 good afternoon colleagues. I need interesting comments with COVID-19 implications on our work throughout the world in Europe and in the operational realities when we have the cluster. So I'm very grateful for all the colleagues that are joining us, especially in field operations. Today is quite an exciting moment. Since I joined the global protection cluster about six months ago, we have started a series of online webinars to engage with field colleagues, share some of the thoughts we're seeing and observing in some operations, bring it to a global cross-country conversation. We have had several so far on peace, development, nexus, on the role of protection, response and role of protection in counter-parallel environments. But since I started the work, I started almost at the same time with Valerie, our colleague in UNHCR, who's heading the human rights section there. And since day one, Valerie brought her hat as a previous cluster coordinator and current hat as the head of the human rights team and said we really, really need to strengthen two things in field operations. One, how the cluster are benefiting and using human rights mechanisms, and two, the understanding of cluster members on the role of the cluster when it comes to the human rights. So it took us a while to conceive together this first moment of conversation. It comes also at the same time where we are restructuring the work at global level and we have approved recently the establishment of a task team on human rights under the global protection cluster, where indeed we will take some of the thoughts that we put together here today to fruition and implementation. So by way of introduction, let me offer two main thoughts. First, of course, the anchorage of protection in human rights is something established. And this is something that we'd like to strengthen. Sometimes we see that protection response and protection analysis have been siloed in few elements of the human rights, but somehow ignore the wider human rights responsibilities. And this is an area where we would like to re-broaden protection, take it to the general level of the human rights understand, national humanitarian law involved. So that's the first element. The second element is that as protection cluster members and protection cluster and operations, we have a responsibility to contribute to human rights mechanisms. While we also have the responsibility to maintain humanitarian access to our operation. And sometimes these two come together and reinforce in each other. Sometimes there is a perception that these two go against each other. And one of the key issues that we'd like to discuss today, but also take forward in the task team, is to clarify how the members of the protection cluster can utilize existing human rights mechanisms. So there is a can. How can they do that? But there's also the obligation. Where do we have the actual responsibility? And it's not an option if we should or not use and contribute to information regarding human rights and analysis around. So with these two questions, I would like to open the discussion hand over to Valerie, who will brief us on the engagement with the human rights mechanisms. Brief us, give us an overview of the existing mechanisms and zoom in with field experience on the possibilities of engagement. Then we will have about 20 to 25 minutes of questions and answers. And then maybe try to wrap up with some concrete steps going forward. So with big thanks to the operation cell of the Global Protection Plaster for organizing this. And for the human rights liaison unit and UNHCR, I'm very glad to hand over back to you Peter and onwards to Father. Thank you so much, William. And good afternoon, everybody. Good morning, wherever you are. William, I think this is really a pleasure to have this webinar because we have been brainstorming for months with William how to best bring the human rights engagement to the two clusters, protection clusters, and how we can actually take advantage of the systems without necessarily overburdening or putting additional work for cluster coordinators and cluster members. And I hope this is the first of various discussions we could have eventually in the future and see how is the human rights liaison unit and eventually beyond that, we could support you within the different possibilities of human rights engagement. Maybe just to have an idea who is online, would it be possible that you would send to the chat box just from which operation you are now connecting, so in which operation you work, in which protection cluster, and if you have been already engaged with human rights mechanisms in the role of protection cluster coordinator or member, would it be possible so that we know a little bit more about each other? So if you can just say in which operation you are working, and if you have already experienced with the human rights mechanism part of the cluster system, that would be very useful. So we see that we have from Syria, excellent, welcome Mohamed, from Coleta Wire C, from Khartoum, excellent, welcome Aziz, Sarah, hi Sarah, hello to chat, Samba from Central African Republic, excellent, so we have a big variety of operations, South Sudan, Nigeria, Sudan, very good, excellent. It's good to hear the diversity of operations and actually the human rights mechanisms are really relevant to all operations where protection clusters are activated, so you will see that maybe you don't need to engage with all of them at all times, but you can pick and choose and strategically see when it is interesting for you and strategically good to engage with the different mechanisms, and I see we have also colleagues from Guatemala, from Niger, and that's excellent. So very good, so let us get us started. I have asked if some of you have already been engaged with human rights mechanisms, I don't see any answers, people are shy, don't be shy, because we know and we have discussed that with William several times, this has been somehow a blind spot for us how we can engage strategically with the human rights mechanism and how we can bring the cluster protection clusters to use the