 Okay, I think we can get started then. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening to everyone online today. And welcome to this webinar on Access and Protection, Avoiding Putting People at Risk. My name is Ann Herrod Lang, and I'm delighted to be serving as your host today. For those of you who don't know me, I'm the Executive Director of PHAP. That's short for the International Association of Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection. This is the third webinar out of a series of four organized by the NRC Global Protection Cluster and PHAP with financial support from USAID, in which we're looking at the challenges faced by practitioners related to access and humanitarian protection. So with that, let's turn to the substance of today's event. As mentioned, this is the third webinar in a series of four in which we are looking at how humanitarian protection relates to access. Last month in our introductory event in this series, we asked you to submit the types of challenges related to access and protection that you are currently facing in your work or that you have faced in the past. We then grouped these by theme and designed each of the subsequent webinars in the series around your examples in order to really ensure that we're focusing on the issues that concern humanitarian practitioners the most in this area of access and protection. So in the last event, we looked at challenges that practitioners face when trying to gain or maintain access for protection. And then we'll focus in today's event on a different set of challenges related to access and protection, namely when humanitarian actors can actually end up putting affected people at risk through their actions and what can be done to mitigate this. So in order to carry out their work for the protection of affected people, humanitarian actors need access to reach those people with needs assessments and with services, but that access can bring with it negative consequences for those receiving assistance or protection services, for focal points and contact persons, and for communities as a whole. Knowing how to approach and address these potential risks related to access and protection is critical for humanitarian actors. To help us navigate this complicated area, we're joined today by a panel of experts, each of whom brings extensive experience on working on issues related to access and protection. I'm first of all very happy to introduce Muhammad Alaw, joining us from Sana'a, where he has been the Protection Cluster Coordinator for Yemen. Welcome, Muhammad. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. Thanks for being here. Next, we have Melanie Kismakar-Wiffing, Protection Advisor in the Global Humanitarian Team of Oxfam. She's joining us from The Hague. Welcome, Melanie. Hello, and thank you for having me. Our pleasure. And joining us from Nairobi is Sam Jordan, Director for Humanitarian Access with the International Rescue Committee. Thank you, Sam. Thanks very much. I'm happy to be here. And as our fourth panelist today, we have Andrea Castorina joining us from Cairo, where he is the Regional Program and Policy Officer working on protection and accountability to affected populations with the World Food Program. Welcome, Andrea. Thanks for joining us. Okay. We'll just make sure before we bring you in, Andrea, that your connection is working a bit later on. Before we jump into the discussion, I would just like to take a quick look at the types of issues that we're dealing with in this session. More than 350 registered participants did complete the pre-event questionnaire regarding issues that you faced in your work. And many of you also submitted specific examples of these. We found quite an even spread in the types of issues that you reported, including the risk of attacks in robbery, risk to focal points, concerns about needs assessments, putting people at risk, risks of aggravating communal tensions, and the risk of stigmatizing program participants. One area that particularly stood out were issues related to affected people having to travel to access assistance with more than half of respondents having experienced this issue in their work. So we're going to start by looking at situations where the way that assistance is provided or the types of access that humanitarian actors have actually expose people to protection risks. This includes the risk of robbery or attacks, as well as situations, as mentioned, when affected people have to travel a great distance to an access point, and that brings risk for them. So before looking at some of the specific examples that participants have submitted, I'd like to first turn to Muhammad. So, Muhammad, have you seen this type of... This is a very general category of situation. Have you seen this type of situation in practice? And do you have any very general recommendations first for this type of issue before we get into the specific examples? Over to you, Muhammad. Thank you so much again. Yeah, absolutely. Those risks are actually... They exist in our humanitarian work, for sure. And I would like to talk about two very important concepts that we... I would say we should consider when we deal with that, with the humanitarian work in order to avoid putting people at risk. The first concept is the risk analysis. It's very important that we really try to put some thinking and some time into analyzing what potential risks the people might be facing. And even before implementing our activity or our program, try to see what are the best ways to mitigate those risks. We do... Sometimes it might be if we do it on a repetitive way, or we do it throughout all our programming. We might get very familiar with that. And it might be not necessarily like a snapshot of... Okay, let's book ourselves into a room and try to think of the risks. Sometimes it might get to a time-automatic process, but it's very important to make sure that we are giving that consideration. It's important. Because otherwise, revolting the risks that might happen might take even more time and might take even... might create even more risks. The second concept that is very important here I would like to highlight is the principle in production mainstreaming of meaningful access. And it's very important here to look at three layers related to that principle. And both layers are the first one is that the people should be able to access the service. And of course, us as a humanitarian actor should be able to also access them. And the second layer is that we should make sure that the people are able to receive the assistance that they are entitled to. And the third concept is very important is that we need to make sure that people are able to benefit. So our job doesn't actually end when we just deliver the aid. We should be able to analyze what are the risks that can come beyond our delivery activity. And we should be able to mitigate those risks. So those are two concepts I would say that are very important to consider. Perfect. Thanks so much, Mohammed. On this first general question I'd now like to turn over to Melanie to see if you'd like to add any thoughts on this point. Over to you, Melanie. Thank you. Yeah, Mohammed already mentioned the importance of risk analysis. And I think that's a very important point you mentioned. And also the importance of it becoming part of our regular work. I think that's really a critical point because otherwise it might feel like an additional burden that we have to deal with and find time to. So just including risk analysis discussions in our regular team meetings or some meeting with communities. So including it in regular activities we already do. I think it's a really good point. So I mentioned including communities I think it's really important that they participate actively in our risk analysis. Of course in the first phase respond the first 72 hours we might have to start with a risk analysis in our own team. But as we move forward it gets increasingly important for community members and affected people to be involved in that risk analysis because they know that which risks they're likely to face. But also what are the best ways to overcome those risks. And the last point maybe we could spend lots of days probably doing risk analysis for one particular activity. Of course we also want to go ahead with the activity if it's possible. So a good thing to do is also trying to keep it simple and prioritize the risks that we and others think are and I think the people think are the most harmful ones and likely risks. So the process doesn't it doesn't get too big and takes over the whole of all of our efforts. Perfect thanks so much Melanie and Andrea did you want to Yes, first of all good afternoon and apologies for before I had some issues with the microphone. Good afternoon everybody and thanks for having, very happy to join this conversation. Then yeah on this point just to maybe unpack a bit the importance of involving communities in risk analysis. So we are talking about participatory risk analysis and we I think it's extremely important in this session to understand the different levels of risks that different people might be exposed to. So we need to unpack the idea of risk and the fact that different people are exposed to different risks. So this is very useful to basically come up with ad hoc basically ad hoc solutions for particular risk individuals and also we would be able to build on the experience and the insight of views of people and particularly exposed people to find mitigation measures prevention mitigation measures and oftentimes these solutions are available within the community. So having this community based approach and involving communities in participatory risk analysis can allow us to come up with very innovative solutions that are available in the community. And for example when we talk about movements to and from distribution and risks associated with this there are sometimes solutions that are available for particularly at risk groups. I'm just thinking about for example body systems patrolling along the routes or safe accompaniment to and from the distribution or for people with specific needs in terms of limited mobility there is sometimes opportunity to arrange porters or proxy receivers of assistance so there is a really wide range of possible local solutions that sometimes are not really visible to us but involving the people themselves I mean who know better than of course us who are the barriers to the risk that they say so we can perhaps come up with the most suitable and relevant solutions to prevent or mitigate these risks. Over. Excellent thank you so much Andrea. I'll just jump back over to Melanie I think you want to come back in with an additional point. Yes maybe for those among us who are managers or advisors and not doing their implementation as such as us going out actually to affected people there is of course also a way we can support this process which is by having open discussions and opening the acknowledging that there are of course risks involved in what we do and just by being present in the field and I think that can create a really good space for our teams to have that discussion and acknowledging discussing about the risks they might be seeing or feeling could exist and create that space to then also engage around identifying measures. Wonderful thank you so much so this has been a great introduction to the general area that we're talking about here. I'd like to now get into some of the specific examples that participants in the webinar shared beforehand so that we can look at some more practical situations in detail. So yes we'll be looking at a selection of these challenges asking our panelists what advice they would give to practitioners in these kinds of situations. We'll start with an example in which the way that assistance was targeted created concerns in certain types of households. We have the example up there on the screen this is coming from someone working with an INGO who writes in a