 Good morning good afternoon wherever you might be located. My name is Christy Edwards. I'm the head of policy programs and legal at Geneva call and it's an honor to be with you all today. So as I'm hoping you're all in the right session will be talking about access negotiations with armed groups for protection. And as I'm sure many of you in this room are aware, millions of people that live in areas under the control or influenced of armed groups are often in dire need of not only life saving assistance but also protection. And without quality access for protection, their lives their dignity livelihoods and rights can be endangered. So today, I have several panelists with me who are going to explore how they conceptualize and design access negotiations with armed groups to make sure that specific protection risks based by civilian populations are addressed. And so we're going to be looking at a number of different issues and questions today, particularly around different approaches to access negotiations, the complexity of working in a complex multi layered and fast developing operational context. The linkages between improved access to essential services for civilian populations and increased protections. And finally how the role played by local communities and CSOs can be really important in negotiating access. So I'm going to give a quick introduction to our panelists for today. We're first joined by my colleagues out of Hamid, who is the head of mission in Iraq for Geneva call, as well as push coffee chockery who is our project coordinator based in Innova Iraq. We're also joined by Musa or Musa Aguazan, and I apologize if I mispronounced your last name, who is the program coordinator in Burkina Faso also for Geneva call. Next we have Aaron Hutchison, who is the country director in Yemen for the NRC. And finally Samuel Carpenter who is the team leader for protection and inclusion for the FCDO with the UK government. So welcome everyone I'm excited to start this conversation today. And I'd like to actually start with you if you could share with us your experience from Iraq on the engagement of armed groups in order to gain access and what are the different approaches to access negotiations with armed groups for protection purposes. And are there any differences depending on whether the focus is on assistance or protection. Hi everybody. Well, in the context of Iraq, I'm going to share some of the perspectives based on our learning. But at the same time, I also invited my colleague, Veshkafti, to also delve with some examples. In the context of Iraq, all those situation in Iraq has improved as compared to last few years. But still, there are a lot of protection related issues and concerns which are quite prevalent. As still Iraq has more than 1.1 million IDPs who are unable to go back to the areas of region due to various security issues, livelihood issues or housing issues. But I would say that most important is the security issues. Because Iraq has a number of armed groups who are not only operating at the national level but also at the local level and there are some proxies were also located in different areas. And when I say these groups, these groups are quite influential in the territories that they control. And then there needs to be a lot of coordination and communication in advance with these elements who are controlling these territories. In the context of this background, Geneva call has been here for the last six years. Although the situation is better, but we are focusing more on humanitarian engagement, which is basically comprised of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. In that framework, we have developed a number of materials that are leading towards policy level engagement with these groups. So as a start-up, we reached out to the leadership of all these different groups, not only at the top level, but at the same time to all of their commanders at the ground level. And offered them a number of trainings at policy level so that the groups fully comply with these protocols. While working with these groups, we also identified a number of focal points within these forces who can be our lead to do all this coordination and communication. And these focal points we have trained effectively so that they can be the mediums to whom we can communicate in case of access negotiations. So in that respect, we also built the capacities of local and youth engagement groups and facilitated a number of access negotiations on conducting assessments and governance on return issues, opening up checkpoints, relief access to camps, bringing armed groups, armed actors to negotiation tables to facilitate a return of the IDPs. So I have my colleague Peshkafti, who will give a number of examples, then I'll get back to you. Yes, thank you very much, Aadha, for this intervention. Of course, just like Aadha said, in Geneva call, we have been dealing with issues related to access and accessibility, both on the side of the populations and on the side of humanitarian community as well in Iraq. We have over this past few years of engagement with the armed groups and international community, let's say humanitarian community. There were some issues actually facing both the local populations under the control of, you know, I would say in the areas under the control of armed actors and also in other locations in their vicinity. And so we facilitated access for one of the, I would say, key humanitarian actors in the context of Iraq, because they did not have, you know, I would say, access to the leadership of the armed actors in one of the locations, I would say, namely in Diyala, and they couldn't conduct, you know, assessments for return and especially the IDPs who were displaced in 2014. So we actually reached out to the leadership of the armed groups in that area and we managed to bring some, I would say, humanitarian aids and relief to the area through that international agency. And not only in Diyala, also in Muzal, there were some access issues facing international agencies and also local NGOs, because, you know, when they were moving into the camps where the IDPs were located, there was a lot of harassment, I would say, by the staff of the checkpoints on the way, they were disturbing actually the staff of these local NGOs and international agencies. So in Geneva call, we actually learned of this issue and we negotiated with the armed doctors on the ground in the field. In the first place, it was not easy to reach the leadership, but gradually we managed to reach the leadership through Baghdad, of course, not only through the field contacts. And then we managed to bring the armed groups together with the international agencies that had trouble of access to the IDP camps in the southern part of Muzal, where a lot of IDPs actually were located. And thankfully, at the end, the relief and humanitarian aids were finally allowed to be delivered to the dwellers of these IDP camps. Most importantly, in St. Jarb, there was a time actually when one of the key armed doctors controlling the area asked all the international humanitarian community to leave the town and so the city is already devastated and the impacts of war and conflict is very much still alive in the city. But only one day later, because we had a training with them for a few days before this happened, so we reached out to the leadership of the armed group that didn't allow the international humanitarian community to operate in St. Jarb. And after some negotiations, we managed to resume the humanitarian action in the city of St. Jarb and it was something very impactful and good that we had this response from the armed doctors as well. And now we are in the process of actually doing some assessment in areas in the province of Salatin, where after training and organizing a number of workshops with the armed groups in Salatin, they told us they are ready now to talk to us and to the organizations working in the field to do assessment and they are ready to help facilitate the return of IDPs to their areas. Of course, I wouldn't say it's always easy to make access, I would say, facilitated. It takes a lot of effort, sent a lot of energy at the same time because it's not only the field, I would say commanders who have the power of decision making. It goes through a lot of filtration and that's why we keep chasing and we keep running and we keep holding the dialogue with all these actors. In other places and locations, we also had implemented a community-based protection through which we have been able to bring all the community leaders, IDP