 Thank you, Julie, and good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, colleagues. Thank you very much for joining us as we come together to kick off the GPC and Global Protection Forum for 2022. It's really my great pleasure to welcome you to what I hope will be a very lively discussion today, as well as to kick off the forum more broadly. It is fantastic to see so many participants with us today from all over the world. We've registered more than 3,200 people, the majority from Sub-Saharan Africa, but also many colleagues joining from Latin America and the Caribbean. These numbers reflect more diversity in registration in terms of region and organization type than ever before. It is a strong sign that the forum is designed for and with protection colleagues and practitioners in the field. Thank you very much to everyone for joining us and taking the time from your busy schedule to attend these events this week. And many thanks also to the colleagues who have worked very hard in preparing for the forum. This year, the Protection Forum will focus on a truly foundational aspect of protection work, that is access. Access remains a major and key approach enabler and tool that helps advance protection outcomes for communities affected by conflict and crisis. Over the past year, the Global Protection Cluster has felt increasing urgency of this topic. Looking across the 32 protection cluster operations, we see the very real challenges facing communities in terms of their access to protection. We also see the challenges facing us collectively as protection actors and humanitarian actors in delivering the needed protection services. These challenges related to access are not new. However, there has been a marked deterioration in the degree and quality of access over the past few years. This is particularly true for protection responses like access to gender-based violence support and legal aid. Protection actions require sustained access that enables protection and human rights monitoring, engagement with communities and leaders, and the delivery of targeted services to vulnerable groups. Across our 32 protection cluster operations, we estimate that protection actors reach 25 to 50% of the affected population, I would say only. And in some of these operations, access is even lower than that. That's why as a sector, we have met tremendous strides over the past several years in strengthening the quality and the impact of our collective efforts, sustained access and support for more inclusive and community-based protection measures has never been more imperative. We need sustained access that enables relationship building, nuanced analysis of diverse needs, experiences and barriers, and responsive advocacy grounded in local priorities and leadership. During last year's forum, with all of you, we took a very strong focus on localization and our focus now on access that protects really builds on the work that we have done over the past year. We want to dive into how we as a sector and as a system can better enable the ongoing leadership of communities and local actors to sustain and strengthen the kind of access that enables responsive protection services and outcomes in complex humanitarian settings. The Global Protection Forum that we launched today aims to provide a platform through which key protection and access partners, field practitioners, donors, member states, academics, and many more people engaged in this field of work can come together to find better ways to move forward, to shift behaviors, policies and practices in ways that can advance access that protects. There will be 12 sessions throughout the Global Forum this year and I really hope if you have not yet done so that you'll register for them. Now to turn to our program for today, I'm very pleased that we are joined by guests from UN agencies, international organizations and national NGOs as well as colleagues from the protection cluster in South Sudan, who will all contribute to what I believe will be a very lively discussion on how to move the needle on access that protects. To kick off this discussion, it's my pleasure to pass on the floor to Mr. Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of Coordination at OSHA. Ramesh, thank you so much for being with us today and for offering us your perspective from your work with OSHA. OSHA has long flown the flag of humanity and access and ensures protection is at the core of what it does, providing extraordinary leadership, not only across operations but also in high level policy discussions in both places like New York and Geneva. Ramesh, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Bernadette. Thank you very much also for the invitation to give some opening remarks today. I also recall that there was no Global Protection Forum when I was previously in this, my previous incarnation, but I was in a similar setting with the Global Protection Forum group I think in about 14 years ago, so it's good to be back after all these years. As you know, supporting and facilitating humanitarian access is a core part of the work of the emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths, the humanitarian coordinators around the world and of OSHA in general and all of our humanitarian partners. Access, humanitarian access mandated by General Assembly Resolution 46182, which helps set up the Department of Humanitarian Affairs in OSHA, refers to a two-pronged concept comprising humanitarian actors' ability to reach populations in need and effective populations to assistance and services. Safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access is a fundamental prerequisite to effective and safe humanitarian action for all the work that all you and our colleagues on the field do, especially without surprise in situations of armed conflict, but also however in context of disasters, for example the very recent Pakistan floods and civil unrest in other areas. Humanitarian access is a principled and negotiated business. In Resolution 1894, the Security Council underscored the importance of upholding the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence. Compliance or non-compliance with these principles affects