 Hello, everyone. My name is Anne Herrod Lang. I'm pleased to be serving as your host for today's webinar, Negotiating Access for Humanitarian Protection. This is the second webinar out of four in a series organized by the NRC, the Global Protection Cluster, and PHAP, with financial support from USAID, in which we'll be looking at the challenges faced by practitioners related to access and humanitarian protection. As mentioned, this is the second webinar in a series of four in which we will be looking at how humanitarian protection relates to access. Last month, in our first introductory event in this series, we asked you to submit the types of challenges related to access and protection that you're currently facing in your work so that we could focus the remaining sessions on the issues that concerned you the most. Today, we'll be focusing on the challenges that practitioners face when trying to gain or maintain access for protection, whether negotiating directly for protection programming access or negotiating for humanitarian access in general while considering protection concerns. While negotiating for access for humanitarian assistance is often challenging in and of itself, practitioners and organizations face a distinct set of issues in access negotiations that relate to protection. Now, to introduce our panel, we're joined today by a panel of practitioners, each with an extensive experience of dealing with questions related to protection and access in different contexts. I'm first of all very happy to welcome Tiffany Eastum, Executive Director of Nonviolent Peace Force, joining us from Geneva. Welcome, Tiffany. Thank you. And also joining us from Geneva is Hechem Kedrawi, Director of Operations of Geneva Call, who previously also worked for over a decade in various response contexts with the ICRC. Good to have you on the line, Hechem. Hello, everyone. Thank you for the invitation. And next we have Jochen Riek, Head of Field Coordination in the Access and Deconfliction Unit in Yemen, but right now calling in from the West Coast of the United States. Welcome, Jochem, and a special thanks for joining us at such an early hour where you are. Thank you very much for having me. And last but not least, I'm very glad to have with us again Paul White. Paul is a ProCap Senior Protection Advisor with ProCap being administered by NRC. Welcome back, Paul. Thank you very much. My pleasure to be here indeed. Now before we jump into the discussion, I'd just like to take a quick look at the types of issues we'll be dealing with in this session. More than 400 of you completed the pre-event questionnaire on which types of issues you had faced in your work and submitted examples of these issues, concrete examples from your experience. I think that one point is worth making at the outset that these are all very commonly occurring issues with each of them being experienced between 29, roughly 30% to 60% of the respondents. So we see a lot of shared experience with these particular challenges amongst those who have joined the event today. Now we'll start with one of the more common issues that's been submitted. When authorities invite organizations to provide assistance following or during a crisis, but they do not want protection activities to be a part of this. Before looking at some of the examples that have been submitted by participants, I'd first like to turn to Paul to ask have you, Paul, seen this type of situation in practice and do you have any general recommendations for practitioners, for humanitarian organizations dealing with this kind of issue, this kind of broad issue? Over to you, Paul. Thanks, Pat Harrod. Yes, I come across this very often so I'm not surprised other colleagues do as well. I think one thing we need to bear in mind is that authorities often want to be seen to be providing for their constituents. So they especially like to give something physical and of course the assistance we give is also part of protection. But I find that access negotiations are not the best time to start explaining to authorities what protection and human rights are. It's best if we can start our conversation with the authorities or the gatekeepers about in the situation they find themselves in. So it might mean we're talking about some physical assistance or financial assistance. We focus on how protection actors might be able to help the authorities. So that's one thing that I think it's important to bear in mind. Another is it's always important that we don't lose sight of the small picture when we want access. We need to focus on the people in need. So for example I've seen Tiffany's agency, the Nonviolent Police Force, in the very deep field taking on simple yet quite dangerous tasks like accompanying people to and from food distributions to keep them safe. It's a small job in a sense but it's very important and it was very helpful for the humanitarian community to get access by offering to do to provide that sort of assistance. So there are things like that. The other thing that's important is partnerships. I'm sure many of you know that WFP colleagues are often in the lead working with Ocha to negotiate for access, sometimes health or shelter or mine action or others might be there also. But these agencies and particularly WFP colleagues can step in for us if we can't get protection into a negotiation on its own terms. WFP is just one example of a UN agency that's moved ahead leaps and bounds on protection over the last decade. So we need to be prepared and ready to work with other agencies. The Global Protection Cluster now has an MOU with the health cluster, the Global Health Cluster. IOM have a protection policy. Main streaming has been around for a long time. So we need to involve other agencies. We don't need to see protection as something that's exclusive to protection actors. Another issue that I see is that governments are less keen to give us access. Previously there was a clear distinction between what happened in a conflict, what happened in a natural disaster or a climate emergency. But these days governments are demanding of protection people in both situations. So it's important that somehow we are able to show them that we're able to assist with the immediate problem. One thing that prevents us getting access sometimes is if we go in to talk about a long-term development problem, for example, that's been there for years without offering any immediate assistance. So I think we need to be careful of that. Crucial also though is the analysis, the importance of our protection analysis. I found myself in one situation where a mullah who led the local very conservative community was prepared to accept some child protection assistance from UNICEF who I was with at the time as a pro cap. But his conservative community didn't want assistance. So it highlighted for me that our analysis needed to understand not just the motivation of the leadership, but also the community attitudes. We can't get access unless we have a good grasp of those attitudes. I've worked in situations where authorities fear that protection people will go searching for bodies that are buried or fearful that we might identify other human rights abuses. So again, when we're negotiating access, we need to be articulating our motives clearly and we need to be careful what we're prepared to articulate. Sometimes it's as simple as authorities fear a loss of faith. This is more important in some cultures than others, but it's something that we need to watch. So we need to be careful just how we approach the authorities when we're talking about access. But ultimately I think it comes down to we need to do our analysis, find out exactly what the entry point should be and what would be acceptable to the local authorities and the gatekeepers. We also need to take a longer term view often. So sometimes we tend to want to resolve every problem immediately and we just can't do it. So we need to look at things long term, we need to strategize in the long term and small access to start with can be the starting point that we need. I think also using other agencies as often as we can. Geneva Call have a different role to be the role that many of us players, protection actors. ICRC, IFRC, MSF, who's best situated to help us get some protection access? So we need to be asking ourselves that I feel very privileged as a broadcast because we need to move between the cultures of the different agencies and we get to understand them. So we need to understand which agency, which culture within which agency will best suit the circumstances where we find ourselves. I guess the final point that I'd like to make is that we should be reluctant to give up early. We need to test the authorities because circumstances are often changing. The dynamics of our office change, the dynamics of the UN, of the NGOs, of the government, of the various people we're negotiating with. So we need to be careful to continue to analyze and to test what's going on and there might not be an opportunity today but a week or two later opportunities might start to arise. So there are the key points that I think are important when we look at trying to negotiate access for protection actors. Excellent, Paul. Thank you so much. And as you know, we asked participants to provide concrete examples of this particular kind of challenge. We've received a number of really excellent ones. I'd like to actually read out a few of them here and ask Paul to provide his reflections on these specific examples. If a