leaders, attorneys, media outlets and all others together with the armed actors and they began to hold discussions on how to actually make return more conducive and provide facilitations for the people to return. That was also part of the community project we actually conducted in one of the locations. This is in nutshell about the interventions we in Geneva are doing with the different armed actors across the country and thank you. Just to sum it up, thanks Bhishkepti, that in terms of these engagements or interventions, it's very important in the process that not only to have continuous engagement with the leadership of the armed groups, but also having regular contacts with their localized commanders on the ground. What happens in the situations that there's a lot of movements, sometimes armed groups in one territory, sometimes new commanders come into place. You need to have regular updating at all the levels and to ensure that your level of trust and confidence is in place. This is very important. Simultaneously, it's also critical to have access to negotiations to build effective relations and have confidence with the tribal leaders as well as local civil society and local authorities because you cannot have just isolated negotiations around group. You need to bring in all these relevant actors and players on the table. That's how you build the confidence and make the structures more sustainable for the long term. And as Bhishkepti mentioned, in one of the locations, we build the capacity of our local partners so that when it comes to issues regarding protection of children or their recruitment or other issues, they can get the ability and the capacity to locally reach out to the commanders and to see that these issues can be addressed locally in the long term basis. But at the same time, last I would like to say that when it comes to access negotiation, it's not only for protection but also for assistance. And at the same time, it can also lead towards long term dialogue because armed actors sometimes or most of the time are a reality when they are located in certain locations. It's not just one time that you negotiate it and it's done. It's a continuous process that lasts even for six months or three years because bringing some group of people back to their ideas is one thing. But to ensure that this group of people continue to stay there is the most important thing. Thank you. Thank you both. These are such fantastic examples of practical ways that long term sustained and continuous engagement with groups as well as with civilian communities on the ground ensures that protection of civilians is an overall process. So next I'd like to turn to Moussa and for those of you who might have just joined. Moussa will be speaking in French so there is translation available if you want to click on the button down below. You can click on English translation or whatever language is best for you. So, Moussa Geneva call has recently published this past June, a study on humanitarian access in this the hell. So, could you share with us the main takeaways for protection access for protection activities, as well as any recommendations that you have on how to address the challenges associated with access for protection activities. Thank you very much. So, I'll be starting by talking about the study carried out in Mars 2022 and most notably in Burkina Faso in Niger and the study is called and the state actors and non-state actors and the opportunities in the Sahel region for humanitarian actions. So, knowing that in Sahel we have what we call radical groups. So, in my presentation I'll be talking about what the outcomes are in term of perception, the perception, the way the armed groups see the humanitarian stakeholders. I will give you the big lines, the big principles, the main outcomes. And I also wanted to talk about the specific way they see our activities and I will conclude by some recommendations. So, we had interviews, we have armed groups, we have meetings with these armed groups and we have focus groups. So, in terms of perception, the first point, the first thing we noticed is that except for the signatories of the reconciliation agreement and those who signed these groups, well, these groups said they have a good view on our activities, humanitarian activities, as a sign, the peace agreement. So, they're famous, they have well-known and they're well-organized and so they have a more political approach. And it's also important for them to pay attention to human rights of all these groups. So, all the groups will be able to talk to and that includes the groups who signed this peace agreement. And I would say that the other groups don't have such a positive approach to our activities. So, why don't they trust us? Because they have doubts about how we can stay neutral. So, this concept, I'm not sure you can see me because it's my... I'm not sure you can see me or you can hear me. Musa, we can hear you, but because your connection is a little unstable, we're going to keep your video off so that we can hear you really well, okay? Sorry, sorry to interrupt. Thank you. There was just to make sure that you could hear me. So, they had the bad perception of what we do because they had doubts. They had doubts about how neutrality and how we can be impartial, how the humanitarian actors can stay neutral. It's more obvious in Burkina Faso. And these distrust are based on the... because they don't understand whether our approaches and our methods. For some of them, they are in municipalities and villages, they see us coming, they give the assistance food materials, and they don't really understand how we've decided who are the beneficiaries. And they get a feeling that there was no way to define the correct beneficiaries, the people who are truly in need. So, this concept of targeting the right beneficiaries. And this creates some distrust among our... these armed groups. And another thing that may be problematic. So, we have radical groups and what we call self-defense groups. And they don't understand how the humanitarian actors have access to areas controlled by radical groups. They can't go there, but the humanitarian actors, they can't go there. So, they have this distrust. And they tell it frankly that they may be that these... the humanitarian actors have some secret agreements with the most radical groups. And this is why they're allowed to go in these areas. And these are the three main points we've been able to identify and as stated by these groups. They highlighted the importance of these protection activities and most notably the follow-up on protection activities. These self-defense groups, how they are called themselves. This looks a bit like intelligence for them, because we have the protection committees and they're collecting data, they're collecting info, incidents which took place in the area and they share the area so to manage their activities. And these groups said we don't know how these humanitarian actors use this data, this info. So, the follow-up on this data and the whistleblowing systems after this in order to collect data, there's a complete distrust. And they consider it to be pretty much almost like intelligence agency. So, moving on to the activities. For gender-based violence and most notably the help we bring to women. They tend to think that they want us to change the society. But when we have these new NGOs who are focused exclusively on women and they only talk to women, well, for these radical groups, they are disappointed. They don't be disappointed and maybe deceived. They don't really understand the purpose of all this. So, the consequences are that they make the access to some NGOs more difficult. For example, notably, they have checkpoints. They put checkpoints on the roads. And most of the time it's very difficult to go through these checkpoints. It's not enough to come there and say, I want you to go through. So, they also have taxes. They call it the price of tea. It's the name of the tax or the price of chicken. It must not be in Burkina Faso. They make things much more difficult based on the community who needs our help. So, let's not forget that the self-defense groups are based on communities, on ethnicities. So, if they know that this help, this assistance is for a specific community, we don't like. Well, they may make things more difficult for us and make it more difficult for us to bring this assistance to this community. And sometimes, they tend to also focus on the ethnicity or the community of the staff members. For example, if a member belongs to a community, they