 Okay, good morning, afternoon, evening, everybody, and thanks so much for joining us here today on this interesting webinar for proactive protection. We've still got some people joining us, so just to let you know sort of how the session will be run. There's no chat function, but there is going to be time for Q&A throughout the session and some discussion, so please do put your questions in the chat. And if they're for specific panellists, please do indicate who they're for. I think we'll get started because we've got a really packed agenda and some excellent panellists with us here today. So as you will have seen, this webinar focuses on approaches to prevent, reduce or mitigate the impact of violence. Noting that while efforts to interrupt violence should be at the forefront of humanitarian action, the value of this approach is often underutilised and under prioritised within the humanitarian sector. So this session aims to bring together organisations and individuals using approaches to reduce violence, giving concrete examples, including from affected country texts and inspiring stories of success. As I say, we've got an excellent range of panellists here with us today, with representatives from Nonviolent Peace Force, Norwegian Refugee Council, Community in Nides in South Sudan, Rights of Protection in Ukraine, Humanity and Inclusion from Colombia. So without taking up any more time, let me hand over to Tiffany Easton, the Executive Director of Nonviolent Peace Force. Over to you, Tiffany. Thank you so much, Gemma, and hello everybody. Thanks for being here with us today. Thanks to the Global Protection Cluster for hosting this event, for NRC, for really leading on the organisation, all the panellists and everybody who is able to join in with us today. It's really energising to be able to be part of this conversation as a vibrant, developing, emerging part of the protection community that we see has really got a lot of traction and that's really helping us overall shift our focus from looking at protection as largely a remedial response to really including a focus and an energy around the prevention of violence. Protections really come a long way in the humanitarian sector over the last few years. It's not so long ago that we often got asked by leaders in the humanitarian community, members of humanitarian country teams and such, what is protection? I don't understand what this is even out and to where we saw the funding for protection was just slivers, drops in the bucket compared to other sectors. So we have seen a real shift and that's really come as we've sort of across the board really recognize that those numbers out there are staggering. We see numbers that talk about 2 billion plus people living in conflict affected countries more than 80 million having had to flee, forcibly leaving their homes because of violent conflict. Violence being the leading cause of death in certain age groups 15 to 44 is one of the reports that's out there. Violence plays a big part of it and from a humanitarian perspective with numbers like that the odds are there will never be enough remedial action to even come close to meeting those needs and there's a collective awareness that we could use the organizations, the structures, the influence that we have and that the physical, the human resources that we have on the ground to actually contribute towards preventing violence. I think historically we've often felt quite almost hypnotized or paralyzed by the complexity of violent conflict and had a collective feeling well if we we can't we need to be humble we can't make claims that we can end a conflict we can't bring all of the conflict to an end so we should be very careful about what we say about prevention and really shied away from that. We also have been really careful about engagement with people who do represent the threats which are generally armed actors state or or non-state and really thought what does that mean for humanitarian principles and neutrality and largely been focusing on people's vulnerabilities and building capacity and not really engaging on direct threat reduction so historically but there is a convergence now where through work being done and we'll hear lots about that today specific examples where we're seeing more and more that the work being done in country programs in in where in conflict affected areas done by all teams people from all parts of the world whether from the communities that are directly affected or those who come in and support from outside that really is able to work on interrupting violence interrupting in the moment so when we talk about proactive presence it's helping us really shift our focus to look at the prevention of violence and again not writ large prevention of violence but really looking at for those moments of interventions where the interruption of violence where an individual a family a community is being threatened or for direct physical harm if we can support the opportunity and support changing the outcome and increasing their safety and security what really what we can be contributing to violence that moves forward into the next week the next month the next generation as it builds up in terms of things like revenge ongoing untreated trauma important impacted by violence so there's a real imperative to be able to do that and what we are looking at with proactive presence comes from you know a body of work that largely sat in the idea that internationals could really play a a a deterrent role because they were representatives of the international community and while some of that is built into this type of work still today that sort of old idea of passport protection has gone by the wayside and what we really see is proactive presence or strategic protective presence for violence reduction is really about inclusivity it's an approach to violence reduction that it really looks at these asymmetrical power relationships and seeing those who the small group of people hold most of the power are able to normalize threats of violence or the use of violence and for the those who have the least amount of power are almost are the victims of violence are being most impacted and the work we collectively do as as an integrated group community of people directly impacted by violence and those who come into support can actually directly engage to change the outcome of threats of violence we're working on delinking our connection between physical protection as being the requirement that sort of automatic assumption that we need the force or the threat of force to be present to protect and to and to stop physical violence there is no singular answer to these complex world were places that we're all trying to work and contribute to there are times and places for each of those responses but what we all know and I'm sure people on this call from their own lived experiences is the headline violence the forces fighting forces is just one small part of what we see as violence that permeates throughout society particularly in protracted crisis protracted conflict where we see violence sort of really starting to get normalized and permeate all aspects of society and so when we think about the role that we can play of interrupting cycles of violence in the homes in small communities in schools enter and interrupt communal violence that all of that is the building block to a more sustainable approach of a larger approach to to to ending broader conflict so if we each are able to build up skills and play our roles in those area those areas then we have a better chance of sort of not just being in the remedial service the overarching of this goal of this work of course is to do the right thing in the moment you know if any one of us were were at immediate threat of being harmed we would hope somebody would intervene and help keep us safe in that moment so that humanitarian imperative that doing the right thing in the moment we have an opportunity as a community in addition to that is to really challenge and contribute towards a larger paradigm shift if we can demonstrate through the work that you'll hear about today that it is possible for unarmed civilian life strategies to make a significant difference in the outcomes related to violence or threat of violence we can help contribute to those who are in the policy field those who are making funding decisions about how to approach and how to how to do things like conflict prevention conflict management and overall civilian protection from broadening up and and moving past the again the overprivileging of resourcing force protection as the sort of most trusted and known approach to to deal with that we can contribute over the last few years we've seen there's been 27 or so UN and UN related policies recommendations and resolutions including mission mandates that are now putting in the language of unarmed approaches for protection of civilian as priorities for four years in a row the US Congress's annual funding bill has called for advancing unarmed civilian protection as an approach in the recent years more than 15 country missions to the UN and New York have hosted events featuring this