members to enhance both their security awareness and understanding of the context within which they were working, thus allowing MSF to continue working safely in an unstable environment. Show less

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  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

  Sept 2007 - Jan 2008

  Project Coordinator

  Programme set up and development of an emergency surgery programme focussed on violent trauma and complicated obstetrics.Context analysis in a politically and socially complex, unpredictable and insecure location.Negotiated safe passage and facilitated the evacuation of the MSF OCA team.Involved in all aspects of post incident analysis: immediate incident analysis, analysis of both the security management systems and of organisational institutional risk to identify lessons learnt and reduce future exposure to risk. Show less

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  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

  Aug 2008 - May 2012

  Head of Mission

  Managed MSF OCA’s interventions in Bangladesh; led the Country Management Team to apply MSF OCA’s Strategic Plan to design relevant medical humanitarian programmes within the country.Designing and initiating planned and emergency projects within a bureaucratic country prone to political instability at national and local levels.Engaged other actors, NGOs and donors, to address the humanitarian needs of the unregistered Rohingya refugees in order to spread the risk involved in working with this politically sensitive population. In doing so MSF OCA was able to address humanitarian medical needs whilst reducing the organisation’s institutional exposure to risk.Designed and conducted an advocacy campaign using: diplomatic contacts, the international media and international donors. Changing the tone of the policy debate within Bangladesh on the Rohingya refugee population in order to influence both the evolution of Government policy and maintain humanitarian access.Contributing towards MSF OCA’s developing understanding of, and position towards, humanitarian aid in contexts where Official Development Aid is used as a tool for conflict management within asymmetric warfare (Toronto seminar December 2010 between MSF and the Canadian and US policy makers and militaries). Show less

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  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

  Aug 2012 - Sept 2013

  Building networks and collaborative relationships with relevant actors in Jordan to negotiate access for MSF OCA to become operational in response to the refugee influx from Syria.Exploring options and opportunities for direct humanitarian support to populations in southern Syria.Managing the planned exit of MSF OCA from Iraq in such a way that would allow for reengagement if it became possible for MSFOCA to provide medically relevant interventions with acceptable levels of security for staff.Responsible for the transition of the Amman office from one that oversees the remote management of activities in Iraq to one that is capable of supporting direct humanitarian interventions in Jordan and Syria. Show less Responsible for three projects addressing the medical humanitarian needs of refugees from the conflict in Blue Nile state, Sudan (more than 600 staff with a combined budget of over 7,000,000 euros providing medical care to 67,000 refugees in three camps) in the physically isolated county of Maban in Upper Nile state.Advocating with the international community at county and national level for more effective camp management to reduce the impact of one of the world’s largest hepatitis E outbreaks (MSF OCA identified over 8,000 cases of acute jaundice from July 2012 to April 2013).Providing leadership and support to maintain the effectiveness of project teams working with a disease that: they could not cure, they were at risk of catching themselves and which killed up to 20% of affected inpatients.Building relationships with authorities and armed actors to negotiate humanitarian access in order to conduct assessments into rebel held areas of north Sudan’s Blue Nile state.Conducting on-going monitoring, evaluation and analysis to ensure, MSF OCA’s goals were realistic and achieved within all aspects of the intervention. Show less

  • Emergency Coordinator

    Mar 2013 - Sept 2013

  • Emergency Coordinator

    Aug 2012 - Feb 2013
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  European Commission - DG ECHO

  Sept 2013 - Sept 2014

  Technical Assistant

  Providing technical advice about proposals for multi-sectoral humanitarian aid programmes to facilitate the allocation of European Union funds to finance humanitarian operations in Jordan.Assessing ongoing humanitarian operations supported by ECHO.Support Partners when addressing humanitarian issues.Monitoring the development in the humanitarian coordination structures.Representing ECHO in donor, Humanitarian Country Team and NGO forums.Assessing developing humanitarian needs in the refugee populations within both camp and non-camp settings within Jordan.Supporting ECHO Brussels by developing context analysis of the political/security context in both Jordan and Syria. Show less

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  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