mechanisms more when it's useful and needed. I have gone through the protection cluster strategies that are online on the GPC website, just briefly to see the strategic objectives and where the different operations are, and it's interesting to see that basically for all protection clusters, human rights are either in the strategic objectives or in the priorities that are mentioned and outlined, so it's something which we see very important probably or highly on our agenda, but what it is beyond those fluffy words of human rights and we must protect and respect human rights, what it means for us practically as protection cluster coordinators and members, and how we can use the different tools throughout our work, so this is the question we will try to unpack a little bit today in this webinar. You might have seen also recently, actually two weeks ago, the secretary general has launched a new document, a very important document, which is called a call to action on human rights, the highest aspiration, and William mentioned just in the introduction that it is not only an option in some cases when we should engage with human rights mechanisms, but we have also obligations. We have also obligations how we should engage at minimum. Most of you are familiar with the initiative human rights up front, so what is our role in mainly conflict situations and what are the red lines for us, what are the minimum requirements that we should be looking into, so we're just drawing our attention that some areas should become a part of our work and mainstream it into the exit into the system. I think we have some colleagues online, okay, we are muted. If you have questions or any comments during the webinar, you can of course write to the chat box or raise a hand and ask it any moment. So maybe next slide, Peter, if I can ask you please to move on. How we can engage with the human rights mechanisms and here I would like to stress and as William said, the idea is not to give you any additional work or yet another reporting template or something that would be an additional responsibility and deadlines for you, no. So I want to clear that from the beginning, clarify this is about providing you with additional existing mechanisms and channels for your work that you might not have known before or that you might not have explored fully before and this is to make your work easier, not to make it more cumbersome and as we will see at some point you may decide that engagement is not the way forward for you, that it is not the time or that the conditions are not meant for you. It's okay, but you know that you have the options to engage with different mechanisms and each of them has different advantages, possibilities and constraints, so you can mix them also as it is useful for your context. So this engagement will be very context specific and depends on your country operation and I already mentioned that we have also human rights mentioned many times in the protection cluster strategies which is excellent, it's a starting point, but if we have a look at the HCT protection strategies when actually protection cluster is advising and the HCT members and the HC on some critical protection analysis and priorities areas to focus on, you're actually very little elements and references to human rights and obligations that come with it as well. So we also realized that in this area as advisors to the HCT the protection cluster would need to bring that element into the work and analysis to make sure that we provide a full picture of the analysis not just from the needs perspective but also from the human rights based approach and this is something that we have heard from various field operations. What is the difference between needs based approach, human rights based approach, how it is relevant for us, why we need to make this distinction? So this is also something that we try to work on with the global protection cluster, we have put together an initial note that maybe we can share with you later or have another webinar later if needed and useful to go more in depth and explain the difference but also to draw the attention that those discussions are in many operations very relevant. Many of you who are online we have worked already together in the past so you know that I come from the cluster coordinator's perspective and when joining this new position in the human rights liaison unit I actually realized in how many situations I could have used the mechanisms more strategically and I could have approached them and I could have used them in areas or situations where I had I thought that there is no more option for advocacy for reaching out to the government for being in situations where I felt my hands are tight so now looking from this side I would like to show you some concrete examples where I think the engagement can be useful for you and in which way you can use it for example when you don't have access to some parts of territory but you need information or when the government is not very forthcoming on some questions or when you would like to follow up on some commitments from different ministries and so on so we will go into those examples a little bit more in detail as we progress with the presentation. I also you see on the screen that I mentioned dialogue on sensitive issues and this is something which I see as a big added value of the human rights mechanism so as an example we what we do currently for example when we are aware of a very delicate situation and we know that there are human rights violations happening but we know that we cannot raise it directly with the government because it would compromise our positional our our situation on the ground it may further restrict our access or it may really harm some relationship that we have been already building for a long time so we use for example some special reporter independent experts to pass the information to them approach the government from their side but this is all in confidential manner so nobody actually knows that behind it's it's also a UNHCR but the information is being channeled by entities which are highly respected by the governments