 But yeah. Okay. Well, welcome. Let's start. We've got quite a full agenda. I'm just going to share my screen to let you see the agenda. One second. Okay. Good. So welcome. My name's Jim Robinson. I'm the co-coordinator of the Global Housing, Land and Property AOR. I'm really pleased to welcome you to this quarterly global meeting. As the name suggests, we have these four times a year and it's a chance to share updates, information, hear about who's doing what, sort of build that community of practice around HLP. Some of the colleagues here are working on coordination. Some of them are interested in HLP in other ways, either through policy, academia, or working in shelter, cluster, CCCM, other parts of humanitarian programming and development work as well. So you're all very welcome. We're recording the call and that will allow us to share the content in a meeting with colleagues who maybe weren't able to join today and for us to refer back as well. So our agenda today is we're going to have, it's quite a full agenda. We've got some really interesting things to discuss and updates. Like I say, firstly, please do introduce yourselves in the chat. Feel free to comment at any point. You can raise your hand if you would like to comment verbally or leave a comment in the chat as well. And if you would like to speak in French, we have Tresor here to help with translation. And yeah, so please do intervene however, it's comfortable for you. So we will be looking at the Global Refugee Forum is taking place next week and as you know, we've had some work going on around a pledge to focus on HLP. So we're going to have an update on that. We're going to hear from colleagues working in Afghanistan, Palestine, Democratic Republic of Congo. We're going to hear an update from colleagues working on shelter and HLP and a project looking at cash and HLP. And then we'll also hear from the Global AOR on the information management work that's ongoing. And yeah, a couple of updates as well from my side. But yeah, so please could you mute if you're not speaking? I'll try and spot you and mute you myself. But in case I can't, please do do mute. But first thing is over to Ombretta, who's going to give us a brief update on the Global Refugee Forum. Hello, Ombretta. Hi, Jim. Hello, colleagues. Welcome to this meeting. I'm Ombretta Tempram, the Global Co-Coordinator from Unhabited Side together with Jim. And it's great to meet you and meet you again, you all. Yeah, just briefly, thanks, Jim. Next week, there will be the Global Refugee Forum. I'm sure many of you already heard about it or are engaged in it. It's an opportunity to actually, you know, gather and hear all the work going on on the thematic of refugees. And it is also an opportunity for all of us to working on HLP and related aspects, so actually raise the profile and the visibility around this thematic area in relation to refugees, but also a bit more broadly on displaced population, both in countries of origin and country of displacement. We probably announced it and discussed it briefly already in other meetings, but UNHCR, NRC and UNHabitat are cosponsoring a global pledge on housing, land and property rights, which is, you know, a broader home where many organizations and partners are, you know, coming in and submitting matching pledges as well on the thematic area. The HLP pledge is called Advancing Durable Solution through Secure Housing, Land and Property Rights, and basically it aims at increasing the proportional, forcibly displaced women, children, men with secure access to housing, land and property in support of sustainable return and integration, local integration and other local solution. So quite strongly framed, you know, on the perspective of durable solution. I think that the information on this pledge is available online, we'll also put the link in the chat, but there are three areas of focus thematically, you know, restitution of housing, land and properties, housing, land and property rights documentation, and then comprehensive land and tenure security strategies for displaced people. So we'll be seeing maybe in the coming weeks which partners were interested in that. And also there, the pledge got some traction among governments and member states. And perhaps it's important to note that at the Global Refugee Forum the last day on the 15th of December, there will be a high-level side event on housing, land and property rights with where many partners, including ourselves and countries as well, will speak about their own pledges on these thematic areas and also, you know, how they perceive the importance of housing, land and property rights in their own context. Of course, those of you who will be there are welcome to join, it will be at 11 and all the information is on the GRF website, but also the session will be live-streamed, so for those who are interested but are not participating in person, it will be possible to follow the discussion there. And with that, I think I will conclude by saying, you know, we will be able through this process of pledging and GRF to actually, I think have a broader overview of the work done on HLP by different partners and countries, and maybe have further opportunity of engaging at different levels, also from your side, you know, at the country level, you'll be able also to see online which partners and countries are interested in HLP, so I encourage all of you actually to go on the platform and have a look to see a little bit who is out there and how to create synergies on this thematic area. And with that, thank you so much and back to you, Jim. Thanks, Ombretta. Yeah, so you can find out the details and there's the link on I put in the chat which will give you some of the details and there might be others that people can share as well. And it might be that you and your organisation are making a pledge that links to HLP, so please do let us know if you would, yeah, like to share something about that or share more about that either here or through the global updates, the newsletter that we provide as well. Okay, so thank you, Ombretta. Over to the next item on our agenda, we're going to hear now from colleagues that are working in Afghanistan, so Ben and Anouk, I'll allow you to introduce yourselves, but please, over to you for talking about gender-based vulnerability to evictions in Kabul. Yeah, Ben and Anouk, over to you. Oh, thanks very much, Jim. So I'm Ben, Ben Flauer from the HLP AOR in Afghanistan, and I'm here today with our colleague Anouk, who's from the Gender and Humanitarian Action Working Group and also from UN Women. So I think Anouk will share the slides, but just to give you a bit of a background, so since August 2021, the de facto authorities in Afghanistan have had this intention to relocate IDP informal settlements, and this is particularly the case in Kabul municipality, where there are 50 or so informal settlements that the authorities want to evict and return back to their place of origin. And the reasoning for it is they say these are conflict-dispaced people that were granted temporary permission to occupy state land, but now the conflict is over, these people should return to their place of origin. And of course, a lot of these settlements are in very high-value urban areas that de facto authorities want to redevelop and kind of use for either transport, public infrastructure, or sell to developers. So there's been a few evictions that have occurred in recent years. The most recent one was in July of this year, when around 2,000 households, accounting to some like 15,000 people, were evicted. And what we've been seeing is that there are very gendered dimensions to these evictions, and for a whole host of reasons, women are both more vulnerable and experience evictions difficulty differently, and that's of course related to the general rollback of rights, economic and social rights that we've seen affecting women in Afghanistan more generally. So in that context, I'll leave it to Nuke to provide some insights on these challenges. Great. Thanks so much, Ben. Can I just check that you can all hear me and also see the screen with the PowerPoint? Yes, we hear you well and we see the screen. Yeah, thanks. All right. Awesome. Thank you so much and thank you for giving us a bit of time to present this work today. So as Ben mentioned, the idea with this brief that we've developed also here in the PowerPoint was kind of to add a gender lens to this work in order to see specific challenges that are faced by women and girls in communities that are being evicted. So that's often an informal settlement both in Kabul and in the provinces. So as Ben mentioned, this started happening across the past few years and happened more recently since the Taliban takeover. So that's really something that we wanted to look at from a gender perspective. That's a lot of the