 My name is Goron Yochar. I'm the Director of the Division of International Protection. As Julie said, my function here is to make a few introductory remarks, brief as possible. And then I will turn to our co-coordinators who are participating with us today, alongside myself and my colleague William, who's out of screen shot on the far, my far right at the moment, but you'll see plenty of him through the course of the next hour. And William will be making in his capacity as coordinator of the Global Protection Cluster, some closing remarks. So, also with me today is Ron Powell, former UNHCR colleague that I'm getting reacquainted with, sitting with us today in representation of UNICEF and all those that so proactively participate in the Child Protection Area of Responsibility, which UNICEF lead. Also here with us in the UNHCR building in Geneva, we have Jennifer Chase from UNFPA, who is here in representation of all those who participate so actively, enthusiastically and with such commitment on the issues around gender-based violence. And online and we'll get to them later. When I direct questions to them, we have our colleague Bruno Donat from UNMAS. Bruno was to be with us here in person today. I believe he is actually physically in Geneva, but having just returned from a quite comprehensive field visit to Burkina Faso and the Middle East, he couldn't make it here with us today, but he's on screen and the sound check was working good and fine earlier. And last but not least, and I believe, Jim, you told us that you were calling in from your own back garden shed. It looked like a very professional location, whatever way you've set yourself up during COVID. It was looking like a most professional place and sound and video working well. So we have Jim with us in representation of NRC and all of those who contribute to the housing land and property area of responsibility. So in my capacity as chair with that title, I carry the rather grand and lengthy title of UNHCR's Director of the Division of International Protection. I have an additional responsibility of which I'm particularly personally proud and it's the reason that brings me here today as part of my job because I also have the responsibility within UNHCR and the accountability to support the global protection cluster which is led, the coordination is led in turn by my colleague William and the team that support him. But it's to me that he ultimately reports and then I report in turn to our High Commissioner and all of us are accountable through the work we do on the global protection cluster in internal displacement situations in particular to the emergency relief coordinator. And secondly, I'm pleased to be here today because I'm amongst those that are old enough to remember when the humanitarian reform took place over the period 2005-2006, the establishments of the cluster and I've had the pleasure particularly from a protection perspective to see and I hope those of you participating today will agree but it's equally open to you to disagree and to call us to account if you have a different opinion. I've had the honour and pleasure over the course of the last 15 years and more to see what I think is an improvement on UNHCR stepping up to the coordination lead of the global protection cluster and the work we do in very close partnership with all the individual areas of responsibility. And third, I'm happy to be here today because events like this give us the opportunity to reflect on what we have managed to do well, to look at gaps and not just today's session, obviously I'm talking about the program for the whole week, to look at what we've done well, to take satisfaction from that but more importantly to look forward and to identify gaps and continue to strive to do always better. And in opening this session today I'm opening a week-long series of events with numerous, I'm not going to go through the schedule here, you all have it and I don't want to take up the time from our invited guests but it's a whole week of activities that's bringing together hundreds if not more people of a common commitment around common concerns about the quality of the delivery of protection and that's always exciting. So when I reflect about progress, sometimes when we look at the scale and how daunting the complexity of the operations we work in, it can tend to become a little bit overwhelming and it's important for us, I think, to hold on to the fact that yes we have made progress over the years. We've made progress in that I think we've been much more proactive, articulate and matched action with words about doing what we say we will do and meaning it around all of our collective efforts to the preservation of the dignity of the people that we serve. And for me that word is very important and should always be seen hand in hand with protection because what we are trying to do is to deliver and ensure that people can enjoy the full exercise of their human rights and do so with some level of dignity, safety and security. We've done a lot I think in on packaging what is meant by protection of civilians and being better able to articulate what we can do as humanitarian protection actors and how that complements but cannot ever replace the actions that are required by states and armed actors of all ilk in terms of the physical protection of civilians from the dangers that they face in conflict situations. We've made progress on access negotiation although this, like many of the issues we work on, is sometimes a sort of a one step backwards, two steps one step forward, two steps backwards, three steps sideways advancing that kind of peculiar crab walk that we're always faced with because as we gain access in some locations deterioration of conflict in other locations means that our access is denied and I really want to strongly underline on this point of access and I hope that will come out in the week's discussion. Often