ourselves, humanitarian actors, their acceptance among the local communities and also the ability to engage in negotiations with state and non-state actors with the aim of reaching affected populations. Yet, and no surprise to all of us, there are multiple constraints which impinge on humanitarian access, including bureaucratic restrictions imposed by state and non-state actors on personnel and humanitarian assistance. This includes donor governments' funding restrictions on engaging with, for example, Shabab in Somalia or Hamas in Gaza and domestic legislations which criminalize the provision of material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations. Biocratic impediments can also take the form of delays on visas, for example today Myanmar, conscription of humanitarian staff as we see more and more in eastern Ukraine or delays in getting humanitarian projects approved, which we have seen in Yemen. It also impacts and impinges on, brings about in situations of insecurity and conduct of hostilities. Threats, arbitrary arrests and attacks on humanitarian personnel, premises and assets such as the recent looting of humanitarian warehouses in Haiti, which we all know, but also I think the increasing ultimate price paid by many humanitarian actors in conflict situations with the interference in the delivery of humanitarian assistance and also with restriction on movements. So at a global level, OSHA advocates for the safe, timely and unimpeded access to people in need. In 2007, the emergency relief coordinator committed to establishing more systematic monitoring and reporting on access, reporting instances of grave concern to the Security Council and supporting efforts to increase access on the ground. Since then, the ERC has repeatedly emphasized the critical importance of improving access in the Security Council and other fora. Under the leadership of the ERC, OSHA's played a leading role in documenting the various types of impediments that counterterrorism measures and sanctions generate for principled humanitarian action and advocating for systemic solutions with all stakeholders, including the Security Council, its counterterrorism and sanctions committees, member states and donors. Today, there's broad acknowledgement of the humanitarian issues related to the implementation of the sanctions and counter-agenda and the need for measures to preserve principled humanitarian action in counter-terrorism and sanctions contexts. This is reflected through appropriate language and relevant Security Council and GA resolutions and most recently, the adoption by the Security Council of a sanctions carve-out for humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, which indeed is a step forward. The ERC also actively facilitates through negotiations if needed, the access by operational organizations to emergency areas for the rapid response or provision of emergency assistance by obtaining the consent of all parties concerned with dialysis such as the establishment of temporary relief corridors or temporary relief days and zones of tranquility and other fora were needed, for other forms were needed. At the country level, humanitarian coordinators and OSHA play a critical role in facilitating and coordinating efforts to establish and maintain principled humanitarian access to and by or for people in need and to overcome factors that inhibit access. OSHA develops tools and provides guidance and support to HCs and humanitarian counterteams to address access-related issues, including humanitarian engagement with non-state armed groups and respect for humanitarian principles by both warring parties and the humanitarian community, those principles being our main source of protection. OSHA also facilitates efforts to monitor access in order to identify constraints and their implications for affected populations. This data can then be used to build common approaches to resolve issues and to inform advocacy and negotiation processes. Turning to the focus of this year's Global Protection Classes Forum on Access that protects, I'm keen to frame the discussion at the outset on a collective way forward by emphasizing three points that are crucial for OSHA's perspective. First, just as humanitarian action has both a relief and protection objective, so too humanitarian access speaks to enabling both. Humanitarian access is not an end goal but a means to fulfill the broader objective to make people safer, protect their ability, dignity and rights. It's not a simple case of either or. Often a shortage or lack of essentials like food, water or health care is closely linked to a lack of protection corresponding human rights. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that a lack of access and proximity to affected populations may have specific implications for protection activities. We need more robust analysis to better understand and address those specific constraints and implications when they arise. At the recent humanitarian coordinators retreat, many humanitarian coordinators pointed to the imperative to have a presence and protection through a presence there, and this is a vital component of access. Secondly, we must also strengthen our attention to the protection impact within existing humanitarian access arrangements, mechanisms and tools at a global and country level. Evaluating progress towards securing or sustaining access must be looked at in terms of the extent to which our approaches have led to improvement in protection of affected people. Creating additional or separate protection processes risks overburdening country level colleagues and diluting our efforts. At an operational level, for example, this should translate to protection clusters strengthening inputs to existing monitoring efforts by and collaborating with access working groups. Third, we must tackle the assumption that addressing protection concerns or advocating for rights will inevitably hinder humanitarian access or result in negative repercussions for the delivery of programs. One aspect of this is enduring is that ensuring that leadership have political backing from the headquarter level and from the leadership level, the headquarters and support. Humanitarian