 And we've been basically looking at strengthening the amazing work that our colleagues across 32 cluster operations are leading. And the GPC has been really committed to using the full range of advocacy approaches and advocacy tactics to ultimately play a critical role in supporting protection. And so this really includes for us the full spectrum of advocacy from quiet diplomacy, negotiating with armed groups, to using global human rights mechanisms and trying to influence also the UN Security Council members. So it's really a wide range of actions. And the GPC wants to promote and to leverage all of these different avenues for advocacy. So this has been a big focus for us this year. And some questions have arise from our colleagues in the field on how to reconcile these advocacy ambitions with the importance of maintaining operational access. And you may know that 90% of our cluster operation operates in conflict settings. So human rights violations remain the main driver of protection issues today. And so for all of those clusters, this tension between advocacy and access is very real. And it's very complex for many of them. So we've heard it from colleagues in Ethiopia, in Haiti, in Mali, in Central African Republic, in Nigeria, and the list goes on. So that's why we thought of organizing this peer-to-peer webinar, this exchange dialogue to also discuss a bit how those tensions and trade-off between access and advocacy can be managed. So the aim of the event is really to look at how do we manage better this tension between advocacy and access. And as I said, it's very real for our colleagues in the field. So we don't want to deconstruct the idea that the tension exists. But we want to try to question a little bit the narrative and also dive into a discussion with some practitioners who are dealing with these issues on a daily basis. So I hope that we will be able to understand from them how they manage the tensions, what are some of the mitigation measures that can be put in place to both deliver protection services, but also speak out when there are grave violations occurring. So first today we will hear from William Shemali, who's the coordinator of the Global Protection Cluster for some opening remarks. William will help us to set the scene of the discussion and also share his perspective on why advocacy and protection access are so important for the Global Protection Cluster. And then we will hear from Vicky Metgaf. Vicky, you are a lead researcher at ODI and last year you published a report on collaborative advocacy between humanitarian and human rights actors. And you will present to us some of the findings of this report that are particularly relevant to the topic today. And I think you will help us also frame the panel discussion. And I'm really pleased because we have three amazing speakers who are accepted to join us today. And they are really protection leaders and practitioners. They are, as I said, dealing with those issues on a daily basis. And I think that they bring very different perspectives because they are from different entities. Some of them are working at global level, other at regional levels, other at national levels. So, yeah, I think it's a beautiful mix of examples that we will be able to hear from them today. So we have Eva Linaki who works from MSF. She's a humanitarian affairs advisor. We have Christelle Hure working for NRC. She's the head of advocacy, media and communication for NRC regional office in Western Central Africa. And then we will be zooming in a specific national context with the presence of Tamar Bumushan. She's the grand supervisor for INSAN Association, which is a local NGO and a human rights network operating in Lebanon. So just before we start, since I've introduced all our speakers, I think it would be nice also if you could just put in the chat, drop a line with your name and your organization so that we know who's with us online around this virtual table. And we won't be able to take a direct intervention from the floor because there's a lot of people online, but we really encourage you to use the chat to drop ideas, examples, reactions to what you're hearing. And of course, we will constantly be monitoring the chat and I will make sure to bring back those comments and questions into the discussion. So before we dive into the discussion, I just would like to give you the floor, William. As I said, you're the coordinator of the GPC and I wanted to give you the floor for some initial remarks. I think as protection actors, we need consistent ongoing access, but we also have a responsibility to witness, to speak up when violations of human rights occur. And so I think it would be great if you could help us frame a little bit this event and give us your reflection on how we reconcile those two notions of advocacy and access and what's the GPC approach and positioning. So over to you, William. And thanks for being with us. Thanks very much, Marie. Can you confirm that you can hear me well? Yes, now thank you. Good, good. Thank you, everyone, for being many today on joining us for this important topic and also greetings to MSF and RCE, ODI and INSAN for helping us move this agenda forward. The session comes today at a crossing point of three mega trends that we're facing this year. First, this year, we have about 160 million people at risk or in need of protection. And that number is the highest number ever recorded since the creation of the cluster. But also the scary bit of it is at last year, we were at 110 million roughly. This year, we are at 160 million. We had an increase of about 50 million people in need or at risk of protection in one year. So the scale and the leap, this quantum leap is very real. We feel it across operations through our programs and services and partnerships. But the second trend makes this leap clearer in terms of quality. The major driver that is causing risks and needs for these 160 million people remains, by far, conflict and human rights abuses. And I think we've gone through a couple of years of a lot of multi-layered and complexity narrative that is very true. COVID socioeconomic impact of COVID, climate change, economic meltdown, bad governance in many places. But when we look at what our 32 operations are reporting, is that very clearly conflict and the rights abuses during conflict remains the single biggest threat and the driver of protection risks in the world. And third, what makes this context quite challenging is that across our 32 operations, all of us combined, national partners, UN, NGOs, independent interventions, we think and we have reports that, at best, we are reaching between 25% to 50% of people in need. So out of 160 million, with the current machinery and limitations of it, there are 80 million that we know we will not be able to reach. They will not be able to reach any protection services. And this situation is even worse. Sorry, William, you've been muted. So we have a triple crisis. We have a scale crisis. We have a rights abuse crisis. And we have lack of access crisis. And all of them makes this session very important. It's clear that we need strong advocacy across all the different dimensions of advocacy to change behaviors, to speak up and highlight where abuses are, to end impunity where it is. At the same time, we really need to scale up our access. So the question for us is not, should we prioritize advocacy over access or access over advocacy? The question is, how can we have an access that protects? And one of the key tools of protection is to be able to have an access while you are able to advocate for behavior change and ending impunity and being able to highlight where abuses are happening. How can we have access to engage with armed groups and convince them to change behavior? How can we have access to communities in a trustworthy way to address and prevent forced girls' marriage? How can we access authorities to stop children recruitment? And how can we access villages to provide medical, legal, psychosocial services for people who survive and abuse? And this is where the operational reality of this question becomes very interesting. So in the GPC, we see these trends. And we have decided at the beginning of this year to start a drive to better understanding the problem and start to have a systematic way of addressing it. So we are preoccupied, in general, by a feeling and evidence that, in general, we have less humanitarian access in the broad terms. Second, we have less access for protection services and people's access to protection services. Third, even when we have a humanitarian access for shelter distribution or water distribution or medical aid distribution, it's not systematic that these interventions have a clear protection outcomes. Fourth, the system-wide access negotiation modality, when it's run on behalf of multiple organizations, is still very much geared towards assistance provision and assistance access. So we measure access to places like Tigray or in Sudan today by the number of trucks that we have managed to bring across or putting a green line on a map. And that's very important. It is life-saving. But this limited conception of where the weight is for access negotiation is