we have a tendency on the obstacles that are placed in our way by non-state armed actors or many of the similar terminology that we use to refer to non-state groups. I think it's equally important that we are clear and firm in our discussions about access in highlighting where in fact states themselves are the ones blocking our access and I'm not talking about when they're taking actions to preserve and improve our security as humanitarian workers. I'm talking about obstacles that are in some cases there's no other way to say it but apparently deliberately designed to worsen the protection situation rather than improve it. We have to remain constantly aware of the core cross-cutting issues like gender-based violence and the welfare of children calling on both Ron and Jennifer to give us their a bit more deep reflections on that. We can never forget and we are not and should not ever be allowed to forget that the continued prevalence, the constant presence of the risk and unfortunately the reality of sexual exploitation and abuse in all operations that we work in. We hang our heads in shame every time a new report about a scandal breaking somewhere comes to the fore but as committed humanitarian actors we don't just hang our heads in shame and look the other way and shrug our shoulders I think through the cluster system and particularly the global protection cluster and all its manifestations in field locations we do everything we can to ensure that we focus on prevention so that we lessen the number of times that we have to hang our head in shame when we see the constant repetition of these types of egregious violations of rights of the people we serve by the very people that are supposed to be there to help them improve their dignity and safety. There's a couple of other points I want to make. The sign is being waived in my face for time so I want to respect that in deference to our guests but there's five quick things I want to run through in terms of keeping a focus on what we've achieved and where we need to keep our focus. So I applaud the global protection cluster for its increased active support to field operations and this goes across all of the AORs and that will come up also in the questions. Bruno for example just recently returned from mission and several other missions were mentioned here as being recently concluded as we were having our preparatory informal conversations here. That focus on missions, the help desks and coaching I think is fundamental to ensuring that we can raise the standard of protection clusters in each and every operation. In connection with that I'm very personally supportive of the reconfiguration of the operation cell and all the work that it does in that direction. I welcome equally the development of the protection analytic framework and the launch of national protection analysis updates in several operations. We can never do without enough data and analysis. This is what informs our actions, our fundraising and without effective resource allocation we'd be nowhere in the actions that we will be able to follow out. Fourthly I appreciate the rollout of the protection coordination training program offered to all new coordinators. I think all of us that will be speaking today we're the kind of elder generation. Well William's a bit younger than some of the rest of us that will be speaking today but it is important to have this training so that we're passing on all the time, experiences, lessons learned and raising the standard quality and capacity of all participants in protection clusters regardless of their grade or level of experience. We're all here to learn from each other and to ensure that mutual learning. So with that said I'm going to turn the floor now with a few questions to get the creative juices running to the invited guests. So Jennifer and Ron, I'm going to ask you the same question and I leave it up to you how to divide the answer but working as you do as coordinators both for the gender-based violence and the child protection areas of responsibility. These are both areas that have put in a lot of work on strategy. So GBV has its strategy just recently launched to cover the period 21 to 25 meanwhile the child protection AOR is almost midway through its strategy of 20 to 24 and both strategies have principles and results related to advancing localization in leadership, participation and partnerships. And I'm sure in the audience online today we have many representing local, grassroots, national level organizations. So from your experience what opportunities do you think we have in the next two to three years to really accelerate our commitment to meaningful engagement of local actors in the humanitarian space? Thank you. Thanks Jennifer and thanks Gronje for the introduction. First maybe to advertise that later this week we'll have a session on Thursday on localization so we'll be going into more detail into it. Maybe just to start with our strategy and to say where is localization located so in our goal area number three we're talking about strengthening already existing and locally owned child protection coordination systems and improve local service provision through close collaboration with local governments, civil society, protection actors, other clusters and sectors and particularly national actors while adhering to the principle of neutrality. And within that we look at local leadership, participation and innovation supporting the duty bearers to lead child protection coordination groups strengthening also transition processes building resilience of government system and civil society and community-based mechanisms and strengthening coordination and collaboration with peace building and conflict actors particularly by supporting local child protection coordination group to improve the engagement and dialogue with those actors. So that's in our strategy so we have really a clear commitment