coordinators and HCTs must be given great incentives to focus on protection as part of their core responsibilities and indeed accountable and be accountable for it. This is a key takeaway of the recent independent review of the implementation of the ISC protection policy. From Afghanistan to Ethiopia, Ukraine and Somalia, protection is very much at the forefront of the missions conducted by the USG-ERC Martin Griffiths and in his engagement with parts of the conflict, including on access. And we've seen this in Afghanistan, Ukraine, everywhere. I will cut short my presentation here, just very short, very quickly. Archie remains fully dedicated to support this and facilitate access on behalf of the humanitarian community. We will work with all partners and all stakeholders in helping to do so in a transparent way as possible. And this is a major part of our strategic plan for 2023 to 2026. And we look forward to doing it in a much more strategic way, more transparent way, but also doing it having more consistent standards applied in all contexts throughout the globe. And we look forward to working very closely with you, with UNHCR and the Global Protection cluster partners to take this forward. Thank you very much again. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Ramesh. Thank you for joining us and thank you for sharing these remarks with us. We are, as always, very grateful for the strong partnership of OSHA and the invaluable advocacy expertise and coordination that you are leading when it comes to humanitarian access. Before I turn on to our panelists today, I'm very pleased that colleagues from the protection cluster in South Sudan have prepared a video for us demonstrating both the challenges and the opportunities for access in their operation. I'm Atsiga Patrick. I work with Danish Deputy Council in South Sudan. But in most emergencies in South Sudan, the biggest challenge in gaining access to protection activities are ongoing security concerns and inaccessible terrains. More frequently flooding and extreme weather conditions combine with poor infrastructures and limited means of transport, completely hinter access to some locations within the country. Simultaneously, areas with active public and frequent classes, particularly hard to reach areas, make it very hard for our protection team to access some locations. As humanitarian access is hindered, delayed or denied, and protection needs increases over time and vulnerabilities are often exacerbated. With DRC Mobile Response Program, DRC is able to try and mitigate access challenges and deliver timely protection services to the most in need. My name is John Gahir. I'm the ponder and excerpt director for Mobile Humanitarian Agency, which is a national venue. The successful negotiation of the access to the southern unity is the unity state inventive. That was 2018 during a very active conflict where we need to access both locations, which is being controlled by different administrations, the opposition and the government. And we had to negotiate that successful. What we used to do when we have a demand signal from our people, we do what we call the contact analysis and the stack order mapping. That is to give us an idea of who we should be talking to to negotiate the access. And we also do what we call environmental scanning to identify the threats and then the vulnerability. The second thing that we usually use to do as well is to recruit within the area of the foreign excite, local recruitment. That gives us an advantage of a situation whereby it happens that there is an active conflict again, that our critical staff can be relocated. But the local recruited staff can remain. That gives us leverage of being able to get the information from the ground and we're still going to continue with our activities as well. My name is David Hattar and I'm the Roving Protection Cluster Officer in South Sudan. As we all know, funds are ever decreasing, which is leading to a lot of competition between humanitarian actors to deliver results. I think there are two key things that need to happen. The first thing is stakeholders, specifically donors, need to be more lenient and understanding when it comes to results. Because we're seeing a lot of competition, we're seeing a lot of attitude that if a certain actor does not deliver results to the donors, then this means no future funding. So I think this is quite a challenge actually coming from the top down. Another thing that I think is vital is that we need stakeholders, donors alike, senior management to encourage collaboration, not just between agencies, but actually between clusters. And I think one way to go about this is to ensure MOUs, for example, between clusters, we've seen this already happening with certain clusters. So that if someone is going to the field to do any negotiation for access, that they keep protection in mind. Thank you colleagues for these very impactful clips and for taking the time to record those for us. I think your messages will resonate throughout the week during the different sessions and discussions. To build on both the comments made by Ramesh and our colleagues working in South Sudan, I'm pleased that we are joined today by three actors leading on protection and access efforts from a wide range of partner organizations. Tiffany Isham, Executive Director of Non-Violence Peace Force. Samira Nuri, Deputy Director General of the Citizen's Organization for Advocacy and Resilience in Afghanistan. And Hishem Kadrawi, Head of Operations at Geneva Coal. I couldn't think of a more fitting group to have a discussion on how we can further place protection at the heart of access and particularly zooming a bit more on the role of negotiations. Thank you for being with us here today. And to kick us off, I'd like to turn to you, Tiffany. Across humanitarian action, while an invaluable focus on community empowerment, accountability to affected people and local leadership has grown over the past several years, there remains a tendency to frame the role of civilians as one of beneficiaries of aid. However, in situations of violence, civilians and communities, and we see that every day, they engage in