context where we serve many female headed households, a household without any male members expressed fear about being targeted for theft or attack by other people in the community for receiving shelter assistance. Now to comment on this situation I'd like to turn first to Mohamed you have the floor. Thank you again. I mean this example was very important to help us looking into to go back a little bit to the risk analysis. It's very important that we do that risk analysis with taking into consideration gender power dynamic social status of the people that we work with. So it shouldn't be only one risk, general risk analysis that we believe the mitigation measures might help everyone in the community. Actually we need to break it down. We should know we should know who might be at a higher risk from the others and then adapt our mitigation measures based on that. It's very important as well is we don't approach the mitigation measure in a way that everyone can be vulnerable in the community. We should consider how we analyze the vulnerability of the people in a specific context who might be vulnerable in South Sudan might not really be in Iraq for example and that's very important we brought that micro lens into that and also to go back to what Melanie and Andrea also mentioned and complimented on this when it becomes part of our normal programming it's very important that we make sure that the people that are in the front line are part of that analysis. People that know the culture for example female head of household might be might be at higher risk inside one country but different from one area to another even and that's very important to look at that and my last point on this specific example is also very important to see who can be let's say our allies in a community who can really lie on work with to mitigate those risks when a female head of household might be at higher risk it means that we might be able to have some sort of community structure that we can work with to improve that some sort of community based women groups for example that are able actually to support us in the over. Very important points indeed thanks Mohamed. We'll now turn to a second example this is coming in from South Sudan submitted by someone working with a UN agency there where access only allows for delivery in specific locations forcing affected people to travel to collect assistance so our participant writes in South Sudan where access to most of the affected communities was hindered by insecurity from different armed groups protection services including assessment and distribution were provided through mechanisms including rapid response missions RRM during this period one or two villages are selected as meeting points where people from all other villages will have to come to avail services this means that vulnerable women and girls including persons with disabilities have to travel long distances and even at night to collect assistance and return to unsafe routes. So I'm turning back to you Mohamed for your thoughts on this different but related example coming from South Sudan back to you. Yeah unfortunately emergency response in South Sudan is happening now for too many years but the same time they might be part of the side of that that we have learned I mean for that let's a little bit look into a general to look at that from a general point of view before we look into it from South Sudan but like it's also important to revisit and rethink our way of doing emergency response in the humanitarian sector and every day or every year unfortunately the conflict is becoming so much decentralized at a very micro level inside one town so you will have different areas of pockets of conflict and one of them is South Sudan it's very important we look into how much we can localize the emergency response how much we can actually work with the community itself how much we can work into through local groups through local organizations how much we can actually be able to preposition our materials or our items in the field and work through that it's also very important that since it is a conflict area we need a continuous conflict analysis look into how front lines are shifting and who is affected and what are the safe routes that are left for the people and also of course engage the people in identifying those routes and so in this example particular example there's already they already selected a village to distribute and people are going there but it's very important to see if we did the right choice on that and we selected the best one and also it's important to consider what are we delivering in that emergency response and how we are delivering that and see where we can actually with our modality or the item or even if it's a protection how can we do it in that way some of the examples mentioned from Andrea at the beginning I would like also to recall here because I feel they are relevant the concept of trying to help if the people need to walk and there will be people with ability or there might be different people at different level of risk it's important to look into community structures again maybe we'll have casual labor we'll help the people and what item are we distributing to the people and how much they can actually carry it back home if it is an asset over very good thanks so much and I see from the comments in the chat and then also some comments coming through the question line that your reflections are very much resonating with the participants so thanks so much for the analysis and for the reflections Mohamed just point to our participants it would be wonderful as well if you want to discuss these examples yourselves as well using the chat and we've also put up a poll in the upper left hand corner so that you can share with everyone what would be your number one recommendation to a practitioner experiencing one of these situations regarding how to approach a situation where assistance leads to risk for example as we're discussing now robbery or attacks or other related risks we'll post a similar poll for each of the categories that we have throughout the session today so that you can continue to share your own input and your own recommendations as well and we'll have all of that then of course compiled in the archive as a resource after the event is over today so I'd like to turn now on the same example turn over to Melanie did you want to come in on this one over to you Melanie yes I wanted to underline a point that Mohamed made just on this example especially in the context of the first you mentioned we've been delivering humanitarian assistance for a long number of years already and the need to see how it's going something that we hadn't mentioned yet but I think it's really important that we monitor how those events evolve and what is happening so in the specific situation they are travelling on distances we're assuming from the example that there is unsafe and that there is incidents happening it's important for us to monitor so what is then happening not just two areas of analysis before the activity implement our activities and it's done but go back as part of the distribution monitoring as part of follow up discussions really look at how did we play out where our mitigation measures effective or not and rethink for next time and learn from it especially in situations like South Sudan where this problem comes up again and again of course so it's really important that we look at it learn from it and then adapt for next time great thanks a lot Melanie I'd like to turn now to our next example this is coming from someone working with an INGO in Nigeria we've actually received several examples regarding situations where there are attacks by armed groups after assistance has been delivered and this is one of those so the participant writes in northeast Nigeria after food distribution it was observed that there was always an attack at Nagala by non-state armed groups on the community to loot the food distributed so Mohamed let me throw this back to you and see if you have any advice or reflections for someone experiencing this type of challenge back to you Mohamed it's very important to ask ourselves in this example a few basic questions the first question is why the soldiers are doing that will this food be delivered to their people and still they are doing that or we are talking about an armed group that completely has no accountability to the people that we are trying to distribute food to and that will be very important to look at because if it is a completely different armed group that doesn't have let's say the community acceptance and doing that it's very important than to rethink where we are distributing the food how we are distributing the food and whether other alternatives can work or even and definitely to consult the people how can we mitigate such risk because there might be even more risk if we stop distributing the food for example and those are very important to look at so basic conflict analysis is very important here and on the other side if it is actually their people then it's very important here to look at how did we negotiate our way in to distribute the food in the first place did we do enough on the engagement did we do enough on the advocacy level into making sure that aid being delivered without creating harm on the people or at least it's delivered to the people that they are in need before for this those are the key points that I would like to share unless others also have some other thoughts from their experiences over Thanks Mohamed it's really important questions I think to ask in this type of situation I know that we have several panelists who want to come in on the next examples I'm going to move right ahead to example 1.4 this comes from someone working with an INGO in Afghanistan and it's a situation where we're looking at risks associated with cash assistance so our participant writes local criminal and armed groups became aware of cash distributions despite these being organized carefully people receiving cash are put at risk or asked for a percentage of the amount received now in this one I'd like to go first to Andrea Andrea you have the floor what are your reflections on this type of example Yes perhaps I can try to unpack a bit the scenario based on my past experience in Afghanistan so I think like here we have perhaps a mix of different issues some issues are related to contextual factors of course conflict presence of non-state armed groups and insecurity in some areas another area of concern is also then some structural shortfalls of the architecture I would say in Afghanistan at least when I was there most of the assistance, emergency assistance was being delivered in urban house mostly under control of the government but still closed enough to contested areas and many beneficiaries were coming from contested areas or areas under control of non-state armed groups to receive assistance and then go back to their places of origin again under control of non-state armed groups this assistance was being delivered mostly through government led structures the so-called petition system that is in place in Afghanistan it's not only related to provision of humanitarian assistance but more broadly to services to communities humanitarian assistance again is provided in China through this government managed system which means that the government is directly involved in assessments and in the delivery of assistance so I think all these factors pose huge protection issues and especially in this context cash based interventions cannot be protection neutral so I think the bottom line here is that it's extremely important to consult people beneficiaries through a participatory analysis and ask them what is the best and safest way they see to receive assistance which transfer modalities they prefer cash in kind or a mix for example which kind of delivery mechanism they prefer cash on site which means they need them to travel back with the cash on themselves or vouchers or