practitioner came to you with this issue, what reflections you might have for him or her. Understanding, of course, that there's no right answer. These are all really difficult situations, difficult questions. And I'd also like to invite any of the other panelists to indicate if they'd like to jump in as well. So first example, this comes from someone working with an INGO in Nigeria who writes, An armed conflict context in Northwestern Nigeria resulted in a mass population displacement with increasing vulnerabilities. Several cases of sexual and gender-based violence were reported as well as children being sent out at an early age in the al-Majiri system with immense protection needs. During access negotiations, it was made clear that these occurrences are cultural and a ban was placed on speaking up. However, nutrition and pediatric interventions were welcomed as well as acceptance of medical care for survivors of SGBV. Over to you, Paul. Any reflections on this specific situation? Well, that sounds to me like a situation where we do need to take a long-term view. I believe this system's been in place for years and years and years, so we can't expect to just turn it over because we are there. So it's a matter of finding out what we could do, but we need to do that by taking a long-term view and we must build on what's there. So in other words, if we do this for nutrition and pediatric interventions, then that's our starting point. We need to make sure that our colleagues working in those areas are familiar with protection. They want to know where we want to move on these issues and similarly with GVB. That means we're going to create a network. So we need to basically identify networks, identify opportunities to take the system further, but look at it from a long-term perspective. That might mean we need to be talking with our development partners as well because as humanitarians we may not be there for a long period of time. So we need to be setting the scene and setting up the system so that we can make some moves. Another key thing from my perspective is always trying to identify just a couple of people within the system, perhaps within the government, within the military, within the police force who may be interested in pursuing this. You might get a note from some of the senior people, but you might find some people who are interested in working on the issue with you. They might be lower-level civil servants, but I think it's important to try and identify your friends in this situation, people that you can work with over a long period of time. So there'd be just a few suggestions from my side. Sure, thank you so much Paul. Let's turn over to Hisham. Did you want to come in on this one? Over to you. Yes, thank you very much. It's more on the actual theme, authorities to favour assistance rather than protection when you do intervention. I think I just wanted to make a couple of remarks just based on my experience. I think we have, here it's a two-side issue. There is an issue from the authorities that of course always favour having material in-kind things to be given rather than dialogue or discussion that can be embarrassing for them or putting them under pressure. And here, the authorities, they can be official ones or non-state armed groups. I mean, at the end of the day, anyone who is controlling an area or a population rather favours something concrete than just a discussion on respect of human rights or mental and law. But however, what I wanted to add is that it is always something from our side as militarians because most of the time we internalise these challenges and we basically accept the fact, without sometimes even trying, we accept the fact that authorities or actors in charge would rather accept first assistance than it would be easier to think about protection. And I think it's wrong. And from what I had experienced, it does not work. It's not because you give something today that the next day you can speak about GBV. So we have as well ourselves internally to reflect on, to make sure that either it comes together, protection and assistance, or we speak about protection because protection is the basis. I mean, if we increase the respect of people during conflict, then we reduce the need for further intervention in terms of assistance. So I just wanted to say that it's important as well to look at ourselves internally and as well sometimes to perceive the fact that sometimes we don't put ourselves in the position of speaking about protection first. And I believe we get the authorities to be used basically to this system. So we just have to be careful and I think one of the potential solutions could, as Paul was saying, strengthen just coordination prior to intervention in a specific area between the various actors on the ground, the pure protection actors like Geneva Coll or Civic or any other ones, or the mixed ones like ICRC, UN and so on, or the pure assistance ones like the WFP or MSF. I think it's important because if we are, let's say, harmonized together, then it will be easier than to deal with the issue when we come to meet the authorities, whoever they are. Thank you very much. Thank you, Shen. That was very helpful indeed. I'd like to jump over as well to Tiffany on this. Over to you, Tiffany. Great. Thanks. I just wanted to comment on this specific example. And what really stood out for me is the sentence that says, during access negotiation, it was made clear that these occurrences are cultural. And I think that that's a really common thing that we run into is cultural being the explanation in a positive spin or the excuse in a more negative spin for what falls under our work as all under our work around protection and what we would see as violence. And when I think about it from negotiating access, it's really recognizing what, what the motivation of access restrictions and that kind of response from local authorities, from local duty bearers, from the local communities themselves, is that recognizing that that is a motivating act and when we're external actions coming in, and what is perceived to be an attack on an identity and an impact on a culture is going to draw a very negative and immediate response. And I think that the way that we talk about these things in a much more collaborative, mutually respectful way can help open up that space. Again, it can be a lot slower. Who are you engaged with? Who are the people within the community who are both respected as representatives of their culture but also are willing to be changed agents around violence? I think this is a helpful way. It can be helpful. None of these things will work in all situations, of course. But I really think that issue around cultural practices is something that is very common across protection work. Great. Thank you, Tiffany, for drawing that out. Indeed, a very important aspect of that example. I'm glad that you were able to come in on that. I think we have time for a couple of additional examples on this theme. We have another. This came in from one of today's participants who's working with an INGO in Bangladesh. She writes, in Bangladesh, approval of a project in the Rohingya camps was first denied and then severely delayed because it contained protection and education measures. Government wanted to restrict service provision to a few agencies only despite the huge need in the camps. There was an inherent threat that none of our other non-protection projects would be approved in the future. Lengthy and continuous advocacy by local colleagues finally made it possible, but I don't know more specifics on how they achieved it. Back to you, Paul. Do you have any reflections on this particular example coming out of Bangladesh? Well, I know it's a very difficult environment there. I've been on occasions. And I guess persistence is one thing that we need to just continually work with the authorities in that part of Bangladesh because it's a complex system and a complex issue from their perspective. So I think we need to be persistent. I guess the only other thing there is to try and use those who have the best access. So I remember when I was there, the NGO Islamic Relief were running some legal services and we tried to work closely with them because they seemed to have a better relationship with authorities than some of the others. So I think, again, it's a matter of trying to identify who is best positioned to try and advocate for your protection work. But I think we need to be bold also in some of these situations that the authorities think we need to get results by doing that. But if we do want access, then we need to just be persistent in our approach. Okay, thanks Paul. And we have another example. Okay, thank you. We have another example. This is coming from a participant working in Tanzania. This is from a few years back from 2015 working with an INGO in the Naduta camp in Tanzania who writes, reports about harassment in the camp from pro-Kurunziza supporters against refugees who opposed him were dismissed as rumors by Tanzanian authorities who refused to discuss this. Assistance was welcome. Protection concerns or mitigating measures about refugees who were escaping political violence in Burundi were not welcome. Back to you Paul with this example. Any reflections? Well, I found that a very tricky situation to deal with. And again, I think it's a matter of how we analyze the situation and try and pinpoint where we might have most to be about refugees. And UNHCR being the mandated refugee agency, I would