could make things more difficult for them. And for my recommendations, I think that we need to raise awareness. And we need to inform people so we can focus on and train these armed groups. Because we know that they have doubts, suspicions, and because they don't have the correct awareness on what we do. And the second element is that we need to strengthen the cooperation among the humanitarian stakeholders. So, they can convey the same message to these armed groups so they can understand our constraints. And the very last point, I think it would be important to bring a new dynamics and to strengthen the community-based mechanisms for protection. And this is why we highlighted a strong potential to get access to humanitarian assistance while relying our efforts on the community leaders. So we need to work the community leaders, we need to count on their concrete involvement in our humanitarian activities so we can have an easier access. And this is what I wanted to share with you and thank you. Thanks so much, Musa. And for those of you who are asking in the chat about the report link, I've put it once again, Rania from OHCHR has also put it in there. But the link is in the chat if you'd like to take a closer look. Musa, if I can ask you just a follow-up question or two. How do you see the role played by local communities or civil society organizations in such access negotiations? And how can local capacities be better integrated into access negotiations? It's a very good question. So the custom leaders have a huge role in Sahel. They have a really big role to play, not only on social activities, but also politically. I will talk about the last event in Burkina Faso. There is a political crisis and in the end it's political and religious leaders who managed to calm the tensions and to make sure that no one used weapons. So in the same way, when there is a disaster, leaders of communities are the first ones to bring an answer. So thanks to this first rank role, humanitarian actors must use this role and to try to involve them in negotiations. Let's not forget that all armed groups have moral references with their leaders so they can be influenced by leaders. So we need to identify these people. I will finish by saying that local resources, custom leaders. It's true that the Sahel is going through a crisis, but traditional mechanisms and local mechanics exist. So humanitarian actors, no matter the field, need to use these resources. Thank you. Alright, thank you so much, Musa. And so I'm starting to get some questions in the chat box. Again, if you would like to ask questions to any of our panelists as we go along, please do put those questions in the chat. I'll keep track of them and we'll have some time at the end to go back to our speakers. And next, I would like to turn to Aaron. And Aaron, from your perspective in working on these issues in Yemen with the NRC, how do you see the linkages between improved access to essential services for the civilian population and increased protection, for example, in terms of creating an enabling environment that reduces the need for humanitarian assistance through protection of infrastructure, local economies and livelihoods, for example. That's a really interesting question and one that's rather relevant to the context in which we work here in Yemen. We're working within a context where the access constraints, both the access of civilian populations to essential services and protection, and that of humanitarians to the civilian population are particularly onerous. In particular, when we speak of humanitarian response in Yemen, due to a number of different factors, the humanitarian response is also de facto replacing a development response, as well as in many cases basic service provision that would usually be provided by the state. Just a quick note for those less familiar with Yemen, we're working in a context where we have two different sets of authorities, the de facto authorities or DFA in the north of the country, as well as the internationally recognized government or the IRG in the south of the country, both of who along with the Saudi-led coalition are parties to the conflict. While all parties to the conflict are perpetrators of violence against civilian populations, much of what I'll speak to today and much of what I speak to today is very relevant to countrywide. I will give a particular focus to areas under control of the de facto authorities given the focus of the discussion today. With the nature of access reporting in Yemen, we necessarily have a much better understanding of our challenges as humanitarian actors to each populations and less understanding of how access to services is constrained for people in need. There are huge gaps due to inaccessibility to certain areas. For example, certain hard to reach frontline locations where data is simply unavailable to us as there's little or no humanitarian presence. And so we don't have a proper overview of how people are accessing services or not. As well constraints on humanitarian actors access to communities through restrictions of assessments and on feedback mechanisms, particularly by Amsarallah, the de facto authorities also constraints our understandings of coping mechanisms and reliance on aid. And a lack of feedback mechanisms particularly presents a huge constraints to prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse reporting and referrals for other protection services. Building a safer environment for Yemenis through protection of infrastructure, local economies and livelihoods needs to go hand in hand with humanitarian leadership, pushing on commitments for the protection of populations, increasing access to humanitarian of humanitarian actors to better understand the protection needs and supporting communities in terms of civilian self protection mechanisms. Ensuring that essential services are functioning and accessible to people in need in Yemen is extremely important for protection outcomes, as it reduces reliance on aid and decreases negative coping mechanisms. This is particularly important in a protracted crisis like Yemen where funding is continuing to decrease every year. However, there's quite a number of dilemmas that humanitarian actors face when trying to create this type of enabling environment, particularly when we're working in areas controlled by armed groups or de facto authorities. In Yemen services and infrastructure have been damaged and constrained by years of war. Authorities are unable to pay salaries for many key roles, including for teachers and health workers, rather than humanitarian response, having a parallel system. INGOs and UN agencies are currently paying incentives to existing public sector workers to keep parts of the system from failing. Unfortunately, this also presents its own dilemmas and interference by authorities in the north, in terms of the types of activities that you can do demands for taxation. On these incentives for public sector workers is creating a lot of difficulties for humanitarians in this area. There's ethical questions for us that we must continue to critically analyze when it comes to supporting state institutions, particularly when we know that a large proportion of centrally held money may be used by the de facto authorities for conflict related or military activities. Ensuring that authorities view incentives for workers supporting local services as part of humanitarian work and not as taxable income is key to the continuation of these types of services. Attempts by authorities particularly in the north to control and extract financial benefits from projects aimed at strengthening infrastructure, the economy or livelihoods also presents a challenge for humanitarian actors when dealing with armed groups and they can strain the benefits of these projects for communities. This also takes the form of control over, for example, which suppliers are contracted for construction projects, increasing taxation on suppliers, interference in who receives assistance through controlling beneficiary lists, and sometimes as well extortion of beneficiaries who have access to beneficiary lists. These projects and meaningfully contribute to enhanced protection of populations by aiming to create a stable enabling environment. It's critical to produce the level of interference by authorities through strong common positioning red lines standards, led by humanitarian leadership with accountability through the TAM clusters. A particularly critical challenge the humanitarian community faces is often in deciding between whether to when to