which are independent and which are seen as a credible source of information so we can reach the means without necessarily exposing other parts of our our strategies if it would have an impact this is context specific but just to give you an example I believe that engaging with the human rights mechanisms would also create some new synergies in their respective country operations and clusters with actors with whom we don't necessarily engage with traditionally so for example national human rights institutions in some operations such as Guatemala, Latin America I'm sure we are already very much in touch with but in others less do we use their potential as independent entities but having big access to parliamentarians to civil society from different angles so this is just a type of stakeholders that we may benefit from including in our stakeholders analysis and looking into possible synergies when working on human rights engagement another area where I believe the human rights engagement would be really beneficial is as we will see there are different platforms which discuss the human rights violations and situation of human rights across all countries in the world meaning all operations where protection clusters are activated and as a result if we bring in the angle of the displaced persons we will hopefully also get the commitment of countries to progress on some situations just for your information we have done recently an analysis of the recommendations that were made in the universal periodic review I will get a bit later on what it means exactly but there are a lot of comments and recommendations related to refugee to state less persons so as island seekers but very little on internal displaced persons so we hope that this is part of the initiative to boost a bit this aspect and bring different actors mainly protection clusters to be more present and using those mechanisms very important element as well is that through the human rights engagement there is an aspect of sharing information with internal displaced persons about their human rights human rights education so how do we actually channel and and make available the information about the rights of IDPs to themselves because they are not a very difficult that they use it for actively and also the fact that it comes with certain responsibilities so we worked with other agencies such as OHCHR UNICEF UNFTA UN Women on aspect related to human rights education and we hope that this will be an area that we will further develop and maybe even pilot some of the initiatives with you in the field and therefore empower IDPs in claiming their rights and being aware of their rights and lastly the point that I had on the first slide is to make the connections with 2030 agents and with the broader initiatives that are currently ongoing and on which to which many of operations in which you work are contributing to in various operations I think mainly basically all that you mentioned before in which you work the government have an actions plan related to 2030 agenda and I don't know how much you in given come specific context you contribute to those action plans or how much you participate in the discussions but it is also an area where protection of IDPs could be strengthened so on the question of refugees is quite now well represented address sectors but protection of IDPs seem to be a bit left behind so we hope that this would again not only raise the awareness but also strengthen some partnerships with the non-traditional counterparts that are also working on similar initiatives so this is just to frame a bit our discussion and do you have any question at this point you can unmute yourself or raise a question through the checkbox no question so far okay very good everybody hears me okay no complaints Peter loud and clear excellent very good thanks Liam so with that I would like to move to to an overview of the mechanisms Peter please next slide very good so we are four main mechanisms that I would like to mention briefly human rights council universal periodic review special procedures and treaty bodies and let me make one point when we say human rights many people immediately make a connection oh yes OHCHR we have a colleague OHCHR that's for OHCHR no so if we speak about human rights it's a responsibility of every single agency and organization it's like the centrality of protection in humanitarian action we cannot say it's just protection cluster I think we are the ones who understand that very well it's a responsibility of everybody so all of us we have a responsibilities and commitments that we need to follow up on and OHCHR is supporting of course is the agency focusing on human rights but also supporting as a secretary at many of the mechanisms but it doesn't mean and that it lies with them for implementation we all share the burden and the responsibility between us so briefly on the different mechanisms so they have been initiated by the general assembly which created a human rights council and under the human rights council we have two important human rights mechanisms universal periodic review and special procedures I will now go more in this into explaining what what they mean general assembly also adopted actually ten main human rights treaties and we will hear more about them as well and each of the three teams to simplify has an associated treaty body or a committee that is then following on the implementation and we will see how we can also engage with them and how it can be useful for protection clusters so if we can move on Peter we will start with the human rights council so the human rights council is happening in Geneva but I still felt it's important that we mention how it works so that you see the bigger picture and how it all fits together so the human rights council is an intergovernmental body meaning that 193 states that are members of the United Nations system are meeting regularly actually three times a year in March in June and in September to discuss the situation of human rights across the world okay so there are themes that are regularly discussed as well as emergent situations and this