to localization and I see many opportunities and some of these opportunities are building on what we already do, on frameworks that have been identified that have been put out, guidance that has been put out. There is the IASC guidance on strengthening participation representation and leadership of local and national actors so that's one opportunity that we need to build on. It's there, we need to help implement it. But as I said, just to say a few words on what we've been doing on localization and these are areas we see as opportunities to further strengthen. What we have set up are help desks for three languages for Arabic, French and Spanish and it helps us really to improve our communication and engagement with local actors and also to strengthen their technical capacities. So those three help desks help us to get that into place. We've also been having our cluster coordinators, our AOR coordinators promoting local and national NGOs to take on leadership positions in sub-national working groups and they're linked to the national cluster coordination mechanisms. We've also seen an increasing involvement of local women organizations and the organization of persons with disabilities and youth-led organizations in UNICEF-led clusters so not just child protection AOR and we've been supporting local cluster coordination groups to develop and implement localization strategies and to have in place dashboards to measure progress. One important area where we've also taken action in our strategic advisory group we actually have local actors being part of that and the global CP AOR SAG is also chaired by local actors. In specific countries like Colombia, Nigeria, Somalia the global child protection AOR we have supported local and national actors to take on co-coordination roles at the national level. While in Iraq and South Sudan the global child protection AOR has partnered with to save the children to increase the participation of local actors including local government in leadership for example in the Iraq child protection AOR at the sub-national level. And also what we've done with the global protection cluster and the global gender-based violence AOR we've used the IAC guidance to also develop a podcast which provides a step-by-step guidance to country protection coordination groups on how to increase participation and representation of local and national actors. And then maybe to mention finally we have also worked with the global education cluster on institutional capacity strengthening because we felt that there was an area that we invested in a lot on technical capacity but not so much on institutional capacity. So we've developed a framework for local actors particularly for national coordination groups to really invest in strengthening the institutional capacity of local actors. And it's using a two-way twinning mentorship coaching support approach. Now in terms of opportunities apart from building on what we've already done I think one thing that we need to see what we see as an opportunity is how we can working with ensuring that there is quality and flexible funding for local actors. For them it's very difficult to access the global funding pools that are existing which are easy for us to access not always with success but at least we can access that for local actors is much more challenging. The institutional capacity strengthening is extremely important. The other thing that we need to look at is how we address the overhead costs for local actors and whether we can get some global agreement on that. And as I said earlier the addressing that institutional and organizational capacity of local actors is extremely important. Thanks very much Ron. You run the gamut there and I'm sure some of the things you raised will be familiar across all of the AORs. And you went there from such simple welcoming mechanisms as ensuring that we strive more and more to have translation so that even our meetings become more accessible right through to the question of funding which is so fundamental for the capacity and the independence of the local actors that we want to work with that they have access to funding against which they can develop objectives which allow their organizations to grow and thrive and not be constantly in this kind of boxed in as our partners doing only what we ask them to do or what we deem fit for them to do. Jennifer, he's covered such a lot he hasn't left you a lot of room but I'm sure there's other experiences from the GBV AOR that you could also bring to the fore. Over to you. Thank you. And those of you who know me know that for me to keep my intervention within six minutes is always a challenge but I will do my best. So just to the good news I get to build on what Ron has already said and I think that localization is an area that really child protection catalyzed in the protection cluster so I want to recognize the important work that's been done by child protection and has motivated us and I think we started off by doing a research piece looking at what do women think about this whole dialogue that's happening on localization and really interviewing directly women's organizations which now we refer to as women led organizations and at the moment with the support of the gender reference group we're looking at what exactly does that definition mean there's a definition by grand bargain there's other definitions that are being determined which will be important in figuring out how to track what is happening in terms of funding in terms of co-leadership by women led organizations so we're about to enter a governance review at the GBV AOR which is looking at our core membership we don't have a SAG or a steering advisory group but rather a core membership and we've already decided that we will have two women led organizations as part of the process starting at the beginning of the governance review so that we're not taking decisions on behalf