far away from having access for NGO programs to engage with armed groups and change behavior and address difficult topics such as early marriage and sexual violence and children recruitment. So the setup of the system for access negotiation is not fully geared in a purposeful way to enable access for protection as it is. And finally, we think it is taken for granted that when we have stronger advocacy, then we have less access. We don't believe we should jump to that conclusion too quickly. And there are a lot of studies, evidences. I was just looking at one of MSF from a couple of years ago. ODI study that we did with the GPC last year shows us that the answer to this question is much more nuanced. What we need is a proper analysis of what types of advocacy could lead to blockage of access, but also what kind of advocacy could actually enable access. And here we need to think of advocacy way beyond just public statements and public recognition of issues, but use all the facets of advocacy when we're talking about this. So we feel this is the fifth preoccupation that the term advocacy is hijacked by one tool of advocacy, which is public statements, and as such is creating a too heavy of a weight on access versus advocacy. And I think we can be more nuanced than that. So what we are doing this year is the following. We're running a number of roundtables, events like this to get smarter in understanding the problem. And today's event is one of them. So I'm very happy to be able to hear reactions and experiences for multiple colleagues to guide us in better understanding what is really the problem in a nuanced way and what could be the solution. We are calling for a number of things that would lead towards the end of this year on the 1st of December to launch our agenda for improving access for protection for next year. So in the lead up to this, we are trying to lobby, to galvanize, to better understand the nuances, to be able to react as a cluster in an appropriate way to move out of this 25% average of accessing people with protection services or the other way around. So first, we are calling for a protection access review, a review of when did protection access actually work? What made it work? What did not make it work? What blocked it? Second, as a result of this review, I think we need to define a number of tools that allow us to have a meaningful holistic access that protects or has a chance to protect. Third, the current monitoring system of humanitarian access is too high level when it comes to protection. We need to nuance it more. We need to set up a protection access monitoring system that allows us to be able clearly to say, in this district or these set of villages, even though we have this type or that type of access, it's not yet protective. It doesn't yield to protection outcomes as it is. So we need a smarter monitoring system that allows us to be better reactive and more precise when we speak about how much we can access certain communities. And finally, a proper advocacy versus access review is due. And I hope it will result in a more nuanced answer than when we have advocacy, we have less access because the reality on the ground is much more nuanced than this. So with all these thoughts in mind, we want this conversation today to help us constructively destroy them, refine them, make them sharper and help us in this conversation where we do feel we understand the problem, but we want to understand it better. But we're also, as a system, we're careful because we know there's a lot of sensitivities and we're not the first generation of humanitarians that try to address this issue. So there is a reason why it's very difficult. We definitely want to take a shot and try to crack part of it. And this is why we need a community and I'm looking forward to this conversation. Back to you, Marie. Thank you so much, William, for introducing us to the topic and also giving us this overview. I think it's very helpful to have your insight before we start the discussion. And it's been also very valuable in terms of nuancing the understanding and this opposition between access and advocacy and we've already had some debates with the speakers ahead of this event when we were framing the concept of this event. So I think you've made it very clear that we need to look at advocacy and access as two foundational aspects of protection work and that go hand in hand. And I'm sure the three panelists will also speak more to these aspects and thanks also for giving already some solutions and some ideas of a way forward. So I want to hand over to Vicky. I don't know if you want to have some initial reactions to what William was saying, but also since you've led this research for the, for ODI and the GPC last year on the opportunities and the challenges for more collaborative advocacy between human rights and humanitarian actors. I think it will be super interesting to hear from you also because it's been a very valuable and useful report that we have been using in the GPC a lot. And the reason why we were hoping that you could kick off the discussion is that you said that a lot of people when you were, that you interviewed for this research highlighted that advocacy by humanitarian actors has become, I'm quoting a race to the bottom. So you were also saying that even senior leadership have this tendency to prioritize maintaining presence or access over engaging in dialogue and advocacy. So I think your research also shows that even private diplomacy is increasingly compromised or deep prioritized for the sake of maintaining access. So I think it would be great if you could run us through a little bit some of the trends and findings of your reports and then it will dive naturally in the panel discussion with our three speakers. So Vicky over to you. Thanks Marie, Emily. Thanks to you and your colleagues for inviting me to speak at the event today. Thanks William for those opening remarks. I'm certainly gonna pick up and echo some of them in my comments on what we found through our research over the last couple of years. So at the humanitarian policy group, we're kind of in the process now of just concluding with the research that we've been conducting over the last two years on this question of the practice of advocacy on protection of civilians in armed conflict by international humanitarian organizations. As part of that, we looked at a wide range of different actors within the international sector and looked at different types and different levels of advocacy, different practices. But one of the key themes that we're running through all the discussions, interviews and consultations with practitioners that we had from across the humanitarian sector has been this concern and overriding concern, I guess, about the risks involved in undertaking advocacy in whatever form, as you said, Marie, from quiet diplomacy through to public condemnation. So it is of course true that there are many risks inherent in advocating for increased protection of civilians, particularly in the most acute and difficult conflict situations. But there are also many risks inherent in not advocating on behalf of those populations. If we stay silent in the face of abuses, what impact does that have on that civilian population? At what point, to be honest, do we become complicit in abuses if we stay silent? And more importantly, what is it that populations actually need or want from us in terms of our advocacy and our operational or programmatic role? So for today's discussion, I'm going to focus in on these risks relating to advocacy and access. It was only a small part of our research, so bear with me, but I'll provide some brief comments. We didn't look at it in huge detail. But it's clear from our interviews with practitioners at headquarters and in the field from the UN system, from NGOs, international and national, from the Red Cross, Red Press and Movement too. It was clear that many people in the humanitarian sector today consider that access and protection advocacy are in direct tension, that in many circumstances, operational access is at grave risk or will be at grave risk if you engage in protection advocacy. And it didn't really seem to matter too much whether that was public or private diplomacy. This, of course, is not a new perspective. We saw those views, evidence in the official reviews, for example, of the humanitarian response to the end of the war in Sri Lanka. And then again in the 2019 Rosenthal report, which looked at a decade of humanitarian response in Myanmar. The UN leaders, whether heads of agencies or humanitarian coordinators or even more senior, are often particularly highlighted for holding such views. But we found that these views were prevalent among NGOs too, particularly at the country director level, but also across the Red Cross, Red Press and Movement as well. Many other humanitarians that we engaged in the course of this project told us that this in their view is the wrong approach, that actually advocacy to improve the physical, legal and material safety of civilians affected by armed conflict is an integral part of our work as humanitarian actors, that it is a moral as well as a practical obligation. A moral obligation