probably be trying to put the pressure on UNHCR to take that up as an issue as strongly as they possibly can through their senior management. It seemed to me to be a very tricky political issue to deal with locally. And it may be that pushing it up the line and to the mandated agency who has very clear responsibility for the protection of refugees might have been one way of going about that. But once it can be very difficult if you're in the field and you're seen to be getting involved in the politics of a situation. So I would be trying to push that up to UNHCR but I'd welcome comments from the other colleagues who might have better ideas. Yes, indeed. Any of you do feel free to jump in or indicate that you'd like to jump in. In the meantime, I'm going to move on. We have one more example on this theme before we give you a rest, Paul. So this one is coming from DR Congo. Again, from a participant working with an INGO there who writes, the protection activities planned by my organization have been blocked by the provincial authorities one day before the activity implementation, despite previous engagement with authorities as well as information sharing. This resulted in the suspension of our mediation activities planned for a dialogue between breeders and farmers in conflict with expectations from both parts. The team is now trying to develop an advocacy strategy at the higher level to advocate for the implementation of their activities in the area. And I'm going first to Paul, but then of course any other panelists who'd like to jump in, please do let us know. Over to you, Paul. My thoughts on this one would be that it would be good if the breeders and farmers could somehow show their support. So if they could be very much part of the advocacy strategy and try and take it to a higher level themselves or together with you, because again, it's a very tricky situation. I think what's key is though that frustrating as this is that we don't leave, that we continue to support the concept and we continue to try and push. I know it's very frustrating when you've done all the work, you've got everything prepared. I was involved in one myself where the government actually arrested our lawyers when we got them all to the second day of a meeting and destroyed our meeting that way. But I think we need to just persist and to the extent possible get the participants to be advocating on their own behalf. Over. Great. Thanks a lot, Paul, and a very important message indeed to leave us with as we move on to the next theme. So now we'll be looking at a different type of issue. What to do when discovering protection issues and then having to decide whether and how to advocate ourselves or to report on these issues, considering that this might affect our access. I'd like to turn to Tiffany on this. Tiffany, you have come across this type of issue a lot in your work, as I understand. What does this tend to look like in practice in your experience and what would be your general recommendations to colleagues on this kind of issue? Over to you, Tiffany. Great, and thank you for the opportunity to speak about this. Yeah, it's a struggle and we all find ourselves bearing witness to situations, sometimes collectively and sometimes really just one or two organizations in very deep field locations and wondering what to do with the information that we have. From where we tend to start the thinking in this conversation is really around the right at the outset, how does the framing of both protection and reporting sound to our counterparts in our local communities is sort of an inherently paternalistic nature to these words. A protection comes up with this visual of being in an authority figure an authority role to have more power than those who have less power to protect them from others. And we have that situation. So the way we talk about protection and really recognizing right from that beginning and then reporting is it has a very similar feeling to it where we are reporting on the behaviors of somebody else. And if we take it right back to the very personal, our own personal experiences of how we feel if somebody is reporting on our behaviors and I know that sounds very simplistic, but one of the things that I find is most useful in protection work is really thinking about the core of it all being human dynamics, human relationships and interactions and understanding what those motivations are. So starting from that is really challenging ourselves to think about how we come across particularly those of us who are involved in UN agencies and INGOs as the foreign presence in any given area. And then the next thing I think we really need to ask ourselves is why are we reporting and to whom. So there is a tendency in the humanitarian architecture to be a closed loop within ourselves and we report to ourselves for various purposes. Sometimes that reporting is done really intentionally with a hope to change a certain circumstance and often that's done for data collection, for sharing information, for preparing for context analysis, for thinking about what's going forward. But what is the purpose of the reporting and is it necessary? Who are we reporting to and why? Before we are doing it, I think that there can be a tendency in some protection programming and we see this a lot around the language, around monitoring, where it's being in an observer position and then reporting what you see can come across. This is not always too certainly, but it can be done in quite a passive way. So we go into a situation, we observe something and then we report to an external body about what we saw on there. So that is not a place of built trust with our local counterparts, whether they be the local authorities, the community members, non-state arms groups and so on. We think that we need to really challenge ourselves around that and have some discipline around how we use information and what we're trying to achieve with it. I think the question about what have we done before reporting? Why is the decision being made to report and what does that mean? And if we orient our protection work towards prevention first and foremost, our first role, the best protection as we know, is prevention, preventing the violence from happening in the first place or being able to contribute towards interrupting it or stopping it. So we gain a lot more credibility and we are in a much stronger defendable position related to reporting if we can demonstrate actions that have been done long before that. We have been working with the local duty bearers and perpetrators and yes, sometimes those are the same groups and sometimes they are not and really raising concerns, sharing observations from a collaborative perspective. We tend to have a decent amount of success of really approaching the idea of civilian protection with local duty bearers and perpetrators as a mutual concern, a mutual concern that we're collectively here concerned about this community and we would like to work together. If you build those relationships up and have that and if you're first line of reporting and give an example of sort of badly behaved or aggressive soldiers on a checkpoint and we have been able to build a solid working relationship with the local military commander or militia commander, we can go directly to them and say, this is what we're observing. Would you be able to help and to effect change in the behavior of those who are under your command? And if that doesn't change and if we have tried other things, then we are much in a much more defendable position when our access might get challenged. We can say, well, we did try. Here's the things that we've been working on and to be able to do that. And even when we go out of the local context, we'll find first line of defense is really working with the local actors to try and prevent in the moment. If that's not working, it is much more comfortable for the humanitarian world again to report to itself than to report to the higher authorities related to those duty bearers and or perpetrators if they are different groups. And so prior to, if it's possible and again, not always possible depending on the relationship but in some places it can be where you would go into the state capital, provincial capital or national capital and work your way up through the authority lines on that front prior than to going from a more punitive approach which is reporting into the humanitarian community, the diplomatic community and so on and so forth. Another aspect that I think that can be very helpful is recognizing, again, going back to that real paternalistic nature, the vibe around reporting is if we focus on amplifying the voices of those who are being directly impacted by the violence. Working with communities, those who are being directly impacted who want to actually directly report what's happening to them themselves. And so if we can look at it from an amplifying the local voice and leverage our good offices, leverage the existing relationships that we have within the authority structures and barring success in that area with the foreign structures, humanitarian and otherwise and encourage those who are most affected to be able to use their own voices and say their concerns directly. Recognizing that that can come at an increased vulnerability. Not everybody is going to want to be able to do that and that is, again, there is no singular solution for any of these very complex problems but it can be quite effective. It is also incredibly empowering and much more