is a platform which brings together all governments and also civil society UN agencies it's a big event and we can take advantage about from this mechanism in various ways if we can move to the next slide Peter this is as I mentioned happening at Geneva level but I just wanted to give you an example how we can fit into interacting with the human rights council session so to give you an example the human rights council session has been just happening the last few weeks and they discuss situations in Yemen in BRC Congo in Libya in Burundi in Nicaragua so I think all of those situations are very very relevant to protection clusters of course Sahel was very high on the agenda and you have the heads of state or the prime ministers members of the parliament civil society discussing presenting on the situation but also receiving suggestions from other states from civil society from UN agencies on what is the situation and what should be done going forward or should not be done of course so we have an opportunity when there are those discussions to provide oral statements those are short oral statements that last about two minutes but why is it important is to draw attention to some issues or topics that are not necessarily highlighted in the discussion so I give you a very concrete example for Libya all the discussions around Libya are usually around migrants and asylum seekers on word movement but there is very very little being discussed on internal displaced persons in Libya so in that regard for example the protection cluster could channel the information and draw the attention of the community to the fact that they are also internally displaced persons who have specific protection needs who have you know additional challenges and where they are kept in the system to address them just as an example okay I'm coming up now so this is not necessarily a negative oral statement it cannot draw in a positive way attention to some issue but it can also comment some positive development in a country so for example thinking about Niger as we have colleagues from Niger when there was the IDP law passed in Niger we can comment the government of Niger for taking those positive steps and encourage them further to engage on the topics related to IDPs and providing technical support whenever needed and etc so this is an example how we can engage on oral statements we can also of course there are many side events during the human rights council session we can not only participate because they are very interested but also organize side events here as it is happening in Geneva I mean this would be further for discussion with the IM and the GPC but there might be an opportunity for example to do a side event on the intersection between climate change and conflict induced displacement in internal displacement context or looking into production challenges in emerging situations in any topic you can think of but this brings together the different stakeholders and of course brings a lot of attention to a topic because there are many people attending so we can also host side events and if you think this may be an opportunity for you a situation that you would like to raise please reach out to William and the GPC and we can connect how to best support it's also a platform where we can collaborate with other agencies civil society permanent missions so for you to know that the human rights liaison unit connects with a lot of permanent missions and we share with them information on confidential and non-confidential basis so we have regular exchanges with them and we share with them for example some worrying trends or some we highlight some some recommendations that would be good that they follow up with other countries so it's also a means how to a different levels influence and draw the attention to specific issues so this is also a channel that we have not yet explored for internal displacement but we use very actively for refugees and state less persons during the human rights council session there are also resolutions that are being drafted again and just in the last few weeks we had a resolution on trafficking on persons with disabilities racial discrimination on child abuse so all those topics of course that you are working on in the field we would look into how to best input the internal displacement aspects to the work and of course we can we have also the opportunity whenever there is a presentation of a situation to channel relevant information because the protection clusters have very effective means of protection monitoring collecting information analyzing trends so this information from the ground is very useful for for those discussions very good and please if we can move on Peter as we saw on the graph one of the one part of the human rights council is the universal periodic review so a second human rights mechanism that I will present to you now and what is a universal periodic review we often say UPR the UPR is a very interesting mechanism because every single country in the world so 193 UN member states is being reviewed on the situation of the human rights every four years so every four years we look in detail into a situation in a country and see how the human rights are being respected or not and this is without exception and this is we are now in a third cycle of this UPR so it means that every country is now being reviewed for the third time so it's not that each country is reviewed at the same time but every year we have over 40 countries that are being reviewed and what it means that they are being reviewed the state which is being reviewed prepares a report from their perspective but then we have a compilation of reports from UN agencies and we have also reports from civil society including NGOs national human rights institutions and so on so there are three elements and this is what is then being reviewed because those reports are public okay so there you can find them online they are being shared publicly now so far how it works is that when let's say Sudan is under review from UNHCR site we contact UNHCR colleagues in Sudan and we work with them on preparing a report