in that using our voice, particularly as internationals, to try to protect affected populations is integral to the principle of humanity. And it's also practical or a practical obligation since we also commonly advocate for or should be advocating for people's freedom of movement as well as our access to provide services as part of our overarching humanitarian and protection responses. So what did we conclude from our research on this particular point? I've got three key issues to reference here. First, it is really important to acknowledge that undertaking different forms of advocacy on protection of civilians on human rights issues can pose genuine risks to access for the provision of services and assistance. There are cases in which senior leaders, even from the UN of humanitarian organizations have been forced to leave a country where visas or travel permits have been obstructed for staff, where other restrictions on operations have been put in place by conflict parties, government and non-government, ostensibly in retaliation for advocacy that's been undertaken, again, by quiet diplomacy or public. And over the years we've seen that happen repeatedly in terms of restrictions imposed in Darfur, in Ethiopia, in Myanmar, in Syria, in Palestine, all around the world, unfortunately. Some of the more high profile cases have clearly had a chilling effect across our sector more broadly, discouraging others from speaking out publicly or even undertaking quiet diplomacy on sensitive issues in terms of protection, because they fear the backlash against themselves, their staff or their organization. And a common theme in our discussions with senior UN officials, for example, in which they highlighted that if they spoke out, they expected little, if any, support diplomacy-wise or politically-wise from their own headquarters or from other member states if there was some kind of retaliation, particularly from a host state government. Our second conclusion is that a proper assessment of the risks inherent in advocacy is required to fully understand the nature of those risks to humanitarian operations and, more importantly, to affected populations. But we found that such assessments are pretty rare. In fact, we found that very commonly, decision-making on advocacy is based on assumptions, often assumptions that related to what had happened in some of the more high profile cases elsewhere, which were not necessarily themselves connected to protection advocacy, or at least that connection wasn't entirely clear. So in that regard, it's useful perhaps to consider briefly what actually happened in some of those more high profile cases and think about them a little bit more. Was there, for example, a direct correlation between the advocacy undertaken and the access restrictions imposed? It's not always that clear-cut, as I said. With respect, for example, to the PNG of NGOs, international NGOs in Darfur in 2009, the tensions have been building for several years between those NGOs and the government, with the government increasingly frustrated at what they saw as a lack of engagement with them by those organizations. And the announcement also came at the same time as the international criminal courts indictment of President Bashir. So the high-profile advocacy that they had been undertaking was most likely a factor, but it probably was not the only factor in the government's decision at that time to shut down those NGO operations. What were the direct consequences for affected populations of restrictions imposed on international organizations? In Ethiopia last year, the PNG of the UNICEF head of office, as well as OHR and OCHA staff, has not, as far as I'm aware, but please contradict me if I'm wrong, has not, as far as I'm aware, resulted in the closure of ongoing programs, although I appreciate it was a highly disruptive experience. And in a case in South Sudan, the PNG of an MSF staff member for advocacy on GBV issues actually spurred local actors into upping their own advocacy on this issue. And that, in turn, over time, improved actually the provision of protection services to GBV survivors. If access to services or assistance was disrupted, would it have been better to not advocate on their behalf? I think that's a really tricky question to answer and is perhaps better framed as a question regarding what do we need access for? And I refer back here to William's comments about access for protection, not just for the provision of assistance. Do we need operational access at any cost? I think those are quite important questions to consider. The answer I think lies in taking direction from the affected populations themselves. What do they consider the risk to be for them in particular? And on that basis, sorry, what do they want us to do? Do they want us to continue advocating or do they want us to carry on providing assistance? Do they see this dichotomy between access and advocacy? It's not, you know, each case would have to be taken in its own consideration. For example, in Ethiopia, local civil society urged the international community to be more vocal in recognizing abuses against civilians because they felt that the international community's silence on these issues or relative silence contributed to the trauma that survivors were going through. Again, each context is different, but that's one our reflection. And in this regard, the research highlighted something a little bit worrying to be honest, which is that the consideration of the risks of inherent advocacy, whether they're properly assessed or not, is too often focused on the risk to our operational access. And again, I stress here, access for providing assistance and services, not necessary protection in the way that William has articulated earlier. So we focus more on our operational access, rather less on people's access to services and assistance. And that the considerations are generally more focused on what restrictions on operational access would mean for us, for our organization, in terms of our visibility, our relationship with our donors, our public reputation, and rather less on the practical consequences for those people in need that we were or are providing services, assistance, and hopefully protection too. So thus we would argue from our research that unfortunately, the people that we are there to protect and assist are not always the front and center in our decision making on when and how to advocate. Our third conclusion is that there are actions that can be taken to mitigate the risks of advocacy and protection, both the risks that are posed by that to affect the populations, as well as to our operations, our operational access. And this is where our research highlights the importance of working in partnership, particularly across the boundaries of humanitarian and human rights action, and between international and local actors, partnerships that help to increase impact and to mitigate risk to all concerned. When we work together, we can amplify our voice when we are united in highlighting the threats that civilians face, it is harder for conflict parties to ignore. And when we work together with a range of actors, including local communities, we can better understand and therefore better mitigate the risks inherent in advocacy, using different channels, tactics, approaches, strategies, using the different comparative advantages that we have as different types of organizations. This kind of collaboration, particularly between human rights and humanitarian actors can mitigate the risk of a number of ways. Sharing data and analysis of the protection situation can help build a stronger evidence base on which to advocate, making it, in theory at least, harder for conflict parties to rip up. This shared analysis is also critical to making informed decisions about when and how to advocate. Having only a partial understanding of the situation on the ground means that we may miss opportunities to have impact and we may increase the risks of negative fallout from our advocacy that we do undertake. Advocating on the same issues, calling for the same actions, may also reduce the risk of an organization or entity being singled out for retaliatory action. The more public advocacy could be undertaken by those organizations that face less risk or that have a higher risk appetite because they are more distant from operations, have less field presence or are just generally more focused on advocacy than delivering assistance and services. If you coordinate, you're able to see those opportunities and those actors that can do more than others. And most importantly, this kind of collaboration between human rights and humanitarian actors can ramp up the pressure on conflict parties to change their behavior and thereby reducing the risk to civilians' risks of violence and abuse. There's a couple of examples here. So in Palestine, and I noticed somebody shared the report from Islamic Relief, which I think looked at this too. So I haven't seen that, but I hope it's similar to our findings. In Palestine, for example, the humanitarian and human rights community have long worked together, not always in perfect harmony, it must be acknowledged, but always in an effort to try to mitigate