of women led organizations but really having them also tell us what we need to be doing at the GBV AOR so that's an important step at the global level and then we also have commitments to call to action which has 85 members UNHCR is one of them UNICEF is one of them and our commitment is to increase the co-coordination at the national and sub-national level right now we have co-coordination by civil society organizations or women led organizations in Yemen and in Afghanistan but that's not enough we have more at the sub-national level right now we're working on our baseline and not only the co-coordination but the actual membership of our AORs or sub-clusters or sub-sectors looking at the principles of partnership are we being transparent are we sharing information are we including the membership of the women led organizations in the decision making is there a relationship of equality and really looking at how we can increase and not just at the leadership level but the whole participation overall and I would say we're doing a lot of advocacy with OCHA a whole number of members of both the GBV AOR and the call to action to look at things like pooled funds where right now things like having a threshold of 250,000 if a country only gets 500,000 in pooled funds or in SERF for GBV AOR for GBV then that's two organizations getting funding and it's a lot of money for a small women led organization as a starting point so we want to look at some of these issues are there other ways that we can manage funds so that there is more access to pooled funds by the women led organizations and we know that OCHA did give funding with 25% going to women led organizations to UNFPA and UN Women and we hope that there's some learning there that we can look to scale up on these interventions so there's multiple levels I think another thing that's been exciting is at a principles meeting it was decided that UN agencies like UNHCR, UNICEF IOM UNFPA have agreed to quarterly reporting on what funding they are giving to civil society organizations including women led organizations which is as challenging as you know UNC's figuring out how to track is challenging as well and that's something that we're all working towards but the intention is there to really look at are we succeeding in partnerships rather than as implementing partners and I think there's a big difference between those two and so providing funding to a partner rather than to an implementing partner is what we're striving for and I see that I have one minute left so I'll just say in terms of the future we did get funding from BHA to actually put into practice in two countries coaching, mentoring for co-coordination we recognize that it's a process that doesn't happen overnight and to provide that support including a network among our women led organizations that are in the role of co-coordination to support each other and be able to ask each other questions and motivate other organizations to fund local organizations for co-coordination we've heard very loud and clearly from women led organizations that they cannot do this as volunteer work they need funding to do this and they need to scale up and we need to listen to them thank you very much very strong point there at the end I mean we all of us are we're paid for the work we do we're professional humanitarians we want the staffing resources be able to take the coordination leadership so it's it's not realistic to expect others to do that as a volunteer as a part-time unpaid position the partners that we want to to support and amplify at local level are as much entitled to have those type of resources for the contribution they make to the work as we are so I turn now to someone who is on screen Jim are you still with us yes I hope so there you are so you see now everyone gets the benefit I was teasing earlier Jim I was saying that that looks not unlike from where I'm sitting without the benefit of my glasses but it looks not unlike the inside of a refugee housing unit which UNHCR has converted into temporary office facilities and has been used a lot as well for throughout COVID times as isolation so that looks like a very nice working environment you have there Jim is with us from NRC and I'm going to turn to him there is a session I know coming later in the week about the gendered aspects of housing land and property so I'm not going to expect you in the six minutes allocated to you Jim to cover everything that we'll have a chance to dig into deeper later in the week but could you just give us a bit of a taster about the work being done by the protection partners on the gendered aspects of housing land and property rights I'm sure you have some examples then and successes that you could cite that would be inspiration for others to learn from and build on over to you Thanks yes and thank you Gronya it's really great to be with you great to see so many colleagues online as well so fantastic what a privilege to be able to gather in this way yes as you mentioned tomorrow we have a session hosted by the housing land and property area of responsibility which is asking what is secure enough highlighting sort of initiatives to enhance women's housing land and property rights in humanitarian response it's tomorrow at 2pm century European time so it would be great if you can join us and it will go into a lot more detail about what I'm just going to mention so now but I want to be in just by stating really strongly just how important access to and control of housing land and property is for the economic and social well-being of women especially when they're affected by displacement conflict disaster and without the protection of HRP rights any idea around durable solutions is going to remain an elusive concept not grounded in reality so during conflict and displacement existing patterns of discrimination increase as we all know displaced women face discrimination in many