and how to directly address violence from parties to the conflict and how we balance this with the impact it can have on an organization's wider access to provide assistance to populations in need. Of course we also recognize that what what one organization does has an impact on the entire humanitarian community as well so we're not just making decisions for ourselves, but for the wider humanitarian community. We're working within a context where parties to the conflict are inherently suspicious of humanitarian activities, their entire approaches from the military security lens, and very often they assume humanitarian activities must have some type of underlying security or intelligence for example the de facto authorities view assessments as an opportunity for intelligence gathering for information that will pass on to other parties, and therefore there's there's very strict restrictions placed on our ability to conduct assessments protection inclusions assessments can be particularly sensitive. For example, as humanitarians we want to ensure that our programming is inclusive and accessible, and therefore we need to understand vulnerabilities related to disability, for example. However, authorities may assume that when we're collecting this type of information, we're doing it because we want to gather information on the idea on the areas in which fighters are actually coming from, so that we can pass this information on to other parties to the conflict. All parties to the conflict in Yemen are perpetrators of violence against civilians, and they are the ones who control our access. An example of this is that there's many organizations who are working in education, who may sometimes turn a bit of a blind eye to the quote unquote summer caps that may be used as recruiting mechanisms for youth and spiders in Yemen. Similarly, organizations are hesitant to report on great violations against children, and because deciding to directly address these issues of parties to the conflict would absolutely have direct negative impacts on an organization's access, because it will put organizations at odds with the authorities who control every step of our access to to providing assistance. I spoke quite a bit about the dilemmas we face and less about what we can do to negotiate our access. When I was reflecting on what the humanitarian community needs to do in order to properly address this, I keep coming back to the need for really courageous leadership that puts protection at the center of the response. In this context, the role of the humanitarian leadership, including the ACC, the DHC, and OCHA is really critical. While their role is of course important in every response, I cannot underscore the role that they must play in context like Yemen, where here each individual organization is constantly pulled between this tension that I described, and being honest, often decision making falls on the side of maintaining our wider access to provide assistance. Authorities who are priced to the conflict control our access every single step. And I can say somebody as a country director who faces this dilemma on a daily basis. I can admit that I have definitely made those same decisions and I know just how difficult this type of decision making can be. However, as a humanitarian community together, we do have significant leverage over over the parties. A joint approach where agencies have agreed to a common understanding of red lines joint operating principles, as well as mechanisms to actually mobilize action would be a first step in this direction. As individual organizations, we face retaliation when we push sensitive issues too far with authorities, which can include suspension denials of visas which some of our colleagues on the call today can attest to personal slower approval of projects travel permits etc. The leadership and not really essential in being the face of these issues, because they don't have operations that can be held hostage. A well reasoners coordination system with the right people in the right place is the number one thing I can recommend. And there's also a key role here for the protection cluster or also specialist protection advisors such as pro caps who can play a role in supporting the leadership in this, even in cases where the leadership may have willingness to put protection at the center of the response they may need sports and how to do this in practice. And finally, while communities and civil society have their own mechanisms to negotiate their own access. I think that there are two key elements not to overlook here. First, in, I think I want to highlight that in in highly militarized context, the space for people to do so, without causing further protection risks to themselves, their families to their communities, maybe constraint and specific support from the international community may be important in context like this. As well, I think often we as an international community are not even aware of how to best provide support to these types of efforts. And we do need to invest more time and capacity to better understand this, so that our efforts are complimentary and at, you know, at a minimum that our efforts to increase our own access are not putting communities further at risk. And as part of this one of the roles we can play is increasing the knowledge of populations of legal rights to identity accessing legal documentation, as well as accessing to, which is really key to accessing essential services. Without this it's impossible for people in need to facilitate their own access to existing services. In the current context in Yemen, building this type of sustained enabling environment protection is challenging. The failure of the UN broker truce is a blow to efforts to secure a long lasting peace for Yemen. A long lasting peace agreement is crucial to creating this type of enabling environment. However, even in the absence of this there are still very specific and concerted steps that we as a humanitarian community can do both to improve our own ability to provide assistance and protection as well as to support the community's ability to access these services on their own. Thank you. Thanks so much, Aaron. And if I could maybe just ask a quick follow up question. Could you maybe tell us a little bit more, you described some of the challenges in getting maybe necessarily access or involving marginalized communities or communities that are not as visible, or that might not have trust in international getting them access to services, but I know obviously making sure that they are involved in the design and an identification of needs of your programs is really important. So could you talk a little bit more about how you do engage these communities, whether it's people with disabilities or individuals who may have suffered or survived sexual and gender based violence. How are you able to get their views and perspectives in the design and implementation of these projects on the ground when it is a complex and challenging set of circumstances and there is a lack of trust in either government run facilities or even facilities run by humanitarian actors. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a number of specific bureaucratic impediments that are put in place to prevent us from being able to build really strong close relationships at community level. However, I think that organizations like MRC and many other NGOs. We have had a sustained presence for many years in specific areas, and being able to maintain that presence and build trust of community level of community members really at the ground level is one of the most important things. While there are a lot of challenges for us to be able to get access to communities, once we're there, we can build those trust and relationships, and then be able to understand their needs through our day to day conversations through a back and forth mechanism, even if in places, for example, a formal feedback mechanism may have certain challenges to it. So really that sustained day to day presence on the ground through trusted staff is really important. And one of the things that we've found quite important as well as making sure that our frontline staff have the tools they need to be able to understand the different vulnerabilities of the groups that we're that we're working with. And then that those frontline staff have channels to feed that back up to management and the the expert staff will design proposals, etc. So that our staff on the ground who have such rich information who have such a local level of knowledge. That information doesn't