 Hello and good afternoon from Geneva. This is Simon Russell at the Global Protection Cluster. Welcome to this webinar on the ITRT Professional Standards for Protection Work, the third edition from 2018. New professional standards were developed in a large number of organisations who you see listed on the screen now including the Global Protection Cluster. What I'm going to do this afternoon is to introduce Pilar Fidmono who is the head of the Protection of Civilian Population Unit at the International Committee of the Red Cross here in Geneva. He's the current project manager for the Global Protection Cluster and that head of the Protection of Civilian Population Unit in Copenhagen make a presentation about the content of the professional standards. She's already shared with us her emails on the screen. Catherine I hope you're listening and understand that's what's happened but we've tried to cover that up. We'll also be joined after that by Helix who's a member of the Danish Refugee Council Global Emergency Team working in a project known as the Pact and she'll tell us what impact means and then Alexis Selinon from the Finnish Red Cross will talk about work and the usefulness of the professional standards in supporting migrants in the irregular situation. We'll take some questions as well if people have them. So we hope to wrap up within about 45 to 60 minutes and we'll start with Pilar. Good afternoon everybody and the GPC for organizing these webinar. Indeed we have had a launch of the standards in April this year. It was a great event with the participation of all of the advisory members and now that we are releasing the sessions in French, Spanish and Arabic in January 2018 we thought that it was a great opportunity to actually launch globally the standards via this webinar and I think that the best way to actually introduce those standards is actually via a video that we prepared with all the advisory group members and that actually reflects all the changes the good additions of these 2018 professional standards for protection work The standards unify us as a professional community. They are built out of decades of practical experience and give us a common language and shared concepts to inform our work. Since the last edition of the professional standards we have a new statement by the Interagency Standing Committee about the importance of protection to humanitarian action and the IASC has said that protection is central to humanitarian action and it should be the outcome of our work. This is already the third edition of the professional standards reflecting the evolution of our reflection but also the evolution of the challenges that we are facing in the field. So we started just over two years ago with the advisory group, a group of agencies, NGOs and UN agencies involved in both human Italian and human rights work. We started together to reflect on what were the areas of the documents that required revision. A second step was a much broader consultation trying to reach out to practitioners in the field throughout the world to gather their views and opinions to give us some input to criticize the draft documents that we had prepared and to try to ensure that what we were proposing effectively reflects the consensus of practitioners. What OCHR values in this edition of the standards is that it reflects better the perspective and specificities of human rights actors who can recognize their work in the standards and this happens in many ways throughout the standards for instance with the examples provided, the terminology used with references to human rights concepts or simply by referring equally often to human rights as well as humanitarian actors. The standards reflect more protection work that typically human rights actors undertake like the promotion of accountability for violations, access to remedies or advocacy to change laws. One of the greatest strengths of this new edition is really about the engagement with multiple actors, the fact that the guidance itself is really geared at both humanitarian and human rights actors but also there's new guidance around engagement with multinational forces and peacekeeping forces as a reflection of the current operating environment. In the first chapter there is a reinforced link that has been made between non-discrimination and impartiality and I think it's very important because in a true humanitarian action there is a need for it to be really impartial and it's not impartial if it does not take into account the needs of the most vulnerable that must be tackled first. Another part which is I think a great step forward is the our discussion of the project cycle and causal logic and identifying risks I think that we're a lot clearer now than we were before. In addition the chapter on managing protection strategies now includes more specific standards and guidelines to work towards protection outcomes for example through continuous and context specific protection analysis striving for complementarity with other actors and the importance of learning from our experience to feed into strengthened programming. Chapter three the protection architecture where there was an addition related to the role in protection of non-stated army groups and I think it's really important to consider not only the protective role of usual actors the usual suspects in the word of protection but also the responsibility of non-state army groups in protection. Working in a complementary way with partners is important because by some estimates 130 million people live in fragile states or in need of protection of whom 65 million are internally or externally displaced and no one actor can deliver protection services to all of those people and we need to work in a complementary way ensuring that all our strengths are used to deliver protection. We have worked hard in this revised third edition of the professional standards for protection work to reflect recent developments in technology in no one