risk and in some important, albeit small and often temporary ways to reduce the risk to civilians. Lots of different examples from that that I'm sure many of you are aware of. In Syria too, through the Human Rights Reference Group, the HRRG, humanitarian and human rights actors have come together informally to coordinate advocacy, to consider the different risks inherent in different advocacy approaches and to develop appropriate strategies for engagement in international human rights mechanisms focused on the situation in the country. So our research shows that the risks imposed by undertaking advocacy very significantly with multiple factors, including context, timing and the issue or the theme, all having an impact on how serious those risks might be. We therefore need to adjust our approaches, our tactics, our timings and our partnerships in order to better mitigate those risks. I'm going to stop there, but in terms of the discussion that we're about to have, I have a couple of questions that I wanted to put forward to help shape that conversation. The first is in your view as practitioners, what are the real risks of engaging or not engaging in advocacy on protection of civilians' issues? And here I mean the risks to us and the risks to affected populations, as hopefully I've stressed a few times in this presentation. Secondly, how can we adapt our advocacy to reduce the exposure to risk, both again for affected populations and for us and our operations? And thirdly, what residual risks remain after re-small mitigating measures have been taken? Which, what are those residual risks are acceptable to us? More importantly, again, which residual risks are acceptable to affected populations? But I'll stop there, Marie, and hand back to you and looking forward to the conversation. Thank you so much, Vicky. And thanks a lot for the very inspiring overview and for already setting the three questions for the panel discussion. I think the report has been already shared by colleagues in the chat, but I will really invite you to have a look. It's a very rich research and it's been helping us a lot in our thinking. So thanks a lot, Vicky, for that. And yeah, you framed it very well for the discussion. So I may come back to you, Vicky, after the panel discussion, if you want to react to some of the reflection that are being shared by Eva, Christelle and Tamar. But I think it's around many three or four points. You've said it very well. The risk exists. The tension is real. It's not a new perspective, but it depends from context to context, from operation to operation and from organization to organization. So what I'm really pleased is that we have a very good diversity of speakers. So we have someone from an international NGO, someone from a national NGO, and then we have MSF. And colleagues are also working at the global, at the regional and at the national level. So I hope that they can also share their perspective, depending on the role that they have. You've also said that we don't, and I think William also mentioned it's in the opening remark, like we don't do a proper assessment and analysis of the potential risk. And it's very much based on assumptions. So I'm sure the speakers will also be able to share some reflection on that. And then the question, as you have framed it, like what kind of risk are we ready to accept, whether it is for us as protection partners, but more importantly for communities and people in need. So thanks a lot for framing those three questions. And Eva-Christelle and Tamar, I don't know if your internet connection allows it, but if you can put your camera, that would be great. I know Tamar, it might be difficult for you in Lebanon, but so if you can come on screen, so we have a bit of a virtual conversation. And I wanted to ask you to share some initial reflections to what you've already heard from William and from Vicky, and also some very concrete examples of how your organization has been unpacking those challenges, what Vicky has presented, and how you've been managing these tensions. So I wanted to start with you Eva, if it's fine. You are the Humaton Affair Advisor for MSF. And of course MSF is such an important reference for the Humaton community, especially when it comes to providing life-saving assistance, but also MSF is very well known for speaking out. I think you call this Témoinage work, which for me speaks and says a lot about how you perceive your role and how MSF is speaking up for people who are, that MSF tries to help, including in war zones. So I wanted to ask you to come first for some reflection and examples, because I think you have this very unique perspective to share with us. So could you come in and explain a little bit how you manage this tension between access and advocacy? Sure, thank you so much, Marie. I hope you can hear me. Well, you can see me well. Perfect. So thank you so much to the organizers of course for inviting us. It's a great pleasure to be with you and to be contributing to this very important conversation. And thanks so much for all the previous remarks from William and Vicky, super interesting and useful. So just to give the MSF side and just a little bit of background to start with. I mean, as I'm sure you're all aware of, MSF was established by a group of doctors and journalists. And well, the reason why this is important is basically because there are two inseparable elements that are combined in MSF's work. One is the medical aid and the other one is, as you mentioned, Marie Temoynaj, what we call Temoynaj or bearing witness if you want. So of course, the first one is quite obvious. It refers to the provision of medical care. And then when it comes to Temoynaj, basically what it means is that MSF volunteers are there to listen to our patients and what they've been through. And in case MSF is present in a place where and has witnessed large scale human rights violations, then it may ultimately be forced to make public demonstrations in that regard. So as you can understand, basically speaking out flows from MSF's commitment to bear witness and it's part of its identity. Now in terms of MSF advocacy, the MSF advocacy starts at the field level, so it's actually grounded in what we see and what we witness on the ground and that also determines the content of MSF's messages. But also, of course, what we can say about a situation also feeds into the decisions about how we say something and who do we target, who do we say it to. So coming back to the question at hand, advocacy and access. So the issue of whether we will lose access if we speak out is an ongoing debate within MSF and at least from a humanitarian approach perspective, we try to question, we try to question where relevant and where we can. So we try to actually approach this from a different angle. So rather than having this as an either or, like either advocacy or speaking out and having them opposing each other, we actually try to ask the question of, how do we do advocacy in a way that it's useful for the people that we serve? How do we do advocacy in a way that it's in their best interest? So in a natural way, we feel that probably it's not right. It may not be the most useful question to ask, whether it's access or advocacy, because probably in most cases, it may not be that we lose access because we have spoken out on human rights issues. Vicky has already, I think, provided some positive examples, but just like another one, if we look at Myanmar after the coup, basically MSF spoke out publicly about the fact that the arrests and the widespread restrictions that were imposed through the state of emergency had the potential of severely interrupting life-saving healthcare that MSF and other structures were providing to the most vulnerable in Myanmar. We had also voiced concerns, deep concerns about the harassment and intimidation faced by members of the medical community in Myanmar. And there were generally other press releases, with respect to that situation, for example, on the fact that insecurity restricted access to healthcare and the impact that the whole situation had on HIV care. But at least to the best of my knowledge, we did not lose the access that we already had because of these public statements. So against the backdrop, it may be more useful to actually ask other questions or focus our energy and time on working some other questions. So for example, I will echo something that has already been said, which is, do we want to have operational access at all costs? Perhaps this is a narrative that we should question. Another question may be, what if there are other situations where essentially the organization itself judges that it wants to give up its operational access in return of speaking out? And then another question that may be useful is what if humanitarian principles, for example, are seriously interfered with when we're trying to secure access? It may be an important component. And I think the last and most important question is probably how do we conduct our advocacy? As it was already, I think mentioned before by William, there are different shades of doing advocacy because speaking out is not only about a public statement, a public denunciation, that there's