work that we do at the Gender and Humanitarian Action Working Group is to kind of try to add a gender lens on some of these issues. So that's what we tried to do here. So I'll just share a little bit more on how we did this and then we'll go into some of the findings together with Ben and if that works. So in terms of the methodology for this brief and maybe Ben, we can share the brief with everyone afterwards, the link to it at least. We built on data that was collected by UN Habitat before the Taliban takeover, but that was the most recent data for these informal settlements in Kabul. And then we really tried to use the gender desegregation. Thank you so much for sharing the link. The data was gender desegregated so we actually were able to extract some key issues that were mainly facing women and girls. Here in the department I've also added some of the findings from recent focus group discussion that we also did with women and informal settlements in Kabul. So we'll also also present that a little bit. So looking really at gender vulnerabilities, as Ben was saying, due to the current situation in Afghanistan, and I'm sure this group is very well aware of the situation where we have many directives and decrees that are specifically targeting women and girls in Afghanistan. Oops, I lost the presentation. Let me just try to share again. All right, it's coming back. I'll just give it a second. But just to come back a bit on the context, we do have a lot of directives that are directly impacting women and girls. And of course there has an impact on how we provide assistance and how vulnerable women are when trans-received humanitarian assistance, including in the case of evictions. So I'm sure you're all aware of some of the ban that happened last year in December of women NGO workers and that was also extended to women working with the UN afterwards. That creates a lot of difficulties in our ability to reach women. So that's a little bit for the context. So when it comes to informal settlements, what we notice together with the HRP task force is that women who live in the settlements really rely heavily on community networks to get information on assistance. That's in many cases because women in Afghanistan really have issues in interacting directly with men. So it's a lot easier for them to interact with women. But now in many instances we also don't have enough women staff or we face challenges for women staff to also be there to interact with women. So we find that women tend to really rely on networks of people that they know mostly are women to get information on assistance. The issue with this during eviction is that these networks are really at risk of disappearing entirely for women. We noticed that women in the informal settlements were a lot more informed about assistance than women outside of the settlements and our assumption is that because they're able to get information from these networks, then they're better able to get information on the assistance and to get the assistance. So you had 40% of women in informal settlements that were informed about assistance versus 25% of women in host communities. So as I was saying, really the evictions put a risk on these networks and could create many risks in terms of women being completely left out of assistance. And informal settlements in Kabul and in the provinces in Afghanistan, we also have a lot of women-headed households. And so these households are even more at risk of not getting any information at all on the assistance being provided because they don't have male relatives that could go around and get this information from them for them in the context where a lot of them are staying inside a lot of the time because it's with the restrictions and requirements for male guardians, it's really hard for them to move around. So here you can see a quote also from Displaced Woman in Kabul saying, we're comfortable speaking to people in our community and in our family. If I have a problem, I'll speak to my neighbors or my brother, we know each other and we'll help each other. So that's a bit on these networks. And then another very important element is video on the protection side. We're seeing that population in informal settlements are already more likely to use negative copying mechanisms. And so disinclined child labor that often targets boys more often and early marriage of daughters that's targeting girls. Often these copying mechanisms are really used as a protection mechanism or people see them as such, especially for the early marriage of daughters. I think a risk that we're seeing with the eviction is that this situation in terms of protection issues could potentially get worse so right now as we were mentioning there were networks that are in place that are able to to some extent creates also protection mechanism for women, women-headed households and girls in the community. Without this next work and with the impact also on the household's economic situation which Ben will touch on, this may create more protection and concerns. There's a quote here from this space woman in Kabul saying girls don't feel safe in hand because they might face safe problems and harassment cases. That's why most of these parents are willing to accept their premature marriage. We have no door or walls in a tent and keeping daughters in distances unsafe. That's why it would be better to accept such a premature marriage because it can also help us economically because we can charge a certain amount of money for our girls. So that's a bit the logic that we're seeing in terms of this protection mechanism and again when it comes to protection another issue that we're seeing in the informal settlement is access to identification which is much lower for women so as you can see here compared to men so that's also something that's impacting services and that in case of eviction would also mean probably less access to services because we still have many both humanitarian and more development partner that require identification in many instances and this prevents women then from from getting assistance. It also prevents women from really interacting with the border formal system which they would need to do if they were to resettle summer. That's already something that's more difficult for women because the system is mostly now made of men, silver servants, so they would need to interact with men well they're also not often allowed in government buildings so it's also creating a complicated situation for them. So I'll stop here and I'll hand it then to talk a little bit more about the economic situation. Well thanks Anu. Yeah I'll just go fairly quickly through these I think and so yeah so the one key finding is that there's a very big difference between the economic situation of male-headed and female-headed households. More often we see a female-headed household in the lowest income bracket that's earning less than a thousand afs a month which is a very low income of around $20 or something like that it's very low and that's for the household far below the average per capita GDP of Afghanistan which in itself is one of the lowest on earth. So this has a number of implications from a from a kind of HLP lens. F women are evicted, female-headed households will have far less capital resources to be able to find alternative accommodation so they're far more likely to either go to other informal settlements and squat or other peripheral unsafe areas of land where they can find accommodation where they will where they can erect their temporary accommodation. So and then moving on to the livelihoods aspect of it. Again looking at the broader picture in Afghanistan of women having restricted access to public space it's very notable that a lot of the female-headed households primary livelihood activity is based on the public space for example unskilled labor female-headed households and women in general are relying on accessing informal labor in public spaces to derive an income even 12.5 percent of women-headed households primary source of income was from begging on the streets and of course these activities in themselves are extremely vulnerable to disruption based on any number of factors for example you know adverse weather or climate shocks but also in the broader context of the rollback on women's rights it means that the women's income streams in informal settlements render them highly vulnerable to evictions and in the case where they are evicted they may find it difficult to re-establish informal economic networks that enable them to derive a livelihood and and this is particularly the case as I say in in in the context of post 2021 Afghanistan and then moving on to the next line so yeah so so these are basically the outcomes from an economic perspective of evictions means it's going to be particularly severe for women both