kind of work unarmed civilian life strategies to violence reduction so we've got some momentum out there we've got a community really in development and we're learning from each other and we can be inspired by each other and we've still got a lot we've got more work to do and more more ways that we can spill skill up so really today we're hoping to come together be inspired hear examples of what's happening and and then to inspire us all and and to be able to move forward so let me end there thank you so much for the opportunity and Gemma let me hand it back over to you. Great thanks very much Tiffany and I think it's just so important to think about those sort of long-term approaches inclusive approaches and as you say that paradigm shift so I really hope this conversation here can contribute contribute to that so let me just hand straight over to Karolina Frankeschini from NRC who will present on NRC's civilian self-protection program an example from Afghanistan over to you Karolina. Thank you very much Gemma and good morning good afternoon to everyone I'm very pleased to start and to be presenting you today one example from our civilian self-protection work in Afghanistan. As NSE we have started to implement the civilian self-protection program since around 2016 because we strongly believe that efforts to interrupt the violence should be at the forefront of the protections of civilians achieving greater protection outcomes require humanitarian actors to move close to the front line and to do so in NSE we have developed this strong civilian self-protection program which mainly focuses on civilian agency and it really aims at strengthening existing positive self-protection capacities in harm conflict and other situations of violence context. So we know that communities and individuals develop self-protection strategies to respond to conflict and violence this is because they know their context and what they need to feel safer better than anyone else and by supporting them to collectively identify and strengthen these strategies affected person and communities can reduce protection risks and mitigate the humanitarian consequences of violence of course in addition to supporting all these self-protection strategies that exist at community level we also as humanitarian actor bring protection tools that are developed by humanitarian actors through for example they work with communities and through for example conflict resolution and research and thanks to these tools communities and individuals are able to expand their capacities their skills for self-protection and can really build a better resilience to address and respond to protection threats. So I would like to share with you a more concrete example from our civilian self-protection work in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan the way we work is that we start by identifying communities for the CSP program and usually this is based on some criteria such as for example proximity to conflict activity community acceptance of the program but also presence of conflict related protection risk within the community. Once we select the communities we then identify existing protection committees protection group and we take them through a civilian self- protection training and during the training we give the opportunity to the protection committees to identify all the conflict related risks within their community alongside with other components from the protection risk equation. Once we have the committees identify these potential mitigation measures we then identify person responsible for a protection risk reduction plan and after the training we ensure that we continue to mentor and engage with the communities through for example other forms of support and these forms of support can be like provision of material aid or additional training depending on the action plan. So in the north of Afghanistan especially in the province of Kunduz and Balkh we have implemented a mood year CSP program. The both provinces we were working in were experiencing frontline conflict with a lot of fluctuations in the lines of control and the fluctuating front lines resulted in displacement for most of the communities which was a core focus of our protection program but also opened communities to targeting by armed groups both directly and indirectly. So while talking to communities and engaging with them the communities reported high level of a heavy weaponry being used within civilian spaces. Human rights abused from by armed actors contamination occupation of civilian infrastructure so the program really concentrated on this particular concern. So during the program we worked in one of the village and we worked with Mr. Amadi who was a 50 years old NRC protection committee member who received a CSP training in 2021 together with other community members. In early 2022 the commander of the local police moved into Mr. Amadi village with several armed bodyguards armed vehicles and assorted weaponry so the community was concerned about having a militarized home within a civilian neighborhood. So the community expressed their concern to Mr. Amadi who decided to convene a protection committee meeting to basically discuss the risk and went through a list of possible solutions together with the other committees member. He then led the committee in approaching the police commander and he explained to the police commander that their village was a civilian space and that his presence with weapons and uniforms opened up the village of being targeted. So Mr. Amadi presented the commander with options the protection committee had considered so either dismiss the armed guards and store weaponry at the police station or relocate to an area with fewer civilians. So the commander agreed to disarm after recognizing these unified stance of the community and the political pressure that was leveraged by the community through advocacy with relevant stakeholders. So the commanders also expressed surprise that the protection committee they knew the distinctions between civilians and combatant and was able to use this knowledge to reduce the risk of being targeted. So Mr. Amadi told the NRC that the protection committee had built on other committees within the community and with the CSP training and the terms of reference the committee role and status was solidified. So they started to do conflict mediation prevention work as it now the committee is included in the formal justice system and governance mechanism of the village. And now the committee currently meets on an average of twice a month and they have new members joining from different age groups. So this story for us it is important because it really shows how the self-protection strategies chosen and implemented by a community in the case of this case study mainly advocacy towards armed doctors and exercising collective influence have a concretely helped to prevent further violence. It's also a prime example of civilian agency as it demonstrate how civilian by applying civilian self-protection tools can really create a space to keep their family safe in the midst of a conflict and despite a volatile context that the participants to the training really demonstrated their ability to maintain their own civilian status and neutrality really driving action and advocacy through the committees during the conflict and really they defended their neutrality through basically their own association and their old self-protection structures and mechanism and they were also able to navigate difficult conversation and made advocacy efforts with armed groups and recognize that their action increased the safety of the of the community. So of course we acknowledge that CSP strategies alone might not provide the level of protection that communities need. However we feel that as protection actors we have a role to play in continuing investing in strengthening local capacities for self-protection supporting existing community strategies and really promoting community-led action as they do contribute to prevent and reduce protection risks. During a reflection community workshop we had the opportunity to confront some of the communities we work with and confront them on the program and we have heard communities saying that the program helped them to increase their safety, facilitate life-saving action and really provide a mandate for collective action. We are therefore very excited to continue this work however we also need to be very cognizant that there is still a lot that we need to do in terms of growing and expanding this work and there is still a need for a lot of learning that we need to do on what is working what is not working. So we are convinced that this work is critical is a critical area to work on and we really look for support from donors to be willing to be with us in this effort and really support through funding on evaluation and learning on these proactive protection approaches. Thank you very much. Thanks Carolina and I think it's I think that's a really powerful example of sort of looking at where there's external support to existing community mechanisms as you say sort of working through the