on Sudan but we don't see actually many operations where protection cluster coordinators would be involved in this process and when they would provide input if this is not to be associated with UNHCR protection cluster can prepare a report under the civil society okay so it depends of course on the dynamics either we can feed the report inputs to the UN compilation or we can of course use the other channels through civil society but it would be interesting to look into the possibilities of consulting with cluster members and providing inputs or submitting a report on situation of internally displaced persons and this is where I mentioned earlier that we have done an analysis there is very little being provided on IDPs there is a lot a lot on refugees and stateless persons but we would like to see more prominently IDPs because this is an area which is rarely highlighted as the concerns during the during the process so what happens actually those reports are being produced and then the state receives recommendations okay about 200 recommendations every time during the cycle and if the state actually accepts so if the state supports the recommendation that they receive then they need to implement it okay this is very important why because they need to report what they have done to achieve this recommendation so it's really an opening and this is again an area where the protection clusters I think can really use this in the field let's say that the government accepts their recommendations or supports their recommendations that they will have a loss on IDPs okay so then you can approach the government okay so the government has supported this recommendation and we are here ready to support you as needed as useful to work with you on on this aspect or for example the government receives a recommendation that all security forces should be trained on trafficking in persons or on the best interests of the child very good so here you have an opening because you can then work with your counterparts at comfort level and say we are ready to support you and to work with you and this is from what we have seen as an experience from operations this is really highly appreciated because the government needs to show progress and in many situations they don't have the capacity to do so or the technical expertise so then they very much welcome any any support coming from from you from protection clusters or agencies maybe I should also mention that there are special funds available for implementation of those recommendations that are administered by OHCHR so it's also a possibility to get funding for the implementation that you can support but maybe this would be a topic for another webinar or further discussions very good so can we move on Peter please so okay I think I already mentioned all those aspects how to engage with UPR so very good we can move on please Peter now we come to this flag a couple questions that came up yeah very good we had one question about uh confederal states and states that don't fully engage with human rights conventions whether we have advice on that and then another question from a legal perspective whether the information provided by us is credible from their perspective talking about the human rights council and so the first one is on the treaty bodies the committee the convention yes it can relate to the treaty bodies but I take it more broadly perhaps to states that don't fully engage okay so I will maybe leave it until we finish the presentation of the fourth human rights mechanisms sorry and the second question whether from a legal perspective you think that the information that we provide is seen as credible with respect to the human rights council if it's too politicized or uh if maybe the person who provided the question can explain a bit more colleagues uh it's in the chat box of the Muhammad thanks for the questions more generally I think just from whether our information provided to this process is is credible okay I think I can address how it is perceived and we are actually keeping track of the recommendations we made and how they are then reflected or being followed and we are currently at some 60 70 percent of reflection rate what it means that the recommendations we make are really highly relevant and actually taken up then by the state for implementation so this is a rate which is very high and the efforts we to go into it are not definitely in vain we can share more details per topic also with you if you would be more interested what are the topics where governments hear more to our recommendations or less on the political or non-political of course this is a dialogue the human rights council is a dialogue with intergovernment body so you may raise a question is this too politicized we are working in a politicized environment in every operation we we are in they are politics involved in every activity we do of course but as human nutrients we need to be neutral and follow the human nutrient principles so the interventions we do are not targeting any kind of political side or any kind of statements that would be taken on either side we are really drawing attention of the different stakeholders to the needs to the rights of internally displaced persons hopefully in that case and what are the particular protection challenges and what needs to be done more or differently so we are deep politicizing in any way the discourse and bringing attention to the critical needs if that responds to to your question okay if not please unmute yourself your colleague and we can provide more clarification okay very good so at the meantime maybe we can continue with the special procedures mandate holders so the third human rights mechanism I would like to present to you we will share with you a video summary video also after the webinar where you can see in three minutes what are those mandate holders about but what is what do we mean by special procedures mandate holders those are either special reporter independent experts working groups it doesn't matter what the name is but those are independent experts which are working on specific team or topic at this