  Nov 2014 - Aug 2015

  Head of Mission

  Representing the MSF movement within the South Sudan Humanitarian Country Team; bringing a neutral, principled humanitarian position to topics under discussion.Proactively built a working relationship with all stakeholders (Government, Opposition, Diplomatic, Donor, UN, IO and INGO) at senior levels to maintain and develop safe humanitarian access and operations allowing MSF to continue to provide medical humanitarian access to vulnerable populations.Coordinating with stakeholders to ensure that weaknesses in the humanitarian were identified and addressed. Doing so from a perspective of mutual respect in order to facilitate positive change as opposed to an unproductive negative response to this aspect of MSF OCA’s advocacy.Lead a MSF OCA largest Mission spread over three countries with: five projects, nine base locations, employing over 150 international and 900 national staff working in insecure front line and cross border locations with a budget in excess of 20,000,000 Euros.Ensured that MSF OCA’s operational capacity was used to compliment the work of other actors where possible and if necessary to replace other actors whose lack of capacity hindered humanitarian support of vulnerable populations to ensure that, where possible, needs did not go unmet.Coached, trained and supported staff in operational and security management positions allowing MSF OCA to conduct medical humanitarian operations in an insecure environment with an acceptable exposure to risk.Streamlined Mission management and support systems in order to facilitate greater operational responsibility and responsiveness while reducing and simplifying mission support structures to provide effective, accountable and cost effective mission management and support. Show less

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  Mercy Corps

  Sept 2015 - Jan 2016

  Country Director

  Gained a greater understanding of the challenges faced by NGOs that are reliant on institutional donor funding and the importance of the donor/partner relationship from the perspective of a partner for facilitating flexible humanitarian responses in rapidly evolving complex emergencies.Led the transition of Mercy Corps’ programmatic response in Yemen from a developmental mind set to one that focuses on multi-sectoral humanitarian responses to the evolving conflict.Initiated internal reporting to build accountability, institutional learning and assist programme development within Mercy Corps’ programming in Yemen.Put in place a security review to allow Mercy Corps to re-establish its international staff presence in Yemen. Show less

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  CARE USA

  Feb 2016 - Apr 2016

  Programme Manager (Temporary Duty Assignment)

  Managed grants with value of almost $6,000,000 with the following donors: ADH, OFID, SAFPAC, UNFPA, HPF and OFDA covering in CARE Turkey’s cross border programme supporting host and IDP communities the in Health, Shelter/NFI, WASH and FSL sectors.Managed the provision of accountable humanitarian assistance inside Aleppo, Idleb and Hassakah governorates remotely through Syrian implementing partners, monitoring the provision of assistance by the triangulation of Partners’ reports with third party monitoring backed up by CARE monitoring consultants.Worked with Partners to support proposal and budget development and donor reporting, coaching and building the capacity of Partners to increase their capacity to develop and deliver accountable programming. Show less

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  Handicap International - Humanity & Inclusion

  Jan 2017 - Jul 2018

  Programme Director

  Led the development of the country Programme’s Operational Strategy for 2017-2018 successfully hitting a short deadline whist including a political conflict analysis of the country to guide HI’s understanding or future needs, risks and opportunities for secure access to: host, IDP and refugee populations.Following the tumultuous year of 2016 for both South Sudan, I led the re-establishment of best practice in HI project and programme support systems ensuring timeliness and accountability in all areas of mission and programme management.Conducted annual planning and budget forecasting ensuring that the country programme was adequately structured, staffed and resourced.Established good working relationships with both current and new institutional donors in order to stabilise and increase the volume of HI’s projects in the country whilst diversifying its donor base. HI’s donors included: the European Union, ECHO, DFID and UNHCR.Ensured that HI in South Sudan engaged strategically with the Cluster System from both a coordination and an advocacy perspective in order to facilitate an increase in the quantity and quality of humanitarian assistance available people living with disability. In doing so more than doubling funding allocated to HI’s humanitarian budget under the South Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan.Conducted high level advocacy in order to ensure that issues of inclusion for people living with disability were included in donor policy at the design phase of future calls for proposals. In this way donor, UN and NGO policy support for issues of inclusion moved from aspirations to contractual obligations for implementing.In a challenging security context ensured that HI’s security guidelines were updated and fit for purpose in order to ensure that the risks faced by HI staff were as low as possible and suitable contingency planning was in place to support safe humanitarian access. Show less

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  Relief International

  Sept 2018 - Jun 2019

  Emergency Response Director

  Managed a multi sectorial humanitarian aid programme supporting both Rohingya refugees and host population in Ukhiya and Teknaf upazilas within Cox’s Bazar district.Represented Relief International: with national and local authorities, donors, UN agencies and within the NGO community. I was also the organisations representative on the Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Working Group within Cox’s Bazar district.Overseeing programmes covering Health, Child Protection, Gender Based Violence and Disaster Risk Reduction I was responsible for managing over 300 full time and 600 volunteer staff.Oversaw a period of consolidation, in terms of reducing donor budgets, ensuring that Relief International was in a position to reduce staffing while achieving programme results within budgets. RI’s donors were: ECHO, OFDA and UNHCR. Show less