transfers so I mean considerations like this are extremely important if we really want to find localised mitigation measures protection wise I think here the example refers to some sort of regular or ad hoc taxation that is applied by non-statem groups to people who receive assistance another issue is the risk of retaliation again in this case as the government is directly involved in the provision of humanitarian assistance whether it is involved in humanitarian architecture including beneficiaries receiving assistance from the government sometimes are also at risk of being subject to retaliation and attacks for being considered as supporting the government somehow and then again another issue and then I stop there is the heavy involvement of local authorities and community gatekeepers including Malix community representatives in assessments and delivery of assistance which means that we over rely and this is a common issue in protection interventions and not only in protection we over rely on community leaders representatives or alleged representatives and local authorities which means that this opens to a lot of space for corruption, abusive practices and sometimes we also fail short in terms of betting intermediaries in this case of Afghanistan most of the gashes is also provided through vouchers and vouchers have to be then exchanged in specific shops the way that the shop owners are vetted and monitored sometimes is not enough we don't apply all the required measures and of course beneficiaries are exposed to some abusive practices over thank you so much some very important points there Andrea on this I'd like to also turn to Mohammed for his inputs over to you Mohammed briefly on this I'd just like to share that what can be actually useful in any distribution and specially in cash based interventions or distributions is to break down the process of that because more or less we need to register people, we need to verify we need to have some sort of community awareness maybe sometimes or sometimes we prefer not to and then there will be the distribution itself and then after that by theory which is it's a must I would say a post distribution monitoring so when we consider each phase or each step of the process of distribution and then look at what can happen to the people at each stage that will help us to really know what is the biggest risk to mitigate and which one we need to start with more urgently I think that can be a good way of doing that to break it down into steps and then look into which step is actually have the most high the most risk on the people and then work on that usually it's the physical distribution itself and what can follow when the people on their way back home for example a lot of the risks might be happening if we go back to the attack or the robbery and that's to go back a little bit on so and I can see a lot of organizations are aware of this right now where they work with the distribution points distribution points sometimes they even change the whole system they have from using a money transfer agency into money in an envelope but of course with some of the mitigation measures so there is a lot of things going on I would say seeing many different context and very important to look and learn on that especially when it comes to cash rate and prevention over great thank you Mohammed and over to Sam as well Sam could you come in on this one please thank you sure thanks this quick point this was an example that happened in a program I was running in Afghanistan many years ago now we were transporting cash for a distribution to a village and it got stolen on the way to we and obviously the community very upset about this thinking a few days what we could do anyway in the meantime the community found out who had stolen the money which was robbed from the vehicle and sent it to to tell us this and that they recovered the money they also added that they were going to burn down the houses of the perpetrators so obviously we advised and tried to avoid that happening so the two points really one having good relations with the community and valuing that and taking time to build it can mitigate both risk of something happening but also potential mitigation measures afterwards and then back to the risk analysis and security management again not mitigating just the likelihood of something happening but also the impact because when an incident happens you don't want it to get out of control and then generate additional risks to more people or to access so that planning security management preparedness critical instant procedures and so on being ready to respond to risks being realized you can never eliminate the risk so make sure you think of the other side as well. Great thank you very much Sam and I'd just like also to acknowledge and thank those of you in the chat who are sharing related resources thanks for that poll and also those who are sharing some insights and some further examples Mahir Mohamed thank you so much for contributing there as well as now the responses on the poll we've had a number of really interesting points come up through the poll which I'm sure not everyone has been able to read through in detail but that's why we have the recording so it would be possible to see that afterwards so thanks so much and do keep that coming as well as any questions you may have for the panelists. I'd like to bring up just one final issue a specific example rather on this issue before we move on to the next one this is related to how trying to reduce risks from one type of access restriction in this case having to regularly go to a collection point can actually lead to other protection risks arising instead. This example reads as follows in order to reduce the number of times that residents struggling with mental health issues had to go to collect their medications they received three months worth of antipsychotic medications in advance however as a result we observed an increased number of household break-ins. Melanie can I turn to you for your reflections on this particular example over to you. Thank you. Yes of course from the example we're not quite sure what the reason was for giving three months but we could very well imagine that it was actually an immigration measure to reduce the number of frequency of distribution of the medication what could maybe put people at risk because the distribution would become too predictable so apparently the option was chosen to give a vigoration at one point which then seems to affect to break-ins maybe because vigourations were more visible or because it was more attractive to actually break-in because there were vigourations to take then if it had been more frequent but smaller distributions and I think this example highlights two important things and one is what we do and how we identify mitigation measures if first of all we should of course involve the community and then to find the mitigation measures maybe this was actually the case in this specific example and that's the reason why they moved to a three-month distribution in one go because again as I mentioned earlier and as Juan mentioned as well communities know best what the risks are likely to be and what would be acceptable compromise or a way of mitigation but this also highlights the need for us to think through the risks that we might be creating with our mitigation measure we can't just simply stop at identifying the risk and coming up with one mitigation measure implementing it without questioning it so we have to do again a risk analysis also from mitigation measures that we identify because otherwise we might be creating even worse risks potentially and that would like to bring an example that highlights this point as well and we did a research about lighting in refugee camps and the refugees had identified that the leg of lighting was actually increasing the risk of harassment for women and girls when they went to latrines at night so the first mitigation measure identified including with together with refugees was distributing households for the land so they could use them when they go to latrines at night but there was only limited the number of solar lamps and they were often used inside households it was still quite obvious and attracting attention when someone actually used the solar lamp to go outside to the latrine and so actually harassment didn't stop it actually continued and for some it even increased because it was even more evident when women girls went outside at night to use latrines and this is then where the importance of monitoring also our mitigation measure kicked in we went back and it was identified that the mitigation measure was not working as such it was actually exposing them to additional risks or the same risk continued and then the refugee camp residents identified that maybe it was better to install a bigger lighting around the latrine in this situation making it less obvious and we're taking households for the land but again in other situations that might not have worked so looking at looking at our mitigation measure thinking through the possible risks that we might be creating with them and the monitoring the effect our mitigation measure is having is it working or not are we creating new risks and adapting again great thank you Melanie and I see that Brian in the chat has posted a link to the study thank you so much Brian very helpful indeed now to Muhammad could I turn to you on this example 1.5 any further reflections to add just one point is very important to consider since the example is related to mental health it's very important to highlight that mental health interventions they need even further analysis of what risks they can bring for the people so not only the risk that it's brought up here but also by nature there might be stigmatization against the people and it's very important and we have responsibility to make sure that there's already a lot of constraints and blocks for mental health in many contexts so we need one block less so if that risk happening the people that we're having more break in it might actually stop the people to receive the services and that would lead even to further risks on the people especially on their mental health over thanks so much Muhammad so now we'll be turning to another type of issue so now we'll be looking at situations when focal points are put at risk so first you address it generally so we're looking at when we need to work through community leaders or focal points but our visits and communication with them puts them at risk so perceived as giving power to them cooperating with the government et cetera so first taking a look at this set of issues generally I'll turn first to Melanie for your reflections and then any of the other panelists who would like to come in Muhammad and Sam so first over to you Melanie thank you and we've seen at the beginning of our session in the short survey that was done before the webinar that this is one of the most striking issues for many of the participants reading part one to start off I think there's different reasons of course why we work with community focal points and it could be community focal points village leaders, community leaders volunteers or community groups of course or community protection monitors and so I'm including all of those in my reflections not just the individual focal points but also volunteers and such and of course the reason why we would be working with them is we could be doing remote programming so it's the only way we have access we could be in order to gain access we need to go through the different community focal points but also because we want to work with community focal points to actively engage communities give them space to play an active role and be sure that our assistance is of course relevant and pertinent to the need and then of course community-based programming including community based protection work for instance where we also work through and with community members and support them to