accurate for those most affected to be able to speak on themselves and as protection actors we can orient our actual protection activities than to be working on ensuring and reducing the risk to those people who are willing to stand up and use their own voices through tactics like protective accompanying mention strategic presence and so on and so forth. And then ultimately we come down to the point where sometimes we do have to accept, we have to make those very tough decisions and accept that sometimes our access will get restricted. Sometimes it's temporary and sometimes it can be more permanent and those are very difficult decisions to make. We've certainly run across that multiple times where we say, well, if we say anything we compromise our ability to remain here but we have literally tried everything in our wheelhouse and the communities that are impacted are also supporting that they want this messaging to get out and to whom. And then it's a much more collaborative approach. We have to be very careful about internal discipline and around information sharing. I can think of an example where we were working in a camp. Our team in the camp had some concerns. There was a military presence and had concerns about what was happening there in terms of aggression some civilians reported it to our country office and then reported it into other protection colleagues to the protection cluster. As part of a contact analysis conversation it inadvertently got swept up into a protection report and what had should have been more disciplined internal conversation on our end because our colleagues in the field should have been speaking to that camp commander first and foremost and so we have to go back and make the apologies and do the work there accordingly and so we have to accept some challenges and then sometimes you have to say there's no other option we need to get this information out and do it from that perspective. I think from the requirement for sort of creativity and adaptability in protection work is extraordinary and that certainly is very clear for me as it relates to reporting that there is no singular approach to this but I think from a mitigation perspective is that reporting should be seen as a tool for direct protection for violence interruptions for immediate concerns about people's safety and security rather than an activity in and of itself for the sake of data collection. I'll leave it there for the moment. Okay great thanks so much Tiffany. Now if I may we do also have a couple of examples that have been submitted by participants on this type of issue so I'll toss those over to you Tiffany I'll just read them out and again the other panel is wishing to come in. Just let us know. Example number one this is again someone working with an INGO and they're working in Bosnia and Herzegovina and they write, within the current operation we have experienced temporary suspension of the outreach activities targeting the affected population sleeping rough outside the official reception facilities as a consequence to observing and reporting rights violations and excessive use of force by the authorities. Negotiations were required to ensure continuation of activities. Do you have any reflections Tiffany on this situation from Bosnia and Herzegovina? Yeah I imagine that that was probably a really difficult choice that the INGO made about having to report it and to whom and they waived the risk and the benefit according to do so. What stands out for me is sort of two things. One is the word temporary. There was a temporary suspension and sometimes when we are making those decisions as I was saying that we know might risk our access in exchange for what we think will be a greater good. Sometimes that is access is not a complete and finite process, it's fluid. So the fact that it's temporary I think is great and I would say congratulations that the negotiations were able to bring about continuity of activities and I think Paul made some good comments about that about putting things in perspective in terms of accepting wins and losses and small versions of access when we can get it and to be willing to accept that sometimes we have to go back to the wrong board and sometimes we make mistakes and sometimes we do it for the right reason and we would do it again if we needed to. Perfect thanks so much and I'm sure it's very helpful to have those reflections for the listener who submitted that example. We have another this comes from a participant working with an INGO in South Sudan who writes we were in an area to do a nutrition assessment. We noticed that there were a lot of child marriages and so we flagged it and we also inquired from the authorities. They however quote advised us that if we want to work there we should not interfere with the culture of the people and that they should be allowed to be. We hence brought it up with the field INGO meeting and the group decided to refer the matter to the organization mandated to address protection concerns. Is this a type of situation that you've come across Tiffany in terms of access and protection outcomes and what do you think about having a single mandated protection agency take it on rather than coordinated effort of all of the organizations around there. Back to you Tiffany. Yes we've run across situations like that and working for non-violence force we only work on protection so we are a single mandated organization in that sense. The culture comes up again and so my comments from the previous section are echoed here again and I think that is reflecting on the specific example is a really important place and really challenging ourselves to look at those short and longer term work and what is the prioritization of needs. We can come to short term mutual agreements on direct protection with local authorities more easily and things related to direct, Paul referred to the work the WSP has been doing direct violence that happens in the Northern distribution but can happen in those situations what happens in communities that are caught in contested territory so on and so forth direct protection and prevention about sexual assault direct protection from children being harmed and so on and so forth as a short term agreement to build relationships and build trust so it's a starting place that hierarchy of needs preventing violence in the moment I would say starting there and something like early marriage child marriage is a much longer more challenging thing to get involved certainly we all know for the people involved in what's happening today that doesn't feel true but we have to be quite realistic about where we can affect change and so building trust and working with the relationships and again going back to the primacy of the local actors and really being oriented to what brings about successful sustainable change is the change that is initiated from within so if you're working in the community you're able to build up community agreement that violence should not be the default approach to conflict management and conflict prevention and then what is violence and that there's the very obvious overt types of violence and then what is maybe less easily recognized at different times as more subtle violence and then are there people within that community who are both respected as representatives of that culture who are also very worried about this particular issue and we I mean it does stand certainly as an example have found that you know certainly a lot of men and women but predominantly women in communities that we work with are very worried about early marriage keeping their girls in school so on and so forth so we've been able to orient towards them taking the lead on that issue so with a locally owned locally driven prospect I think where I mean collaborative and coordinated is always what we should be doing and sometimes if you're coming in for a short term humanitarian response and somebody has the ability to engage in longer term programming in this case perhaps an organization that's really just focusing on protection work then that is also fine we can be mutually reinforcing to one another. Great, thanks so much Tiffany. We have a few questions coming in to follow up on some of the points you've been raising but I think we'll try to come back to those at the end after we get through the next two themes so we'll come back for a round of Q&A. We've also had a few questions come in for Paul. So for now let's move on to the next type of issue that we'll be discussing in today's webinar. When there is access but the authorities or the armed group do not let the humanitarian actor deliver freely on their own but rather restrict which channels that the assistance and protection can go through. Now before looking at some of the examples that we've received from participants about this type of challenge I'd like to turn first to our panel and specifically to Hishem. Have you seen this type of situation in practice Hishem and do you have any general recommendations to share with the group on this kind of issue? Over to you. Thank you very much. I mean indeed I think we all see in this situation happening in the field and as you said rightly it's both from state authorities be it at the national level or at more let's say local level or from the armed group themselves. Anyone who is in position of authority wants of course to control what's coming and come out from the area they control. I think first to start with there's nothing wrong against any type of authority asking