women in male-headed households and particularly for women-headed households because once they've been evicted and we have to remember that these informal settlements are very centrally located they're close to these informal livelihoods and and also they're very established a lot of these informal settlements that are due to be evicted have been there for 10 or 20 years over 50% have been over over 10 years and so these informal economic networks have been very important for women-headed households and in the absence of these and I think as Anurka mentioned it's very likely that women-headed households once they have been evicted and they're in a peripheral location without access to the informal networks that they relied on they are likely to to lead to negative coping mechanisms and we've seen a lot of those in Afghanistan that's been documented by Jihar and others so just moving on to the the next slide so yeah so you can peruse these in more detail in the brief which Jim very kindly linked to so I think some of the main recommendations from our report we've looked at the immediate impacts of evictions and so immediate impacts of evictions we've seen how important it is to have disaggregated household survey data so that we're able to understand the particular vulnerabilities faced by women and humanitarian partners are able to address those needs once they know what they are and a key aspect of this we have found in Afghanistan is the need for women humanitarian workers to have access to these sites and that's because of the the cultural models of gender that Anuk spoke about which means that women find it very difficult to interact with with male humanitarian workers and also access information about humanitarian services if there are no women humanitarian workers to provide those messages and that information and another thing that's crucial is cash interventions when women are evicted with nowhere to go they need cash to be able to rent accommodation and link to that some of the you know the work of Iklur and others about rental agreements so that the rental rights of women-headed households are protected and they can't be evicted from their rental accommodation and that's again a very gender specific protection concern and then moving forward into the medium term for the durable solutions aspects again we found that you know it's crucial that women-headed households in particular of course male-headed households too but particularly because of the economic profile of the women-headed households it's crucial that they remain linked to the urban centers in which they have developed these economic networks so in the event we strongly advocate for authorities not to evict households in general and if they do it's it's it's crucial that they that they provide alternative settlement sites in urban areas close to livelihoods and provide livelihood support and we've also provided some guidance on international and domestic frameworks for resettlement in Afghanistan and that can also be we can also share that with you later if interested so that's all from us thanks very much and look forward to any questions. Thanks Ben thanks Anu, that's really interesting and great to see the links being made between gender and evictions and the risk of eviction that we kind of know are there but don't always see kind of analyzed in such a sort of a comprehensive way so thank you for putting that together and does anyone have any questions or comments for Ben and Anu? Carol please yeah come in. Thanks so much Jim and thank you for that excellent presentation. I was wondering if you have any evidence or information around so clearly I think we understand positive benefits of providing a combination of housing rights plus cash to support women in situations like this. Do you have any information though on women's ability to control the cash? Is there any concern that in fact it's challenging for them to keep keep um yeah to keep control of cash transfers? I think a pretty narrow question thank you so much and I really appreciated the presentation. Thanks Carol yeah Ben, Anu any um well actually any other questions if there's others we can take them as a group? Okay so maybe Ben, Anu if you'd like to respond to that question about evidence around women's ability to control cash so yeah if that has an angle to it that we need to be aware of. So thanks so much maybe I can take that and Ben if you want to come in and compliment. I think generally in Afghanistan cash is the preferred modality to get assistance and that's across both women and men um due to challenges and sometimes and being able to get also the right assistance so for women a lot of times we hear that they don't get gender responsive assistance so they prefer to get it for cash and by themselves so that includes for instance dignity kits or other products that women would use in terms of their ability to keep the cash I think that really depends on different regions so we think um recently for instance with the the earthquake that happened in Hera we saw some distribution of cash to women inside men had it resolved uh that that went I think really well um and where women were able to keep the cash um in other instances however and I'm thinking specifically of the south of Afghanistan where it's a lot more conservative uh it's really difficult for women to even come to a cash distribution um and in these cases I would often be almost of the time be the men and the households that would that would come and get the cash in the case of women headed households we're saying that these households are actually able to come to distribution and because there's no men in the households to keep the cash and use it so it's really these households that I think um actors should really try to target uh but Ben if you want to add as well I'm not going to add from my side I think you covered it all there Anu. Okay thanks both um great thanks if anyone else has other comments or questions you're welcome to put them in the chat or um yeah or raise your hand and come in that would be that would be great um but yeah thanks again Ben and Anu sorry um I'll put the link as you see to the uh the briefing in the chat so people please have a look and I'm sure they would welcome feedback and sharing and comment and uh others things as well um Carol your hand's still raised I just want to check if that's a new comment or if if you um it was just raised from no that's fine thank you thank you um okay thanks and so on to our next item in the agenda is um to have an update on um some of the HLP violations we're seeing in in Gaza and West Bank in Palestine um I'm sure a lot of us have been um yeah watching with kind of horror how things are playing out there and um uh yeah and trying to consider and work out how we might respond as HLP practitioners um so yeah thought would be great to hear from colleagues who are working in that area to understand a little bit more um so Nader um I think you're online um please yeah introduce yourself and then over to you for a brief update and if people would like to yeah respond or comment and then can come in afterwards uh but yeah Nader over to you all right thank you Jen uh my name is Nader Muadi and I'm the um West Bank Legal Task Force Coordinator uh also following up with uh HLP issues that are taking place right now in Gaza so many thanks Jim for providing me with this opportunity um regarding what's happening in the Gaza Strip we're seeing wonton destruction and displacement um according to the Palestinian Ministry of Public Works and Housing in Gaza and 90% of the structures that are being targeted in airstrikes and by artillery are residential structures um according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics since October 7th Israel's essentially damaged 252,000 housing units and destroyed completely 50,450 rendering them uninhabitable um together I mean this figure of about 3,000 housing units 300,000 sorry constitutes about 50% of all housing stock in Gaza um in addition to houses 70% of commercial facilities have been damaged or destroyed 47% of the roads have been damaged or destroyed 67% of health facilities have been damaged or destroyed um 59% of all educational facilities have also been impacted with 316 being damaged and 197 being destroyed um also 50 of all wash facilities have been damaged and destroyed essentially 85% of the population 1.9 million people out of 2.2 to 2.3 million people are now internally displaced people uh 1.2 million are currently living in unawares facilities which are overcrowded and have a whole bunch of problems and are also being targeted by Israeli airstrikes uh so far unawares also distributed hundreds of tents but nonetheless uh the humanitarian aid that's trickling into Gaza is insufficient it's not enough it's not being allowed and there's many