take initiative so I'll be looking at all those in my reflections and so when thinking about the risks that focal points could be exposed to as a result of us working with them or them working with us those risks could come from different actors and stakeholders could be authorities as already mentioned in the introduction here it could be armed groups it could be criminals, gangs but it could also be other community members and that's for a different range of reasons it could be because of the nature of the work that the community focal points do with that so it could be because it's very sensitive because they are working on protection issues it could be because they are involved in the targeting for distribution to affected people in which case they could see increased pressure because they seem to have power until gets or not included in distribution list but they can also be at risk just simply because of the fact that they are seen to be interacting with outsiders with us with the maintenance be that flow to international NGOs or UN agencies and that's for a number of reasons they could be perceived as being an ally of authorities because they're interacting with us and we could be seen as being allies of authorities they could be seen as informants as a result they could be seen as holding power just information is of course power but also the power to include someone in distribution list they could also be seen as threatening the position of authorities for instance if we do community based protection work and we engage with community protection groups and work with them on protection which is of course normally the primary advantage of authorities authorities could feel threatened that those groups or focal points are working with are taking over their space or their place focal points could also be seen to be making a personal gain from the work they're doing so there's many different reasons that could mean that they are at risk and the type of risk that we could see could be reprisals, threats of violence could be extortion harassment, arbitrary arrests and pressure from other community members or bribery, corruption attempts so there's many many different facets to this so some things that we should take into account when we work with focal points and able to do it in a safe way for them of course if we should first have an understanding of the community so what are the power dynamics that exist who has what power if or more so also knowing who might feel threatened by whom because putting any kind of resource and that can be information it can be a food distribution it can be cash distribution or the power of having outside contact can of course change power dynamics and people who are in a power position before they are there might feel threatened because they feel threatened that they do power in their degrees and we also need to look at gender dynamics when we work with focal points of course women often are in a more vulnerable position when it comes to participation in communities so we need to pay attention to that and also if we then include them more proactively at focal points we need to pay attention to how that plays out both at community level and also at household level as well and conflict dynamics need to know what conflicts exist in and around the community because by us intervening in that community they could also see us as changing those dynamics and as a result the focal points of course also changing those dynamics we also need to know how people are organizing and how they are interacting so we also know how information flows of course and then we come to the risk analysis that we've already been mentioning a couple of times now we need to do a risk analysis with the focal points because they are the ones who are going to take a lot of risk potentially so they are the ones who need to make an informed decision of whether they're wanting to take the risk of being harassed by police for instance or not again they know the risk that they're likely to face and they can tell us what could be some good way of mitigating that risk and it should be a joint discussion we might think of a few things that they hadn't thought of and vice versa and we should also keep in mind that the mitigation measure that we'll find might not work for every single focal point one mitigation measure might work for a male community leader whereas another one might work for a female recently appointed IDP focal point and I think what's really important is that the roles of focal points and volunteers are really clear in the community as well because some of the risks also are created because of the misunderstanding or miscommunication of the roles and the power and the men that those focal points have so there might be expectations that are created between the communities and the focal points that we're working with just because we have the ability to communicate it what focal point is actually working on so that's also something to keep in mind. Wonderful, thank you so much Melanie for unpacking this whole issue around the risk of focal points being put at risk everything from the types of risks we're talking about to the different means of analyzing the situation try to mitigate those risks so thank you very much Sam and then Andrea for any additional comments and additional thoughts on this category of issues first to you Sam, over to you Thanks, yeah so this is a slight variation but I think the learning point from it applies to the focal points that we've just discussed there as well so sometimes we kind of recruit focal points, right focal points onto staff people are well connected with communities to do government liaison, community liaison and so on so I'm just thinking back to early days in the Syria conflict or 2013 and we were running some programs in some pretty scary places with hostile pretty hostile armed groups around so I was completely dependent on staff and colleagues from the area keeping me safe but there was also a two way thing some of the teams felt that they could handle most things because they were from the area from the community and so on but the situation the context was being radically changed by the armed groups that were coming in because they had a vision of society they had foreign fighters and foreign commanders and so on and so people even though they were from the area and well connected we increasingly found challenges in being able to navigate that and I had one chap who said yep I can go and solve this I'll fix this and talk to the armed group and come back with some things that we just couldn't deliver and basically raise the stakes and I think as realised in Melanie's remark the stakes and the risks in these situations can be very high they can be deadly so we have to really work through that to try and understand the new situation and so I guess the point is whether it's liaison people you bring on to staff all working with focal points not just transferring the risk assuming that they know everything about how to operate in a conflict environment conflicts change the context they change social relations they change the politics etc they change who has influence they don't just assume that focal points can navigate all of that that they know all of the risks that they might face work through it together understand the situation as it is don't make assumptions don't just transfer the risk and hope for the best share it and share the thinking as well so I think that was just the point don't assume focal points know everything and can manage all the risk on their own excellent Sam and I see a similar point being made in the chat from Puja thanks so much really resonates clearly I'd like to turn then to Andrea Andrea over to you just quickly building on what a very comprehensive overview provided by Melanie about the different possible reasons why focal points can be at risk and narrowing down a bit the discussion as per the most recent intervention from Sam focusing more on conflict conflict affected the environment and the sensitivity of engagement of community focal points in this specific context I would like to maybe stress a bit some considerations related to engagement of community-based mechanism around self-protection structures so let's say here the sensitiveness is by design it's just strictly related to the nature of the intervention is a protection intervention that uses available resources in the community so community-based self-protection mechanism of course because of the nature of the intervention itself and the level of engagement of community focal points the level of risk can be exacerbated in this case even though we are of course aware of the amount of risk I think is extremely important to to support whenever possible such community-based structures around self-protection mechanism and there are of course some practical measures that can be put in place I would say some of these measures can be for example adopting a faith approach so we start smoothly we start with less contentions activities and then once like we have already established trust with the community based committees groups whatever they are and we increase our understanding of the local context and the dynamics and everything then we can maybe move to more sensitive activities an example can be based on my personal experience supporting protection of education and conflicts affected communities again in Afghanistan in this case we started working with school-based committees but of course we didn't start straight away with very sensitive protection of civilians for example the engagement at Boga negotiation and things like that we started with more less sensitive activities such as rehabilitation of school buildings, rehabilitation of wash facilities within schools and things like that but in the meantime we gained some more thorough understanding of the context and we established the mutual trust with the community based structures another example can be the use of friendly spaces for implementation of social recreational activities light awareness raising and things like that before introducing community based referral mechanisms or light case management implemented through community referral for example and then another thing would be invest heavily on the community based mechanisms so I keep community also some were saying we should not assume that they since they are from that place and they are part of the community then they know how to deal with everything and that's it absolutely not we need to invest on working with them and keeping them developing negotiation for example and conflict sensitiveness capacities and also another thing would be to develop together with them a context specific early warning indicators triggers and mitigation measures so that we are able to unpack the risk together with them and then we are able to support timely interventions mitigation measures whenever the risk reach the point of extreme risk let's say and then we need to put in place some mitigation measures in that sense and the last point would be also to agree on conflict sensitive and safe communication and reporting protocols with them so perhaps our presence in the community can raise alarm or can be too visible sometimes or depending on the volatility of the security situation we might not be seen as positive actors in some circumstances in this case perhaps instead of doing on-site visits we communicate via phone so the way of interaction and receiving updates and reporting can be let's say conflict sensitive itself and should be agreed together with the community to make the structures excellent thanks so much Andrea very useful to in particular have those examples that you shared and some very important points coming out of those now let's turn back once again to Melanie before we get into the specific examples Melanie you have the floor thank you yes just building on two points that Andrea was mentioning one the need to maybe face approach with the trust