agency of communities building skills capacities but that even when those interventions have ended you know the tangible impact that that can have on the lives of effective people I think it's a really powerful example and going back to what Tiffany said on sort of looking at sort of rather than being overwhelmed but the sort of smaller outcomes these these smaller outcomes are incredibly important outcomes so I think that's a very powerful example. Thank you Carolina for sharing. So now we'll go ahead and move over to South Sudan so we have Daniel Duankalaiou with us from Community in Need Aid and Daniel's going to share lessons from a range of proactive protection activities that that that Sina along with the other organizations implement in South Sudan so Daniel over to you. Thank you so much Gema and thank you everyone good evening to you good morning wherever you are and good afternoon as I introduce this is Daniel Duankalaiou from Community in Need Aid South Sudan known as Sina and and we really appreciate to be part of this webinar and we thank the global protection cluster and the NRC the nonviolent peace force and the other partners for organizing this event so we are so grateful to share from South Sudan about proactive protection strategies activities being done both that are done by Sina and the partners and also by the communities themselves. Next and this particular at the example from South Sudan who would wants to present these four examples and for the purposes of stimulating discussions on this webinar the first one is humanitarian negotiations on demobilization and release of abductees especially children and women and also the second one is violence reduction and declassification strategies third one is creation of unarmed spaces or humanitarian corridors and access to services for survivors of violence and lastly the community self protection skills and we want to appreciate the NRC for presenting some aspects that relates to our examples and this one will also build on those examples that are all shared and given so let's look at these particular examples briefly next so the first one which is the humanitarian negotiation on demobilization and release of abductees is one of the examples we have and all these examples that we have given some of them are tended and they actually lead to the interaction to violence and some are preventing measures to violence and some share the same examples of either preventing violence or interrupts or break the chains of violence where it has occurred so the first one is the humanitarian negotiations as I mentioned earlier on on demobilization and release of abductees and this has been particularly implemented by Sena and other partners such as the children Gredo and Cairo this particular one happens in between the classes inter-communal classes between the communities that is to say in South Sudan the newer community the Inkabor community and and and and Muruli community there have been inter-communal violence and that led to abduction of children and also women but Sena and the partners came in under the RSRTF reconciliation stability resilience for trust funds this was a joint intervention and through engaging these communities trying to demobilize the tensions there was an agreement to bring to the to the forefront that women and children that were abducted were released about 100 and 102 women and children were released from young state and handed over to the greater people and administrative area and that leads to a relative peace because the chains of violence was broken but however there were challenges registered such as a lack of trust among the communities there were also insufficient funds and fragile political atmosphere and then the poor infrastructure roads and community and but also natural disaster that that hit the country such as flooding that affected the implementation of these projects but this particular one was achieved and and then the community were at peace next similar to the first one is the violent reduction and escalation strategies that happened and and then also was particularly almost the same part of of children being released and stunned but the whole idea because of this conflict it was now between these two communities of of greater people a administrative area and also both counties and because of this conflict the same way there were also children abducted and also cattle raided from these communities but through using these strategies to diffuse the tensions and the risk of escalation which was coordinated by the state government other than that was coordinated by by by the humanitarian agency this one was actually led by by the government then led to the release now of 80 abductees and also cattle from a jungles states to greater people administrative area and for this case peace was realized but not only peace but also the violence was desecrated and also reduced and then interrupted the chain that would have happened in case of the isolation from the other community this one put them at rest and these particular things there are also example of such community violence happening such as one of the example is that because of the the natural disaster that have ate mostly up in our region in south Sudan the cattle hidas are moved to to the agrarian communities but because there is clashes between these communities it has led to control atrocities but this could have been contained if if if proactive protection strategies were applied I hope this one would have been mitigated and this situation contained but unfortunately it wasn't done next so the third example that Sina is presenting is creation of an army species and humanitarian corridors this particular aspect is being used by the communities and also supported by the partners but these are existing in the centuries between the communities having realized that as our colleagues from NRC put that developed self-protection strategies but the whole idea is this about this that communities themselves staying together being close to each other try to create humanitarian spaces in case of conflicts and the example of this are two one is between the community of NUER one of the tribe in south Sudan and the community of of Dinka Bor part of a greater Dinka ethnic community have been living together as neighbors but because of intercommunal violence and also migration some of NUER community for example now NUER came to settle on on on the area of Dinka Bor especially in Duke county but now the the the the the the the complex broke out in these communities and then the NUER, Gauwer and now raided the community Dinka Bor community and took the cattles you could see now the situation that the community wanted to retaliate but now some of the leaders and some of the community members created this humanitarian an army space and said no you can't do this to them so what we need is to create for them a safety and to protect them and these people were protected they lived within the community until it was safe for them to leave to their community the other side and also likewise because of the means of survival being being destroyed the community from Dinka Bor now moved to the side of of NUER who actually fought with them but they were also hosted and lived together until relative peace was attained and then they returned to their community so you could see now the community themselves applying these strategies by themselves and helping to create these spaces also it happened recently between the community of Bor and also Murile because of the intercommunal clutches the Murile also who were also involved in this conflict moved and came to Dinka Bor those who actually fought with them but they believed and trusted that they could get safety and actually they were hosted and of course the the whole chain of violence now was broken and delayed foundation for humanitarian intervention and peace building initiatives being taken next next lastly is go back to then to the other slides before lastly the community self protection skills and of course I referred it before that colleagues from NRC also presented from the other perspective of extent but this is actually to build the capacity of children and to give them skills children and women in case of abduction and sexual violence they would be able to to protect themselves and be able to prevent violence when they are approached by perpetrators but this was also loaded is both also preventive and also interactive in case of violence occurring what these skills include teaching them on games such as stick and hide for children and adolescents but also for karate for adolescents and women and also danger signs being given to them particularly these these skills were actually given by enemies in South Sudan especially in Malacal and helping them to be able to build their capacity be able to defend themselves against aggressors and also against any physical assaults and other forms of violence against vulnerable people so these particular measures help prevent it the violence and they were able also to break the chains of violence that happened in South Sudan we believe there are more