obstacles to getting material assistance into the strip and right now 500,000 people still have no shelters and they're unprotected from the elements let alone the airstrikes um it's worth noting that due to overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions at unawares shelters um there's been a significant increase in diseases and conditions such as diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, skin infections, hygiene-related conditions like lice, and there's also initial reports about an outbreak of hepatitis A. People with disabilities, women who are pregnant, who have recently given birth, who are breastfeeding, as well as people recovering from injuries which are thousands and those with compromised immune systems are especially at risk. The World Health Organization documented at least 212 attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip affecting 56 healthcare facilities including 24 hospitals and 19 ambulance 59 ambulances currently only 14 out of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are actually functional anymore and even those that are functional have a very limited reduced capacity due to the lack of medical supplies and equipment that have been allowed into the strip moreover since October 11th. Israeli authorities have essentially cut off the electricity supply to Gaza and the fuel reserves for Gaza's sole power plant are being depleted or have been depleted although a tiny bit has recently began to trickle in but still I mean blackouts are the norm as I said before what we're seeing is wanton destruction, mass force displacement at an unprecedented level. The Gaza Strip is effectively being destroyed in its entirety and there's no real safe space for civilians. We expect that people will be largely living in transitional housing for the next five to eight years and right now we're in the process of setting up a legal task force in Gaza. Initially we had envisioned that it would you know be during the post-war reconstruction process it would be there would be a need for a legal task force so as to assist with them protecting people's housing land and property rights and also to play an advisory role for shelter and wash interventions but now it's also become increasingly urgent for an immediate legal response in the Gaza Strip. As many people lack civilian documentation and without that documentation they cannot you know are taken medical evacuations nor can they engage the banking system they can't even buy a SIM card and oftentimes the lack of civilian documentation also prevents access to humanitarian assistance so that's the very grave situation taking place in Gaza in a very brief nutshell not doing true justice to the the severity of the atrocities that are taking place there. It's also worth noting as you said a lot of displacement is happening in the West Bank right now. In the West Bank we already have a well-established legal task force that's been in place for several years now albeit we've switched the modalities since October 7th we're meeting more regularly more frequently on a bi-weekly basis but we're also holding a lot of bilateral discussions too. Essentially while international attention has been focused on Gaza since October 7th Israel has demolished 223 structures in the West Bank including 112 residential structures 18 agricultural structures 29 live load structures and 25 wash structures 37 infrastructure installments and two other structures this is result of the forced displacement of 124 households consisting of 623 people including 300 children. It's also affected an additional 1,900 households consisting of about 215,000 people and 94,000 children and the reason that the number of people that are affected is so great in comparison to those who've been displaced is that most of these demolitions are occurring within the context of military operations and during these military operations there is vast damage that is intentionally carried out against civilian infrastructure that includes basically unearthing roads and in doing that process with large bulldozers they also destroy the water networks the sewage networks the electrical networks creating blackouts creating water cuts so that's essentially the situation that's taking place right now in area C which is like the rural outskirts of the West Bank where there's many Bedouin and Herter communities that have been at risk of forced displacement for decades now we've been working to support them that area constitutes the majority of the West Bank about 60 and it's both under Israeli administrative and security control in that area demolitions by the state have largely subsided because those demolitions are carried out on the basis of illegal construction albeit Israel does not grant Palestinians in those areas with building permits so they're forced to build illegally however it's largely subsided even though there's not a official freeze on demolitions but simply because the military carries out those demolitions then they're spread thin with the grand war nonetheless in East Jerusalem where demolitions are carried out by the municipality we've seen demolitions continue as they were prior to October 7th and we're even worried now that while international attention is focused on what's happening in Gaza rightfully so that you know they will start to carry out demolitions in sensitive areas which they have not been able to do in the past due to diplomatic pressure and red tape it's also worth noting that Israel during this period carried out 17 punitive demolitions which basically are an act of collective punishment as they target the family members of people who have carried out alleged attacks against Israeli soldiers or citizens and also there's been 22 forced self-demolitions in East Jerusalem the forced self-demolition is a recent phenomenon recent years that came about because of some changes in the Israeli planning and building law which basically imposes draconian measures that can basically put people at risk of being jailed or to pay large sums for building illegally despite the fact as I said before that they are not able to build legally it's also worth noting that during this period we've seen an exponential increase basically in pogrom attacks on communities by Israeli settlers that have also contributed to forceable transfer and in this case we've seen since October 7th 21 communities villages in this area that I described this this rural area called Area C which is dotted by very small Bedouin herder communities and it actually resulted in the displacement of 188 Palestinian households in addition to the figures that I already mentioned consisting of about 1200 people including about 600 children who have been either fully or partially forcefully transferred since October 7th basically due to an onslaught of settler violence by these Israeli settlers so that's essentially the situation in short in the West Bank and Gaza and I mean right now we're meeting on a on a regular basis to see how we can you know formulate legal responses to this very drastic situation and I'd be more than happy to address any questions everyone may have thanks Nader for that update um yeah colleagues if you would like to react comment um please um either you can use the chat or or raise your hand dear I don't know if you wanted to add anything at this point or non-naturally I was hoping that maybe we will have some questions yeah yeah sure sure and one thing to just say that um you know with this kind of situation so what we're we're trying to support with as well is thinking about how to respond in the coming weeks and months and we've been having discussions with colleagues about what that might look like from an HLP coordination side like Nader mentioned the legal task force and the work that that can do on legal issues that are related to HLP but also relating to civil documentation and all sorts of other really essential aspects as well another thing we're looking at is some kind of HLP technical working group that will act as a kind of a practical interface between um those that are working on um you know material provision around shelter wash and across the different clusters and the response as it develops with some of those um you know specific HLP issues that we know come up so around due diligence of of course and other things as well um so yeah so that's something we're working on as well as well as trying to develop some advocacy around this and trying to work out what's the you know how can we be smart and effective in how we respond and you know it's a very difficult situation so if colleagues you have questions or ideas of course please do share um I think Stephanie I think I saw your hand raised please do come in Stephanie and maybe introduce yourself as well when you do Hi my name is Stephanie from the Global