self-protection actions to keep themselves and their families safe. You are working with Non-Violence Peace Force, an organization working on a daily basis to strengthen community self-protection. Tiffany, what can we do better at global level to further support and enable community self-protection and turn this into a cornerstone for access negotiations? Thank you, Bernadette, and thank you so much for inviting me and representing Non-Violence Peace Force and all the colleagues to this forum. It's a great opportunity. I was really moved by what you said in the opening statements. Bernadette really recognizing the importance of things like relationship building and really focusing on those who are most impacted by violence in the work that we do, and that being the cornerstone of both protection, protection outcomes, and to be part of what we want to do for access negotiations. Taking a little moment of inspiration from the video we just saw, starting from the question about how can we support and enable local communities to best support themselves to do local protection strategies. I was reflecting on a time and a situation in South Sudan that I think is such a great illustration of what that we can learn from. We were working with a group of women in what we call WPTs, or Women's Protection Teams, which are local South Sudanese women, looking around the room and seeing who's not present, who is not at the table, and who's most impacted by violence being a starting place for that question. Before being in this role, I was country director in South Sudan for a number of years, and when I was leaving South Sudan, I did a little tour around to say goodbye, and I went to northern Bargazal, so many people I'm sure listening are familiar with South Sudan, and to a little village in northern Bargazal right on the border between Sudan and South Sudan, so very remote, very far away, in a place where a group of women who had been really dynamic and really stating that they wanted to become, take stronger leadership roles in peace and security in their remote location, and what they said is, we're really far away from everything and everyone. We depend on ourselves first and foremost, and that's what we need help to be able to do. So as I pulled up, of course, in the Land Cruiser, and the leader of the group came running over to the vehicle, her name is Mary, very excited to see us come in and ready to tell us about stories about what they had been working on, and they had set up within their community a series of safe houses. So in an effort to address situations of sexual and gender-based violence without any service providers very close by, they realized that one of the things they needed to do was to be able to move to safer locations, and then they also needed a process on how they were going to deal with perpetrators and survivors and so on and so forth, none of this language that they use, of course, but the language that we would use in the humanitarian community. So this was great. They were very excited. It was really impressive to see what they were doing on their own. The thing that really has always stood out for me from this moment is that while I was listening to Mary and the women's protection team tell their story, I noticed around the edge of the circle there was a gentleman and his name is John. He's a local police officer, the one police officer that's available in the area. And I'd recognized him from previous trips, and when we'd first started working there, he'd been very skeptical. What can women do? What can women do for women protection, protecting themselves? All of it just didn't sound right for him. And he had a bit of a smirk on his face. So after they finished presenting, I went over and I talked to him, and I said, hi, nice to see you, and I'm really grateful to be here. And he said, I need to tell you something. And I said, what? He said, you know, I didn't believe that this was possible. And he said, you know what's happening? And he said, normally, all these disputes would go to the local chief's court. And the chief's court would organize and they would arbitrate what was happening and they would come up with some sort of decision. Somebody would make a payment and that would be considered justice. And he says, now what happens is when people bring their problems to the local chief's court, the chiefs now say, we can deal with your problem here and we'll do what you know what we're going to do. Or if you want to actually solve the problem, you want to solve the conflict you're having, we would really recommend that you go see the women. This was really moving. And when we think about communities doing self-protection, and what can we learn from that as humanitarian service providers, as protection actors, as the system, what can we do to support that? What do we do there? We do long-term investments. We have to park our own ideas of what success is, where from different parts of the world, what does justice mean in those situations, it's really important that that is what we're imposing on local communities. They were making those choices for themselves and that we make space for it and we have the patience for it and the encouragement for it and that we use our presence and our solidarity and provide accompaniment for when things get difficult and stay in a secondary role for those local protection strategies. And when Bernadette said in her opening remarks and really talked about relationship building, it sounds very simple but it is indeed the most important thing that we can do, build trust, to be present, to be in solidarity with. And when we think about what do we mean about gaining access and accesses for everyone, we need it for our work and there's access for protection for the people that we're working on. And when we really look at it from the focus of investing first and asking later, investing with communities to support the capacity for local protection and self-protection, then opens up the space to be able, in more difficult circumstances, to be able to do other things. I think one of the key lessons that we've taken away is that access and protection is mutual. I think of another occasion also in