just stay with them, which when you're very busy in the huge emergency response like Yemen. Sometimes as a side effect of everybody just being overwhelmed with the amount of work, but how do you create those channels so that that that information really can come up to management is really essential. Absolutely, and I think we're hearing that theme over and over again it's it's long term sustained consistent communication and relationship building not only with the armed groups but with the government with local communities to make sure that everybody understands the norms and principles of humanitarian assistance projects which is that we are neutral and partial and independent actors providing needs to ensure the protection of civilians. So thank you Aaron. Next I'd like to turn to Samuel and Samuel if we know that the issue of protection is clearly a priority for the government of the United Kingdom and you and I have had some in depth conversations about the impact of humanitarian access for civilian population. So could you offer some reflections from a state perspective on access for protection activities in relation to the engagement of armed groups. Yeah, thanks. I hope people are hearing me. Okay. So, in terms of the member state also as opposed to as a donor, the FCDO as well can share a few, a few thoughts on engagement with non state armed groups. I mean, I think that actual direct engagement is is is by and large really the preserve of our partners so so NRC and Geneva call and many others on the line. It's really an ever more important one and I think it's one of the big drivers of why we're looking again really at our whole approach to humanitarian access. I mean the the often quoted is ICRC number I think is, whereas 614 armed groups of concerns to their operations around the world in 2020. So, you know, that's a number that's really only increased as conflicts are becoming even even more fractured. I think, you know, really, as a state supporting humanitarian partners, it's, it's obviously a significant concern for us. It's really good to to hear there for the the work that's being done how this is coming on as more of a discipline in itself really and the insights from from colleagues in Iraq in the Sahel and Yemen, and we're actually on the front lines of these of these negotiations and engagement to to get access and improve protection. Just maybe to sort of go back a little bit to the overall theme of this this forum, I think it's, you know, it's all too often forgotten that, you know, maybe not amongst those those here but certainly I think in the international community that humanitarian access isn't just about getting trucks in across lines to deliver relief in a conflict and then back but it's, you know, it's those affected people's access to services as well. And we've just been hearing that from from Erin and others, you know, so, you know, access for a mother to get her her child to a malnutrition clinic say, but then on the sort of protection side beyond that I think the process of negotiating access itself can be can be really, really critical as an opportunity to raise awareness of legal obligations of humanitarian principles understanding of the way in which organizations work and therefore building that that trust and acceptance and that I think that the word trust came up a number of times and I think it's it's quite it's quite hard one and actually there's a lot of suspicion in these these situations and contested space it so you know that's something that needs to have a real sustained effort. I think really, you know, access and protection are often really indivisible. So, you know, if we're talking about people's access to water infrastructure. So about the, you know, the protection of the right to access that service and the protection of the water infrastructure itself so it's you know in international humanitarian law it's an object indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. So I think, you know, really treating these as two separate is is is a bit problematic. Then, you know, we've got a in in in the studio at the moment and I think the UK has over time had a strong focus on on gender and women and girls. In these situations, you know, we know women and girls disproportionately impacted by crises because of inequalities, the increased levels of violence we see the intimate partner or conflict related. And then the increased barriers to access to central services and humanitarian assistance. So, really quite interesting, I think the one of the earlier speakers talking about how how some of the approaches we come with in terms of gender can also present a challenge and something that has to be worked through in terms of the engagement with with non state armed groups and building that trust. So I think that, you know, it's, it's perhaps even even more so than just traditional, you know, access negotiations for assistance but when we're thinking particular activities around gender around minority or vulnerable groups that those sort of sensitivities are taken into account and understood as part of the wider approach to negotiating access for an operational agency or for the people affected. And so, yeah, I think as member states and donors, it's really important that not only access but protection and access that that protects really at the heart of our narrative on what humanitarian action is. And so it's great to be to be joining up with with like minded organizations on this and Geneva call the global protection cluster, and I see and others all working on this. In terms of how to sort of improve our work here I think, and there is a need to to continue that effort to strengthen the capacity of the humanitarian system in this. And it was mentioned also earlier around, you know, local staff, local partners, so that really needs to be part of the thinking capacity strengthening. And so that that sort of local tactical level. You know, we have a more structured approach and expertise to undertake those negotiations to deliver protection outcomes. I think this really means, you know, learning from some of the specialist organizations so that have been working, particularly on this so Geneva call but also the ICIC. Maybe thinking outside the humanitarian sector as well I mean so from from the mediation community who are engaging these groups perhaps for different purposes but but how can we we learn from some of that. And how we can draw draw insights from how communities and affected people locally engage. So, in terms of really sort of trying to strengthen that that learning and what we've been doing and supporting. We've supported some work with the Graduate Institute Geneva and Geneva call looking to really distill the evidence on non non state armed groups understanding interpretation of international humanitarian law international human rights law. So including in Iraq and the Sahel some of the examples. We're also working with GP PI and Geneva call. Here to to look at how we can encourage armed groups to comply with norms and assessing the effectiveness of different modes and different ways of engaging so I think we had some really interesting lessons here but how can we you know how can we build a strong evidence base on this so we can take decisions across context that's going to be quite some of this is going to be quite locally specific. But as much as possible how can we you know how can we build the evidence base and make the case to more of this to support it and show that it can really deliver protection outcomes. And then alongside support to individual agencies and I think there's also a need for some sort of common services that can support engagement with non state armed groups and Aaron talked about the role of option the leadership. I think that's that's an important element and it's great to see the doctor has a at the moment really a renewed interest and engagement on access which which has always been there I think in in their mandate from the General Assembly but has had sort of very engagement over time so it's excellent to to see some of that and I think you know some of the ideas that are being talked about in terms of mapping of different groups including across borders. Supporting where it's appropriate collective engagement or or positioning I think that it won't always we won't always wanted to be collective and it might be the individual organizations at the local level but where that can have value. And then at the operational level the humanitarian country teams and I think have a really important role in terms