Shelter Cluster and I also just wanted to give everybody the impression that yes we are really listening even though there are not many questions coming up as you might wish for we are there um I just wanted to ask do you have any idea with so many like um housing units destroyed I mean as you said it'll it'll take several years until those are built up but do you have any sort of indication first of all how many people were renters before because I mean it's a completely urban setting so not everybody's like a house owner in in Gaza um and specifically like how um how the documentation of HLP writes of you know like the ownership or also the rental agreements were actually official so that you can you know like registered or um if there were a lot of or how the percentage is on let's say informal rental agreements which be of course much more difficult to follow up at some point yeah I don't have figures on rent um but I mean this isn't the first war that we've experienced that has resulted in mass destruction I mean this is on an unprecedented level but we've had um similar smaller scale attacks on gods in the past and the reconstruction process is always very complicated um because HLP rights are vast and I mean we have issues for example where um you have many widows who sometimes are denied inheritance rights and they need to be guaranteed those rights you have many orphans who also need to have their rights protected um in terms of inheritance rights um a lot of documentation is lost and you know even not only by the families but also by the archives which are also destroyed um and then you have to create new means of where people can have witnesses to verify and fact check that they are indeed the owners of certain properties um so it creates a whole bunch of issues around tenancy and ownership um that's a very complicated issue but I mean essentially that's what we try to do post-war I mean that's why it's going to involve a very comprehensive legal aid response with a lot of paralegal work and legal information to be disseminated for people to guarantee their the rights and to ensure that we don't do any harm um to potential people who do you know who are rights holders whether they're tenants or owners of properties um Dia would you like to is that fair would you uh how would you add something to that maybe I can add I think that Fatma also raised her hand like our colleague Fatma from Gaza and she also raised her hand but just to add that uh just before the war we were working with our shelter colleagues on uh rent agreements it's estimated that around 10 percent of population in Gaza was renting we are talking about because it's such a small like it's a condensed community it's a I mean it's urban setting but it's nevertheless um people are related we are talking about that these 10 percent are the most real the most vulnerable communities that are basically not having any support um and even in the past it was a challenge it was it was a huge issue but now it's going to be very different I think the situation now is completely different nothing is like before uh last month so we will see how it works and Fatma I think wanted to say a few words thank you thank you very much um now there the deal for the comprehensive briefing about the actual issues on Gaza actually we need to consider the different classification for the land on Gaza we have uh old legal framework agreement since Ottoman mandate which is on 1985 and we have different regulations from Egyptian mandate than from Palestinian mandate we have different kinds of land which is Waqif land, breifet land, table land, settlement land and land which is not settlement until now as well as we have a state land so some people they are leaving inside the state land and they are leaving inside Waqif land while the others or the most majority they have a breifet land and we have extended families on site Gaza which is what we are talking about uh industrial building and it's more than I mean six up to eight floors in each building which is destroyed or major damaged on addition for for what Nadir mentions we have a lot of inheritance issues as well as we have a project housing that built by UNRWA or Ministry of Work and Housing um and other donors from the exibrian that we have before as an RC as an RC only who has the expertise on working on HLP issues on Gaza Strip before since 2009 until the last escalation into 2021 um it was difficult for the people to secure their legal documentation and it was different uh approach and different agreement agreement either with the local authority UNRWA and UNOPS to manage and to do the due diligence for each building and for each beneficiary to enable them to be eligible for receiving the construction agreement unfortunately even if there is a lot of efforts from um international organization and UN organization to support the people to have shelter the shelter will not be remaining as before because they will have some standards for providing only shelter not to rebuild the building as being before the escalation or before the conflict so even Israeli site the Israeli authority they impose different system and different measures to enter the goods and material to Gaza Strip on each escalation they have to to do security clearance and fitting and to agree on the quantity and PQ for each building with UNRWA and with other UN agencies before entering the materials to Gaza watch will be if you are talking about uh 2014 or 2009 uh the reconstruction process at stake more than seven years and we are talking about massive destructive now so we need to consider all this process the legal documentation shall be documentation that distracted for land authority now and most of the people they are lost their legal documentation and even the private lawyer offices were destroyed and we will have a massive needs uh to support on securing legal document documentation as well as the uh boundary between the lands and building it's destroyed and the people they need a lot of work to to make sure that they are the right shall be shall be right holders for the uh pallet of land or piece of land as well as there is a lot of people they are killed and we have to be considered that the court system should be in a place especially Sharia court to um issues inheritance deed and legal identity for the people as well as not only it would be unbearable for having legal documentation so it would be take a lot of time it would be need not only technical expertise but we need legal expertise to do all this work and the future in addition to support shelter actors and shelter cluster on doing the technical side and making sure they are understanding what the requisition for each repair if we are talking about damage repair or minor minor damage or totally damage or totally destroyed so we we need to uh differences between all this kind of work we need to have um a guideline and to uh have different uh kind of work about what we have to before as well as we need to have due diligence guideline and to make sure that even the local authority will be a part of any shall be technical working group or area of responsibility on the future to have a coordination of first to response for these um massive destructive on a proper way thank you Fatma thank you colleagues um we're going to um have to move on i'm afraid with the agenda but i just want to note there's a question there someone's asked about um advocacy around compensation and reparation so maybe one of you can try and write an answer in the chat or or someone else on the call might have some ideas around that as well because i think it's a yeah a massive question and um and of course one that we've seen come up sometimes in other contexts as well people start thinking to the to the future and what is this going to mean and how are we going to advocate for people to um yeah receive the yeah or experience the restitution that they that they must so um yeah thank you colleagues for joining and um yes and this will be a topic I'm sure we will discuss again in the coming months and um and let's see how keep we keep working together and trying to find ways to to to respond um thanks um going to turn now to our colleague working in Democratic Republic of Congo um Pascal Schickler um who's going to give us a short update on on some of the work there and also discuss a couple of briefing notes that have been produced as well and Trezor is going to assist with uh translation so uh Trezor Pascal um over to to you hi hi Jim hi Pascal okay as you say I'm going to speak in France okay I'm going to share my screen I don't know if uh if Trezor wants to share it or I want to do it at my level because I'm going to share the documents Trezor is it possible to share it? yes if you want I will share it okay thank you so my briefing is going to be on the most