with the communities to work on protection as a very sensitive topic and also the need to accompany the community-based mechanisms and structures that we work with on protection I worked a lot on community-based protection work with the committees and one thing that happened a couple of times as well we had established that trust and of course going well we had the clear understanding of risks and the communities had clear understanding of the risks they were taking and how to mitigate them and when the accompaniment and support of us then our team became important is when the context suddenly changed suddenly there was a change in the control of the area and everything that happened developed and the relationship that happened built that had been built were either lost or needed to be rebuilt and I think the committees having a partner to talk about about the changing dynamics and the changing context to not feel alone and left alone in dealing with that change and how to to again build those relationships and then you trust and see what is feasible and what risk has changed great thanks so much Melanie so then let's turn now to a couple of examples the first one comes from Columbia from an individual working with the UN agency there where the interactions between focal points and humanitarian actors risk making them seem more threatening to armed groups so our participant writes in Columbia there were times when visits to community leaders could not take place as this would single them out and increase their risk we would increase the number of actors working on an issue to reduce the risk to individuals or strengthen the capacity of community leaders using approaches that were not seen as threatening to armed groups and Melanie what are your reflections on this example from Columbia yes so first looking at Columbia at the moment or the last couple of years I think we many of us have read articles about attacks against community leaders and human rights defenders so even though that the example he doesn't mention which risk was increasing as a result I think we can all imagine what this could mean it could be a risk that it could also be the risk of being killed for standing up for the community just to remind us of that the context in Columbia and this is coming from different actors including armed groups and criminal gangs so not quite sure in the example what the community leaders were exactly doing and how they were engaging around what but it could be for instance that they were it could be protection monitoring work they could have been providing information on the protection situation in their community it could have been sharing other information it could just have been being the point of access for the community but what all these have in common is that this is an external contact outside of the community so being able to share information about the situation that's going on with an external could be seen in this in the context of Columbia as a threat to the group or the actress at her holding control of a resource for instance in the area so that could have been one of the issues here being for them to be seen as retouching in touch with externals and being potentially seen as informing on people or informing on the situation and maybe even calling actively for attention what's going on. What the example is also mentioning is that the community just adapted their approach to something so maybe they were actually doing also advocacy work or local campaigning or even national campaigning or negotiating for the respect of the community's rights so that's not quite clear about could have been something to that or really specific protection work as well quite sensitive and the example already identifies the mitigation risks mitigation strategies that have been identified and put in place one is reducing the risk to individuals by actually spreading the risk meaning engaging a bigger number of individuals thereby the individual becomes less visible and less out of the group and apparently that was one way they used in the second one we already discussed this using different approaches to their work that we're doing which maybe were less confrontational more behind the scenes yes so some things to keep in mind here is the knowing about the context so knowing for instance Inc. for Columbia the difficult position that human rights defenders and community leaders land rights defenders are in and high level of risk they are taking in that context knowing about also conflict situation dynamics in the area there's many smaller groups the prior military groups knowing who is where and what interests they have in that specific situation and knowing the stakeholders of course that are around so it seems like our community submitted to the example that together with the community leaders a risk analysis of what their presence and their interaction with the community leaders meant in terms of risk for them and what mitigation measures that they could take so it shows them nicely how they identified two different mitigation measures and applied them at the same time and then also maybe they were monitoring how it was playing out and that it actually reduced the risk. It seems to be in fact that it reduced the risk the way they were interviewing them afterwards. Excellent thank you for that Melanie and another example I'd like to throw your way this is coming from a local NGO in Indonesia so we'll travel across the world now and the second example that we received focuses instead on potential risks faced by focal points due to pressures from the community so the person who submitted it writes when distributing humanitarian assistance we collect data for targeting from the focal points i.e. the village officials but then during the distribution process people who were not listed interrupt the process and then the focal points have to explain how the data was collected and why these individuals were not listed even though there was no violence it was a high tension situation and the distribution process took more time as a result. Melanie what are your thoughts on this one? This is an example where community focal points in this case village officials were very actively involved in the targeting for distribution this could have been none of course for a number of reasons it could have been because of remote programming or it was the way of communication and ensuring that the community gave a point of view on vulnerabilities in the community it seems however that maybe the process that was the way the process that was set up may be exposed to villages to the village officials to pressure from community members so it may be it was the case of not enough being enough clarity on the targeting and not being communicated what the criteria were and also what role the focal points were playing or maybe on the methodology it also shows us that of course being involved in the targeting process can give a position of power to people and that can also be then that can be not be accepted by other members in the community so knowing who already holds power and village officials so maybe other groups were left out in the targeting process who were not happy and if we then didn't have a proper complaint mechanism or something like that where people could share frustrations or doubts or questions about what was going on could lead of course to increase pressure on the focal point even more if it was indeed a remote programming and the local NGO not sure if they were able to be present and what level of access the community members did have to also the local NGO to discuss about maybe their frustrations or fears or doubts about targeting process so the risk analysis took of course not just look at the distribution itself and how we get the information through the focal points but also what we put in place to take the pressure of them so being clear and transparent about what they're doing and how they're going to do it but also once they have shared information on targeting and criteria or even potentially suggestions of the people to receive assistance that all that communication is quite clear with community members and being done in a transparent way that leaves less room for more informal pressure I would say or could leave less room for informal pressure if it's being done in a transparent and open way that's quite clear and similarly if we have a complaint mechanism where people can raise a discontent with the process and the results and that directs more to what that mechanism instead of leaving it with the individual with the focal points who were involved. Great thank you Melanie and Sam could I ask you to come in on this one as well over to you. Yeah I think Melanie I captured all the key points but I just thought it's worth highlighting in the current context global context where I imagine most organisations on this call are operating with some degree of remote management in nearly all the countries they work and for this great opportunity around localisation and empowering staff in the field and so on but I think this illustrates that we also need to remember the pressures that can be there as well so staff from outside the area or from outside the country may not often won't know the place as well and have disadvantages but sometimes there being there can take pressure off of local people because if you come from the outside you're not necessarily subject to some of those same pressures. You can always leave people that are from that place have to stay there afterwards so I think this particular example is very well worth thinking through the pressures that are on people that are currently left while others can't travel and are perhaps taking on additional responsibilities I think celebrate that as an opportunity for empowerment but support them I think and things like the complaints mechanisms clear communication with communities in other places sometimes we've removed the actual decision making from the field locations so in Syria and then had it at the sort of rear office as it were in Jordan or somewhere and made that very clear but also with that make sure that there's clear complaints and communication channels for address and so that's an example as Melanie put forward about looking how you can take pressure off people that have to deal with these questions. Excellent thanks for that Sam so now we'll move on to the third type of issue that we're looking at today this is when humanitarian programming risks aggravate communal tensions so when humanitarian actors have access and are targeting the most in need but this is then further aggregating tensions along ethnic or other dimensions so for this I'd like to turn first to Andrea what would be your main recommendations for someone faced with an issue of this type in general Andrea and then we'll get into a couple of examples so over to you right thanks well ok perhaps before trying to provide some possible recommendations I would say that this intra or inter community tensions can be let's say caused or exacerbated due to possible different factors. First of all is how we provide our assistance and our intervention of the how of our assistance and the whom we target so basically with being targeted we are prioritizing people of course this is a huge source of possible tension another let's say typical consideration of inter community tensions classically we can refer to mistrust bias lack of information or misinformation competition on limited resources or also volatile security environment so these are context where we have typically IDPs or refugees and community who share the same area let's say and a third more general consideration is on the fact that especially when we talk about intervention we should not focus only on the most vulnerable people I think protection sensitive interventions are not about only at least about the most targeting the most vulnerable people but especially are about having conflict sensitiveness so we are looking