or let's say controlling or just making sure that what is being provided that really made sense or is not against the very national law. So we will not talk about completely let's say unlimited access to everywhere but here what is very important is that it's only for the channel that there is a control of the let's say provision of assistance and protection and control and then it comes to basically choosing to which type of communities we will provide these services or to which areas at which time of the year and so on and I think I will come back to basically the humanitarian principles at the end of the day as humanitarian actors we are bound by humanitarian principles meaning neutrality and impartiality and I think this is very much important I mean we want to make sure that whatever we do is done in accordance to these principles. So I believe in reality on the ground you will always be asked by any authority why you don't use this particular channel, why you don't go to this particular body it's much better for you and I think yes on the ground it matters for me of check and balance I mean if I go through this particular channel does it impact negatively my neutrality as an actor and the impartiality of the assistance of protection delivery basically would I be able to reach correctly the ones that need this protection and assistance especially it's very important to know that we have to do the assessment from every angle not only that we are able to provide these services but as well when the assistance of protection is provided that there is no let's say bad situation happening to the people who receive the assistance of protection afterwards basically when we leave sometimes we can provide the way we want and then when we leave we have like authorities coming back to the very person that we assisted and then we have let's say act of revenge or reprisals or looting and so on so we have to be very very careful I would say we have to be very careful as making sure that whatever we do is in line with our principle and then secondly that the duty of care principle is very much implemented and respected and this for us would frame the way we are seeking access we have to be careful I mean we are dealing with states or armed groups extremely sensitive whenever we come into a specific area and I understand I mean coming from our own country or our own very country will not accept anyone coming in so this we have as well to understand the realities but when it's for humanitarian purpose I think it's extremely important that we are really bound by the criteria that I just mentioned so this is for me on my first point is really on the framework so to establish in advance a solid framework based on principles and then the duty of care the second point is of course to make sure that authorities be it from both armed groups or states understand and respect these principles and then this duty of care sometimes we take it for granted that's because we're coming because we any organization and I spoke when I was with ICRC who is very big or any other organization we are entitled to do it and then you authorities whoever you are you should know about it no there is a long preparatory work to do in the sense of raising awareness about this principle raising awareness about the importance of being able to provide provision of services without let's say restrictions so there is a lot of let's say ground work to be done at values level so this is my second point is first of all to identify who should we talk to to basically give this awareness and it's not only to the let's say the natural services it can be intelligence, actors, defense, maybe businessmen we have to do like a solid mapping to make sure that we talk to the right people and they understand they need to be champions of our work I think this is the point I believe on the awareness and then the next point is again on our side I mean I'm really insisting on our own accountability as Unitarians and here I speak about the way we behave we did a paper a couple of years ago where we interviewed 25 armed groups with whom we have a dialogue with and we ask them how do you view your action how do you view let's say the way we see the protection and they say you do it as long as you respect principles as long as you don't do double standard as long as you don't mix politics and then Unitarian so from our side as well we have as well to work the talk I would say and be very careful in the way we present ourselves in keeping strictly Unitarian principles even in the way we communicate so we basically make sure that whatever we say we do it on the ground so we may come to of course we come on a daily basis with these type of challenges but are we finished that if we try to implement a little bit the solid framework the raising awareness and then ourselves being able to let's say be clear on principles and that it's from the top of the organizations to the more seed level so if someone is basically saying the same thing and acting the same way then I believe that we could overcome these challenges I will stop here and I will answer questions if any. Thank you very much. Okay perfect thank you so much. Yes we do have some questions coming in but first I would that we also have received a number of good examples related to the theme that you've just been discussing so I'd like to raise those and get your thoughts on those Hegem. The first example this is coming from someone working with a UN agency in Tanzania writing about the concern about the insistence that humanitarian agencies work with selected partners or actors on the ground so what this person is witnessing is that humanitarian agencies are not allowed to engage with the ministry or the authority responsible for health for example but only with the ministry in charge of refugees and wanting to make sure everything is done through a specific ministry rather than allowing the humanitarian agencies to work directly with the governmental authorities involved in specific issues such as health. So I hope that makes sense to you Hegem is this a kind of situation that you're familiar with and what would be your reflections for the person writing in concerned about these kinds of restrictions about who humanitarian agencies can work with especially from the local government side over to you. Thank you very much. Yes I mean this is a very valid example and unfortunately it's often the case at the state level there is one ministry which is designated to coordinate all humanitarian actors efforts and they say that it's just for sake of better coordination and streamlining but of course it's just to control and then to put aside relevant ministries to work together with the agencies or NGOs. I think here we have to understand why they act this way there is a fear of losing control basically there is a fear of losing control so we have to understand the fear we have to understand what is the rationale behind that and then try to mitigate it but not being seen as going against it for the sake of going against it. So one of the possibilities that I mean one of the things that was done and I remember that I did it in Somalia that it was basically more or less the same example is to try in the raising awareness more at the bilateral level maybe using a bit the high level of the organizations trying to convince to say that while we respect the particular ministry to be the central coordinator but if all the actors could be just maybe contributing could be partnering could be just providing their technical input of course under the global umbrella of the coordinating ministry and I think this is one of the other things that worked at that time I don't say that it's maybe the solution for everything but by trying to answer to the fear of some of some actors by losing control by telling them no you don't lose control you're still in charge we just want you please call you invite this and that because they have technical expertise and it would help be responsible as well to make sure that we update you on what we do and so on and so on and this is something that could be possible of course if the particular ministry is totally blocking and it's end-enduring basically life for populations to be served and so on here of course we need to go a step further and maybe have a denunciation and go a bit higher in the pressure but most of the time it's dealt with at bilateral level by understanding as well why they act this way thank you. Another example this is coming from an individual working with an INGO in South Sudan who writes in South Sudan which was divided into rebel and controlled areas we were based in the rebel territory. Our activities were however to take place in both areas while in the rebel area we would face an extremely arduous task to be cleared to leave the rebel area. The sheer number of different levels of authorities that would need to stamp the clearance letter was hampering our access many times we failed to deliver services because one commander on that specific day had traveled wasn't present so tossing this back to you again Shem is this a kind of example that you witnessed and what would be your thoughts for this individual working in South Sudan. Over to you. Yeah I mean we are dealing with INGO as we work of course directly with armed groups and this situation happens a lot. I mean this is linked I would say in the structuring of armed groups they are usually not really organized. I mean it depends some of them are