examples that should have been given we also believe that this could also be as found his father but we we we give these few examples only to stimulate the discussion for this particular webinar and and for the case of helping to see that these particular strategies and activities are being done by the partners also by the government and also by the community themselves but they see room to to build on this and to help the community being served and being at the protection so thank you so much for listening over to you Gema thanks thanks so much and I think I think you put some really interesting range of examples there including sort of the the risk of not intervening and I think sometimes organizations don't fully think through sometimes think through the risks of intervening but not necessarily of not so thanks for pointing that out and I think also really interesting points around the need to build trust and that some of the pitfalls if that trust is not there but you know also those examples you gave of building trust between communities that have previously been in conflict and and building some kind of cohesion for participants and listeners we're going to after our next panelist we'll go into our first Q&A we're splitting it because we've got a very full agenda so please do start posting your questions in the chat and we'll stop after the next intervention but so for the next intervention we've got we've got Alton Ness I probably have a pronounced that terribly we bit sorry about that or Global Head of Programming from Nonviolent Peaceful so over to you thank you Gema can you see this week yes great wonderful I'm going to talk a little bit about different types of intervention that we have experimented with applying different context rather than going very deeply into one specific example of proactive protection I want to start off with an example from South Sudan so really a classic example of proactive protection often around IDP sites refugee sites where mostly women go out to find find water find firewood and putting themselves at risk and moving to different checkpoints facing sexual harassment sometimes at every checkpoint and so what we do is to go physically walk with them to places where they find themselves unsafe and when I'm sort of going off the fly we're really kind of looking at with them which are the areas that people feel most insecure we are going out before we go with those groups to engage with the soldiers at checkpoints to know that that they know who we are to that they also know that we're coming with them and we find that a lot of the times those groups are not very comfortable with committing those violations in front of a big group along with international organizations where often local groups are taking over these activities like women protection teams that are forming and that they're not taking over these these accompanied by themselves so we are phasing out our presence from that we may also sort of engage with local commanders in this example to say okay maybe a local commander is willing to leverage on this issue what can he do to reduce kind of harassment by drunken soldiers to which refugees are what we're going out and interestingly also in some places like in Darfur when we go out into an area where we are male soldiers the community accompanies us and so there is a symbiotic relationship between this this accompaniment it's not just NP accompanying local communities but sometimes local communities accompany us and so that is part of that process we have applied this kind of work of providing presence or our confidence in different types of spaces whether it is on human rights trials where witnesses need to testify that are afraid of being harassed as sometimes there is an aspect of solidarity involved rather than kind of a real threat we've provided for example presence at demonstrations in the united states where people felt being harassed either by by police officers or by bystanders an interesting case also in in Iraq where we found that a lot of humanitarian aid workers were going away at night and and violence were actually more frequent during the night time so we started our team there started to do night patrols in specific areas of the IDP sites where people felt unsafe at some point I remember the a wash actor discovered an ISIS tunnel and that immediately drew our kind of force protection to build their military or police officers were immediately stations around those tunnels in the camp and we already could see that that would be a pull for for more harassment towards civilians so you can often see that coming and so our team started engaging with those soldiers starting to have a presence there to anticipate any kind of harassment by sort of those forces towards towards refugees another kind of example is sort of holding that space within sort of community disputes and you see on the picture here is an example from from Sri Lanka where the communities are engaging with each other we're not the mediators here in this space but sometimes communities feel unsafe to come together and so if MP is present and we do a lot of ground work working with one community working with the other community to bring them together and sometimes to follow up on if someone is is is violating the agreements bring them back together and monitoring that space so that is a kind of a different type of presence in an organ the peace building setting and sometimes that is applied with with IDPs and host communities as well just a quick slide on on on theory we've seen a lot of times that immunitarians focusing on sort of civilians that have been affected by perpetrators and and while human rights advocates focusing a lot on putting pressure on the decision makers whereas the whole space the chain of command is often a big smoke screen around who is doing the actual violence and so what we found as MP that was useful is to engage with different the parts of the chain of command sort of really see where is the violence coming from and also acknowledging that that there are people within the chain of command that are willing to leverage with us that are willing to collaborate it's not one block of perpetrators who are convening those violations a different kind of example is around ceasefire monitoring where we also brought into the proactive approach to monitoring not just going in and reporting violations and bring them back when incidents happen which is often the case but really seeing what are the areas where there are tensions oftentimes we notice that soldiers on the ground don't know the ceasefire agreements they they act on what they think is best and create great escalations through that through that way and so often the times it's like clarification anticipating where escalations may happen rumors that may sort of be acted upon by by one group or another that lead communities to displace and sort of really anticipating a lot of that work especially in post-conflict situations where partisan not willing to to to communicate or don't trust each other at all and oftentimes that Tiffany talked about like the violence is sometimes so overwhelming and so we really try sometimes to to to to stay within a feasible way of of of not overstepping our boundaries in this case in Myanmar and the Philippines we saw a lot of people being caught in press fires and we're not here to say to the soldiers you got to stop the fighting we're not addressing the violence we're here really staying focused on can we get the civilians out of harm's way and sometimes they're very willing to leverage with us and say i give you a half an hour if the other one's also stopping so we go to leverage with the other side and they say yes okay give you a half an hour fine get the people out and sometimes those parties are really happy that you're doing that because they don't want to harm civilians that create negative image for them and so there is often space for us to leverage on all these kind of things early warning is also an example that I'm going to mention especially in places where communities feel really abandoned and violence is so much that we're really saying we cannot stop it communities cannot stop it but there are things that we can do to organize ourselves if children knows what to do when the next attack happens where they need to go to if they are in the school for example at least maybe not all the children get missed in the next time of an incident and so by sort of organizing the space and saying sort of what can we do if something happens we can we can give some empowerment back to the communities to say okay it's not all kind of fatalistic and oftentimes violence comes in cycles and we can anticipate that in the next dry season another another cycle of violence will so just in conclusion this work requires a lot of of relationship building and sometimes that's difficult to explain to donors like why are you drinking more tea with local communities and but finding those entry points I was talking on the phone with someone from the Ukraine team right now she said there's so much work to be done in the beginning communities that I was