of shaping wider operational environment setting context for how others are engaging and so so that's an important part. And we're looking at how we can we can build on some of the support we've previously provided to the roll out of of HCT protection strategies and to look more at be a collective advocacy by the humanitarian leadership in country or more private engagement on a select sort of smaller number of two to three top issues and how we can really drive some of that forward given that they face maybe different exposure to those that are really on the front lines. And then and then at the sort of higher level the most of strategic level and there's a few things we can do I think UK's played quite an important role in trying to protect some of the normative environment for for this work including at the Security Council. And we've last year co-chaired the group of friends on conflict and hunger resolution 2417 at the council really trying to improve reporting and accountability for for some of these related violations of via child. And we're trying to step up our work at the moment really to address some of the barriers to humanitarian access and protection might unintentionally be created. By sanctions and counter terrorism other national security measures to to ensure that this this important work connect can actually take place so building on the success of the resolution exempting. Humanitarian action from sanctions in Afghanistan. There's now an opportunity at the Council to look how we do this much more widely across all regimes which could could be a really an important factor in enabling some of this work. I think it's only through sort of working right across these these levels so from what we've heard right at the sort of the front line of engagement coal face if you like right up to to the level of the Security Council and so on. And the role of states like the UK and I think we can we can enable a better dialogue and stronger negotiations and ultimately improve protection outcomes through through this engagement for for affected people. So I'll leave it there but back to you. Christie. Great thank you I think what you what you've touched on here too is, you know the importance of effective coordination between the global level, looking at the triple nexus between humanitarian development and the peace building communities is really key as well as you know thinking outside the box at the local level as well and thinking about how to best engage local actors local communities, who are of course experts in their own needs and and how to best provide those to their own communities. I think this is really important. And you know we're, we're all very excited about the upcoming PSBI conference in the UK, where I know that the topic of preventing sexual violence is going to be a major topic of conversation, and I'm thinking about humanitarian communities and and thinking about not only the ways that that governments can be effective in addressing these challenges, both from a donor perspective as well as political perspectives, as well as you know how to engage the voices and and actors on the ground who I've been talking and I muted myself apologies. So, I'm not sure where I left off but just to say we're very excited about the, the upcoming PSBI conference in the UK. Okay you heard everything, except bless you it's all right, not sure how I got muted, because it wasn't me and my hands are, you know, talking on my face. And yes, we're very excited to have the conversations from from government political actors as well as local community activists and survivors themselves so I have a number of questions from from the audience that I've been carefully collecting. And miss the first question was actually to you and it was specifically regarding some of the the gender issues within the study. And we've got a question here asking, is the gender analysis and related related to the GBV facts that you mentioned, present at the level of the report or and is it integrated in the response or recommendations. And do we still have moves on because his video has been off so he is still in the room, but his connection wasn't great. Okay. Well, maybe I will come back to him. And, well, there's Sam there was another question specifically to you somebody will come to you real quick just because your comments are fresh in our minds and then we'll, we'll come back to you as soon as we're able to connect. So, Sam the question we had here was, how do donors ensure that their funding requirements don't create disincentives to negotiations for protection outcomes. We know that many donors incentivize beneficiaries reached activities undertaken, which can translate to humanitarian institutional priorities of access whatever the cost. And so how do donors support course correction to mitigate such practices. I think this actually goes back to maybe a previous conversation you and I have had about you know what is impact. How do we measure it and how do we make sure that it's achieved. Yeah, no it's a good question. So I mean there is a risk I think that we just disincentivize some of this engagement in a number of ways. You know, we, you know, donors need to manage and what they need to account to particularly public donors for the money that's being spent. And, you know, that there's a kind of a range of kind of measures that are put in place to manage fiduciary risk that you know the money isn't spent appropriately. And then I think there's the whole range of kind of compliance with with sanctions counterterrorism and so on other measures, which I think will come from a good place. And I think they're important for states at the UK. I think in terms of sort of say, you know, if you look at a country like Somalia say, and questions about access that the panel of experts that their last report has some sort of anecdotal points around how some of these these measures may have sort of disincentivized or prevented access, but it's quite hard to disentangle what actually had the impact. And I think we need to get better at understanding that, but actually it's a bit of a snowball when you can exempt some countries in areas of, you know, if you if you can roll back certain, you know, exempt certain UN sanctions and different member states do the same. And it becomes a bit of a snowball and you actually sort of, yeah, can really address some of this quite effectively. I think that's kind of the baseline we've kind of making some quite good progress. Let's see where we get to the security council by the end of the year, but I think there's a really good direction of travel and strong US leadership on that that we didn't necessarily have previously. And then I mean, I think it's in terms of kind of, yeah, exactly as you said, Christie, how do we incentivize this it's about demonstrating impact. So we've got a program at the at the moment really trying to invest in evidence and what works on certain elements of protection and some of the work with Geneva call is is part of this. Humanitarian action has really poor evidence base overall but often it's the areas that were weakest and most challenged like cash transfers that had to build up that evidence and now we actually support quite quite well. So if we could do that more on protection that would be that would be good. And then finally I think it's really about that there's a there's a close partnership at the at the local level. And some of these decisions are really difficult, you know, in northern Ethiopia what what is the, you know, when do you say well we can't assess certain populations and we can't deliver protection services. We shouldn't say that that we shouldn't assist populations at all, or we should even consider a temporary suspension and that's quite a difficult question and I think that'll be for individual partners to work through. But certainly, you know, given the gravity of some of these situations we would still want to continue to be providing life saving assistance. And, yeah, so, so a few points there, but they are tricky tricky questions to work through. Absolutely thank you. Looks like we've got Moussa back. So I'll repeat the question for you. And for the audience. Is the gender analysis and related related to the GBD facts that you mentioned in your remarks present at the level of the report and is it integrated in the response and recommendations. So I understood I understood I understood I'm not sure I understood I understood I understood the question very well but I know you were talking about the gender based violence, didn't you. Yes, yes, so