a lot of different tactics and there's different levels either locally, regionally, or internationally. Of course, all of these things, they depend on the context and the specific circumstances that we may have each time and all of this inform the choices that we make. A couple of other points that I would like to touch upon which may be interesting and useful. And so one is the MSF independence, because MSF receives the majority of its funding from individual donors and private institutions. So this can help at least a certain extent because the counterpart may not think that MSF is serving some more exterior agendas or somebody else's interests. So this helps to a certain extent but it also can give MSF the opportunity, the liberty to kind of choose what it wants to do from an access, operational, and advocacy perspective. And the last point with respect to human rights actors, MSF is not a human rights organization. Of course, we do look at human rights and human rights violations, especially those that relate to health and medical care. But of course, we're not a human rights organization and human rights actors are different from us but definitely we do recognize the very important roles that they play and that is super important to engage with them from an advocacy point of view. So I think I will leave it there and hand it over back to you, Marie. Thank you very much. Thank you Eva. And thanks for questioning the narrative as Vicky and William also did at the beginning that we need operational access at all costs. I think the three of you have already pointed out that negotiating access, if we can't maintain a protection presence, if we can't monitor protection issues, if we cannot engage with communities and do what MSF calls témoignage and speaking up when violation occurs, it doesn't really make any sense either. So I think it's great also that you mentioned that there is this broad advocacy spectrum that I think Vicky also spoke about and the different ways of speaking out on the protection issues going beyond just public advocacy. So thanks a lot for also echoing those points and I wanted to turn to you, Christelle, because you work at the regional level and you work in a region that is extremely complex, the Sahel and Central African region. So as a head of advocacy for NRC, I also wanted to ask you how NRC is approaching these tensions between access and advocacy because I think you are engaged in very much on both fronts. And I know you have very concrete examples that you wanted to share with us on where there's been positive practice on how to manage these tensions in the Sahel and also in the Black Chair Bassin. So Christelle, over to you. Thank you, Marie. Can you hear me well? Yeah, okay, great. Okay, so yeah, and thanks to all the speakers for their presentations. I think that I might repeat some of the things that have already been said, but it's also part of the way that we can learn. So yeah, as you have all said, the tension between advocacy and humanitarian access is real. It's very real in Central and West Africa and maybe even more so for advocacy and protection issues. NRC is a humanitarian agency. We're not a human rights group, obviously, and that requires keeping continuous access to ensure that our mandate is being fulfilled. So this is, you know, part of our answer when you're saying, well, should we keep access at all costs? I'm not saying that at all costs, but for us it's really important it's part of our mandate. That said, according to NRC, humanitarian work is never just to hand out assistance. For us, it never was and it never should be. It is also about the protection of civilians, about bearing witness, and about speaking out. So in the region, when we are looking at the tension between access and advocacy, well, basically there are two main risks that we're looking at. First of all, it's the risk of a reaction, let's say, by the authorities. You know, like you mentioned a lot of these examples, which we also have in the region. But I think that the second risk that maybe we haven't highlighted yet is the risk of retaliation measures by the non-state armed groups on the populations that we're trying to protect or, you know, like to speak for, but also on humanitarian staff. So this is also very important to consider when we are thinking about our advocacy. But also, NRC, well, first of all, we're very conscious of that, but we know also that the advocacy, if well used, can be a means to an end. For us, there is a need to do a case-by-case risk analysis and identification of mitigation measures. So I think that I might repeat some of the things that Vicky said, but just to illustrate, you know, like how these mitigation measures have been useful and have been implemented in the region. Well, first of all, obviously we need to rely on strong evidence. For this, we work a lot with the protection clusters or we rely a lot on them, you know, for collecting this evidence. The evidence should highlight the causes and the solutions to your problem. We need to ensure quality checks are there. We need to make sure that assumptions and conclusion that we're drawing are valid and are very strong. For us, this is the first thing that we make sure of when we're developing our advocacy. Then, and this has been said a lot of time before, but we need to be strong in terms of coordination. We need to be at a coalition at the highest level, at the leadership level. You know, we need to, when we're talking about country level, we need country directors, right? And we need also to think about the diversity of stakeholders. I will go back to human rights just after that, but just in the sphere of humanity, within the humanitarian community, we need to bring together donors, UN agencies, INGOs, national NGOs. At the original level, we were not that strong in terms of advocacy on humanitarian access. So in 2019, NRC with ACF and OCHA decided to create together a regional task force on humanitarian access and humanitarian principles, basically which aims at improving our analysis on humanitarian access, but also improving our advocacy. And it has been pretty useful because for instance, using this task force, we can think about how the INGOs are going to develop key messages, talking points that are then going to be carried out by donors and by the head of UN agencies that are invited in G5 summits or over key events that are happening in the region. Well, first of all, INGOs don't have access to this kind of a high level discussion. And second of all, it's very sensitive for us to push for this or that recommendation to the Sahel governments. So we have used that tactic several times in the region and it has been pretty useful, like donors, OCHA, like attending these events, sharing the messages, and then these messages or recommendations being included in the final statement of the conference. So for me, that's first a strong example, then partnering with Human Rights Group. I think that while it can be done openly, it can be done in the shadow, obviously, like sharing some evidence or some of our assessment of a situation. In once again in Sahel, we have a good example of an advocacy campaign that has been started by Crisis Action, but it's called People's Coalition for the Sahel. So it's an informal and diverse alliance of civil society organizations and INGOs that is really doing advocacy on protection issues and on the humanitarian crisis. It gathers about 50 different organizations, so local CSOs, international organizations, both human rights organizations and humanitarian INGOs, such as NRC. So thanks to this coalition, first of all, we've had access to high level decision makers, because we are together, we are stronger. And second of all, once again, it has allowed us also to speak out on some topics collectively, and so diminish the risk, in talking about protection issues, in talking about humanitarian access obstacles and so on. Then another mitigation measure is that we're using quite a lot at the regional level, but I think that we could use more. It's how to use also, how to use different voices, but to use high level voices. How can we use high level representatives, the special rapporteur on human rights of internally displaced people? How can we use these high level visits that we have in the region? And so for this, we need also the country level to collaborate with the regional level, and I think that we need Aboriginal to collaborate more with international level, with what is happening in Geneva, because sometimes we know at the very last minute that there is this visit that is happening. And for us, obviously we need to take some time, and it's very important that we have this vision. Another mitigation measure that we're using in the region, and well, especially looking at public advocacy, which is obviously even more sensitive and the private advocacy, is like a other record discussion with journalists. Obviously it's tricky because you need to make sure that the information that you're going to share cannot be tracked down to NRC operations. So it's always kind of sensitive and you always need to do a lot of research and context analysis before you can do that. And also you