wondering what why are you showing up here again but at some point they're getting it and they start trusting you and the stories of violations are pouring out but it needs a lot of time to navigate and sometimes you need a local monk or a local priest who can get you an entry point to another actor that you're trying to engage I want to leave it here thank you very much Jenna kind of back to you thanks for that and some and and really good to see sort of quite a wide range of different interventions that the NP have been doing over the years and yeah I think it's I think your point on sort of that lower hanging fruit piece is super interesting and again go back into where we can which wins we can have and I think also I found your diagram super interesting and I wonder if those on the call want to have a little bit of a think around sort of where they see themselves positioning themselves as an organization but equally you know what more perhaps they could do so just as a reminder we're going to break now and then go back into another round of panelists and Q&A after but to to break up for the first Q&A here so please do use the Q&A function if you have any questions but in the meantime I'll kick off with a fuse so I guess sort of I'll ask this openly and then come around to each panelist for your views on it so feel free to take which one you think resonates mostly with you but I mean I guess firstly some people might be wondering what the point is in interrupting violence if we can't stop it from happening again and can we stop it from happening again and what does that look like in practice and from the experience of you and your organization maybe some on the also how do you mitigate security risks prevention work and violence reduction obviously inherent is inherent with risks I'm sure so how do those that are engaging on that mitigate those risks and the dangers involved but I guess we probably have quite a broad range of participants on the call that are wondering sort of what more they could do within their own organizations in the space so maybe thinking about sort of what some of the entry points are for humanitarians who wish to do a little bit more on proactive protection looking at prevention interruption and violence and risk reduction etc how do they get better at it what do they need to think about so I'll start off with that but again a call for those in the audience if you want to put out any questions please do so we've got about 10 minutes for this session I think so I'll just go around from yeah sort of in the order that we that the presenter presented in so Carolina feel free to answer whichever of those questions you like yeah so maybe I can start with what's the point of trying to interrupt violence if we can stop it from from happening which is I mean a very good and legitimate questions and I will start by saying that it's it's true we cannot ensure that violence won't happen again and however and we have heard this from this first round of presentation that in these efforts to try to stop and interrupt instances of violence during the process we engage with groups individuals who can really take an active role they can make choices and make commitment and really build on their experience using existing self-protection mechanism and structure to identify solutions that can prevent or reuse the the community exposure to threat and we know that protection is not just about like external approaches but also civilian approaches to their own self-protection and if we are able to interrupt violence even if it's just for a short term of like period of time we really can help in creating a safer space for communities in which they can talk for example about the root causes of conflict and this can create then space for other type of interventions such as for example peace building to then tackle the root causes and and try to work most towards a long-term or more sustained solution so I mean we know that like any method on on civilian protection we need to acknowledge that also this program can face challenges and obstacles and not least the lack of funding uh relative to other form of for example externally peace intervention but it also this kind of approaches also present like an enormous opportunity and possibility and potential for supporting um civilians protections and all their efforts in context where without it like it may not exist at all so uh we still feel like reducing those instances of violence if it's just on the short or median term is still uh critical and the work should be focusing on on real prevention so really try to respond to those immediate threats of violence before they actualize and look up at de-escalating then then tension as part of our protection response. Great thanks Carolina so Daniel maybe it can come to you and maybe you want to I mean feel free obviously to answer any of the questions but I know that sort of you've given quite a broad range of interventions that Sina's involved with in South Sudan so maybe you could also talk a little bit more about sort of where there are entry points for humanitarians that want to be involved in more protection work and what does that look like in the context of South Sudan what more could be done um yeah but but obviously sort of feel free to answer any of the three questions I initially pitched thanks. Thank you so thank you so much Gima and I really appreciate Carolina for answering the first question I would like also to look at there's mostly two questions maybe the relevancy of this particular concept to the whole world community and particular to South Sudan and one more can be done because we have given wide range of activities and then strategies that are already in place and in existence and somebody could be just asking why need this and yet we have other humanitarian interventions already in place and the most important thing that we look at the whole world is engulfed in conflict violence that we see everywhere and the context of South Sudan that has been subjected to protracted civil wars so there are a lot of issues relating to violence and it would be important that prevention is better than cure so there are now most communities are hostile to each other and then creates a lot of protection risk but if we apply these strategies we'd be able to either prevent or interrupt the violence but where it has interrupted it creates an humble space I want to agree with Carolina that there will be a space for humanitarian intervention which could not have happened if the exchange of violence was not broken and the clashes where it's still happening but also other activities of his building may take place but what more can be done I believe the law that needs to be done the existing one needs to be spent then that needs a lot of the partners and also the donor community but also to bring this one to the decision maker and especially I want to appeal to the global protection having come up with this this innovative idea should actually discuss it and put it part of programming be able to make sure that this is mainstream in all our activities and also equally to the partners we should actually have a package or an aspect of programming that is yet towards employing a proactive protection and then also the donor community should be able to support the partners and should be able to give funding for this particular aspect to be better to prevent than to cure later at the later stage that would also be more expensive but also to advocate and also create more awareness to the society so that they able to adopt or they able to improve what they had and to discover more of proactive strategy that existed but unknown to the partners and also to the donor community I think a lot of things need to be done and these are some of examples I think could help in the context of South Sudan a country that is engulfing the whole violence and also where women and children are not safe vulnerable people are not safe every time you sleep but you know violence may break out but how do you come out of this or when it has occurred how possible can it be interrupted these are things that we need to be prepared adequately if these skills are built the capacities are built and then there is within the donor community and then also within the partners and also at the global protection cluster this agenda to move forward hope it's you gamer thanks thanks very much Daniel and I think I think it's clear there's always so much to be done but then looking at sort of those entry points for for humanitarian organizations and these as you say clearly sort of the prevention is better than cure we have to we have to think about Hubert I don't know if you want to answer one of those specific questions or a couple of them but I think you know it'd be great to hear from you on how nonviolent peace force works in mitigating security risks but also that that question around entry points for humanitarian organizations and I think picking up on your point I you know we hear this a lot as well on you know are you just sitting there having cups of tea with people but actually that point of sort of building trust