South Sudan and Northern Zhongli in an area that was getting quite cut off. This was during the start of a couple of years into the war, but the fighting had not quite reached there, but resources were getting very limited. And we were one of one or two maybe other small organizations that were in a very remote location. And what was happening was a local group was starting to steal from the compounds and they were stealing the fuel at this point. So the community knew, the NP was the last organization in this community that hadn't had to evacuate yet because we had not yet been robbed. And so community leaders came to us and said, we've heard that you're the last fuel storage available and we know if your fuel is stolen, you will just have to leave. And we really want and need you there. We need you to stay here. So we're going to the local commissioner and we're going to ask him to help us. And this is what they did. They went to the local authorities, they pled their case and the local authorities went and made it clear to whoever would be stealing that they would not approve of having our fuel stolen. So it was important and a humbling moment that at that moment in a very remote location in a very, very, an area that was being targeted, it was our, us being protected by that local community. And I feel when we think about this cornerstone piece, this is where we need to come from is looking who is not at the table, looking at inclusivity as our primary motivator and then we build and we take it from there. These are words that are easy to say. We all get busy, we get focused on the work that we need to do and to remember that when it comes back, when we come back down to the foundation of doing it from a values-based perspective and building those relationships and that trust and being in solidarity with one another, it's not just who is making, who is going to be safe in the moment, but in a more integrated world, we will all be safer. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tiffany. I think your experience resonates certainly with me and I'm sure with many, many, many colleagues who are listening to us. Samira, you are joining us online and I would like now to turn to you. Through your experience working in Afghanistan, you are very well placed to share with us some insights on advancing advocacy in support of access for protection. In many crisis contexts around the world today, advocacy continues to be perceived and assumed as a risk that may undermine access to protection, access and protection. Many operational organizations are wary of speaking up for fear of having their operations shut down. Can you share with us from your experience if there are also examples of how advocacy has contributed to expanded and better access for protection purposes? Thank you so much. First of all, I'm also thanking the organizer of this event for inviting me to speak on behalf of the national and local NGOs in Afghanistan. And the organization that I'm working, the Citizen Organization for Advocacy and Resilience, is a national NGO that's working in Afghanistan since 1989. From the past 34 years, the organization has been able to implement more than 800 projects across the country in both development and humanitarian sectors and has been able to join and form different platforms and groups for advocacy for protection, for humanitarian, for all the needed sectors and areas who are able to jointly work with the international NGOs, with the UN agencies, and to respond to the affected people in the humanitarian crisis across the country. Coming to your questions, as we all know that in Afghanistan, like the recent complex situation, like political situation in Afghanistan is quite critical because of the complex history. And if we say that there isn't one formula as a remedy to this conflict, but, you know, these kinds of conflicts and different political agendas in the country made the situation quite critical for the actors to do the advocacy. However, in the country, like before the fall of the government and the hand of Taliban, there were some platforms and groups that they were working for the advocacy for the protection purpose. And after the incident of the 15th of August and the country, many other groups also formed for the advocacy purposes, like individually or as a group, everyone has done differently to do the advocacy for the protection purpose and to somehow, like to some extent, these groups individually or as a group are able to speak the voice of the affected people on defending different sectoral or cross-cutting issues in Afghanistan. Besides that, like in the country, we have an advocacy working group that formed with the support of the ACBA, which is a coordination body that all national and international NGOs are getting together and doing the advocacy for the protection in the country and some other challenges that we are recently facing that access of the female humanitarian worker in Afghanistan, which is a quite challenging nowadays that humanitarian female worker do not have access, even though the access to or to each area is now easy for the international NGOs to go there and implement some project under the protection, while the marginalized group like women and girls are deprived of these protection programs. So this is another challenge in Afghanistan that we are facing in this area, even though the advocacy is going on, but it's not as much effective as it should be to path the way and to solve the solution and to have access for all the different type of the affected groups. But we are, like to some extent, be able to negotiate with the de facto authority to solve these problems. But again, like there are some challenges that we are facing. But the important point in here is that when we are doing some advocacy with the coordination with the international NGOs or donor agencies, union agencies and donors, there should be like, we should understand and everyone should understand who is doing the advocacy, how it's done and who is doing these and who are the audience. If we are doing the protection programs in the country, does the audience understand, really understand the protection? Because I