regulations particularly around personal data and data protection and in particular chapter six and its annexes addresses a wide range of information technology issues and provides guidance on their use and we're definitely going to incorporate this guidance into our staff trainings and fieldwork. It is critically important to counterbalance the need to obtain information and give voice to victims of human rights violations with the need to ensure their safety. Beyond the main document we have developed a set of companion documents so there is a shorter version that is more synthetic and more accessible for field practitioners there is also any learning available online and finally there is an app with full access to the standards on mobile devices. The link to a specific webpage that contains the standards in a much more web friendly format as well as the link to the average edition so I hope that you can visualize maybe the video later if you have time. I just wanted to put a little bit into perspective the changes within which these standards have evolved since the first edition released in 2009 before I give the word to actually the people who are today carrying out the work of applying the standards in the fields because actually the all aim of these women I want to provide with some practical examples of how these traditional standards can be an RD in operationalized and disseminated within field practitioners. So we've seen in recent years an increasing conflict and increasingly urban conflicts taking a heavy toll and presenting new challenges for the protection actors. These conflicts are also protracted. We see this very often this phase but it is true that we can see that we're not only responding to emergencies but actually we're having to remain in contact for a long term basis. We're actually seeing also an increase in internationalization of conflicts and with these we also see an increase in the protection needs of populations affected by crisis. So today about two billion people are affected by fragility, conflict, 65.3 million people that are displaced by violence and conflicts these days. About 2500 migrants died this year crossing the Mediterranean and they could go on citing numbers but as a result what we're seeing is that both international and non-governmental organizations in humanitarian operations are increasing the number of humanitarian personnel present in those conflict situations. We're seeing non-humanitarian actors including the UNCPP Council, Human Rights Council, member states, peacekeeping operations, as well as development human rights and peace building organizations being complementary and working on protection in many other contexts and the other groups of professionals as well including health personnel, lawyers, journalists, social private actors that are gradually becoming part of the protection act. So we're seeing that the architectural protection is being more and more complex and the need for protection of the work of protection is becoming more urgent today. We're also facing a protection act for many challenges and different challenges today. We have important restrictions in access to affected people. We have national and local organizations that are complementing the work of international ones because of the problems of access and they are undertaking activities that are not being covered neither by the state nor by the international. We have seen also going resort to creative ways of working such as the most management and the use of new technology, something that we didn't have in the past and there is also a mentality change within the humanitarian sector. We're going from providing aid to actually facilitating people's access to help and enable self-help. So protection practices increasingly reflect the rights and the capacity and also the desire of effective communities and individuals to engage and de-engage in international humanitarian efforts to enhance their protection. So we see this as an increasing need for standards and for guidance to protection practitioners and for alternative actors that actually have to engage with affected populations that may have a protection outcome or protection impact on people. Even that, I think that we have a protection act of the double task. First, to uphold the moral duty to do protection work to the best of our abilities and without causing harm. And second, we have to be conscious of the scope of the effort will remain very limited. It's at the state to noticing the responsibility of primary duty bearers to ensure they work so that we have also the responsibility to not replace but also and undermine the efforts of the state to protect people. So this, I hope, highlights the importance for working towards having standards of protection and professional actors that understand the protection work and that actually are able to do no harm and protect affected people. And with that, I thank you for the reason. And now to Catherine Stara. Thank you, Simon and Pilar. I hope that I'm now able to share my also give a little brief on the efforts that we have made in this third edition of the professional standards for protection work and the process we went through and indeed the challenges we we sought to address in this revised version of the standards. So as Pilar was also alluding to, I mean, we know and we are challenged in today's armed conflicts characterized by violence and the targeting of civilians and communities. And that indeed does call for a strong coherent and not least shared principles and standards. And that is what indeed we need to take action to prevent them to respond to protection risks and to contribute to protection outcomes. I would argue that at least professional standards for protection work have already proven their worth because they provide that set of minimum standards on which we are and must build our protection work. What we did in the advisory group, which Simon was saying was led and is led by ICSC