intersecting ways as women as refugees and IDPs as returnees as members of economically disadvantaged groups and as members of ethnic and religious minorities they experience higher rates of poverty than men which is a huge risk of gender-based violence and they often shoulder the responsibility of caring for their children and other family members so even before conflict women are disadvantaged when it comes to HRP entitlements land ownership remains largely restricted to men both by tradition and often in law globally men's land holdings are almost three times the size of those of women and inheritance is fundamental to the accumulation of assets including land but often women and girls have fewer rights than men and boys women experience the loss of HRP rights at every stage of displacement and when women are forced to leave their homes finding a place to stay is critical to survive displacement and to provide safety for their families and women also have different experiences of HRP rights in return situations they're often less likely than men to possess the documentary evidence of their land tenure and more likely to experience violence in relation to their dispute so in this context one of the ways that protection partners approach these issues is through increasing what we call security of tenure and that's what a number of the examples that we'll hear about tomorrow and I'll mention now are doing so by security of tenure what we mean is the degree of certainty to which people are able to stay on the land that they're on or in the house that they occupy so if you have tenure security it means that you can live in your home without fear of forced eviction whether that's in a communal settlement situation an informal settlement in a host communities or after return it's the foundation of the right to adequate housing and many other human rights it enables people to live in their home in security, peace and dignity and in the humanitarian context we often look for an incremental like a step by step approach that might be the most appropriate and this recognises that displaced people can be supported to improve their living conditions in different types of accommodation so tomorrow we're going to hear some examples from Somali organisation the Northern Youth Frontier League which is part of the HLP AOR in Somalia we're going to hear about their work supporting women's access to justice on preventing forced evictions and improving women's HLP rights in Somalia also in Somalia we're going to hear about great work that UN Habitat and GLTN are doing to protect women's land rights in the context of traditional justice mechanisms we'll hear from IOM in Nigeria on their work integrating women in traditional HLP dispute resolution processes so supporting those processes to happen and we'll also hear more from NRC in Syria exploring how the crisis has affected displaced women and their ability to claim HLP rights particularly around inheritance so if you're interested in that please do join us there's been a transformation of gender roles for Syrian women across the region and as a result a number of initiatives that also promote their enjoyment of HLP rights one of the things I wanted to mention is that the session tomorrow it ties in with an addition of the HLP AOR newsletter that we're a special edition that we're launching tomorrow which is focused on security of turning for displaced women and it draws on contributions from several agencies, sectors it wants to speak to the challenges and trends but also to illustrate country initiatives, examples carried out by local civil society, NGOs and international agencies that will support women's access to HLP so this comes from the AOR members who are a part of a displaced women's HLP thematic work stream an area where we can really focus on this key issue and make sure it's integrated across our wider work and thinking about what we do to build on these examples what we do to build on these these initiatives that are happening well the AOR has a technical support role a sort of role supporting coordination but also supporting the technical functions as well and I want to see our help desk function develop more to have better capacity to be more accessible through languages led by local and national partners that's something we're prioritising for next year and to do this of course, as we all do we need quality funding, flexible multi-year funding that will allow us to develop these much needed areas further and we take real inspiration and acknowledge what Jeremy sorry, what Ron and what Jennifer have been sharing and we look for opportunities to develop this further the AOR also has a role as a broker as a connector and we've had great examples where we can bring people together working in very different contexts to share experiences of what has worked, the challenges but also explorations, we want to do this more and in multiple languages and to really build on what is being done we need to understand what works what innovation can be captured and adapted and research is helping us understand the significance of women's tenure security its connection to other rights for programming that cuts across all clusters and phases of response and with this initial understanding then comes a responsibility to learn more and improve HRP programming, you can read more about this in the newsletter which will be shared tomorrow so next steps must include reach specific programming context involving women in designing, implementing monitoring programming so that what is secure enough reflects their reality and for us at the HRPAOR we want to tell better stories we want to go beyond the silos and cut across clusters considering longer term durable solutions connected to peace and conflict and put local voices at the centre, HRP land, homes, property, they're inherently local, they affect all of us all of our lives where I'm