have, like I'm working in this area from past 13 years, most of the programs that coming to Afghanistan like implementing or the donors are bringing some models from other country and they are implementing in the country. Like it's quite different because in some of the activity of the protection, the model which bringing from other country is not quite a resultful to be successfully implemented in the country because it's not according to the context of the country. That's why some of the programs which is under the protection are not much, the result is not much effective. If these kind of activities in the country like handled, managed well with the collaborative or coordination with the national and international NGOs so it will have a positive impact. So these are the situations that we are facing in the part of protection and the as an individual or as a group doing the advocacy and the result is also good to some extent but still it needs more support of the international community, the donor to support the local NGOs because when the 15 August incident happened like all the international NGOs left the country all the donors stopped and suspended their project. The only NGOs that were in the country were local NGOs, national NGOs that after three days of the incident we started our operation while other international NGOs where there's a dire need for the protection all left the country stopped their operation and after five or six months later on that we received emails from our international partners that still like local NGOs are working so we said yes we started our operation. So this is the challenges that we are facing or maybe sometimes the coordination is lacking there or sometimes the support is lacking with the local NGOs and also in the part of protection and the recent and I'm also sharing another experience that recently because we also have lots of challenges with the de facto authorities because recently the de facto authorities brought some changes in the NGOs law while that is contradicting with the humanitarian law so UN agencies international NGOs and local NGOs along with ACBA doing advocacy for this that how we can convince the de facto authority to support us to do our programs or do our protection programs and do the advocacy. So these types of things like make the barrier and make the the barrier and to not implement the project that we receive somehow some funds from the international community or donor but unfortunately we received from the ACBA that they had reported around 30 million of the fund that was allocated for the protection program refunded back and that fund allocated to Ukraine. Why? Because most of the IT implementing partners that they wanted to do the protection programs they were avoided or they were the de facto authority made the constraint able to come up with that to implement the project so these kind of challenges made us to not implement the project correctly to not have access to marginalized groups and to not have a good result from their protection activities. Thank you. Thank you Samira. Thank you for sharing these very concrete examples with us we all have lots to learn from your experience and your call for continuous support was loud and clear Heisham you are also joining us online and I'd like to turn to you now in your capacity as head of operations at Geneva call while there are multiple drivers contributing to constraint access it is clear that armed groups have crucial role to play when it comes to efforts led by humanitarians to gain and expand their access the ICRC estimates that between 60 to 80 million people are living in territories exclusively controlled by armed groups including countries such as the Central African Republic South Sudan we talked about Mali and Colombia and yet a significant gap in the protection sector tends to be the lack of systematic engagement and negotiation with armed groups and parties to the conflict Heisham what in your opinion are the biggest challenging facing those operating in places under the control of armed groups and what can be done to better support engagement for access for protection thank you very much I don't know if you can hear me yes great so thank you very much and thanks for the GPC for organizing this event and reminding us that protection is at the heart of any humanitarian engagement we at Geneva call strongly believe that any engagement with parties to conflict should be protection driven with a focus on the needs of people most affected to better highlight and identify challenges of humanitarian and protection actors when it comes to access we first need to know in which political and conflict settings we are operating conflict settings are extremely fluid with multi-layer situations communities, armed actors meditarians are all interacting between these various scenarios with scripts that change continuously and sometimes there is no script at all there is no one size fits all one country has often various layers of conflict I would still try for the sake of the discussion today to distinguish between three main situations first of all areas under the full control of armed groups here we see armed groups that are acting or seeing themselves as de facto authorities as my colleague Samira talked about the Taliban in Afghanistan for example at Geneva call we engage them in their new role because you have specific and new obligations when you control fully a territory issues such as law and order human rights delivery of services that will not have in the second setting that I talk about where areas are under the influence of armed groups here we talked about guerrilla armed groups they cannot control territories so they conduct warfare around hit and run attacks for example here at Geneva call for example we engage them around topics such as conduct of hostilities then you have the areas under the full control of governments but even in this particular setting states are increasingly supported by pro-government armed groups and militias as we see in the Sahel region and in Iraq with Hashad Shabi the Shia militias supporting the Iraqi governments and in all of this context or sub context as you want to know you