and is there something around the system and we can sort of go into a bit more detail on one of the questions in the chat here as well but wonder if you've got any reflections on the sort of entry point and maybe some of the challenges risks but also opportunities as well as that the mitigation of risk over to you. Sure thank you gentlemen and one point on the the first question on what's the point I also want to say that you know that people are so used that violent means are the only way in which you can solve something and so it is it is incredibly important for us even from a symbolic perspective that we can show people that there are different ways to to address violence and that it may work and then maybe yes it goes back into into sometimes into another cycle but enough times we can see that to create a momentum and to build that faith that there are different ways is really important and I think that can change through the the culture of war or the idea that violence solutions are the only way that we can we can be safe. As for the kind of security risks and the opportunities at the same time of course the ongoing analysis is really key and communities we're really relying on communities for that they really know what to do and where to go. I think having our for us to be non-partisan it has been very important for us our security as well and making sure that we're not only non-partisan but will also be perceived as non-partisan so that means if we're engaging with one community we're also engaging with the other community even if that one community maybe has has more issues than the other community we need to sort of make that difference as well because that helps our security as well. Another aspect of our security I think is to sort of to understand what leverage you have and I think as I said before a little bit oftentimes I think people start to put their finger on the biggest type of violence the biggest atrocities and those are very difficult to to address and they're very dangerous to address if you don't have the leverage and so oftentimes people are ignoring that there's a lot of violence on the periphery that are people in the wrong time in the wrong place there's some miscommunications there's people uh people maybe sort of being victims of kind of the unruly behavior on food soldiers that commanders don't like to have as well and so I think starting to sort of tackle those types of violence with the kind of encouragement with those with those soldiers often with those armed forces saying how can we work together rather than right away coming in with like a finger pointing that often builds a lot of trust among those armed forces and groups and they say you know the enemy we're also struggling here and I've been here without a salary for a long time and I don't know what to do and I haven't gotten my instructions and so that that builds a lot of trust and that gives us security as well and knowing what we're doing in the example that I gave before when we're saying oh my task here is to get the civilian out I'm not going to report right now on human rights violations that I'm seeing because that that may not be the right place and that may be another task for the organization to tackle or for me at a later stage to tackle and if I have more leverage and more power and I've been there a longer time on my team in the Philippines I can see that they are having more leverage and more power to also challenge those armed groups and say oh wait a minute this is really not not okay and I can see that because of that trust over a long period of time it's easy for them to sort of to tackle those more sensitive issues so you should kind of keep that balance of of your power and leverage and trust. Thanks and some really interesting points now I'm not going to try and summarize because we're we've got some other speakers waiting we're going a bit beyond time thanks also for the questions in the chat we'll have a look at what we can come back to from the next round of speakers. So now we're introducing Natalia from Right to Protection in Ukraine and looking at conflicts and triggers and tensions between IDPs in Ukraine and host communities so Natalia over to you. Hello to everyone thanks for the opportunity to present some examples of proactive protection in Ukraine and firstly just a few words about Right to Protection and next slide please so R2P is a human rights organization that works to solve problems related to forced displacement and migration and currently we are working almost in all regions in Ukraine controlled by Ukrainian government and we provide assistance to conflict-affected population and particularly to IDPs in Ukraine since 2014 so we really understand their challenges and needs and also we realize those social processes that have been taking place in the society after the beginning of war and the way they are transformed afterwards so firstly people really unite in front of common threats they really to help each other 24 hours per week and sometimes they do it on a personal enthusiasm and adrenaline and then for obvious reasons due to constant traumas, exhaustion, lack of material resources, insecurity so all these leads to the emergence of points of tension and conflicts in communities so that's why and we could move to the next slide please so that's why last year we conducted a research on relationship practice conflicts and trigger topics among Ukrainian IDPs and host communities as well as returnees and home communities next slide please therefore we wanted to understand what potentially conflicting situations arise or may arise and decide what needs to be done to resolve or prevent them so I'm going to tell more about just several cases, several challenges and conflicts that we identified and also about some ways to resolve or interrupt these conflicts so the first challenge is insecurity it's not only about the daily threat to life physical and mental health that Ukrainians face it's about the consequences of the actions of the Russian aggressors namely interruptions in electricity and water supply and increase in crime in cities and towns decrease free access to medical facilities and also an increase in the incidence of HIV, AIDS, TB, other diseases so presence of weapons not only among military personnel but also among civilians problems with provision of bomb shelters and so on so what can be done right to interrupt or prevent these problems and some things that could be done audits of safety in the community and cooperation with law enforcement agencies and also creation of working groups on security from among employees of local authorities police officers and public activists and these working groups may propose some maybe specific plan to resolve issues relevant to their own communities and other challenge and other group of conflict we could move to other slides so this is conflicts of different identities and I could say that this is the most complicated group of conflicts in terms of difficulty to resolve them tensions or conflicts may arise between people with different values languages beliefs rituals traditions in addition the war formed new identities such as the identities of those who live in the territory where hostilities taking place and those who did not receive such experience those who were evacuated abroad or to another region of Ukraine and those who moved from the village to to the city and vice versa and again so what could be done to prevent this type of conflicts we think that it's necessary to organize safe spaces for a discussion of important and sensitive topics in communities and other activity is a creation of mobile groups that will consist of facilitator and psychologist and these mobile groups will work and help to prevent or resolve different conflicts that may appear for example in collective centers or during distribution of humanitarian assistance and also I want to present what have done now already and definitely we continue we will continue with this activity we could move to other slide so based on the results of our research we have developed and implemented a media campaign in which we raise the topic of stigmatization of internally displaced persons and we wanted to tell that even isolated conflicts conflict situation between IDPs and host communities can affect the collective reputation stigmatizing all IDPs however there are many stories of mutual help understanding and compassion and that is the positive experience that gives our people a sense of unity and I want to show you a video that we created in the framework of our media campaign and with with this video we are reaching out to IDPs and representatives of host communities to remind them that only by coming together can we survive these difficult times times for us and the IDPs are in effect a symbol of unity so I hope that we will able to watch this just one minute video it's in Ukrainian but with English subtitles so at least maybe you could help me and not to cry alone this is my right to help sincerely and directly and your kindness now is also right without a doubt from which place you have not been we have a