moment we have 44 him or Monday and currently we engage very actively with about 20 of them so we don't engage with all 44 but the ones that are probably most relevant again to protection clusters are on disability working group on this enforced disappearances on IDPs of course on older persons special reporter on children on trafficking real violence against women and girls to those mandates are working on topics that you deal with every day we have also 10 mandates that are related to specific countries and I will park them there because they are relevant to specific operations we have today Central African Republic and others and the way we engage with them are quite similar to those independent experts special procedure mandate holders or special reporters they are following a specific situation or a team and they you can bring to their attention information or ask them to for example issue a media statement to to draw attention to a to a problem or a topic and also eventually in my team for a country visit so what do they do they can visit a specific operation and I think just recently the special reporter on IDPs went to Iraq correct correct William you went there as well so they can visit a country which draws the attention not only of the government and relevant entities media but it can open up a dialogue on specific issues that were maybe stuck or block and which can help you then in your day-to-day activities in the field so we can proactively actually suggest countries and operations where we feel the independent experts or special reporters should go and visit this is something we start to do now and to be proactively try to suggest in relation to different topics where it might be relevant to to visit if feasible if the government consent another area where we can engage is in terms of input to annual reports so those special procedures mandate holders issue two reports a year one which is presented to the human rights council and the second one to the general assembly and there are two aspects one we can also have a dialogue with the special procedures mandate holders about the topics to raise to their attention so for example we could suggest for the special reporter working on uh uh violence against women if she would be interested to look more closely into the situation of IDP women and girls if that is a topic which has not yet been highlighted enough for example and if they are already writing very poorly we can also provide input so when and they are covering the topic we can bring to their attention some data analysis specific protection issues of IDPs in a given context so all this information can then fit to report which is presented either to the human rights council or the general assembly what is also a very effective way Peter if we can pass actually to the next slide please is uh that we can work with them on media statements press releases and this can be either in confidential or non-confidential manner so we can either pair with them and work on on releasing information that we want to draw attention to but we can also share with them information which is too sensitive and then they release it of course independently by themselves without necessarily exposing the protection cluster and protection cluster members it's also an opportunity when they come to a country visit to for example pass them some questions or areas uh in terms of territory we cannot access but we want to have information on because they can ask they can go and for us it's an opportunity to uh to get information and not only information but also maybe to tackle some issues with where there might be blocks with the government from from their side so those are just some ideas but actually the different engagement with the special procedures mandate holders can be very wide and very uh the spectrum is very broad and it depends on your country protection cluster what what the gaps are what the challenges are what are the protection issues where you seem to be blocked or maybe would like to have more support usually we tend to only engage with a special reporter on IDPs which is our natural counterpart of course Cecilia Jimenez and it's a very excellent collaboration with many of the protection clusters but they are as I mentioned 44 of those mandates and we are not fully using them for the IDPs advocacy and situations so something to to explore further very good and uh I'm looking if there are any questions not not really so we go to the fourth fourth um human rights mechanism which is the treaty bodies I will take a little break and pass it to Peter please thanks Valerie happy to give you a bit of break and talk about the treaty bodies again if there's questions you're free to pose them while I'm going here but as mentioned earlier by Valerie when looking at the overall graph the treaty bodies are the committees which derive from the core international human rights treaties and their role these experts were elected to be on these committees is to monitor implementation of those treaties by the states that have ratified them uh they're independent experts for fixed for renewable terms and they're nominated by states they have a diverse geographic and gender balance and they're between 10 and 25 members and in total we have 10 of these so-called treaty bodies who meet particularly here in Geneva although meetings are suspended for the next few months for obvious reasons but they meet here in Geneva to to do those to conduct those reviews of state implementation I'll go through some of the the functions of them in more detail but here you can see the overall chart of the various treaties at the top and then the committees which come from them down at the bottom for example you have the convention on the elimination of racial discrimination is the first one civil and political rights the second economic social and cultural rights is the third discrimination against women or convention against torture the fifth the convention on the rights of the child convention on the rights of migrant workers and their families convention of the rights of people with persons with disabilities