extremely organized but for let's say a lot of them are not really organized and everyone is basically saying that they are the guys in charge and usually when the person is not here on the day then everything is blocked. It's basically a poor common control of the very armed group. And then you have of course let's say divide within the armed groups as well which increases these difficulties. I would give an example on how Geneva call basically we try to overcome this in another context in the DRC where we have a multiplicity of armed groups and common control. Here we basically sat together with the leaders of the armed groups with some community leaders as well and we put it on the table and we say this very issue basically how we can get the famous letters, green lights when you are not here when you are not there as they are traveling a lot. And basically we identified focal points, basically specific focal points with one focal point and if the person is not there who is the one in charge and then we have basically a kind of an organic that was validated by the armed group leader to this point is very important. And at the end of the day when everyone agreed on that basically it was easier because everyone knew that if A is not here because it is traveling that day then B has responsibility over that and it is basically the communication and decisions taking. However for this particular example it's very important that you involve the top leadership and if you organize this at the technical level it won't work because everyone is scared of taking decisions because of the fluid structure of armed groups entities. So it's a matter as well once again I come back to the point of understanding with whom we are talking to, understanding what are their reality on the ground. Sometimes they don't do it on purpose, sometimes they are just completely disorganized. So what can we propose to support as well and what can we propose to make let's say to create a system when there is no system. So yeah this is one mitigation measure that we developed for this particular example. Thank you. Perfect thanks so much and great to hear the examples that you're able to bring in as well. I think that really helps to be able to see the similarities the commonalities from one context to another with some of these challenging issues. We're going to do one more quick example if I may and I do have a couple of questions for you as well but we'll save those for the very end for the quick Q&A round. This third example comes from someone working in the Pacific so writes, the organization I work with in the Pacific was at times denied direct access to communities. Aide had to be channeled through the village chief for him to distribute as he saw fit. It took considerable time to negotiate alternatives and enable access to assess specific needs. Over to you Hisham for any brief reflections on this example coming from the Pacific region. Yeah this is a great example and it's basically another facet of the equation is now at the traditional level. Basically we come back to the very idea of who has authority and who exerts this authority and usually in many situations where you don't have a rule of flow system which is really let's say robust, they basically the one in charge controls what's coming and to whom is going there. I think here in the example they basically explain the way they mitigate it and it's true it takes time to negotiate alternatives to allow access and it's all about sitting with the person. I think I don't know for this example if they succeeded to achieve their objectives but it's really by just understanding why the village chief wanted to channel to go through it. Was you afraid of a diverted assistant that was maybe the case from all the organizations in the past? Was you afraid of other issues that we don't know that maybe objectives and this we understand and we try to work to go through with them or is it really for his own business and here is once again I come back to the raising awareness and being clear before even we engage into any activity with the community leader that this is the way we work basically. We work without discrimination, we work according to objective criteria and of course we will include the chief in this work and several times I mean I met organizations that don't understand let's say the local structures. I mean they don't understand why the chief would be in charge because from maybe from their own countries they don't have the structure. I mean a lot of western countries don't have any more like village chiefs and so on or traditional leaders but the vast majority of the world you still have these authorities so it's extremely important that we understand the internal structures and the importance of this particular person. So it was possible that maybe this was not taken into account in the analysis so my point here is once again to understand exactly how the structure work, why this chief is so important, why he wants this or that, if you can accommodate when it's not let's say interfering with our humanitarian principles and the duty of care and then take the time to understand, to explain and it's rather it may be sometimes better to delay a little bit than to just rush in and then regret it afterwards because it's harder to change when something is done than to do it directly. Thank you. Perfect, thank you Hisham really highlighting one of the fundamental concepts that's so important to negotiations of all types, really understanding where your counterpart is coming from. Very helpful indeed thank you so much. We're going to move now to the fourth and final issue that we're examining today. We'll look at a couple of examples and then we're going to move on to a brief Q&A around that we've already looked at access negotiations and protection from a few different angles but I'd like to next focus on the specific issue of restrictions on needs assessments in particular when they cannot include protection. I'll turn to Yoken, what would be your recommendations generally speaking in this type of situation, restrictions on needs assessment, what can be assessed during the needs assessment. Over to you Jan. Thank you very much. Maybe first of all to start, in my experience it's often in restrictive operational environments you have already constraints on assessments in general and then of course on top of that you often see that protection assessment as part of overall needs assessments face additional constraints. And of course these constraints for assessments will very greatly depending on the context on where you try to run these assessments. And so that goes along as well with constraints in the implementation of the programming. So I don't think we can actually just talk about the assessment regarding protection but then this will of course also have implications on the implementation of protection programming if we can't even do the assessment around these programming. But I think what is important to look at is first of all and that goes back to what Yoken said is actually to understand what triggers the authorities to block certain assessments and especially the protection assessments. And so go back, have these conversations with the authorities, with the armed group, with the de facto authorities tribal chiefs depending whoever is in charge. And of course these conversations should be part of like a long term engagement. And I think like one important point I wanted to make is that these negotiations be for protection or for other humanitarian operations is a process. So it's not a one-off conversation you have, it's a long-term process where we slowly start to explain our roles, the programming and assessment as well. So as part of that I think it's important to unpack protection activities because what I've seen is that depending on where you work and the context, there's a great misunderstanding of what protection means and what protection does on the sides of the authority. So if we unpack what we actually want to look at in terms of assessments and then subsequently in programming, that certainly can help the understanding and can certainly help the negotiations and the engagements going forward. And so and then also try to understand what are the underlying issues, sensitivities and the interests around then blocking certain parts of like protection questions within an assessment and protection programming. And most of it has already been mentioned. But I think the top three I have experiences either related to what they often define as cultural sensitivities. We had that in the first example. What comes up a lot as well is that in related to potential military activities, so the authorities for example are concerned that assessments in general, but especially protection assessments are tools to spy on military movements front lines and so forth. And then of course related to control, power and the interests of the respective actors. So if we understand that then in our conversation we can at least start mitigating some of the concerns of the stakeholder of the party we're engaging with. So I mean this might help and ideally we would get an agreement on the protection assessment as part of an overall assessment or as a protection assessment itself. However in reality it's most likely a longer term negotiation and engagement were step by step getting more parts of like protection questionnaires and protection assessments and protection teams into certain areas to gather this