need to make sure that you protect the anonymity of the people that you're going to talk about. But this can be very useful. And this, we have a lot of cases in the Sahel. Again, we have cases of villages that are under siege by non-state armed groups. We cannot talk about which villages we're talking about. We cannot easily erase the voice of these people because we know that it's a modus operandi that there are going to be retaliation measures by the non-state armed groups on these populations. But no one is talking about it. So we also are thinking about how we can make sure that someone is talking about it. So yeah, so these are some examples of some of the mitigation measures that we are thinking about in NRC. Now when we're doing advocacy, we always do a risk analysis and an identification of mitigation measures. This is how sensitive the conflict of the context is today in the region. Once again, advocacy is a powerful tool and I just want to give two very quick examples on how advocacy has actually helped improve the humanitarian access in the region. The first example is about Niger. There is a need, while all of our region, for a stronger distinction between humanitarian stakeholders and military forces. In Niger, after what happened in Korea and with the killing of several humanitarian staff, the government had decided to impose armed escorts all over the country. So it meant that there was no single humanitarian operation that was possible without an armed escort. INJOs used the fact that the text was a bit blurry to consider that it was only imposed for two UN agencies and not to INJOs. But the text was still there and it was also the chilling effect and so on. So a lot of advocacy was done under the leadership of OCHA, ACF, several INJOs participated into that. And after nine months of advocacy decree was formulated and the decree basically was saying that now the decision was to be taken by regional authorities through coordination with stakeholders, including humanitarian organizations. Meaning that now we can take that decision and can advocate, we can have a dialogue with local authorities on armed escorts. So the situation has considerably improved thanks to advocacy. Then another example is we're doing a lot of advocacy on logistical issues. For instance, advocacy towards donors to have more funding for in-house flights. This is very basic stuff, but this is needed and without advocacy towards donors, like maybe we will have in-house flights but maybe it will take longer. In Burkina Faso, in Nigeria, in Cameroon also there is a strong need for advocacy on counterterrorism regulations. There are a lot of counterterrorism regulations that are either while preventing humanitarian actors from having a dialogue with non-Satan groups or it's not that clear. So there is this kind of a chilling effect. So through advocacy, we can negotiate humanitarian exemptions to these counterterrorism legislations. This has been done in chat, for instance, by the RCRC. So it's also another example of what can be done. And sorry, I think I was a bit too long, but just to conclude several remarks. Advocacy is a powerful tool. It can be an enabler to humanitarian access to improve the protection of civilians if used wisely. Once again, it needs a case by case risk analysis, okay? Coordination, coordination, coordination within the humanitarian community between different levels, national, regional, international, between national NGOs, NGOs, UN donors, and also with human rights organizations. And then I would like to say maybe a final word is that considering the growing constraints, considering the protection crisis that we see nowadays in Western Central Africa in almost all of the countries within which we operate, we need more and more stronger humanitarian leadership at national, regional, and international level. We need the humanitarian leadership to speak out, to help us raise the voice on the protection crisis and also on the fact that the humanitarian space is shrinking. Thank you. Thank you so much, Christelle. Very concrete examples. And I think it's great to dive into some of those specific countries that you just mentioned. And thanks, I mean, for me, it resonates a lot what you have said about the importance of strong evidence and also the role that the protection cluster, for example, can play. So I think I remember from also some of your remarks, the power of the network, the importance of collaboration, of coordination, and how this can actually be one of the mitigation measures so that it's not one actor or one organization taking all the risk. So for us, of course, at the GPC, it's why we have invested so much in strengthening the capacity of coordinators of protection cluster to lead collective advocacy. So this is why we have a dedicated task team. We are investing this year on training, capacity building, exchanges like this one so that our coordinators in the field are also stronger to lead on some of those collective advocacy. So thanks a lot for mentioning that. I just wanna go to our last speaker, Tamar, and then I will come back to all of you for some final thoughts. But Tamar, if you are with us and if you can hear me, I just wanted also to have your perspective because you have a bit of a different approach. You are a human rights organization working in operating in Lebanon, I think since 1998. It's a local NGO and you've been involved in some very courageous advocacy in Lebanon, speaking out on migrant workers' rights, advocating with human rights watch against unlawful deportation, but also promoting legal aid and access to education to undocumented children. And you've also been a convening power to bring together civil society actors around key global processes like the global compact for migration. So I wanted to ask you if you could speak a little bit about the local dynamics and the relationship that you see between humanitarian and human rights actors and how this partnership that has been mentioned by Vicky, by Christelle, and by Eva is actually working for you and whether you see this as a solution, as an alternative to conduct advocacy. So I wanted to hear from you, being an NGO active in the field of human rights and what we can learn also from your perspective. So over to you. Yeah, in general, we see advocacy work in the MENA region to be a very challenging work, tricky and dangerous as well, where not everyone is willing to engage in, whereas service provision is very much easier and in bulk, we see organizations are willing to engage in. But still there are organizations and human rights advocates who are ready to stand up for the rights of migrants and want justice to prevail. And in Lebanon, things are easier than in the Gulf region, but having this in mind, I would like to shed light on one example where Lokman Slim, the founder of UMAM organization and NGO who was documenting the Lebanese Civil War history was killed over a year ago. Yes. So as I said, in Lebanon it, things are more flexible, but we still see assassinations still take place. So Insan Association carries out advocacy activities and the true CCRM, which stands for the Cross Regional Center for Refugees and Migrants, where it holds the secretariat, it joins organizations from the MENA, Gulf, and the Southern Europe, and it provides space to discuss challenges and opportunities regarding migration in the region. So talking about, sorry, I'm reading out from the document where our advocacy manager prepared to present in this workshop. Okay, one example is about the segregation of duties between organizations who do advocacy work and provide services. So this is a very important point to hold independence, and to work independently because the service providers, which are governmental institutions, like the General Security, who issues visas, work permits, identity papers for the migrant workers, and the organizations who do advocacy work who are the non-governmental organizations. Okay, so if the two merge and do services together, then the quality of work will diminish and will weaken. So in Lebanon, we see some of the NGOs collaborate together to a greater extent with the governmental service providers, which diminish the independence of the NGOs who do advocacy work. Insan believes that this shouldn't happen. Advocacy work should stand alone to hold its strength, and the service providers should stand alone so that advocacy work could reach its objectives in an efficient way. Yes, so this is another point that I want to shed light on. Also another important work that Insan has done in the past is a research report. And the topic of this research report was, there's a law that says migrant domestic workers are not allowed to live out independently out of the residency of their employers. Even if the employer allows them to do so. So at one instance, the general security found out that a migrant domestic worker was living out independently and when the migrant domestic worker presented herself to renew her work permit, even though she was living in Lebanon for over 30 years, they wanted to deport her. So they imprisoned her for over three months. Her family came and seek help from Insan. So Insan took her case to a special court but eventually the lady who was imprisoned lost hope and wanted to leave the country. And the government said that if she wants to leave the country, she has to drop the case. So this is another situation where Insan intervened and opened up the case and worked in favor of for the migrant advocated in her favor. This is an example from Lebanon to create a precedence because a case like this hasn't happened in Lebanon, a court representation like this hasn't happened in Lebanon. This is all I can say in brief. If you have any questions, I'm happy to take them. Hopefully in the future, our advocacy manager could be present at this meeting and she will be more helpful than myself. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Tamar. Thank you so much for being with us. I think it's important to also hear from your perspective and thanks to the three speakers. We are almost at the end of this session but I just wanted to circle back to some of you if you want for additional reflections. I don't know, Vicky, if you wanna go first, if I can put you on the spot, but if there's anything you'd like to complement or respond to, amplify. And I also, I think it would be useful for us within the GPC to see going forward. What do you think, what would be your recommendation? What opportunities do you see for the GPC to support partners in better managing the tension between these two activities, whether it's in policy, in practice. I think for us, it would be useful to hear your perspective. And then Eva, Christelle, Tamar, if you wanna add in, please jump in. And also I'm counting on Alison and Carolina to help me out because I saw there was a lot of discussion happening in the chat and I wasn't able to follow all of it. So I mean, Vicky first, sorry for putting you on the spot and then maybe anyone else who would like to jump in. Thanks, Marie. And thanks to all the three speakers that are really interesting. And certainly some real common ground there, I think in terms of some of the key things that we all know are important. So we all know, I think, and agree that assessing all the risks in the full round, so the risk to affected populations, including a retaliation against them if we advocate on their behalf. I think that's absolutely essential. I think we all agree on that. And to base our strategy for advocacy on that understanding on that assessment of risks is absolutely imperative. Clearly, again, the importance of working coordination and partnership, it's a big thing for me. It comes very clearly from our research. It comes from my own operational practice, but I think it's great to hear that echoed here as well that whichever kind of organization you are working in some kind of partnership, I think it's really important for the reasons that people have highlighted. I guess one thing looking ahead that I wanted to highlight maybe, and it's a point that comes out of not just this part of our research program, but I think it cuts across quite a few of the areas of research we've looked at in terms of protection advocacy. And that is that I'm less convinced that there's a question about not enough evidence of impact of our advocacy, because actually it's not that often that advocacy does have significant impact. Unfortunately, our ability to influence the behavior of conflict parties is not that high, shall we say. It doesn't mean, however, that we shouldn't try. Again, I really strongly come back to this point about the humanitarian imperative to humanity as our core principle, our core operating principle. It's incumbent on us to use our voice, and it was great. Christelle, I think you made that point really, really loudly, which was great to hear. But for me, I think it less evidence, but more about targeting the evidence and the knowledge that we do have and we have collated together to those people who make the decisions about when and how to advocate either for their organization or for a country team or whatever. And in that regard, we've spent many years trying to persuade and encourage humanitarian coordinators in particular to lead by example in their role to advocate on protection of civil issues, to help manage those tensions for the operational partners in a humanitarian country team, for example, we've really pushed them to understand those tensions and manage them and to do more in terms of advocacy on protection issues. And that's great. And I think there's a lot of good examples where some actually have done some great work there. Not everybody is on the same level, but I think there's good evidence there that some of them get this and are doing really well. But I think there's a group of decision makers at the field level that we haven't really focused that much on, and that's come out of our research. And that is the country directors, country directors for NGOs, country directors for human agencies, country directors for the Red Cross as well. And what I'm hearing from a lot of their colleagues that are more junior and more senior is that it's that country director role which has a lot of authority to make a decision on when or whether or how that organization is going to do advocacy and how it manages those tensions with respect to access. And what does it mean it wants in terms of access? Why do you want access? What are you going to do with that? Speaking again back to some of the points that William made at the beginning. So I'm wondering if there's a way to replicate a little bit some of the energy we've placed on trying to educate. That sounds very patronizing, trying to encourage HCs to do more of this and do it better and targeting a similar type of approach to country directors across that spread of different types of organizations. Because those are the ones that kind of hold the key. They're the decision makers right for what happens in that country. I mean, I know the authority would vary between organizations, but I think that's a category of decision makers that we perhaps should focus our efforts in trying to encourage, persuade, educate, support in doing more advocacy on protection and getting them to understand a bit more clearly how to manage those very real tensions with advocacy and access. But I'll stop there. Thanks. Thank you so much, Vicky. I don't know if Eva, Christelle, Tamar, you would like to add anything from your side. Any ideas on looking ahead, looking forward for the GPC? I see Christelle, you have your hand up. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you, Marie. No, just to re-emphasize, I think once again that the coordination is to happen at the highest level. So the role of country directors in our region is essential. We're not doing anything if it's not carried out by the cities in terms of advocacy. And obviously, you know, like the city is also the one that is supposed to have the more in-depth knowledge of the context. You know, he's the one also who has the different relationship with potentially government representatives, with the UN agencies, with the HEA and so on. So he's really key also in this assessment of a risk. And then in carrying out the advocacy, obviously. I just want to go back again to the role of the humanitarian leadership. As you said, for me, it's essential. In the region, we have good and bad examples. As you said, I won't go into too many details, but we have some examples where like a very, very strong HEA, you know, like it has really helped. With your advocacy on humanitarian access, we'll only give positive examples and not, you know, negative example, but the example of CAR, you know, for me, it's an amazing example of what a humanitarian coordinator can do to help, you know, like a humanitarian community in pushing, improving humanitarian access through raising her voice. Also, maybe to, yeah, to go back again to how, you know, like looking ahead, what we can do with the GPC, what the GPC can do. For me, you know, like having maybe more clarity on the agenda, what's coming up in terms of a high level visit, but also to work together, preparing some talking points, work together also to make sure that basically the conflicts in our region are visible. Because in Central and West Africa, we have a lot of conflicts that are completely neglected, you know, we are, we have protection crisis, we have disasters, humanitarian access conditions, but we don't really talk about CAR, we don't really talk about DRC, we do talk about Sahel more, we do talk about Nigeria, but it's so sensitive that we don't talk a lot about it. So for me, the role of the GPC also is to make sure that these crises are put on the table, you know, and also to let us know when, you know, like you think that there is a high level visit that is being prepared, because for us, you know, and I'm taking the example of Nigeria, when we have this gain of high level visit, and here not talking about the GPC, but talking about OCHI in New York, for instance, and we have the ERC that is coming to visit, you know, for us it's essential that we have a direct line to share our messages and to make sure that these messages are going to be carried out by, you know, the high level representative, because when it's not the case, and when you have