at peaceful coexistence between communities and possibly also social cohesion saying that I would say that the first mistake that we often do is to consider communities as a monolithic entity so we need to understand that communities are not monolithic entities we have to unpack the idea on the concept of community we need to understand which kind of groups are within the community which consequences which power dynamics are there including presence of gatekeepers and marginalized groups what are possible connectors and dividers within the community all of these of course shape what a community is so it's a very complex entity so we need to invest time sometimes we don't have time but I have to say that whenever we rush interventions it's very likely that this intervention falls short in this poor in terms of protection sensitiveness and there is a huge risk of doing harm so we need to understand communities and make also sure that communities understand us so who we are, which mandate our organization has why we are implementing this specific activity, why we are targeting these people rather than other people so mutual understanding we need to understand communities communities need to understand us and what we do important to have also the full picture of the community before providing assistance meaning we need to disaggregate data when we do assessment along gender, age and diversity lines of course looking also perhaps at marital status economic situation as much detailed information as possible and disaggregation of data would of course help us to have this full picture and plan properly who, where and what to support it's also important to communicate properly this targeting criteria and prioritization to communities we can have the best possible targeting in place but if communities don't understand why we are targeting some people with some interventions rather than other people with other interventions then of course there are serious gaps there that can undermine the process and whenever it's possible I would say we should also involve communities themselves in defining the targeting approaches so if we for example look at community self-targeting that are approaches that are particularly relevant for example whenever we look at asset creation community-based projects that can benefit different communities in this case the community can play an active role in defining the targeting approach itself and we can mitigate the risk of tensions we should also give ground to communities everybody in the community to file complaints so we should provide space for re-evaluation of inclusion and exclusion allegations and also the language that we use I would say it's very important when we build our narrative of the crisis we build our narrative of protection issues we should avoid it's very tempting to use very alarming language and threats I don't know security-related issues for example we should be conscious anyway that these can fuel inter-community tensions so perhaps we should avoid to say I mean to focus too much on security issues crime and the volatility of the security situation in and around refugee camps because of course then we provide good arguments to us communities to blame displaced communities for deteriorating the security environment for example so the use of the language is extremely important and also I would say that we should try as much as possible to focus on needs rather than status and also adopt an area approach so if we focus on status saying for example IDPs or refugees or migrants are particularly vulnerable for example now on top of my mind they have the COVID-19 situation if we say migrants are very vulnerable to get infected by COVID then of course we risk to fuel that kind of a stigmatization discrimination and this can create of course inter-community tensions while we should focus on needs and as much as possible adopt an area approach which means that we target everybody who has the same kind of needs and who live in that specific geographic area another thing I would say whenever possible we should involve host communities local communities in our interventions with assistance and it's possible also with protection activities and also create some venues for joint activities so we were saying sometimes tensions are caused or fueled by lack of information mistrust or also a conflict on limited resources so if we create that space for members from different communities to come together and attend the same kind of activities we build on existing basically connectors who are there in the community we engage let's say good-willing people I think even in the most hostile communities we can still find good-willing members who perhaps are also opinion leaders and who can lead by example and expand the level of consensus around that kind of activity that is a joint activity involving members of different communities this of course contributes to peaceful coexistence and we can achieve also social cohesion outcomes in the most typical areas of intervention here and I'm almost finished with this intervention I would say for example we can look at involving opinion leaders, religious leaders around some areas such as awareness-raising on disaster-risk reduction and in my mind for example now I have a couple of bazaars that are implemented with refugees and Bangladeshis communities around disaster-risk reduction with involvement of community leaders we can involve religious leaders from different communities around joint religious commemoration we can around security for example security is an issue that is particularly sensitive but if security issues are considered as a problem a shared problem by different communities perhaps we can look at supporting unarmed civilian patrolling or community policing mechanism involving representatives from both communities to take care together of the security of their communities we can look at income generating activities involving youth and women there are really important entry points if we dig a bit and if we understand the local context to work towards peaceful coexistence and social equation the last point is about communication yes we should try as much as possible to combine assistance and our protection interventions with effective way communication that as much as possible should be multi-sectorial and multi-agency so establishing these venues for receiving complaints requests and being able to not only address those requests but also showing closing the loop let's say with communities or showing programmatic adjustments once we receive a request under a complaint it's important not only to act but also to go back to the community and show that we have actually addressed the issue this of course contributes greatly in terms of building trust accountability and mitigate concerns it's important to map rumors and try to timely and accurately address those rumors and I would say that give your change also is important give your change initiatives give your change communication around peaceful coexistence social cohesion whenever it's possible should be also be included in the response over great thank you Andrea and could I ask Melanie to come in on this as well and then we'll jump over to a couple of examples over to you Melanie. Thank you yeah just a short point Andrea mentioned the importance of communication and as you mentioned it's not just about what we communicate also how we communicate and linking it with his point on joint spaces in my experience it can be quite important if it's possible to have good transparent communication in those joint spaces if there are already existing tensions between different groups in your community because if you do important communication in separate spaces in my experience there can be actually creeping suspicion between them and the groups that you tell one group one thing and the other won't get the same information and that could then increase the risk of rumors and more tensions so paying attention to how we communicate in those instances and what settings is equally important. Perfect thanks a lot Melanie just a quick housekeeping note it's looking like we're going to be going over time possibly be about 15 minutes I hope that all of you are able to stay with us on the line all of our participants if not if you have to drop away for another meeting you can of course access the recording afterwards but just a short note about that that we are likely to go a bit over time we have quite a bit more content that we want to make sure to cover here today so let us now look at a couple of examples of this general area of programming aggravating tensions we have seen the number of examples actually coming through just over the last few minutes in the chat looking at tensions between host communities and groups of refugees or IDPs we have some different kinds of examples that were submitted beforehand I'd like to share a couple of those first from a UN agency working in Madagascar our participant writes due to a lack of resources we had to reduce the caseload to provide food assistance to those who were estimated as most vulnerable so in some villages the population actually stood up as a whole to refuse the assistance because they said that all of them were in a difficult situation and they did not accept what they perceived as discrimination where some would receive assistance and some would not so we had to seek support from the government to explain the situation with these communities Andrea, can I turn to you for your reflections on this interesting situation from Madagascar over to you we'll try to be telegraphed here so I think here a problem is the process that has been followed to targeting and prioritization and the way that expectations have been managed I think we have limited resources so sometimes a very specific and limited mandate meaning we target only food insecure people which are things that need to be explained to communities since the very beginning since the assessment phase if we fail to do that then of course we don't manage expectations properly and then there is a lot of space for misunderstanding and tensions can arise in this sense let's say clarity since the beginning explaining the resources available and the mandate of the organization and if it's possible also of course involve communities in the definition of the targeting approaches so I was saying before there are different possible targeting approaches area targeting community self targeting vulnerability targeting so let's say if the community can in the process itself of defining the targeting approaches then the final outcome will most likely not include the tensions perfect thanks so much and another example I'd like to throw your way Andrea for your reflections this is coming from someone with a UN agency working in Erbil in Iraq this touches on the topic of the next webinar in the series actually which we'll be looking at coordination to here we're seeing tensions arising from the method by which distribution lists are created so our participant writes as follows multiple organizations within the city use the same community leaders to get distribution lists and as a result the same households receive multiple distributions while their neighbors did not creating tensions Andrea what are your thoughts on this example over to you sure yes I would say here there are two main considerations from my point of view one is a lack of coordination between organizations on the ground which is creating this problem that is described in the scenario example so of course if we don't talk to each other if we don't coordinate we there is a lot of room for duplications on one side and gaps of course on the other side and this creates poor transparency of the ability to communities and tension another consideration is related again to our over reliance on real or alleged community leaders and representatives sometimes we are late or we don't have time and we just give too much trust and power to gatekeepers