may find criminal armed gangs that are sometimes allied or foes of armed groups and regular armed forces so this is just the level of complexity that you have in a given conflict so I will not talk about the Malian conflict or the Avaran conflicts but the Malian conflicts or the Avaran conflicts and unit engagement needs them to be tailored by type of context even if you are in the same country populations are moving between those values sub context because of violence lack of economic opportunities and sometimes issues to tribal or religious affiliations this needs to be included in the engagement as key actors and vectors I would then add another important factor that is sometimes ignored perception and reputation of humanitarian actors and actions armed groups know us more than we know ourselves I will quote an armed group leader without mentioning his name he told me you come, you go but we stay and observe you lack of organizational memory high turnovers are big challenges when it comes to create the good conditions for systematic engagement the way parties to conflict perceive you actions on the ground is critical even if you believe it's unfair you have to understand their own realities or did several field based studies on the subject and it all comes to the same recommendation when you ask armed groups on the ground principle action and not deviating from the proclaimed mission and mandate are seen as key by local actors civilian and armed groups to conclude I will share a few examples of what I consider the biggest challenges based on what I just highlighted one of the challenges internally are the lack of conflict analysis skills by staff working with organizations and the lack of updates I mean a conflict is very fluid it can show up to six months, one year you need to have a constant updates as well profiles of senior staff of organizations need to include capacity willingness to engage and to engage anyone who is important to engage even if he's someone who is not an official actor the understanding of type of armed groups de facto, guerrilla, coalitions, religious criminals is as well essential if you want to make sure that you have a strategy which is fitting the realities where you work and then comes with this you then have a coherent and holistic mapping of key actors streamlining of humanitarian access as part of a protection and prevention activities is essential for example we consider enabling access as part of legal obligations of armed groups we developed recently the first ever written code of conduct for all Shia militias fighting in Iraq and this includes points around access and their legal obligations and the we're reviewing local rules and regulations created by de facto authorities such as in the Donbas for example training on new year's and norms includes always a day on written access and perception of written actors we need to engage the armed groups on this particular topic how do you see us how do you see our action and then that's it we should accept critics and feedbacks trust building exercise needs to be done as well as an early step before intervening it's too late to start creating the trust at the moment you launch your protection intervention it has to be done way before as you know I call sometimes we engage in groups for 15 years it's only after several years that you can see the results of our engagement and reputation of staff and organization is as well needs to be as well included in the modus operandi of the relevant organization. In addition, communication activities in and out of the country need to be aligned with protection objectives that include sensitive negotiations and that includes senior managers Twitter accounts that sometimes are putting in danger the very action of the of the staff on the ground. Negotiating and engaging are not part-time jobs that you can do on the side. They should be the backbone of a protection and material strategy. Strategic and systematic engagement needs to be done with a mid-term and long-term approach. We consider three to five years the mid-term strategic engagement that we have a particular group. Designing, implementing and streamlining a strong and holistic engagement strategy should be done by organizations that are willing and able to access those hard-to-reach areas. And to finish, bringing on board your governance and top management to make sure that there is a political and institutional buying that you want and need to engage with armed groups on the ground. Don't be the donkey shot of your organization fighting alone. Include all the people that need to be included in this in this fight. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Hisham. And thank you for highlighting so vividly the importance of principled actions and relationship building that Ramesh, Samira and Tiffany also highlighted in their interventions. For me, this conversation sets the stage and tone very nicely for the week to come, examining access that protects from various points of view and also from various context perspectives. To bring together some of the ideas that we've heard here today and to give us a bit more sense of what's coming this week, I will now pass the floor to my colleague Samuel Chung, the Global Protection Cluster Coordinator. I would like to thank again all of you for your contributions today and over to you Sam to close this opening ceremony. Thank you very much Bernadette and thank you for moderating such a lively discussion today and a perfect opening for our week's Global Protection Forum. Also a huge thank you again once again to for all those who have joined the conversation both online as well as in the room Ramesh. Thank you Tiffany. Thank you Samira Hisham. Thank you very much again for your insightful words today. As the last part of this opening ceremony, maybe I can try to wrap up a few of the key thoughts from our discussion that we've heard today. I mean starting globally we've heard that there is a commitment globally on humanitarian access starting from the Security Council all the way to the field, that we need more humanitarian access, that we need systemic solutions around this. We've heard about a commitment regarding