information. Then depending on the context as well I think my second point will be it often is a matter of operational modalities. So I mean I think it's quite a different for the authorities as well if you go in and ask questions within the community, especially in areas which might be closer to active fighting or frontline for where there is already some concern about information gathering and sharing. So to look at creative and alternative ways while negotiations are ongoing of course to gather the information which we require and then of course without putting the community at risk. But also like keeping in mind that what we're doing it will certainly have an impact on the overall axis and that's something we need to look very closely at as well. But in general to integrate protection partners into assessments whether protection colleagues would use observational tools. So that's happening in a couple of countries that's currently happening in Yemen because of like a blockage of protection assessments but not just protection assessments, assessments in general. So then concerns which we'll find from these assessments or concerns around not being able to these assessments can be addressed with the authorities when we then discuss the actual implementation. So whereby the protection should be part of it and not excluded. However it's much easier to have it part of it than like protection implementation in certain contexts. So integrate it into like the overall response. Then what was mentioned in examples here as well is that assessments to go through local partners. So that is being done of course and at times that might be very helpful and might solve the problem partly. However there are also a couple of risks associated with that. Partners might be influenced or close to the non state armed group in the area they're operating in. The authorities, the de facto authorities that might be under pressure by these authorities. So that might put the partner at risk as well as the community and then potentially and of course the programming then and the long run as well. And what we've seen as well is when we look at protection activities and it comes to the assessments around it to rename the activity itself which has solved some of the issues or eased the tension with the authorities and that will be a process while unpacking it. So lastly I just wanted to mention that of course what is important during this whole process is to keep in mind that we need to be transparent while we're doing what we're doing. Because in the worst case scenario if we're not and we've seen that as well then this could have potential significant implications on the community, on the partner as well as on the overall access. So absolute transparency in the negotiations and the operational modalities moving forward and also keeping in mind that especially in restrictive environments even if we do have an agreement to move forward with the assessments that we might be monitoring while doing this assessment and we might still be putting communities and the partner at risk. So that's something to keep in mind. So I think there are several depending on the context there are several options moving forward but of course all in all what we need to look at is understanding the interest and the needs of the stakeholders and the fears of the stakeholders as well unpacked it, try to find a solution around that and understand this entire process as a full-time job rather than a one-off conversation. Because I mean sometimes it takes months, sometimes it takes weeks it takes years and we always tend to look at like access as a snapshot rather than like a long-term process and there are also all of us mainly just based on certain locations often for relatively short time and so we might not have the institutional knowledge or the history of like negotiations in the past. So I mean patience is required for that and understanding of the actors in order to move it forward and find solutions. Thank you very much at this stage. Thank you Jochen. Really appreciate the practical perspective that you bring to the discussion even at that general level. It's very helpful. I think you were already referencing one of the examples that came in that you saw just before the event. I'd like to read it out just to share with the whole group that was an example coming from Ukraine, someone working with an INGO there writing that the de facto authority does not let assessments be conducted directly to beneficiaries. They need to be done via local NGOs as you mentioned Jochen, that are connected to the authority. If assessments are to be done officially, officially not the case but the authority is present and that of course will influence how needs and concerns are addressed. I won't ask you to reflect further now because I think you already did incorporate that into your general comments but just to share with the other participants the specific example that we were dealing with from Ukraine. I would like though to ask you if you have any further reflections on this example from Yemen. This came from an individual working with a UN agency there. I think you may have briefly alluded to the situation and the difficulties there that's here what this particular person writes. Authorities are checking the assessment forms, this is in Yemen, and they don't accept them if they include protection questions. In addition they don't allow any partner to conduct assessments alone or to use unauthorized assessment forms. Any further reflections Jochen on this specific challenge in Yemen. Back to you. Thank you very much. I mean it's a great example, of course it's correct but I guess just to say that in more general terms that I think what I've seen is that when protection is severely constrained or protection assessments and protection is severely constrained then we also see a more restricted or constrained operational environment so now you could rank countries according to that. So the more restrictive your environment the more likely the protection will be restricted as well so it's not just, I guess what I'm saying it's not just protection itself like in the example of Yemen for example it's not just protection questions so you can't do assessments at all whatsoever and protection, conversations around protection are even more difficult than conversations about other you may turn operations. So I mean just to say and again that goes back I think to what was mentioned before as well understand word, try to understand and entangle where the authorities are coming from, what is their concern and their fear, how can we unpack that and how can we ensure that we at least mitigate their fear at the same time ensure that our response remains principled and that we're not and I think that's important as well that we're not dropping protection from these conversations but finding creative ways in order to include it while keeping in mind the risks of like hampering the overall access. I think that will be my feedback to them over. Perfect, thanks so much Joakim. We're going to move now to a quick round of Q&A. We've had some terrific questions coming in throughout this session. I'd like to turn first to Paul. This is a question that came in from Stephanie who writes some humanitarian organizations change their top leadership as routine after a couple of years. How huge is the sacrifice to give up well established relationships with the key gatekeepers and local and national decision makers? Does this make sense if one does not really want to bring in services but also work to change policies? Does it make sense to have this kind of rotation in top leadership every couple of years? Over to you Paul. Okay we may have lost the connection with Paul. I'm going to try him again in a couple of minutes. In the meantime I'll turn to Hisham. Here we have a question from Marta who writes, I agree with Hisham's point that the reflection must start internally to the organizations. I also wonder how much longer the protection assistance divide will prevail in light of the triple nexus. As Hisham said there would be less need for assistance if protection issues were addressed than maybe the divide would actually be counterproductive. Hisham do you have any reflections on this potential trend, arguable trend that potentially the clear divide even as you articulated between protection actors mixed protection and assistance actors and peer assistance actors, how long will that actually last? Do you foresee that this divide actually will become increasingly counterproductive or even non-existent? Back to you Hisham. Thank you very much and thanks for the question. It's a very valid question but it's true that over the years the protection sector has taken a blow and I think it's used of course to many factors. One is the complexity of doing protection work. The second thing is what is protection just to start with having a hard talk with an Islamist armed group on not attacking civilians is something that maybe fewer and fewer organizations will do over time because of counter-relicitation terrorism because of their own safety because of lack of skills because of fear and as well because they don't have the funds for that. I mean at the end of the day it comes back to the question of where do the funds go and donors are more let's say comfortable giving funds to assistance because it's more visible because it's easier to monitor of course than giving funds to protection that is something a bit blurry