in the community are everything but representative of the entire community of course if we don't put in place check and balances if we don't put in place proper screening and vetting of community leaders and representatives that we work with there is again a room for this kind of issues that are described in the example very last point on importance of allowing or creating appeal mechanism which means that if people have any allegation about being included or excluded in assistance there is a space for them to come to us and for us to address those allegations. Okay great thank you so much for that and thanks also to the participants who have submitted poll responses regarding their recommendations for how to approach situations where programming risks aggregate communal tensions. We're now going to move on to the fourth issue and again we'll be going a bit over time because we do want to ensure that we have plenty of time to discuss this fourth issue where protection services either by their nature or the way that they are carried out of putting people at risk. So we've framed this set of issues as protection services putting people at risk the fact that we are providing protection services to people puts them at risk due to the nature of the services including by risking to stigmatize them in the community and to comment on this general area I'd like to turn first to Sam. Sam you have the floor. Thanks yeah I mean this can be one of the most sensitive questions we have to deal with in the field. So I asked he works in protection in three areas child protection women's protection and empowerment and protection and rule of law services and assistance for gender based violence are often sadly one of the most sensitive things that we do and often one of the things that can get us in trouble with authorities and get us kicked out. So that's on the access side and being able to maintain our presence and operation on the protection side for people accessing these services and I suppose there's an element of a do no harm lens here but that can be very very difficult. People who access services maybe at risk of intimate partner violence back at home or social exclusion exclusion from access to economic resources and similar as a result of accessing services whether they're medical, psychosocial legal assistance and so on and many forms of retaliation not just community stigmatization but physical violence. And with the protection services is that where there is a protection harm there is a perpetrator so that dynamic is always going to be there and at a threat not just a hazard but a direct threat potentially. So I think within that context and that framework of risk we often need to have humility of humanitarian organizations about in what ways and how far we can protect protection for actors or people or external stakeholders that don't understand what we mean by humanitarian protection. Protection is a big word and security forces armed actors armed groups etc they often see themselves as the people doing the protecting so we have to be careful and sometimes there's an idea including from humanitarian actors that even on a very individual level we can provide safety like safe houses for example or the local authorities can guarantee protection but it's often not the case either because the authorities don't have the training or the real or frankly because the authorities are not there they have collapsed or because of the way information flows in communities all the armed forces armed groups political actors are responsible for violation so many reasons so we have to be very careful I think what we promise very careful in expectations and work with a sense of humility in this area. One thing we've done before in terms of thinking through some ways to approach it is and I'm sure many organizations here have done similar embedding or bundling such services in border programs or facilities or in a framework that is contextually socially acceptable whether that's within primary health facilities and services for example or other methods so it's not full proof and has risks too but we've been able to use that very successfully in a number of contexts and of course always listening and responding to clients how do they perceive their safety, what do they need what solutions could we work on together how do they want to access services that is the way that is comfortable for them and then the third part is I think there is a public outreach component I think advocacy it is possible to build and develop community acceptance and support for more sensitive services over time working with community champions and trust being credible as an agency and doing good work and showing our integrity so where we can change the environment and reduce sensitivity or signifization of such services that's another approach as well typically that's going to take more time but something that can be worked on in parallel so over a few opening thoughts on this large topic perfect thanks for that Sam and Muhammad before we get into the specific issues did you want to come in on the general introduction to this issue over to you yeah thank you so much yeah I would like to talk a little bit about sometimes the doing protection standalone program by itself can bring a lot of risks because there might be a lot of attention to it there are three modalities of you doing protection where the mainstreaming or safe programming is the basic for everyone protection and non-protection it's also important to consider that integration can be our best solution sometimes so as Sam mentioned where you integrate sometimes in primary health center that's particularly important for example when you talk when we talk about specialized services child protection services that can be very sensitive you can integrate it for example in a nutrition programming where it might more or less dilute that sensitivity and that risk same for gender based violence programming where we can integrate it in health or the productive health program having a case manager that work with the health worker in a facility for example in order to meet the woman or meet the person that are at risk talk to them try to see how to link them how to refer them in a very safe manner work with the non-protection colleagues in our organization for example try to strengthen an internal referral system where they can identify protection issue so protection by itself doesn't have to be the main umbrella that is seen by everyone and that might create risk no we can actually rely on other sectors and we work with them and I think that's very important to realize when we say risk because of because of the nature of protection sometimes we need to think do we need to go very bold and say this is a standalone protection or it's better we integrate with let's say a less sensitive programming for example over to you. Perfect thanks Mohammed so now we have a few examples I'm playing to be asking you Sam to comment briefly on these and then I'm saving one for the end where I think everyone has some comments to make so first let's move through to this first brief example of this type which concerns a situation when the context requires access to registration services to be through the local courts so our participant with an INGO in Iraq writes family members with a member associated with extremist groups at risk while passing through checkpoints when going to local courts to get their civil documentation it's not a complete scenario Sam but based on what we do have here what would be your reflections that you would share with the individual facing this kind of concern over to you. Yeah I'm a little bit familiar with this scenario after which applied in Iraq and also Syria as well with non-state security forces and there's probably people on this board that have interacted more directly with this scenario and may have more recommendations than me. I think it's really tough I mean in Iraq and in places where security forces are powerful and there's huge I mean not just domestic interest in the issue of being referred to here but internationally this is an issue what happens with families that have been associated or perceived to have been associated with some of the groups in questions so very very hard to I mean it's not something you can really work around. The security forces are there it's a hard force. The law, the political and public opinion there's a lot that's not in favour of resolving this scenario. I think the first thing I would say is know the law really really well in countries where there is all of law to a degree and that's the way the starting point. It's not necessarily going to give the answer but you don't want to get caught out by not knowing it. You know what paperwork is required so if there is paperwork that you can have for getting through these checkpoints are there procedures where you can have a reasonable guarantee of safe passage and so on. Do them so you know do the due diligence don't get caught out by things that you forgot them to do. Ultimately here the risk is to the families themselves so it's important they have an understanding and then there are other ways to access the court. Can you have a legal representative legally appointed to the case that can actually go and do the travel and do the paperwork without the family for example having to do that. Can you do as Mohammed my colleague on the panel has suggested mobile legal aid as well. I think getting into the details on this one are there alternatives travelling to the court know the law know the bureaucracy and then really your final option is advocacy and try and ensure that there is a safe way for these processes to happen. There will always be risk especially where there may be confested power or unclear change of command between legal and security authorities. Sorry not very positive answer there some ideas but very, very tough example that one. Certainly a tough example but I think some good practical suggestions actually so thank you so much for that. We've also received multiple examples of how protection services to GBV survivors and the LGBT community or the way that humanitarian actors are able to access these communities are leading to protection risk. I'll just read out two examples here one from an INGO in Sri Lanka who writes since we run GBV project when we contact some people the community generates rumors that these people are survivors of GBV at home and they are stigmatized and then a second example from someone with an INGO in Lebanon writing for services in particular to the LGBT community and to SGVV survivors we risk putting more attention on those receiving services as neighbors start asking why you and not me are receiving visits from humanitarian actors. So back to you Sam for your thoughts on this type of challenge over to you. Yeah there's a similar theme in both of these examples in that communities or neighbors are seeing aid workers going to particular places and knowing the services that those aid workers are providing. And I think in that is the answer to this question which is make it how can you make it less obvious if you're going to individual houses and you're known as an organization that offers GBV services that's pretty obviously signaling what's going on not saying that necessarily in these examples they're kind of wearing projects, t-shirts and caps for example but it's clearly possible for communities and neighbors to identify the situation. So what I would say is think about other ways of having people able to access your services or to know about them. Can you set up facilities where people can come to you and present those facilities in a contextually appropriate way? Can you set up online or telephone counseling? Can you deliver a leaflets to all of the neighborhoods in the house advertising services to all of them and then people can come and find you. So thinking about how people access your services and what the visibility is to others is part