and enforced and voluntary disappearances so those are the core international human rights treaties and for countries that have acceded to those treaties ratified them they've agreed to be reviewed on their implementation by a relevance committee treaty bodies that use that implementation and these review processes this is one of their functions this review process takes place on a recurring basis and the state will similar to the upr process provide its state report indicating what it's doing to meet its obligations under the treaty these treaties should typically be enforceable by law and in the state and they should be the state should be taking positive steps to implement their provisions so the state will come before the committee share its reports and the members will have a constructive dialogue with the state asking questions about certain aspects certain issues and then ultimately issuing recommendations to the state on how it can better meet its legal obligations and in that context UNHCR is regularly I mean from our team's perspective the UNHCR is regularly getting gauged so we work with our operations in the field to bring through this process the issues that we think are most relevant to the application of these conventions to our persons of concern we do this as a confidential channel so unlike the upr where it's a public review there are a public there is a public review phase in the treaty body process but we also can channel we usually provide our information confidentially so this allows us to provide a bit more concrete and serious recommendations about sensitive issues that we're we're seeing I mean there's channels to do so for the upr process as well but in general we we submit all of our information through this process confidentially and then the committees will raise these questions the states raise these issues and issue recommendations and then states similar to the upr intent expected to take steps to implement them before the next time they come up for review so this can be a really useful way for operations it's clusters or UNHCR operations to put on the agenda states certain recommendations about where human rights are not being implemented for displaced persons and in support of those contributions we can also engage directly with these committees we can provide confidential briefings when states are coming up for review will we know there's for example an important displacement context and certain rights under that particular convention are not being respected by a state we can also provide thematic briefings we see a certain area affecting internally displaced persons not being you know adequately addressed when this when the committees are reviewing states we can try and find scope there to to see what their perspectives are and provide more information we can also engage many members and events these are independent members they are typically lawyers or professors who have a powerful voice and we can also engage with them in different events that we we think could highlight the protection issues that we're seeing in the field now we also have the opportunity to contribute to the developments of commentaries that these treaty bodies develop these are their interpretations of how to apply the treaties and so we want to make sure that we can include where relevance the displacement angle in that development of human rights law we want to make sure that the particular challenges that displaced persons face are reflected in that that evolution in that those commentaries on these conventions one other final point of that the treaty bodies can do and might might be able to be a useful tool for some operations is where a state has accepted or acceded to an optional protocol or a relevant part of a particular convention they may have accepted what are known as individual complaints procedures and these are procedures that allow individuals or groups of individuals to submit complaints directly to the committees typically after exhausting domestic remedies in their state highlighting human rights violation or a potential human rights violation and seeking the committees to issue a decision and to review their case so in in this has been something that we've worked on with some of the UNHCR's operations in the fields where we've seen examples that come to mind relate to refugees but can equally apply to eternally displaced persons where we've seen someone at risk of deportation and we've exhausted domestic remedies in that state and we've reached out to and supported them to file complaints directly to these treaty bodies who have then issued recommendations to the state ask that the state not continue with the deportation until they can analyze and review the case so that's another channel we can also use in engaging with these treaty bodies to spur action by the government think that is in general terms the the treaty body system and and how we engage with it but Valerie if you had anything else to add on that I can pass back to you and open the floor for questions you may be just to mention very briefly in one sentence the last point that about the individual complaints mechanisms I think it's very rarely part of our effort pathways in in country level cluster system and it's quite an effective remedy that we can use but maybe we would need again another webinar to go more in depth but this is an additional avenue that we can use once we exhaust the local level system and still the case is preoccupying from protection site it's not resolved and we need to reach out to higher instances so I think we have exhausted the very brief presentation and would be happy to you see any further questions at this point or suggestions how to take it forward or request for support or further engagement and we would like them to also share with you with William some of the elements that we have foreseen to come next thanks Valerie can I come in William here in light of also the time this I want to really thank you for very comprehensive presentation and if it highlights anything it highlights how much opportunity we have that we haven't been systematically