concept. We don't know how we will monitor that. Will it be efficient? We're going to talk to some people that may not be acceptable ones and so on and so on. So I think this divide is increasing over time. There was an attempt I think by the UN sector as well protection clusters by the nexus to make sure that guys we all work together but here we have to be careful. We don't want to have an assistance just sugar coated with protection words. At the end of the day we have to really make sure that pure protection activities that includes prevention activities I think this is very essential work done through radios, through committee engagement all this work that is a bit let's say not really hard facts or hard to sell. This has to be preserved. This has to be promoted by the top leadership of organizations the UN and I think and I believe that if we want that if we want to have less assistance provided and then increase protection then we need really to support protection actors from the local ones to the international ones. This is extremely important and so yes I think I hope that the triple nexus that is trying to explain that there are no silos anymore are basically let's say well implemented and understood by the ones who are actually providing the funds for the organizations to do at the end of the day. So I think one of my points that I would maybe take out of this question is really to have more and more discussions with the donors at the earliest level that is very important that they continue to support protection actors that they don't impeach or present actors to talk to let's say entities that may be illegal with regard to the national installations because this is through this dialogue this is through this engagement that we succeed to have a meaningful protection dialogue. So I hope it answered more of the question but it's a vast question that the president asked that I would say would need let's say a debate in itself. Thank you very much. Absolutely and an admirable job on that one. Thank you so much. Let's try Paul again. Paul do we have you on the line? Can you hear me this time? Yes that sounds perfect. Did you hear or did you see the question Paul from Stephanie regarding the routine changing of top leadership so I won't read it again. I think there's usually a good reason for moving internationals on from my perspective some of the assignments these days are a bit short but I think the change of personnel if it's done thoroughly if there is actually a hand over there's no reason why good connections can't be maintained so I don't have a great problem with the short term assignments. I mean it's possible to extend if people are comfortable in their position but generally I think it doesn't necessarily have to interfere with an operation. It does in some situations but it doesn't necessarily if it's done professionally and thoroughly over. Terrific. Thank you very much Paul. And now a question from Kiran. This is addressed to Tiffany and it's referring back Tiffany to that issue that we discussed during the theme you're coming in on earlier regarding a designated protection actor but it's a bit of a different spin. So the question is as follows in the most serious situations is there a case for one protection actor risking loss of access by speaking out reporting etc while others can then be prepared to step in and provide instead. So it's essentially a question Tiffany about in a sense sort of sacrificing or putting to the front line one protection actor putting them say at risk of losing access by speaking out but then with the in a sense back up plan of others being able to step forward presumably with a more conservative approach in case that front line actor does lose access. Any thoughts on this question Tiffany? Sure. I mean is there a case that could be made? Sure. There is. I think that it's a pretty it would have to be a pretty extreme circumstance if we were talking about an organization that was set up and depending how long they get in the community and so on and so forth but in extreme and serious circumstances and nothing else is moving that can be the could be moved to be considered. I also think that there's a number of again going back to the idea of creative solutions ways of being able to approach those situations in terms of organizations that don't have time present being willing to be the ones to draw attention to what's going on there. The diplomatic community leveraging their good offices, UN agencies or UN mission if there is one that being able to leverage they're much less likely to face that kind of eviction than a smaller organization would. So I think I like the spirit of the idea that we should be willing to collaborate to work together and to keeping what I think I hear in that question is the central spirit is that the primary importance is reducing violence and keeping civilians safe and that is the number one priority over protecting our operations for the sake of protecting our operations. We're there for a purpose and if we can't achieve that purpose through our regular operations we need to look at more creative engagement. Excellent. Thank you very much Tiffany. We have we're a little bit over time but I'd like to bring in one last question this is to Yochan the question is from Florence who asks, who should be coordinating access? Should it be at all levels of staff who are involved or only management in HQ? What do you think Yochan, over to you. I mean I think it's first of all the colleagues in the field who manage access on a daily basis without probably knowing that they're doing so but then like at a technical level I think it certainly should be everybody who's working in the field on a more than depending on what we're looking at like more operation level probably the country office or a specialized person and then at a strategic level again it would be on my opinion part of the country level plus HQ but in general I think for colleagues who are working in the field we're all doing access all the time probably just not realizing it and I think this is where important part starts but it needs to be framed and conversations being had with like the general military command, the authorities, the ministries but then this needs to should be set in like a wider framework the organization has or strategy the organization has relating to access. Perfect thanks so much we're going to wrap things up now I did want to point out on this last theme of coordination we're going to have an entire session in this series that will be devoted to discussing such issues concerning coordination of access negotiations and protection as well as civil coordination that will be in the end of June so I hope that all of you on the line now will be able to join us once again for that even more in-depth discussion on that particular angle but for now I'm afraid we'll have to call it quits for the day I'd really like to thank all of our panelists for their contributions wonderful to have all of you on the line it's been a really helpful really concrete discussion looking at so many examples both from your own experience as practitioners on the panel and also really addressing a lot of specific examples coming in from the participants in the webinar so thanks so much to the panel and all of the participants for all their active contributions before and during the event will be a recording of today's event both in video and audio only podcast format that will be available on the event page in the coming days and as mentioned at the beginning this event was the second in a series of four events on access and protection the upcoming two events will continue to look at concrete issues that you've submitted on June 11th we'll be looking at situations related to access and protection that can put people at risk and how to avoid putting people at risk and then as I mentioned on June 25th we'll be discussing issues around coordination of access negotiations and protection as well as civil coordination and if you missed the first event in this series which introduced the concepts of access and protection and then looked in particular on issues related to COVID-19 there is a recording of that available if you visit the event website and hope you'll also be able to join us next week on 3rd of June that's Wednesday we will organize a discussion with ICFA on security risk management and duty of care during COVID-19 then on the 5th of June that's Friday next week we'll be hosting a launch event for NRC's new toolkit for principled humanitarian action which will include an exchange on the current state of the impact of counter terrorism measures on humanitarian organizations and the associated risks you can also continue the discussion in the PHAF online community there's already been a lot of exchange among participants in the community on this topic and I hope that you'll continue in this channel until our next live discussion and for those of you who submitted questions comments during today's event that we didn't have a chance to address we can take those up in the community it's a great opportunity to keep the conversation going there so with that once again I'd like to thank everyone the panelists and participants as well as the team at PHAF dispersed around the world from Geneva to the Philippines, Kenya and beyond thank you all for your help behind the scenes as well it's been a very interesting discussion and I look forward to next time thank you this is Anhered Lang signing off from Geneva