speaking from now where we live, where we're from they affect our families, our communities our livelihoods, how we feel safe and secure or how we don't so I'll just end there apologies for running slightly over not at all and the passion that you end with there and with that reflection and it's so obvious but I'd never thought of it that way, of course housing, land and property are inherently local, they're there, they're real estate, they're physically in the place where we're working, I just never heard it expressed in that way some very sobering points there from Jim's comments about the type of ingrained structural discrimination around legal rights, inheritance rights, property ownership rights that continue to disadvantage primarily women disadvantage people on the basis of their gender but equally some inspiring comments there about what can be achieved to overcome these barriers and between the special edition of the newsletter coming out on tomorrow's event I'm sure you'll find plenty of interest from many of the participants today, I'm certainly interested myself in logging on tomorrow to hear more about the work that's being done on housing land and property I'm going to turn now to Bruno from UNMAS, Bruno are you with us? Yes I am Madam Chair, how are you? I'm very good thank you, welcome back from your field trip and sorry we couldn't have you here today physically with us in the UNHCR building but very glad Bruno to have you online and we're hearing and seeing you both very clearly so in the latest update that William put on my reading list and he quite regularly ensures that I do read all the documentation from the global protection cluster so in that update there is an observation that 48% of cluster operations are reporting risks for civilians from explosive that's a hard one to get your tongue around explosive ordinance contamination and of this 48% reporting on that they're talking in terms of severe or extreme contamination so could you tell us a little bit about what has the mine action area of responsibility focus been over the last year and where do you see the priorities going forward in 2022 because as UNHCR is very well aware and this has been a kind of a fundamental backbone of our institutional relationship as UNHCR with the full range of UNMAS partners whether that's through the cluster system or otherwise has been the fundamental importance of mine action in order first of all to physically allow the forcibly displaced to return and then secondly to have some semblance of a chance to start rebuilding their livelihoods over to you Bruno what can you tell us about the work of the AOOR that you are responsible for coordination leadership Thank you Madam Chair so on that long word what I usually don't use it what I say to people is whatever goes boom then they understand that's explosive ordinance and in your question I will try to focus on what we do and the priorities and first let me say that I'm joined by also our new co-coordinator she's online with us Hannah Rose Holloway who just joined us as the co-coordinator of the global AOOR and Anna is from XDDG now called Humanitarian Disarmament and Peace Building from DRC the organization not the country so you know the contamination is basically unacceptable I can list the countries it's going to be too long whether it is in Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq Mali Myanmar, Palestine where I just came from Syria, Somalia, South Sudan, Ukraine Yemen and more and as you said I just flew back yesterday from Niger and Burkina where the contamination is more about ID's that and the number of civilians and children who are dying is absolutely not okay so what have we been doing as an AOOR together with partners I have to mention that our main theme has been the primacy of protection I'm going to repeat that the primacy of protection some five areas where I want to highlight as our focus one has been to really support the coordination mechanism in some 16 operations plus as we talk the AOOR is being activated in Ethiopia I think most of you would know why and as I'm coming back out of Niger it seems they may also activate one there has been some kind of a working group so coordination but the focus has been mostly to encourage the leadership of the national and local partners number one what we have been doing number two I will focus at the AOOR level what I have been to integrate my action into the respective HRPs and I think we are kind of proud to have negotiated this paragraph language in the HRP template as part of the protection umbrella and I think for us this is something I wanted to highlight as something positive and progress number three would be the work we have done with several of the humanitarian coordinators I think some of my fellow colleagues touched on that to have access to pool funding serve and so on so here I have to say it is an achievement but sometimes we fail and we fail because of the lack of understanding even of what mine action is or when we say explosive ordinance and I have had some impediments where some colleagues could not understand and in fact I have had to explain even how we contributed recently to the indicators life saving on serve so I think it is both an achievement and on the fence because we are not doing too well there a fourth highlight I think we are very happy to in terms of coordination amongst coordinators is our work with the Child Protection AOR we have developed guidance on mitigating the impact of explosive ordinance on children and this has been a very very good product and we hope it will be I would say propagated a bit more to really save lives and avoid accidents with children and as you mentioned we will have I think on day 5 on Friday we will have one session at 2pm shaping protection case management so we will talk about efficient effective and predictable referral system in the case management system