single dream and the same conviction thank you a lot for the attention so thanks so much and that was an incredibly powerful video as well as intervention we're behind time so I won't comment on anything straight over to you Antoine from Humanity and Inclusion to speak to your operations in Colombia over to you thank you thank you Gimba so I hope the presentation is loaded now you can see the screen okay thank you so I will present to you what Humanity and Inclusion he's working has worked in Cauca one of the department of Colombia and more specifically in the municipality of Corinto where HCI began humanitarian demining in 2017 along with other sectors and approaches such as victim assistance and conflict transformation with all these linked with strategies of community liaison officers so this this that we have implemented allowed us to to reach and to implement proactive protection measures with the result that goes that have been beyond the withdrew of our organization and or land release activities so here the slide that I present to you is the map of HCI intervention of Colombia today even if we are celebrating our 25th birthday I will I will say in Colombia this year so in blue the departments of intervention in just to put in context so we are working on the migration crisis here in Colombia and also on the internal conflict the sectors of interventions are related are related to sexual and reproductive health mental health and psychosocial support economic inclusion and all what is related to armed violence reduction including land release risk education victim assistance that we are working in Colombia now so if we go a little bit deeper in the in the map in the in the contextualization so here you can see Kaoka department which is on the south west of Colombia composed of indigenous and farmers these communities are living in rural areas of the department it is a department that is highly affected by the the internal conflict due to its geostrategic importance and access to the pacific coast there are a lot of illicit crops a lot it is highly affected by drug trafficking and the presence of armed actors there are also quite often disputes between the different armed groups themselves but also with the militaries inducing high risk dynamics for the living communities and resulting in a high contamination of explosive remnants of war in the map on the left the colors represent in red the municipalities that are still needing to be denied and orange under process and green they are safe free of mines so here is a map of Kaoka on the left and the department is divided into several municipalities and the work of HCI here was in Corinto where there is the black circle on the on the north of the of this department so here Corinto map now so you can see there are a lot of mountains so in the north of Kaoka and again many many farmers and many indigenous communities living there the majority of the people of this municipality so regarding the land so the land which is easily accessible is unsuitable for cultivation is really concentrated in the sugar mill companies while the mountainous and difficult to access lands are in the hands of farmers and indigenous and because of that and the difficulty of access to this land they not only have to share but sometimes they have to dispute for the land in the history for the last decades the north of the Kaoka including Corinto municipality was an area controlled by the FARC the revolutionary armed force groups of Colombia and since 2017 with the start of demobilization process of the signing of the peace agreement 2016 sorry this armed group has progressively withdrew of the of the municipality but unfortunately the territory was gradually occupied by new armed groups and they took control who to control so this was to put into context because it's quite complex in Kaoka department so in what about H.I. in this municipality so as I said we were working in this municipality and we started we had in 2016 we have been assigned to work on humanitarian demining in this municipality and basically in the mountainous area so we started this activity of humanitarian demining in 2017 and one year later July 2018 we managed to have an agreement between the farmers and indigenous communities regarding the land dispute so the agreement was about a joint reactivation and the use of a land for development of their communities and this common project was to develop their own sugar mill with a production alternative to illicit crops so this was the result of H.I. comprehensive approach to armed violence reduction so combining risk education land release victim assistance but also with a plus of the work with the community Asian strategy and this has been possible thanks to the combination of various donors including Swiss development cooperation which Brigitte is going to speak just after this strategy was not led by H.I. but by the the community agents themselves from farmer and indigenous communities and what is also interesting here is that within Corinto the two communities and the agents has worked together with it with farmers and with indigenous but also for the installation of the sugar mill and all the techniques they have been supported with another community from another municipality from Garibillo which is a municipality of our distance from from Corinto and this farmer committee went and supported these two other communities of Corinto to implement this sugar mill so this has been thanks to the connection within the community agents today what is the situation so this was a quite long process at the end and between the moments we started this process and now so four or five years of intervention to organize all the process with the communities for the operation of the of the mill of the sugar mill the violence has escalated again with the arrival of the new armed groups that came to occupy the species left by the FARC the confrontation between armed groups has intensified and H.I. unfortunately due to security reasons had to withdrew has a demining actor in Corinto so during this time of escalating of the tension H.I. and the committee we had to define an alternative strategy to anticipate the withdrawal of our organization focused on protection actions to allow the development of capacities in the management and prevention of the risks caused by the armed violence violence sorry so today there are good relations between the farmers and the indigenous so they are maintained and they continue working on joint action to strengthen their communities although we have to admit that the sugar mill is not providing a significant economic income but it generates now products for daily consumption of the families involved and the communities continue to strengthen themselves to maintain control of their territories so this is to conclude so the link with proactive protection so H.I. as an organization is always trying to have armed violence reduction action as integral as possible but it's not always the case because of the context because of the stakeholder strategies and when we started to work in human Italian demining in Corinto it was indeed not possible the situation did not allow us to to be as comprehensive as we wanted but due to external factors including negative ones H.I. and these we had to think about coping solutions to prevent risks related to armed violence so at that time we were not concerned that it could be named proactive prevention and one of the options to mitigate this external risk was needed to take advantage of the work with the community as an agent going beyond strategy within each community but between the communities themselves and this is what was interesting also so this resulted in the project of the sugar mill sorry we just got to wrap up yeah Anton yeah yeah I'm finishing so sorry so I'm low so now what what we could say in the in the short term that we the methodology managed to interrupt the land dispute between the communities and we also manage thanks to this approach to reinforce the land control toward external actors so still fragile but we managed to move forward and I think we still need to more investment to to be reinforced and to disseminate to disseminate this this methodology so I just stop here many thanks and sorry it's always hard towards an end of a session when you're running over to wrap up on such interesting activities and because of time we'll go straight over to Brigitte Odelin from Swiss Development Corporation if you're there Brigitte do you want to come in now before we start the question lovely thank you over to you we're a bit behind the time as you see so I'll try to so first I wanted to thank the organizers and all the participants as we have heard today interrupting violence is an important component of any protection strategy it can save lives and it can contribute to reducing the number of people affected by violence we have heard many examples today of where this programming has been supported by donors I am pleased that SDC is one of them and we are excited about the opportunity to support our implementing partners to scale up this work there are several reasons