were there any perhaps more details related to the issues of GBD in the report that you mentioned and we've got the link in the chat box to so if folks want to go and take a look they can read it. So, unfortunately, I'm not sure I understood the question but if it's about the GBV and how they are integrated in our actions. Well, in Sahel. Yes. Okay, right. So we have eight topics and the GBV is a crosscutting topic for all our interventions when we come to a country we try to have discussions and negotiations with the conflicting parties but also the local communities in order to define the most relevant topics. We can discuss with the armed groups. So when we do this when we have the D we define the GBV as a very specific topic. We tend to see the populations tend to to give up and to forget that we have to talk about the GBV because of facing a very difficult crisis with a lot of atrocities everywhere. So it means that the GBV will tend to forget to talk about this. So in order to not to do so we try when we talk about the children, the prevention, protection of families. So we try to add these crosscutting topic of GBV and this is why we have an inclusive message we try to include it in our discussions. So on the other side, so in Burkina Faso we work with a local organization led by women and this organization has been working for many years. So in order to fight for the rights of women and we've been working with this organization for quite a long time in order to integrate this international law and the humanitarian law in what we do and they try to raise awareness among women and to mobilize women so they can make their voices heard and to make sure that these people, these women can actually play their role, their part in the society. So now the characteristics of our recommendations is that some actors they tend to try to only prioritize women. So we understand that the best will be to improve the lives of women and girls but it should be accepted. It must be accepted by a community leaders but we need to count and rely on the support of men and the full commitment of women, of men. So we need to find a way to, in order to work with men and not to, we shouldn't let men think that this is a conspiracy of the international NGOs and this is why we wanted to highlight in our recommendations. Thank you. All right, thank you Moussa that was actually a much more detailed answer than we were hoping for so that's perfect. Thank you. I've got a couple questions here that are somewhat related so maybe I'll ask them together and then open it up to whomever wants to respond from our panel. First, how do we work around community leaders affiliations to armed groups in context where armed groups are community or ethnic based. And also how do you best deal with armed actors about the human rights or humanitarian violations they commit without damaging the level of trust that you've built with them over a long period of time. So for the second question, we have the experience that it's good to establish focal points as I mentioned earlier within each armed group and to have proper trainings for them on humanitarian principles and human rights. It's not like just one training is to it's a kind of accompaniment procedure for the focal points. So they better understand what are those principles and good to establish a group of focal points. They can communicate they can understand each other and when such kind of violations happens then these focal points could be the mediums that such violations can be communicated to them. We tried to try this kind of procedure and it works very well. Great Aaron or Moussa did you want to jump in on anything. Sorry, my sound one out for just a second when you were asking questions I actually missed the question apologies. I'll repeat it. Actually two questions sort of combined. How do we work around community leaders affiliations to armed groups in context where the armed groups are community or ethnically based. And how do you best deal with armed actors around the human rights or humanitarian violations that they commit without damaging the building of trust that you've established over your your relationships with them. And maybe quickly to touch on the second one, I would say with great difficulty. And, and I think that's that is a bit when I spoke about earlier this dilemma between how do you remain principled as an organization and recognize how essential it is to really put the protection of civilian populations the center of our work, while also recognizing that in situations where they armed groups or the defect to authorities or other parties to the conflict can have some strong control over our access. That's some by speaking out or confronting them on certain issues that actually can damage your long term ability to have a positive impact. So what I would say there is I don't think for us at least there's necessarily one, you know, black or white answer business about weighing up your short, what is your looking for, you know, not just your short term access or your short term outcome, but long term, what is it that we as an organization want to achieve what's the impact we want to have for the people we're trying to serve, and not for us as an organization. And I think coming back to maybe a question that Samuel answered earlier was that I think is often what's difficult is making those decisions based on what's best for the people we're trying to serve, and not necessarily what's best for us as an organization, because sometimes they're aligned and sometimes they're different. And I think on the first question. Again, I don't think there's necessarily, you know, one silver bullet as there's no silver bullets when you're talking with access ever. It's just a lot of work, it's a lot of time, it's a lot of efforts. It's really about remaining principal and remaining really neutral and needs based and coming back to that, and really being able to ensure that all of your staff at all levels are able to articulate not only what are the humanitarian principles, but why. And maybe an example of this is, I first landed in Yemen in, you know, in 2015, in the early days of the conflict here. And, you know, as country director I was talking about in principles and, you know, a principal response and that might mean, you know, in this area, we were having to suspend our programming for a certain amount of time, because we needed to be able to independently access communities and not just be handed a list by a party to the conflict and work based on that. And after a couple of months, I had, you know, I was on field visited with data and one of my, my colleagues came to me and kind of Charlie said, I don't really understand why we're just standing on principle here. People are in need, but we're just spending just because of the points. And it, it was kind of a light bulb for me that we that I had made an assumption that people understood why we were doing this. And, and I think that's really important for a humanitarian leadership to understand is it really needs to be every person at every level of the organization, not just understanding what the humanitarian principles are, why we work on a neutral needs basis, but being able to actually articulate that so that in their work and in discussing their negotiations with armed groups with de facto authorities others with community leaders themselves. Well articulate that so that we're not breaking that trust there. Thanks. Absolutely. I think one of the best things about the model that our field colleagues that Geneva call uses is truly that whether they're engaging with community leaders, ethnic groups, armed actors to factor with groups. The goal is a your underlying achievement is our civilians being protected. And do they have access to the humanitarian resources that they need. But be in the methodology is, it's providing them with a common language based on not only the exact language not just English or French because that's the language that the treaty was written in but what is the actual language spoken in these communities. What local religious or cultural practices are are their norms what how do they interact what what is normal for them to engage on because everybody has some form of protection principles in whatever community they come from. So being able to use our staff on the ground who are from these communities themselves to be able to use to give them that language so that they can then have a conversation, whether the community groups or the armed actors. You know who might not have maybe thought about