public statements that are saying the opposite, the opposite of what we tried to push for is just discouraging, frustrating, and anything else. So yeah, I really think that the GPC being in Geneva, knowing, you know, like other stakeholders in Geneva and having this kind of connection, I really think that it could help over. Thank you so much, Christelle, and I will let maybe Alison, Carolina, William reply also on some of the support that exists within the task team. I just wanted to give the floor quickly to Eva first. Thanks a lot, Marie. No, just a couple of quick thoughts in case they're useful. I'm just wondering, for example, in terms of risk, if, you know, our own fear of certain perceived risks, you know, could actually block us from doing any advocacy, even if the risk is not very clear, perhaps something worth considering. And then in terms of, I guess you can look at it as a mitigation measure, perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but yeah, what could help is obviously continuing the community engagement, being in touch with the community and understand what their own advocacy goals might be and see how, you know, how our, the organizations of focus can be complementary to that and they can inform each other. And then the last point is that I guess we, as organizations, we should like constantly be explaining who we are, what we do with all relevant actors, like on a regular basis and not just when we actually need something, but we do it on a, you know, on a more continuous spectrum. Just those points from my side. Thanks a lot, over to you. Thank you, Eva. Carolina, can I give you the difficult role of closing and maybe taking a few of the key takeaways from our side and what you've heard and how also the task team could be used, I think, from the GPC to push forward on some of what we've heard today, I think Christelle was also making some points very clear. So if you could help us with some closing remarks, that would be very useful. Yeah, thanks, Marie. Thanks a lot, yes. So for the colleagues that arrive afterwards, so I'm leading the advocacy task team at the GPC with Alisson that is here also with us today. And it has been a pleasure to listen to all the speakers and the different perspectives and the different contexts. I think that the GPC work in terms of advocacy for protection is one that is increasingly an investment in the sense of the humanitarian community and some actors that understood that advocacy for protection could be done differently or could be done more collaboratively, could be done with different reflections. I see also in the chat and many colleagues were raising very important points on the chat in terms of suggestions of moving forward, of possibilities of how to proceed the right things from perspectives that we could all agree about, but really the moving forward is the challenge. I think that access and advocacy, the tensions are very clear, are very real. Colleagues pointed out examples, pointed out the risks and the issues involved, but also pointed out possibilities and how their own organizations are bringing solutions to these issues. So really the points on perceptions and assumptions that is what also the ODI report flagged and raised and it is what the GPC advocacy test team now is doing in terms of bringing evidence about what is happening in reality and where advocacy has helped access, where advocacy has enabled protection. I think that building evidence is a major part of the work that we are doing there this year at the GPC task force and we are looking forward to continue this work. Indeed, as a broader perspective, we have also a campaign on access for protection that we are framing and we are learning with these different events about this reflection and the possibilities to move forward. I don't know if, Alisson, you have more points to add from the conclusions and the colleagues that raised many interesting points here. Over, back to you, Alisson Ormard. Thanks, Carolina. No, I think that's a fabulous job after a very, very rich discussion. So, yeah, nothing really to add from my side. I would just say that in terms of the GPC and the advocacy task teams role with collecting the evidence, collecting the learnings, just to add on that side, I mean, William mentioned it at the outset, but we do intend to do a more systematic review of some of the very concrete examples over the past few years where both advocacy is seen as having compromised access as well as those examples where advocacy has clearly enabled access and supported on different humanitarian and protection outcomes. And I think with that, we really hope to follow the thread a little bit more, even with the negative sort of examples. What happens after somebody is PNG? What happens after an organization isn't able to operate because they don't get the visas? I think the story often stops there, but going back to the residual risk element that Vicki, you mentioned, how do organizations then manage in those sort of, crisis moments when they don't have access anymore? How are different elements of their work taken on by other humanitarian actors? For instance, how are negotiations done to regain access, to regain accreditation? And I think that's another source of sort of important learning because it's not the end of the story when there is a very unfortunate sort of rupture for an organization and their operations, but rather how do we continue to learn about managing residual risks? And again, working collectively on that piece. So very much looking forward to taking that work forward with many of you here. And I think the final piece is just around that accountability element. So as we have the practical examples, more of the learnings, how do we then link some of this to other processes, other structures that can help in terms of clear accountabilities within humanitarian leadership, within organizational leadership to ensure there is that higher level backing and that it isn't just dependent on a really active CD or a really engaged HC where we can make progress on this, but how to bring it across the system going forward. But thanks so much and over to you, Marie. Thank you, Carolina and Allison. I don't know, William, if you want to come back in and circle back to you for like final remarks or if it's good on your side. Sorry. Well, thanks, yeah, thanks. I mean, this was really holistic, I think. What I really like is the careful approach with the touch of activism that is there. And I think this is what we need. Last week, maybe by way of concluding, we were in, Allison and I were in New York and Washington D.C. and we're trying to start lobbying for a policy shift in this area with member states, with Ocha. And I think we have a couple of good opportunities that we ought to try. I think the first that is important is that we have an emergency relief coordinator that is very attuned to this logic of being solid on negotiation and giving it a try. And I think what Christelle said, sometimes we need that direct line of communication, maybe sometimes the challenge is in the middle that is more careful than the leadership. I think finding a way to have this dialogue and benefit from a courageous ERC that is now at the helm of Ocha is extremely important. The second opportunity that we have is the Guterres, the Secretary General of the UN call to action for human rights. And I would like maybe by way of closing to quote a principle that is outlined there that we should take seriously by way of holding the UN accountable to that principle and the call to action from the Secretary General. And it says, and I quote, our purpose is above all to have a positive impact. This means being open to all available channels and opportunities to engage. There is a place for negotiation behind the scenes, a place for building and strengthening national capacities, a place for supporting different stakeholders. And there is a time when speaking out is essential. And I think we should take that simple principle outlined there and hold our system at large, especially the UN accountable to it as being the call to action from its Secretary General. So let's keep the hammer on and keep pushing until we make some breakthroughs in this area. Thanks all, and thanks back to you, Marie. Thank you so much, William, I think for those very inspiring closing remarks. I think we've reached the end of this event. As it was explained at the beginning, it's just the start of a dialogue and we will continue to engage and to support on all those issues. So yeah, I hope we can keep connected also with the GPC Advocacy Task Team. We will be sharing our contact in the chat if you want to continue the discussion and the collaboration. And just a big thank you to all our speakers, Eva, Vicky, Tamar, Christelle, I think we couldn't have had this discussion without you. So thanks a lot for all the wealth of experience that you have shared for the very concrete examples for bringing us back to the reality of what it is to manage those tension on a daily basis. I hope everyone has enjoyed the discussion and we look forward to reconnecting soon and I wish you a nice afternoon, evening to all of you. See you soon, bye-bye.