the humanitarian access mechanisms in terms of how we can enable this to happen. We've heard that leadership requires political backing also for more and better humanitarian access and that all of this access is again for one purpose and that is really to improve the lives of people including through protection. We've heard great examples regarding community self-protection about communities and people on the ground not being beneficiaries but being agents that can achieve their own protection outcomes. We know that people in communities living on the front lines of crisis and conflict today they negotiate protection every day. It's not an abstract concept to them. Every day they organize themselves. Every day they understand the community norms and values around them. They leverage what trust they have in armed groups and duty bearers around them. They do protection. They make sure people have access to critical services. They provide needed support to vulnerable persons. They are the agents of their own protection and in this we are accompanying them. Community self-protection is the core component. We need to rely on these communities who are able themselves to even deter perpetrators of threats, avoid exposure, mitigate their severity, and even bring some of those protection threats to an end. Let's not underestimate the power and ability of communities and for us to enable them in this venture. We've also heard about access in terms of advocacy and negotiations. We know that across operations images of trucks reaching locations that have been isolated due to insecurity, these are the lasting images of humanitarian access and they serve as a candle of hope for many communities. But we also know that we can do much more on this. That access is not just necessarily about geography but is also about allowing and ensuring there is the freedom and the ability to act, particularly by civil society and local groups, to address the norms, to address the rights violations and ensure that protection happens on the ground. Protection must be at the core of these types of advocacy, at the basis of these types of negotiations, to open up this type of space that, once again, not just geographically but in terms of influencing protection outcomes. We've heard about the importance of engaging with armed groups, being able to successfully influence their behaviors, ultimately securing their acceptance of protection norms, and we know that we've heard clearly that this context is multi-layered, it's complex, it's fluid, it's dynamic, and our challenge today is to influence what is a changing script and ensure that that script results in better protection. Overall, we know that access is not a new concept nor is protection. But rather by putting these together, by placing access that protects as a core element of our collective agenda, my hope, our hope across the global protection cluster and all of our members, is that we can bring some much-needed attention to this matter. We can trigger a collective discussion on how we can make the needed shifts in policy and practice, especially as what we've heard today in terms of the increasingly constrained context that we live in. It's critical to achieving meaningful protection outcomes and ultimately to improve the lives of the people that we're working with and that the people who are living through crisis each day. In closing, I'd like to share three possible lines for consideration, for discussion, and I hope that, and I invite all of you participants to consider them through all of the sessions to come in this Global Protection Forum. The first is, how can we change the narrative such that access is not just about trucks, but is about access that protects? Do we believe we can do much more on this matter? In order to do this, we as a sector need to move towards a more comprehensive understanding of access, access for what types of response, access for what services, access for what outcomes, access that protects. We need a much more ambitious approach in terms of what is needed to strengthen protection outcomes. Can we change this narrative? Second, how can we tell the story, and in this case the story of protection, we need access in order to be where it counts, so that we can tell the story. What is really happening in terms of protection violations on the ground and where appropriate, how can we get that story where it needs to be told? Robust advocacy on protection issues from the ground up is critical. It's needed for protection actors, it's needed for states, it's needed for all of us to call attention to and help stop human rights abuses. Third, how can we be more present? Protection by presence, whether by internationals or by community-based programming, this that supports community self-protection, how do we further support and enable community self-protection action, this types of protective presence that mitigates violations, that allows a sense of solidarity on the ground? How do we make sure that we can be more present as a cornerstone of all of our access negotiations and advocacy across the humanitarian sector? And fourth and finally, how do we negotiate protection outcomes? Through frontline efforts, through collective humanitarian diplomacy, whether it be with armed groups through member states, security council, we have an opportunity now to look into the existing humanitarian access systems and processes, to further integrate protection lenses into these, to gear our focus of these access discussions on the protection of people and the protection of civilians, humanitarian country teams, donors, embassies, coordination mechanisms, all of us have a leadership role in supporting and complementing such efforts. So on behalf of the Global Protection Cluster, all of our areas of responsibility, all of our constituencies and our members all across the world, I am very, very pleased to invite you to join us this week at the Global Protection Forum. We invite you to see for yourselves the inspiring work that is done by partners. We also invite you and encourage you to contribute your ideas on the way forward for sustained access that protects. Thank you very much and enjoy the week.