important note that we had produced and here it is done in order to reoccur the profile of the visibility of LDP problems in RDC and so before talking about the contents of this note I wanted to introduce you in a first time how do we organize and how do we function at the level of the RDC so how does the JTLTP function that's the first slide and the second slide CECERA will expose it on this note what does it count for what vision we had produced to you? Pascal would like to present an advocacy note for Diasy but before before presenting the advocacy note he would first present the national HLTP in Diasy the way it works so it might be different in in other countries but in Diasy the housing land and property is under the protection class so so there is an established coordination at each level for housing land and property but in sub national level there are seven focal points who coordinate HLTP but most of them are NRC staff and they have a profile so so in in most of those sub national region perhaps most of of participants in in those groups are local NGOs, international NGOs and sometimes government so who are announced in response to this identified need, whether it be humanitarian funds, fund-based funds or reserve funds, we cannot consider the LTP needs as part of the response. Whereas, when it comes to repotting in the 3D, CW and in the Dashboard, we are asked to report on our operational presence, if our response, whereas when it comes to voting in the allocations, the LTP is entirely occupied. Thank you Pascal. He was saying that in planning phases or during the humanitarian program cycle, such as needs assessment or the setup of humanitarian response plan, most of the time, HLP is in those activities, so it means that HLP might be present in those activities, is being considered in assessment and in the setup of the humanitarian response plan. But now, when it comes to the funding process, such as funding mechanism, such as humanitarian fund, self, and so on, most of the time, HLP is not being considered. And this, due to the fact that HLP is not, sometimes Ocha does not consider HLP as life-saving. Ok, so you just said what I wanted to add. So the reason why they are advancing when they put aside the LTP response, is that most of the response actions are not life-saving. And we have observed that when there is the response plan for the crisis of Calais to the south, where there was a project on the construction of the shelter in favor of the ministers, and now we realize a little later that the implementation of this project depended on the implementation of the interest that we are going to build. And who should do this work on the LTP? And unfortunately, because we were not in the response, I assure you that this project until now has known a failure. The same thing in the Qamut crisis in the province of Mahindome, where there was the reserve fund in June, we also had to occult the LTP. And that's all that has been done, it's the assistance to the ministry, forgetting that it's the official crisis that has been at the base of all the displacement. In relation to the M23 response plan, I don't want to mention many things. At the level of Goma, we are trying to build sites to move, unfortunately on the terrain, there is a problem. So, in front of this bill, we had produced a note of information to make a crisis of distress, to alert on the fallout of this way of doing it. Goodbye. Thank you Pascal. So, he was saying that, so considering the fact that HLP is being excluded in most of funding mechanism. So there are some projects that are on a risk because it did not, because even when discussions was about setting up those projects, HLP was not included. And then those projects are facing a lot of HLP issues, and even there is one project that has built some temporary tent in the place that has a lot of problems, a lot of issues. Okay, now there are other provinces that have recently been classified in the stabilization phase with the Nexus family, like Anituri. We are now developing the approach to the solution of the RAP. Once again, the LTP is not visible. Unfortunately, the HCR is the most responsible for managing this fund that should, this time, recruit the actors of the LTP, in the implementation of related activities with the LTP. Unfortunately, these disorganizations, essentially the HCR, have recruited an actor who does not have the LTP. And so, we finally ask ourselves, is this stabilization when we hire actors who do not have the LTP. Over. And there is an ongoing process to align with the durable solution, but the HLP was surprised that a partner who was considered for that is not even an HLP actor. So, can we call it a durable solution when they are trying to include, to exclude HLP? Okay, now you can move on to the second slide to say that facing this NRC, with us, we have placed this note of support to bring together the technical and financial partners, and the humanitarian actors, and the civil society, and the state authorities, to understand how we must involve the LTP in different mechanisms of humanitarian response. And so, the context of the RDC, as we know it well, is always determined by the competition on the lack of access to the land, on the access to natural resources, the emergence of inter-community conflicts, the lack of state services, the legal pluralism is huge and continuous, including the violence caused by the armed groups, followed by food insecurity. So, all these difficulties constitute the context of the RDC. And that's it. What I need to do is a full response to all of this. And that's why the HLP in the RDC has made this advocacy note, just to make sure that all the partners have a good understanding of what is HLP. And that's why the HLP in the RDC has made this advocacy note, just to make sure that all the partners have a good understanding of what is HLP. And the RDC context remains determined by competition over land and the transportation of other natural resources, inter-community conflicts, we can add state services, legal pluralism and customary norms. So, the largest proportion of the population in need of assistance is in the eastern part of the RDC. So, the advocacy note highlights the need to take into consideration the HLP issues in humanitarian response, not only in the HLP sector, but also in other clusters, such as for security, WASH, education and shelter. In any case, WASH clusters or education clusters do not have expertise. And so, even if they have managed a fund to build addictions or schools, we will have, and this is the tent that is formulated in the Nantes, which in the case of the project, which is still a partnership with the LTP to ensure that the land that will receive the construction of schools or addictions does not pose a problem in the end, to ensure that the work done is not brought back to zero. Pascal was highlighting just an example that an HLP or education project might need, for example, to set up a water point or a school. And then before doing that, they need to acquire a land. And there is a process that needs to be followed when you want, for example, to build something on a land. And in most of these steps, HLP might be helpful. So it's important just to take into consideration HLP even from the design stage. But there is a need for means of substance and a understanding of the relationship between the participants in the project and the access to their good and their land in order to allow the creation of means of substance. And so, once again, it's the HLP that has expertise to ensure that when the scale, for example, is given the amount of random tools that it will not be sold to the parallel market. And why is it sold? Because at the end of the day, you can find a place where you will use these tools. I will go quickly so that you can resume at the end because it is in line. And in relation to CCM, we have to show that the site of the HLP site, which is yours, is going to be stored on land that has not been balised in love. And why not involve the HLP in the response when it comes to the monitoring of the sites that will be placed, the sites that will be built in Abrie. The same thing, as you said, where we live, for example, in the great north of Kivu and even in the province of Tanganyika, where we have come to distribute the Abrie to the displaced and finally, because there is no land available, the displaced have finished selling everything that has been distributed in Abrie terms. So, in front of this sample table that we had produced this note with the idea that we will read and once we believe that the HLP site will also have its visibility in the context of the humanitarian response, not only in the north of Kivu, but also in the other humanitarian hub of the RDC. So this is the general economy of the note that we had produced and the fact in English to allow everyone to have an idea of what it contains. Briefly, I say thank you to everyone. The documents are on the NRC site and we will also post them on the humanitarian site. Thank you. Thanks, Pascal. Just to summarize what you have been saying. So is that if, for example, which cluster for security, a cluster CCCM education take into consideration HLP issues, this will increase the visibility of HLP in DRC. Over. Thank you, Tresor. Thank you, Pascal, Masiboku. And I've put the links to two of the reports that you've mentioned. There is a question I'm available for receiving that. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, if anyone has questions or comments, please feel free to write them in the chat or speak them out. Well, we'll wait to see if people write in the chat. Otherwise, thanks, Pascal. And yes, the resources are in the chat. So please have a look at those. And this is something we're trying to support more. And I think it's really great to see a kind of clear advocacy note around why HLP matters, why it's important to keep getting that message out that people need to think about this, whether they're working on direct HLP programming or whether they're working on shelter education. So thank you for that and for bringing those to our attention. Okay. So we're going to turn now to our colleagues in the shelter cluster who are working with the shelter cluster. Melina, I believe you're online and are going to give us an update on some of the shelter and HLP work that's going on. We have quite limited time left. So not to put any pressure on you, but yeah, over to you. This will be very quick. My name is Melina with IOM. Just to give a brief update on what we're working on with shelter and HLP. First, we have the HLP Shelter and Settlements Toolkit. We did an initial consultation that we've been working on with the global shelter cluster and we did an initial consultation with HLP or coordinators and friends last week. We got some good feedback. So we'll be editing the toolkit and then we will have it go for a broader, more practitioner focused consultation early next year. We're also working on developing an online format for the toolkit that won't be hosted on the global shelter cluster website, but in a more interactive and usable format. So hopefully the toolkit is easier to navigate. We also have developed the HLP and Shelter Land Rights due diligence standard update and a shelter and due diligence mini manual. So those will go for consultation with the HLP AOR and global shelter cluster early next year. We have the HLP e-course modules, which I hope most of you have seen the four that we have already and the fifth one will be completed at the end of the year. So I focused on protection and climate change. So that will be completed by the end of the year and then early next year we hope to do a more focused dissemination of all the e-course modules to make sure that everyone knows that they exist, but they are and can use them in their trainings and workshops. And then I just wanted to plug that we are planning the second international conference on HLP in DC. It's part of a series. So the first one will be a Puerto Rico dialogue on HLP in crisis context, the week of April 2nd through 4th, and this will be held in Puerto Rico. And then following this, the week of May 13th, we'll have the second international conference on HLP in crisis context in DC. And this is the same week as the World Bank Land Conference. So we're coordinating and making sure that this conference complements the World Bank Conference and there aren't overlapping themes. So we're still workshopping the themes for both of the events and we'll be sending more information on this to come. Any questions or comments or anything you have about these items, you can email me or also eBay to Lopez. Yep, that's all I have. I hope that was quick enough. That was quick and comprehensive. Thank you. So things to look out for then consultation opportunities in the new year next year around some of the tools and kits that are being developed around due diligence, but also more on the HLP toolkit for shelter as well. And I guess if people want to be involved in some of these the conference then they can get in touch as well. I just put the dates in the chat just so for clarity. Great. Well, thank you for that, Melina. Yeah, we'll have maybe next time we'll have a more of a presentation around some of these areas and also we'll be sharing opportunities for you colleagues and others to be involved in some of the consultation around that. But yeah, thanks so much for that, Melina. Now, Ludmilla, I'm going to turn to you now for a brief update on the resource you've been involved with around cash and HLP. Very relevant given what was discussed about Afghanistan and the use of cash programming in HLP there and particularly how it might impact women. But yeah, over to you for a brief update. We've not got too long. So yeah, please use your time. No, no, no. I know that the time is very, very short. I would like to start by saying thank you by thanking everybody who has contributed to the T sheet. It's still, can you see my screen or not? Yes, but I see a slightly big scary picture of my face. There it is. Yes, there we go. All right, now we see the presentation. We see the presentation. Yes. I'm just going to present the contents because it has not been published yet. So I'm just going to give you a very, very short overview of this tip sheet. The objective is to support people who work HLP in using CVA as a tool, cash and voucher assistance that I'm going to call CVA to make it shorter. And to highlight the linkage between CVA and HLP activities and consider how we can better improve HLP programming using CVA as a tool. So the idea is that I'm not going to explain to this audience what it's tenure systems and security of tenure. And there are some many positive outcomes that were found about the linkage between CVA and HLP programming in literature review. And there are some, it's very important to have a very, very well done context analysis that must not be exclusive to economic market aspects but consider also HLP aspects and cross cutting issues such as gender and climate change because women all over the world Afghanistan people have just showed us how much they face gender specific barriers to the access to land, right and housing and resources. And also because climate change is another cross cutting issue, it's influencing everything. And it's very, very likely if nothing is done in the worst case scenario, the level of displacement predicted is 1.2 billion people and we'll have a big trouble in the worst case scenario, a lot of work to do. So these are cross cutting issues and they are to be considered in the context analysis. And then there are the CVA, the HLP specific programs and specific programming considerations like CVA for building for shelter. I put the building because we are going to see afterwards the lease or rent. But in case for shelter for building the shelter, there are these examples of CVA for collective purchases of land that has been happened in Somalia, in the southern Ladakh project, cash for work that is the case that I cite in the text in Sudan, cash for training for work, so the possibilities are many. When it comes to CVA for lease rent assistance, we know that it can be either a deposit or any fee or duty or integral part of the payment. It has an impact on the local rent market and of course it does require careful consideration of local regulation. So it's a tool very interesting for HLP practitioners that are going to support with this local regulation and programs that work with legal assistance as well. Then we have cases also of CVA in support for relocation and resettlement. CVA in return, the case that I'm going to use in the tip sheet is Afghanistan, how it's being used there. And also we have the integration with other humanitarian programming. CVA and livelihoods, HLP and livelihoods, CVA and CV documentation because we cannot exercise the size HLP rights if we lack a legal identity document. Another issue that I find very, very important is that HLP and disaster risk reduction have a better coordination. In some places it does have a great coordination of work and some places not that much. A good example is for instance Mozambique where NRC is working with displacement in support and it's provided good support of the disaster policy because displacement is being dealt with there in the disaster risk and reduction policy. And finally, CVA and mine action because of lands affected by, contaminated by mining and there will be a specific tip sheet for mine action and we will connect with this. So these are the main aspects that will be covered. This work is finishing this month and we are discussing, save the children and