and we will have the pleasure of having an Unmas colleague Henri Bonin who is Senior Victim Assistance Advisor who himself has experience from Syria and Nigeria and he will participate in this session my fifth highlight of what we've done I would say has been the sharpening of our risk education methodologies in several countries and again I'm worried to mention some partners because we've had so many UNICEF HCR, MAC, HNI others and we also have a sub working group on an advisory group on explosive risk education and they've done fantastic work now let me switch to my last point you are seeing the focus because I'm still within my six minute focus going forward next year it will remain the umbrella is the primacy of protection and four areas will make it into our MA or strategy number one better coordination through raising some funds and at the global level we're not doing very well we do well through the HRPs but not well at the global level number two strengthening partnerships with implementing partners donors, national authorities number one number three whether you call it capacity enhancement capacity development or we like to say capacity transfer to do more of the transfer of knowledge on my nation to others and finally very dear to me what we call EDI the letters can change for me it's equality, diversity and inclusion in the context of protection and my nation what I mean are we reaching out to the most vulnerable of the rural populations whether it is amongst the displaced persons, internal refugees are we having special ways of reaching out on my nation to disabled people so I think we can do better these are the four big things going forward thank you Madam Chair Thank you very much Bruno and on that last point we have different acronyms depending which organization we come from but this focus on equality, diversity and inclusion is something certainly very close to our hearts here in UNHCO where we tend to speak more about age gender and diversity but I think the objectives are the same and this goes I think very strongly to the comments that were made across all of the four AOAs about the localization agenda and ensuring that we are creating conditions that really allow local organizations in all of their diversity and configurations to be able to take a stronger leadership role partnership and leadership in their own right in my own efforts to to keep within the time limit because there was a very threatening sign here in front of me telling me in large red letters that my time was up but we've actually not been bad on the timekeeping and as I turn to my colleague William with a last question and to give him the chance to wrap up more from the kind of bird's-eye view as the coordinator of the global protection cluster a role which has a responsibility and an accountability I stress my accountability towards the cluster at the outset I think William you have a particular accountability towards facilitating the work of all of the AOAs that this is a collective effort and we're sometimes asked about that from the outside people that are not working so closely in the protection area they query us and they quiz us what is protection, what is it about why have you got so many of these subdivisions and I think it's incumbent on the person that leads the global protection cluster to ensure that that message of coherence, cohesion and complementarity between all the areas of responsibility is brought out and I think one point which I didn't get to make in my introductory comments so I'll abuse of my position as chair now with William's patience is the fact that the IASC policy on protection and humanitarian action is under review that gives us an opportunity hopefully with a successful outcome of that review to look at how we leverage and ensure that we are all being complementary to each other in the interest of greater overall protection impact and I think the success of that review again returning to the common theme of localization and listening to all partners and respecting as Bruno was saying the equality diversion, diversity and inclusion objectives that means also listening not only to the usual suspects of those of us that work for the major U.N. organizations but also a better understanding of frontline protection and responders at local level William I turn to you with a question and an invitation that you help us wrap up this first session so in your role and you've been in this role now for two years the second only incumbent that was there as a dedicated function previously UNHCR did a double hatting which did not work was not a satisfactory arrangement so now that you've been in this role for the last two years what do you think have been the biggest shifts in protection efforts and given the huge and growing protection needs with the multiplicity of emergencies that are that are unresolved that are re-emerging that are cyclical and what do you think the GPC and its partners can do best to focus our expertise and skills in the coming year yes William you're going to have the last word today thank you thank you Gronja indeed the the raging protection problem we face today is knockout time and again of too many people often the same people too many times over too many years and these layers of exhaustion make these families really without a buffer or capacity to react and that pushes them to go into harm on top of the harm the initial harm and we see people leaving their homes working in slavery conditions carrying off their girls children dropping out of schools and youth joining armed groups and it doesn't stop there I think then comes what I believe hurts the most which is invisibility million of people go through this abuse in total solitude wondering if anyone knows if anyone cares if they matter at all and this invisibility of survivors is not only a feeling it is actually the escape route of criminals and men with guns it's