using or professionalizing the use of as part of the cluster in general so I would be very grateful if you can also share your contacts for some of the national clusters to contact you afterwards maybe to have dedicated discussions country by country for those who are interested on how to take it forward I hope that would be possible and useful the second element is sometimes the variety of the cluster as we all know creates different approaches to human rights between UN agencies and NGOs and it's very important I think to reinforce the message that that sometimes the cluster has to accommodate this diversity and maybe use some tactics of advocacy or use of information that might go beyond the wishes of specific UN agencies but also lean more towards what the NGOs want over back to you Valerie thank you thank you very much William and I think this is webinar is somehow just a teaser of all the opportunities of human rights mechanisms in the context of protection clusters and I have just shared my email in the chat box and what you mentioned I fully agree we we know the specificities of production clusters and that it represents a wide variety of stakeholders but I believe this is not compromised in the interaction with the human rights mechanisms because we can submit as the civil society members as you know we don't need to represent under UN agencies so it has different opportunities and we can discuss more in detail the practicalities when it comes to more concrete questions and engagement but if you would agree well yeah maybe we can briefly mention the next step should I should I go ahead yes okay thank you Peter can we move to the last slide please maybe this should be rather announced by William what do you think the creation of the task team thanks thanks Valerie I think as I mentioned in the introduction we have agreed under the global protection cluster to establish a task team on human rights and maybe Valerie you want to mention a few a few questions go ahead thank you William so we are pretty excited about that but excited in a measure that again this is only to do something which you feel is useful and where you feel is the need so I believe we will be reaching out shortly to you to hear more about where you think you could use human rights mechanisms and how we could support you but broadly speaking we see opportunities in the protection analysis protection monitoring include aspects related to human rights streamlined the different reporting you are doing some of you are already reporting to some human rights mechanisms and bodies so to bring it together with the protection monitoring systems secondly to look into the HCT protection strategies to also highlight links to human rights and human rights violations were relevant were feasible were useful and to look into the advocacy strategies and how some channels related to human rights mechanisms could be useful for you in how to broaden the spectrum of stakeholders protection clusters engage with and namely the national human rights institutions and eventually development actors working on human rights were relevant and others so this is just to give you some hints but we will be reaching on this we are fully aware that there is a need to build more capacity on human rights engagement this is on the UNHCR side but of course this will be a resource available for protection clusters as well we are just starting to work on a blended learning program on human rights engagement in practice so not only explaining the different mechanisms but rather looking very practically what it means for us how we can use them in which situation is good or what are the disadvantages what is faster all those aspects to bring it in a learning program that can be used in a modular way we have also launched a community of practice on human rights engagement and maybe we could be looking into how to bridge it with the GPC community of practice and make links so as to ensure that we have good synergies on this we do conduct already monthly thematic webinars we can share with you the recording of the previous ones where you would get some more detailed information on on various topics and namely how to engage with the individual complaints mechanisms how to follow up and look into impact of recommendations of to the human rights mechanisms so if you have other suggestions for themes that would be useful for you please don't hesitate to get in touch as well so just some ideas going back to the secret originals call to action on human rights which has been just recently released it was also a question to you it may be a quite recent document but I'm sure some of the protection clusters are already looking what it means for them how to link their national action plans to some of the pillars so bring all this together to ensure that we see the synergies and the opportunities of the system again we're relevant and we're useful for you because the bottom line this is not additional work for you if you don't seem to if you don't find added value in the given context this is just to reinforce the good work you are already doing thank you over to you William first big thanks to you guys to to take such a very comprehensive and complex system and explain it to us in 35 or 40 minutes you have succeeded I think in getting the attention many of the field colleagues I agree with you this is but a start we have many streams to go ahead what I suggest to Valerie is as a follow-up on this maybe yourself and me we can co-write a small letter to the coordinators as they follow up on this outlining the next steps as well as identifying how we can continue following up I thank all the colleagues calling from the field I thank also the human rights liaison unit that we have for organizing this as well as the operations and I'm looking forward to move this important piece of work forward with in collaboration with all of you and and try to make a difference so I take this opportunity to thank you all stay safe in COVID-19 era and have a great evening bye bye thank you thanks everybody thank you thank you Valerie William and everyone bye thank you