and comprise humanitarian and human rights NGOs and UN agencies. What we did, we went through a two years intense discussions and collaborative work to revise and update and further develop what we see as a stronger and revised and new set of protection standards. Not only that this is important, not only for protection and human rights workers and practitioners, but these professional standards for protection and with the centrality of protection and that commitment to ensure protection at the core of humanitarian action. These standards are indeed highly relevant for other sectoral colleagues and for our colleagues in communications, in policy and advocacy work. I wanted to further to Pabila's overview of the challenges that we are confronted with today and in our protection work. I wanted to boil this down to basically three challenges that we have seen in terms of and that we wanted to address in the professional standards. So the first challenge of the three is our ability to take action in very difficult environments and situations and that includes our ability to understand and acknowledge the roles and responsibilities of the duty bearers and their mandates including also armed non-state actors and it's not only to understand these roles but also to make sure that we base our work on the legal frameworks relevant and applicable in this specific context and within which we work. So this challenge about how we take action and how we make sure that we are able to maneuver in these very difficult situations and environment those are standards that cut across several chapters. So that was the first challenge. The second challenge was around this is very much the focus of chapter two that we indeed ensure that we have a results oriented approach to our work and that we do sound and solid analysis and we set our priorities and from our strategy we move towards producing protection outcomes. The last challenge and importantly was how we build the evidence, how we make sure that we have captured all the complexity of the context within which we work, what the protection issues and what the protection needs and risks are and how in that process of building the evidence for our protection response, how we managed the data in a safe and responsible and purposeful manner. So that's what you will see captured in chapter six. Look at them in terms of those three sort of areas of challenges and themes that we worked on in the advisory group in revising and updating the professional standards. We have focused and further strengthened the standards around engaging with UN peacekeeping peacekeepers and other multinational forces, the engagement and interaction with armed non-state actors and also the the challenges and restrictions we see around counter-terrorism measures. So those are standards that we have strengthened and further developed and that course across several chapters. The second challenge in terms of how to manage protection strategies and move towards protection outcomes is captured in chapter two which now has an even stronger result space, the protection orientation if you like, strengthening and ensuring that we have a strong link between our analysis, the strategy setting and the protection outcomes and that we make sure that the protection analysis is not a one-off, it's a recurrent thing that we do and that we make sure to solidly monitor and evaluate our protection response. Addressing some of these challenges that we have seen around the use of new technology and methods, the use of drones, the remote mobile devices and so forth, digitalization, protection and regulation, some data that we work with because there is infection data and information and so forth. So what you can find also in chapter six is also conceptual clarity on some of these issues around data and information management and how we make sure to manage data and information for protection outcomes in a safe and responsible manner. Lastly the chapter is also linking up to other data initiatives as they run and there is this data initiative on protection information management. So also building from other initiatives and the principles and the process and the frameworks that have been developed under these. Looking to how to put use and I'm looking very much forward to hear from our and learn from our field collection worker being put to use concretely on the ground every day. I would argue that there I see and there are taking work to use. I think it is useful maybe to do to look at the standards as a set of working with the duty bearers and holding them to account and has what roles building your protection work on the legal framework. These are fundamental standards create what we could call operational standards and that's for example the standards you see in chapter six very concrete hands on each data and information for protection outcomes in a safe and responsible and principle in terms of making use of them to program cycle if you like throughout the whole process of assessing and analyzing the setting your priorities and the resulting protect the whole protection program cycle. Highly relevant and we use them to a large extent in terms of feeding in and informing our policy making within protection our very more concrete SOPs and guidance. We use them in training capacity building because in essence this is about being able to apply them and use them and adhere to them so this also requires that capacity to work with the protection standards in practice. And lastly I would say that we also use the personal standards for protection work to inform and as the foundation for our advocacy efforts. I'll leave it here and thank you for the opportunity and I look very much forward to hear from the field colleagues. Thank you very much Catherine. I'm going to turn now to Helen Brooke who's the head of the DRB emergency team known as MPACT in Cameroon. Helen over to you if you're there. Okay we're going to turn now to Alexi Selina. So hello