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  IOM - UN Migration

  Jun 2019 - Mar 2020

  Head of Sub Office

  Oversaw the expansion of IOM’s new Sub Office in Ma’rib from one with four international staff and no national staff to one with 16 expatriate and 50 national staff in a Governorate hosting 750,000 IDPs.Represented IOM, the first international organisation of any type to set up a permanent presence in Ma’rib, with the governorate authorities, negotiating ground rules for coordination in order to establish and maintain humanitarian space.Negotiated for IOM to have rent free access to land to develop the UN’s newest humanitarian hub in YemenOversaw the administrative functions of the sub-office, including, but not limited to:a) Managing staff and ensuring IOM rules and regulations were implemented.b) Monitoring and supervising the financial expenditures of the office.c) Approving payments and managing funds.d) Supervising procurement and logistics services, including contracts with suppliers for goods and services.Was the UN’s Area Security Coordinator for Ma’rib. Show less

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  ACTION CONTRE LA FAIM

  May 2020 - Dec 2021

  Country Director

  Conducted change management to give an evidence based strategic focus and new energy to the team developing HDP nexus programming addressing longer term issues within the insecure country context while retaining a strong humanitarian focus.Conducted annual planning and budget forecasting ensuring that the country programme was adequately structured, staffed and resourced.Led an NGO consortium, working with Ministry of Health to increase the Ministry’s capacity to provide MHPSS services within Iraq.In collaboration with internal and external stakeholders developed ACF’s strategic thinking and planning for Iraq based on the intersection of current and future needs and an analysis of future drivers of conflict. The strategy included donor engagement and influencing.Developed strong and diverse leadership within the mission's national and international team to redress an historical gender imbalance within the Senior Management Team and facilitate improved decision making.Represented ACF in Iraq in order to raise the organisation’s profile with Government, donors and diplomatic missions in support of access and fund-raising activities.Positioned ACF within the NGO Coordination Committee for Iraq (NCCI) as a member of its global board of directors to facilitate/support NCCI’s work and as a means to raising ACF’s profile.Developed relationships with strategically important donors in order to provide ACF with a stable and diverse donor base to counterbalance reducing humanitarian donor presence and funding. ACF’s donors included: IHF, WFP, SIDA, the European Union, GIZ, BHA and AFD.Identified and facilitated communications opportunities and staff training so that ACF could promote its work and raise awareness of issues in Iraq.Facilitated succession planning by coaching my deputy, increasing her: networking, strategy development and security management capacity to the stage where she could successfully lead ACF’s country mission in Iraq. Show less

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  Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

  May 2022 - May 2023

  Head of Mission

  Developing and managing MSF Holland’s work in Ethiopia with a budget of over $20,000,000 supporting: refugee, IDP and host populations. Monitoring developing crises and drivers of conflict whilst both responding to and strategically positioning the organisation in preparation for humanitarian emergencies by maintaining and deploying effective emergency preparedness/response capacity.Engaging with Ethiopian authorities at Federal and Regional levels to build and maintain relationships in order to build understanding of the organisation’s work and to build humanitarian space for neutral humanitarian action within the country while negotiating access to allow MSF programming to develop.Representing MSF and the humanitarian needs seen by MSF in meeting with Ambassadors, donors, UN agencies and other NGOs both in one and one meetings and in fora such as the Humanitarian Country Team and NGO coordination bodies. By doing so building relationships and partnerships that facilitate more effective, coordinated humanitarian action.Ensuring compliance, where possible, with Federal laws regulating the conduct of Civil Society Organisations within Ethiopia and understanding institutional risks relating to planned breaches of compliance.Managing the safety and security of the organisation’s 700 staff working across a wide area of Ethiopia. A country with such varied, linguistic, socially and contextual diversity that it requires in depth understanding and varied approaches to safely implement humanitarian programmes in different regions.Coordinating the work and collaboration of: programmes, logistics, human resources and finance teams to prioritise work streams in order to effectively respond in a context of ambiguity, change and complexity. Show less

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  UK-Med

  Mar 2024 - Apr 2024

  Operations Director for the Gaza response
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  Norwegian Church Aid / Kirkens Nødhjelp

  Sept 2024 - now

  Senior Advisor