myself, we are discussing a continuation of this work but it would be a capacity building about CVA for HLP practitioners. So if anybody has a suggestion what a topic or a process that you would like to see address it, please reach out to me, your contribution will be quite welcome. But this first part is the production of the tip sheet and the next part is the capacity building on how to use the tip sheet that we are still discussing that you are and will be contracted afterwards. So for now that's it. Well, I try to be short Jim, thank you so much. Thanks so much for sharing and once the tip sheet is finished and is ready we can have maybe a more dedicated session and time where you can present the contents and we can have an exchange around that. There's a question in the chat around cash for work. So maybe you could try and write something there because we just have a few more minutes left and I want to hand over to Tresor to give us a brief update on some of the information management related work he's initiating. So yeah, Tresor over to you. Thank you Jim, so we have run out of time so I will be brief. Can I see my screen? Yes, we see it well Tresor, thanks. Okay, thank you. Hi Var, so here are some IEM updates so as you might already know most of the operations are in the humanitarian program cycle process and the main challenge during this HPC process have been the lack of of meteorology in estimating the people in need and also the severity for HLP. It's important to highlight that multiple supportive requests that we have received during this period related to the lack of meteorology for estimating the pin and severity for housing, land and property. So there is a need to have this meteorology put in place and here are some ideas just to have this meteorology put in place. So the first idea was to set up a task team that will develop that meteorology and this is just an example of the task that this group could do. For example, this task can be in charge of the review of all existing HLP related assessment tools and indicators. This group can also define the severity scale for HLP and indicators and so on. Maybe you have been working on the same thing with other class. So you're welcome to join the task team. We will send maybe a spirit email for that with more detail but please feel free to reach out to me if you'd like to be a part of this task team. And also there is an opportunity to learn from best practices being applied in some other countries because some countries might already have a working meteorology for pin calculation for HLP and other notes but we would be also glad to have the experience from other countries as well. And then in some context the meteorology for protection cluster might be adapted. We had a call last week with the information manager for the global protection cluster and they said that in some countries they tried to adapt the protection cluster meteorology and it seemed to work when you have MSNA household data but it's important to highlight that this final HLP meteorology should take into consideration the way to work with other clusters such as Shelter and CCCM. So I would also to highlight that we are here to support so anytime you need support feel free to reach out to me Jim or Hombreta. So this is the available support we can do for example we can support you during this HPC process and also if you are already thinking about the response monitoring and this can be for example the review of tools such as FWU matrix or you would like maybe to put in place a dashboard that will allow you to just to communicate on your findings we can support you on that and also actually we are supporting different countries in creating HLP related country pages on the Relief Web if you might already have the page for HLP on the Relief Web but which is not updated we can support you in updating this page as well and also if you need any country dedicated support feel free to reach out to us on that discussions on that thank you Tresor and apologies for the slightly shorter time available I think it's been a very interesting exchange today around various different geographic context so yeah sorry that we haven't had as much time as we could for discussing that we will come again to the information management support in January and just a couple of comments from myself as we close the meeting but just to say so yeah next week next year we will meet early in the year to look at the work plan that we kind of finalised around June July time of 2023 and we will look at how we're doing and we will also make some plans for next year and that includes putting our meetings in place for these quarterly meetings but also those to support our coordinators and also develop some more sort of ad hoc webinar workshop type gatherings as well and I see a comment in the chat from Rehman that I've tried to respond to but maybe not done it properly what I think you mean is there a way that we can connect to people who are working on HLP together and open up a space for them to dialogue with each other I think that's what you mean and let's have a good think about that because I think when the group's been smaller we've been able to do that very easily and then when we've got a larger mailing list it becomes a little bit more complicated but yeah, I see your hand raised please do come in and say what you're meaning, thanks Thank you, I'm not going to take like time I'm asking about a list for all the technical people from HLP we can have a benefit sometimes we have to advise each other to support each other sometimes because for sure now in Iraq somehow we are like in a bad situation with the funds sometimes we need to have like a new idea we have like some issue with the climate change those those things is apart from the HLP somehow so maybe we can have a benefit from this as like name any let's say channel of contact and that's it so yeah Okay yeah well thank you so in the past we've had like a kind of a I suppose a help desk list of people where we can connect when there's an issue comes in and the AOR has kind of managed that process I suppose so for example you would raise your issue to us and we would then say hey have you talked to this person and what I hear you're saying I think is that you would like a list where you can directly go to people and maybe you know you have certainly in the past and I've seen it in other areas like a Skype group or whatever where people can pose questions and then respond so that is something we can definitely look at and let's look at that in January and maybe discuss how that might work and how how we could do that yeah because you know the mailing list now has about 600 people on so that's too big for that but there are some specific technical issues that come up and we try and organise meetings to maybe workshop around some of those challenges which can work quite well but it sounds like you're asking for that more direct kind of a way to communicate which I think would be great so let's look at that in January February next year and have a bit of a think about how that could work but thank you for that it's a great comment and suggestion and that's why we're here is to kind of facilitate that kind of collaboration and engagement so yes well noted and please make sure you follow up if it feels like we're not doing that thank you so I'll just close by saying again next year we'll meet again and look at a bit of a plan and I'd love to have you involved in running sessions in presenting your work in creating events webinars workshops as well and I know on Bretta feels the same she's had to step out just for the final part of the meeting but as the coordinators we want to see you involved and we're really keen to do that so that would be great and I shared earlier just in the chat and was mentioned by Malina some conference things that are happening next year there's also the Global Protection Cluster Conference which will take place in June I think 10th to the 14th in Istanbul so do put that in your diary we'll share more about that as it comes up if anyone is around for the Global Refugee Forum next next week in Geneva there'll be some of us trying to meet up I think on Thursday the 14th so please do let me know in the evening it'd be great to see you if you're there I know that's an annoying thing to say for people who won't be there but but if you are there that would be nice to see you and I hope to see some of you in other places soon as well yes so thanks all for joining we'll be sharing a recording of this and the resources that have been mentioned and yeah until we speak again probably in January have a great end of year and yeah thanks everyone for your contributions today it's been very rich and interesting so yes please go well into 2024 and yeah take care okay thanks so much thank you Jim bye thanks bye