of it. I would also say I don't obviously know about these particular projects but the examples give a sense of going out to find people. I think in many contexts you need to allow people to come to you, make sure the services are known about and let people come to you. Don't sort of be rushing to find people because you have a proposal to write or a grant to deliver. So I think we need to go and talk to the community leader and say where are all the survivors for example. Another technique for identifying so obviously apart from offering services there is a need to identify people here but snowballing. So going from house to house and asking are there people we should be worried about and so on can be another way of finding information in a more sensitive way. It may take longer but obviously there with the risk to individuals. So those are a few thoughts. Excellent. So I think in the interest of time let's skip ahead to example 4.4. So this is looking at protection needs assessments which is another area where there are potential risks to the people participating in them. So we have an example from someone with an INGO in Columbia who writes in our questionnaire we had sets of protection questions which we chose to remove as we could not guarantee the privacy of the interview remotely. We did not want to put those answering the questions at risk. We are now favoring referrals for certain groups rather than relying on some of our previous tools. So let me turn first to Mohammed on this one. Over to you Mohammed. Assessments generally can be problematic in many conflict or many situations especially protection assessments and whenever you have protection because at the end of the day we try to assess or monitor deprivation, violence, coercion and those threats are linked to people with power. Sometimes people that trade the law sometimes or the rights of the individual. So there is always a consideration of any assessment or monitoring tool that we are trying to do to make sure that it is safe and that's where particularly I would go back to the concept of integration where if we have other colleagues that are able to collect information related to food for example or shelter or trying to assess an infrastructure that can be something easier or might put people at lower risk we can include some of the questions that we want to monitor or we would like to assess. So we include in their assessment that and then we analyze that internally as protection team for example and see what is relevant for us. The other thing in many situations actually you cannot even hold a paper with you when you want to assess the situation or the protection environment. It's very important here to work with our teams and one of the main skills that we need to build our teams on the capacity of our teams on is the observation. How can they observe? How can they see what is going wrong and it's related to protection and to the people right for example. That's also very important. I mean at least in Yemen we rely a lot on observation for example the other thing that I would like to talk about here is it's very important to sometimes also consider where an assessment by itself for protection for example is not very relevant. Like the example that we have that it might create more risk for the people. It's very important if we think how can we monitor the situation or the environment instead of monitoring the set. So an example to clarify this point is that so let's say we want to monitor issues related to child recruitment. But we cannot ask various questions on this. We cannot meet the children. We cannot meet their parents. We cannot have direct information. It's important here to monitor other aspects, to monitor the environment itself. See are there check points, flying check points, whether any reports of detention for children. Look into for example livelihood opportunities in that community and how the children are coping with that and their families of course. And also looking into for example education facilities, talk to teachers, have key informant with teachers in education itself. That might be something related to child recruitment. So sometimes we cannot ask the direct question. We need to use more proxy questions for that to help us. And that's where protection can be flexible and at the same time really tricky sectors to be honest with you. Because if we cannot directly do that but we need to keep considering that it can be to a certain extent everyone's responsibility and we can rely on other sectors and other colleagues. Over to you. Great. Thank you, Mohammed. And I think this is the last example we'll be looking at today. I'd just like to thank you as well for taking the time to be with us on the panel today. It's really been a pleasure and extremely informative. Everything you've been able to share with us. So thanks so much for that. Now Andrea could I turn to you as well on this example related to protection communication. Thanks. No, I mean Mohammed definitely has extremely important points. Just perhaps to add on that on the importance to train on protection, conflict sensitive verbal and also not verbal communication. Especially psychological first aid is very important, active listening and nonverbal communication. So sometimes it's very important and relevant protection information is contained in nonverbal communication. So it's not only important what people say but also what people don't say. And so that is important. I think also the use of proxy indicators extremely important. So sometimes we don't really need to ask if in an household there is a child labor or early marriage. We can ask questions such as the number of working family members and the dependency ratio. The daily habits and occupations of children in the household which can give us a good proxy indication about child protection issues for example. And then the last closing note from my side is to have a very critical self reflection whenever we collect protection sensitive information in certain environment. We really need to understand if we can act upon the information that we are seeking to collect. If the answer to this question is no and in environments like this when we already face problems even just in collecting information it's very likely that we will not be able to actually implement any protection, any meaningful protection intervention there. So if the answer to the question is can we act we cannot act in this we cannot operationalize the information, the protection information that we collect then we should not collect the information at all. So it's important to minimize the information on a need to know, strict rigorous need to know basis and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of collecting sensitive information. Thank you Andrea and thanks also to you for taking the time today. It's been terrific to have you on the panel. We really appreciate all of your contributions and Melanie now over to you on this example 4.4 and then of course any other closing thoughts that you want to share before we close. Over to you Melanie. Thank you Andrea and Muhammad have already mentioned a lot of important points on this specific example. I just wanted to pick up on one specific point I understood from the example which is the colleague who checked the example mentioning the remotliness so I understood that maybe it was interviews for protection assessment being conducted remotely maybe by phone and of course that adds another level of challenges to it because if we do it over the phone we are not as dimension damaged the privacy it's like we are not sure who might be listening in if someone is sitting next to the interviewee maybe a husband if we are talking to a woman or some other family member if someone walking by if they are sitting outside I think that's definitely things that we need to consider when we do look at remote assessments and I think this is especially at the moment with the Covid-19 crisis and many of us need more remote programming and remote assessments which is a really important question and also doing it remotely how can we deal with disclosures and the non-verbal communication that Andrea mentioned is almost impossible it's not impossible of course if we do it over the phone so doing remote assessments marriage yet another level of risk analysis Thank you very much indeed Melanie thanks to you for taking the time to be on the panel and for sharing all of your analysis reflections on the examples tremendously helpful now last but not least I'd like to give the floor over to you Sam for again any reflections on example 4.4 and then anything else you'd like to share before we close you have the floor Thanks Greg I'll be really quick and I had exactly the same takers Melanie on this one that there's a specific question or aspect here about the remote nature of the interview or the assessment and that's certainly at another dimension and especially again in the current global context that's going to be applying in many many many more places so I would just say two things one get expertise on the technology there are some secure technologies that can be used in deploy and get advice on cyber security and protecting that it is possible I know there's a lot in media about hacking and so on and so forth but there's a lot of specialist knowledge that goes into what's safe and what's not so that on the one end and on the other as Melanie said there are human risks as well because even if you have secure technology at the other end there may be someone else there and so on and so forth so understanding those and in different contexts it's going to be a scale of risks spectrum of options to put together so I think there are possibilities but going to take a little digging around to see what's going to be appropriate and safe in the context great thank you very much Sam and once again thanks so much for being part of our panel and for taking the time and I'm very much aware that we do go over time but it was very important I think to be able to cover all of these examples and particularly to end on this one regarding needs assessment and also that remote dimension which several of you point out maybe the kind of situation that we'll have to be dealing with even more now in the COVID-19 era so a great discussion to end on some very important points a very rich discussion and I'd like to thank again not only the panel but also all of the participants who contributed very actively in the chat the polls and the Q&A there will be a recording of the event both in video and audio only podcast format as I mentioned this will be available on the event page in the coming days so if you have colleagues as well who you think might benefit from listening to the recording please do feel free to share that link with them also as mentioned in the beginning this event was the third in a series of four events on access protection the final event in this series will take place two weeks from now on June 25 when we'll be discussing issues concerning the coordination of access negotiations and protection as well as civil coordination if you missed the first event in this series which introduced the concepts of access and protection and then looked in particular at issues related to COVID-19 a recording of that one is available if you visit the event website you can also find a recording of the second session in which we looked at concrete examples of negotiating access for humanitarian protection then finally you can also continue the discussion in the PHAF online community there has already been a lot of discussion among participants in the community on this topic and I hope that you'll continue in this channel until our next live event so with that once again I'd like to thank everyone panelists and participants for a very interesting discussion as well as the teams behind the scenes who have made it possible to put on this event today thanks this is then Herod Lang signing off from Geneva see you next time