it in those terms, then have a common language where they can come together to talk about these norms and principles is really really important. Actually I'm sorry I cut you off did you want to add anything to this. Yes. I want to answer to the two questions you've asked. Please. The first was linked to how to talk about violations with armed groups without reaching the trust. We need a thorough analysis of the group in Sahel for example we have a typology we have the radical group and the other group. So for the self defense group we are lucky enough that they all have conduct codes internally and they have limits for fighters. So we need to analyze these conduct codes and to articulate debates and discussions around these conduct codes. So instead of starting from us and going to their code of conduct we must start from their conduct codes. This way, they don't feel the opposition they feel valued. And it's true that our groups are not saints, but they have ideologies they have political ideas economic institutions. But they use force because they think it's the only way that exists to achieve their objectives so there are humans we can talk and have frank discussions with them. So that was the first question. For the second question for the affiliation of community leaders and armed groups, I think we always need analysis and to be maybe at a distance of the group. Sometimes some people in the context are impacted by their own perceptions of the locality. Often we lack an analyst of the influence that exists between the groups and the community leaders in Burkina Faso we have the connection dropped interpreter apologizes I cannot hear moosa anymore. It seems that the connection might be a bit weak. Perhaps if we could turn off your video so that we can hear you. We're trying to turn this video off I think he might have actually dropped. Okay, well hopefully we'll get him back. And if there's background noise I'm in Turkey and so you might hear the call to prayer behind me so I will try to share the next question quickly so that we can get to the answers. Just because we have about 10 minutes left. We've talked about this a little bit from Samuel's perspective on the donor government side, but it would be helpful perhaps for from the field perspective. And a few of you could talk about context where governments are fighting armed groups and how do you negotiate protection access to civilians in in areas held by armed groups, without arousing suspicions or sanctions that you are supporting the governments or giving the latter some level of recognition or legitimacy. I'm happy to start off on this one as this is a perfect question for the Yemen context. We have, you know, an internationally recognized government and we have de facto authorities. I think one of the things that is perhaps a bit particular here is that the de facto authority can actually controls. The control SANA, which was the capital before the IRG and moved to the temporary capital to Adam. So they control state institutions and so we have dual ministries with two ministries of education, we have two ministries of health, we have to central banks to currencies, etc. But this is very a very relevant question for us. And again, I would say with great difficulty and not always successfully. I would say again, when we do this. I think the biggest mistake that organizations have made is often trying to often prioritizing short term access gains at the expense of what does that mean for all organizations in the entire community, long term so accepting a constraint on our ability to work in in areas controlled by armed groups, just to get that immediate access without realizing what that will mean for the years to come. And I think that this is also probably things that our colleagues in Afghanistan are grappling with at the moment. I think that in the early years of the response there's quite a bit of good investment done and explaining the neutrality of the humanitarian response and the needs basis on which we work. And I think that one of the key tools that we have is actually donors and member states. Not all of them, of course, are good allies on this, there are a number who recognize the essential role of the humanitarian response plays, and they do have close relations, both with the internationally recognized government, and with this with Gulf countries who have a significant influence over the internationally recognized government. So whereas, as humanitarian organizations, I may not always be able to be listened to by certain ministers. If I can use our colleagues in, for example, FCDO or in the Norwegian government and their ministry of foreign affairs. There's a number of European member states who are fantastic allies for us, and they can pass those messages and they can help safeguard our humanitarian space and our ability to operate effectively throughout the country. They've been excellent, excellent allies for us. And I mean, this is something we're facing at the moment where the news that I received today was that, you know, there's an imminent announcement by the IRG's presidential leadership council coming out within days that if we don't move our country office or coordination office, which is currently inside that to add and they'll just stop providing residencies for us that they will stop our operations kind of countrywide for this. So these are the types of things that we have to negotiate on a constant basis to but working together working with member states and just putting the time in. Fantastic. So, for Moussa or Peshkafi is if you have any comments to add we'd love to hear your thoughts too. Okay. Very quickly, like Iraq context is different. But you know, like, there are specific locations, which are controlled by some outfits, for example, like coordinated by PKK, for example, in the area in Sinjar. So in one area, for example, like some of the IDPs, I would say in their thousands who are not allowed to go back into those territories because of their political affiliations with some certain groups to coordinate with them, for example, one of the as we are working with joint operations command of the security forces. So they are fully in the loop of our activities that we're doing there. And simultaneously, we also work with that armed outfit in that area. And we offer them a number of training, especially on the return related issues of the IDPs. And after such trainings, they basically like gradually come to the point that they need to open up having a negotiations with other offices. So once you bring them on a table to open up for negotiations, and at the same time, keeping other other sides fully abreast of what is taking place, that would be one of the modus operandi that how can you move forward. So in that respect, we are basically currently in process of securing return of the IDPs into that location, where at present this dialogue is going. So this is just one of the examples of this idea on the spot. All right. And Musa, you've got two minutes for your last thoughts. No, I'll be very brief, because there are a lot of links between some community leaders and some self-defense groups. It's an important resource, because the nature of some groups means that we cannot have access to some leaders. I think community leaders are very important resource for that matter. Thank you. Great. Well, thank you all so much for joining our conversation today. It's been incredibly rich and really fantastic to hear so many different regional examples and perspectives in very complex environments and situations where you might be dealing with self-defense groups, factors, defactual authorities, and on many different issues. So it's really helpful to hear these different examples given and food for thought for those of you who might be encountering similar issues in your own context. And thank you also to Samuel for sharing a donor government perspective and your leadership on making sure that humanitarian access for humanitarian organizations is provided is certainly very much welcomed. I'm sure by everyone in the room today. So thanks so much to our panelists for your contributions, to our interpreters, for your excellent work in making sure that all of us can participate in the conversation today. Of course, to our hosts for inviting us to all be here for this discussion, and we hope to engage further on these discussions with you in the future. So thank you all so much and have a great morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you might be located and look forward to seeing you all soon. Thank you.