everybody. You can speak up as well that would be great. Okay I can try. Hello. So I know this other Helen and I'm theory with a big package of so people with lots of experience but but I will have to lend a little bit different perspective from from a different context. I personally heard the word protection for the first time about a year ago but now throughout the November I had had an opportunity to participate in a pilot exercise called professional protection standards in practice which was organized by the Norwegian Red Cross National Society together with the ICRC and the aim in the exercise was to enhance the understanding of the professional standards amongst the participants but also to apply them in a chosen project that we had enrolled for the for the exercise and that now I was invited to to describe this process a little bit in this event and I will first say a few words about the exercise if you will and then portray how I found the professional standards applicable in the in the program that we have in the Finnish Red Cross that targets migrants in irregular situations. So about the exercise there were several national studies that participated in the exercise but mostly from the Europe and even if all enrolled programs were domestic and then executed in the context outside of a conflict situation as such most standards proved to be quite applicable and and give good guidance in in the context of a Nordic welfare state as well. The method in the exercise was pretty straightforward we worked on an online platform for a couple of hours a day and during a four-week period discussed some of the most relevant points of the standards and how they would apply in in in our various contexts. In addition we drafted the protection plan and commented our colleagues plans and finally modified our own protection plans according to the feedback that we had received and this method was really a success and especially so for three reasons first of all it's participation in the exercise made it absolutely necessary to allocate a certain amount of time for considering the protection aspect of our program in a very systematic and structural manner so that we could produce the protection plan and that is something that that could easily be ignored in a program where providing a support or some sort of a service or humanitarian aid could be considered as a primary goal. Second the tasks that were included in the exercise called attention to the protection gaps to those points where the our program felt short of the professional standards but in addition to this the task also required us to determine actions that remedy the situation and mitigate the situation and to determine the timeline for execution changes and I find this is really important in order to materialize the the the change and then actually make a concrete change in the program how we work and finally third not least importantly the support that we received from from our colleagues from other national societies but also from the ITSC and federation was very important not least so because sometimes any any support from from from collegial support from experts could be very thin in the context that we work in so but now moving to the to the program itself and the application of the standards just to give you a little bit of the context in which we work uh 2015 uh as we know the migration situation in in europe and in finland changed quite dramatically and the number of asylum seekers in finland for example was tenfold compared to the previous year at the same time uh not as a consequence but anyways opportunities to get the residence permit in finland were curtailed to significant extent and as a result of this uh there they were maybe for the first time a large number of microns is started to end up outside the public support network that is run by the state and municipalities the reception services were were were reasonably well taken care of and red cross was called help there as well but but uh after after microns received their negative asylum decisions and expulsion decisions and stayed outside their asylum services uh then they were left to the minimum services provided by the state and the municipalities that that provide only for the minimum needs of basic needs of existence and and those are sometimes even quite difficult to access in some municipalities so this was the background situation when we started uh and now in 2018 we have a dedicated program for the purpose of supporting microns in this situation uh the support that we provide to microns uh is is mainly place of rest and nourishment information uh some guidance and social support to maintain functionality in that challenging situation in which many of the microns uh with multiple vulnerabilities find themselves we have uh modified our system on the basis of swedish red cross red cross house we also started and then have been all the time conducting referrals to the public sector and other organizations working in Finland especially for healthcare and and and social services purposes so in practice we have actually adopted uh a minimum protection approach where where we address the protection needs of those persons who we meet in the context of other support services that we provide some technical issues including Helen Brooke so what i'm going to do is to bring this webinar to a close um what we have is the recording of the webinar so far we have the video which explains the relevance of the professional standard and we have the presentation from Captain Stara we're going to put those on our website at globalprotectioncluster.org and i encourage everyone to go to the website for those materials um also on the ICRC website there are some other practical materials which help you to apply the professional standard thank you very much to everyone for attending today particular thanks to our speakers who despite their valiant efforts were let down by the technical thank you very much and Merry Christmas