why it remains challenging for donors to support this work at scale firstly it is easier for us to support programs where the impact is clear we know that intuitively civilian self-protection protection by presence and other proactive protection approaches can make a difference but we also know that it is difficult to measure and to demonstrate impact with preventive prevention work we therefore encourage partners and the GPC to continue to find ways to show that this programming works we have a lot of learning to draw from other fields such as public health secondly we need more evidence we've heard great examples today we still have to get more we hope that the community led task team will systematically document and share more examples to keep building the evidence base and to build confidence in more partners that this type of work is promising we also know that we're all risk averse I mean donors but also agencies organization and there are good reasons for that one of the best ways to overcome the risk aversion might be to build a more solid evidence base it is so we need to to have a better documentation and sharing success stories with the donor community but it would also be important to rigorously assess and evaluate promising programs before going to scale to explore whether this success would also be found in other contexts and to document the learnings that will enable you to adapt the programs for other settings and lastly we need to see these programs prioritized in country strategies as the donor community will rely on clusters to assess the needs and to identify the strategies that are most likely to be effective we know that you are under pressure to find ways to reach people more people with less and we know that prevention is key to bringing down the number of people in need so we will try to align our funding with the priorities that you put forward so if interrupting violence is a key component of your strategy please make this explicit in your HRPs and protection strategies and then identify the approaches that you think are most promising in your context lastly we trust the GBC will play a championing role to help to mobilize partners consolidate the evidence and keep us informed about what works and what needs further investment thank you very much. Many thanks Brigitte and because of time I don't know if many will have time to stay over for you for a few minutes but I think that's a great entry point to go over to Samuel Chung the head of the global protection cluster and perhaps Sam you can talk about sort of the role of the global protection cluster in taking this forward in the more traditional humanitarian system and in a coordinated approach but over to you for closing remarks thanks very much. Absolutely thank you very much Jim and first of all let me say I mean I am floored at and impressed at the diversity of and the promising practices that we've heard from all of our presenters today it's a perfect launch to this protection conversation series that would be done with the GBC which once again exemplifies the variety of expertise in every country and continent around the world that makes up and comprises this community that we call protection together it's not just information sharing but it's also mutual encouragement identification of good practices and really advancing on protection together so thank you to all of you thank you Gemma for facilitating this but particularly to Tiffany, to Carolina, Danielle, Huiber, Natalia, Antoine and Brigitte also for your very very encouraging words there from the donor side really really impressive stuff and we commend you on all that. On my side maybe just two or three quick remarks to close first is just to say from the global protection cluster side we reiterate the importance of this topic this concept this objective as that of the of the protection cluster and looking really at this idea of proactive protection I mean I looked it up on the dictionary here again and proactive and what does proactive mean it means creating or controlling a situation rather than just responding to it after it has happened and I think to me that speaks very well to one of the challenges that we have across clusters which is prioritization and that's I heard that also from Brigitte here in terms of how this is prioritized and this is about us identifying where we can create control situations as well. The other call is for us to be closer to the front lines really around where protection risks and threats occur to prevent violence from happening to reduce mitigated impacts and again once again I think this concept this objective this practice really brings us there and we heard that today from from such a variety of speakers so from my side just in terms of objective and also enthusiastically I'd like to endorse this concept as one that is critically important for protection clusters and really reflects the direction that we are we are heading today but with two important reflections that I've heard from from you and the presenters today one of them again is around this issue of I think as we bear you said it the biggest atrocities are the most difficult and dangerous to address sometimes right but at the same time we have to recognize where there are the opportunities as well as some of the other risks and threats which is summer at times around the periphery of that those kind of the front lines the harder issues and just a recognition that you know when addressing where the opportunities are for impact some of them are as you mentioned types of these situations the brief ceasefires or cessations of hostilities the mutual agreement between parties around interrupting violence for some for either remedial or other responsive measures this is a clearly an area and I think building on what Brigitte has said from the donor community but also in our humanitarian response planning could be more clearly identified prioritized articulated and reflected in our cluster response strategies that's almost I'd have to say that it is exactly what we need also in some cluster responses is that identification of where can we make that impact we know the biggest atrocities are there but there's also you know at the local level at different areas opportunities to make real gains in terms of response prevention mitigation etc so I think that really meets a need for us for clusters on the ground the second is on this aspect of being on the front lines and it is again we are pushing it is it is difficult we know there are access constraints but we need to hone in on where the front lines of conflict where the front lines of violence are affecting people on the ground and for us it's not only just the military front lines but it's also the front lines and communities I don't know if we call the micro front lines but you know these fracture points where risks and threats occur at community levels are also front lines where we can make an impact and I really appreciated that also reflection there are so many gains and we've we heard it right here in all the various examples of where we can interrupt violence where we can open space for protection responses so with that again just enthusiastically endorse and and and am encouraged by by these from the gpc side we are happy to champion this and move forward with this it resonates with a number of our overall priorities it resonates with our access that protects agenda for change noting that access is about protection that access requires sustainable access quality access that also means presence presence where it counts presence along the front lines etc and also it really hones in well with our with our newly established task team on community led protection which I really really hope and not only looks at the the enabling the capacities of communities but really enabling their capacities around this particular issue of self-protection of where the opportunities are at engagement among communities and once again from Colombia to Afghanistan to others we've seen those examples loud and clear from all of you so just from our side we're we're ready to champion this forward we're very thankful also for all of you for participating in this conversation series because this is exactly where we get to identify these promising areas of work as well as so that we can all forge on together so thank you very much and Gemma I'll hand back to you for the final words. Thanks for that so much Sam and for all of you for staying on for a few minutes I think this has been a really rich discussion I'm great to hear that the Global Protection Cluster will champion this and I think as I said at the beginning this is already a contribution to a growing community of practice where HPG are also collaborating with a number of organizations including on the line to look at sort of ways to take this forward so thanks again to all panelists thanks very much for everyone for for listening today and I think it's a watch this space on there on you know sort of seeing what emerges from some of these conversations it's really exciting to see where they go so thanks very much have a good evening for all of you