this invisibility from one's community from friends from humanitarians from the justice system from political solutions and that crushes so the question becomes how do we collectively in the protection sector and cluster combat this invisibility and first we must see that's how you knock it out you see then you have to tell and then you have to do something about it so in these shifts I would like to look at are we seeing enough are we telling enough and are we doing enough on the seeing I think we're largely doing much better with respect to the technology and social media but too often those who need to be most seen are most hidden and this is where we need to invest more collectively in engagement with community as an area of focus but also bring back that powerful and simple notion of protection by presence we need to invest in that we need to be there but part of the job is also to get out of the way communities do have a voice they don't need to be given a voice we just need to listen to them and an Afghani human rights defender said last week stop talking to us in the corridors but make sure that we have a seat on the table to tell the story to make decisions so this is the first shift where we need to focus seeing more then are we telling enough no doubt we have improved yet one of the few precious things that people are left with in a crisis is their stories we can't let that also be taken away from them so we need to be courageous in telling the truth always the truth and that takes courage in an era of politicization of aid we need to be more courageous but we also need the system to politically stand by and with the truth tellers that's an area where we need to improve more now are we doing enough I strongly believe that protection response is one of the most professionalized and predictable responses in the humanitarian sphere it's anchored in a strong body of laws it is recognized as central both vertically horizontally it is the gold standard of any humanitarian intervention and protection response has mature and professional bodies of action we have standards we have projects we have expertise don't look further than the GBV and the CP areas of responsibility they get the highest scores super professional it's also effective and concrete and linking to peace and development work also don't look further than housing land and property and mine action they're ahead of the curve in this famous nexus and this protection drive is rewarded Gronje I believe this year we have received the highest amount of resources for protection response ever in the humanitarian response plans we have high focus of protection in the pool funds we have stronger mainstreaming in the other sectors and we have solid attention to international diplomacy so it is working but far from what is needed and I would like in this forum to suggest four matters that we need to improve in and I would like to challenge all the sessions to address part of them or all of them first protection and humanitarian coordination system and structure needs a review and an evolution to catch up with the field reality it's 16 years old it's time to evolve again coordination should be based on issues not mandates in operational areas not maps led by local frontline responders and guided by experts we need to evolve our system second there are several specialized protection areas that require increasing collective predictability to become as accountable as the areas of responsibility we have four areas of responsibility but we have many areas of protection that require specialization so these areas have strong actors and maturing alliances reference groups entities to address them but require support commitment and investment and we need to grow in the areas of specialization of protection for example we need to address protection needs of the young persons with disability and the elderly we need to counter trafficking and modern slavery we need to work more holistically on changing the behavior of armed groups mental health and psychosocial support protection risks in digital space engagement with community and legal assistance these areas need stronger focus to have collective accountability in them third protection response across all operations is today ready to operate an extra billion dollars worth of additional humanitarian peace and development services we've planned for them this year we're ready to plan for them next year yet these resources are not there these resources should come the majority of which should be guided and operated by umbrellas of local actors and women led organizations we need to move we're ready let's make it happen and finally circling back at your opening remark humanitarian access negotiation should be transformed to systematically open space for protection by presence and protection services in addition to the access of trucks that we have we need to adapt our negotiation to put programs mostly done by NGOs at the center let me close by saying in an area like protection full of passionate people the leader is not the person in charge we don't take yes for an answer we don't take no for an answer this kind of hierarchy of I'm in charge doesn't work leading in protection means having the courage to go first to trust first to take risks first to leap forward first and we in the global protection cluster and I'm sure in the AORs will continue encouraging this model of leadership the future of protection response depends on opening the space and attracting a new generation of such leaders so you all come and join us deserves a round of applause to all of us for our participation this morning and in encouragement of the work that's to come for the rest of the week thank you very much for joining us today online and I hope that we'll see many of you back depending on your levels of interest in the different sessions throughout the course of the week thanks so much