 So good morning, afternoon, evening everyone, it's great to see so many of you join us here today and I see those numbers going up as you're coming online. My name is Gemma Davis, I'm a senior research fellow at the Humanitarian Policy Group ODI and I lead our portfolio of work on protection. Today we're delighted to be co-hosting this event with the Centre for Civilians in Conflict and we'll be discussing community engagement with armed actors, strengthening protection, prevention and response. Here at HPG we're just beginning a new two year research project, considering the opportunities, challenges, risks of more complementary approaches across peace, humanitarian and protection responses to support communities in their engagement with armed actors for their self protection. And why this focus? As has been referred to in many of the events this week, civilians are not just passive actors in conflict but use their agency, including to engage with armed actors for self protection. Community engagement with armed actors often takes place significantly before any externally supported mediation or negotiation processes and the interaction between civilian communities and armed actors is complex at times ambiguous and changes through time. So there's growing recognition and momentum on the need for a shift in approaches to protection, including approaches to prevention of threats and in considering how civilian engagement strategies can be supported or at the very least not undermined. Peace actors often engage with threats, including through supporting engagement dialogue and negotiation with armed actors, though not necessarily through the lens of protection. And when considering approaches to prevention, there's a growing recognition and willingness to build a community of practice between humanitarian protection and peace actors and to consider opportunities to bridge approaches between the sets of actors. And by having greater analysis of community engagement with armed actors and positive strategies for self protection, the implications for humanitarian protection and peace actors will be a central focus of this reset. So with that in mind, we're delighted to convene this dialogue between a panel of experts across humanitarian protection and peace action, who will speak to the practical experience of their organizations when supporting community engagement strategies. Our first panelist today, Lee Mayhew, is a research officer at ODI, who's been supporting us on the scoping of this research, and he'll present the outcome of the scoping study of the research I just referred to. Over to you, Lee. Thank you, Gemma. As part of the inception phase of the two-year project that Gemma was just referring to, we carried out scoping exercise, which reviewed the existing evidence and carried out expect consultations. So what did we find? So firstly, in terms of looking at the role civilians pay, civilians adapt the strategies of self protection based on the type of armed actor that they're facing. The strategies adopted by civilians include flight, opposition, accommodation, engagement and collaboration. They'll also leverage the presence of multiple armed actors to improve their security. Civilian perceptions of protection may differ to those of international actors. Whilst latter may focus on the standards defined by international law and access to rights, we found that customary law, local values, norms can matter at times more than formal rights. It's also important to recognize that civilians are not a homogenous category. A range of local actors, including traditional, religious and business leaders, elders and community-based organizations often lead engagement on par for their respective community. Understanding who's leading and present during negotiations is important as these factors will determine what concerns are prioritized. Moving on to what factors helped determine the engagement process between civilians and armed actors. Firstly, although external support can improve the effectiveness of community engagement, it's important to recognize that there are certain conditions that will influence the parameters of engagement. This can include the motivation behind the use of violence, group ideology and the level of concern that an armed actor has for its legitimacy. These will determine the boundaries of engagement. For this in mind, community engagement with armed actors is not static. It's influenced by conflict dynamics, which can have both positive and negative effects. For example, firm territorial control and the change of leadership can result in a more conducive engagement process. The level of internal community cohesion and capacity can also be a key factor in effective engagement for self-protection. Strong customer organization, a high level of internal unity and pre-existing respected local institutions and leadership can all improve the effectiveness of community engagement with armed actors. Also, the distinction between civilian and armed actors isn't always clear. Pre-existing relationships based on kinship, family and political interests often exist between the two sets of actors. This may offer civilians the advantage of trust over external actors when engaging with armed actors. However, these factors are not uniform. We found that while in some cases close bonds proved effective, in others it was the position of neutrality. And finally, focusing on what opportunities to disagree for external actors. While there is this growing acknowledgement of the role of conflict affected communities in securing their own protection, plus this increased consideration and piloting by humanitarian protection and peace actors in supporting community engagement with armed actors, a number of these practices are relatively new and undocumented. There is also inertia to a more systemic ship within the humanitarian sector. Concerns over neutrality, tensions between international principles and frameworks and local norms and customs, engagement prescribes, armed groups and top-down approaches all remain obstacles to a more community driven engagement prep response. A deeper understanding of the risks and protection needs, plus at times a greater degree of trust with armed actors, mean that civilians are often better placed than external actors. However, this does not mean that there is no role for external actors to play. Local strategies rarely provide the degree of protection needs required by civilians. A complementary approach is required, strengthening local capacities for self protection while at the same time generating international political will to a more systemically engaged in prevention of threats is needed. Key takeaway from the research is that whilst there is a role for humanitarian protection and peace actors to play, any strategy should be community led. This means identifying where existing engagement is taking place and look to support it rather than replace these mechanisms. And finally, of importance to our research, we've identified that currently there is little to no research exploring the opportunities and challenges for greater synergies between humanitarian protection and peace actors. In relation to the community engagement for self protection. As such, this will be the core focus of our research. Thank you. Great. Thanks very much, Lee. And I think it's really important to this really interesting points there on the fluidity of community and that relations and the gray area between what are civilians and on that is need, you know, really pointing to the need for a sort of in depth localized conflict analysis prior to considering any engagement by by external actors and the need for greater synergies which takes us straight on to introducing our next panelist so Wendy McClinty is the UN Director of Center for Civilians in Conflict. And Wendy will then hand over to Clomont Bede, sorry if I didn't pronounce that very well Clomont, representing one of civics partners from the West Africa Network for Peace Building. Clomont will offer an operational perspective. Wendy will tell us about civics civil society toolkit, the guidance it gives and how it's being used by civics and its partners Clomont will offer an operational perspective on its use in Niger and the Sahel. So Wendy over to you. Good morning and good afternoon everyone it's an absolute pleasure to be with you all today. My name is Wendy McClinty I'm the director of civics UN program and civic is an organization which is devoted to the protection of civilians in armed conflict, both operationally with research and engagement with armed actors and with communities, and at the same time at the policy level as well. And today I wanted to just give you a quick overview of the first of all the value of civil society is a starting point and then and then a couple of words on the new civil society toolkit that civic has just recently launched. And the next time and again is, as colleagues have said in the opening how valuable and active role of civil society is in shaping both protection policies and practice from one side bearing witness to the experience of civilians and calling for specific protection needs from armed actors to exercising oversight of both military and security actors. We've seen how constructive and meaningful, and especially not extractive engagement between armed actors and civil society can improve protection practices and outcomes. So in Ukraine, for example, local CSOs have played a crucial role in not just providing a humanitarian response, but in filling the gaps and addressing the needs on protection of civilians in which local authorities defense and security forces and other actors weren't able to cover on their own. And local civil society in addition to NGOs includes volunteers, community based initiatives local activists and opinion leaders. In many cases, these are the only ones who can access civilians who really do need protection, including some of the most vulnerable groups, and they can help those with disability, the elderly, and others who for whom access is a challenge. This can be in help with evacuation in ensuring food security in supplying medicines or providing psychosocial assistance. We've seen in the Ukraine context that civil society has shown a very quick and decisive and flexible response. And this was really possible due to the existing direct communications between people in the affected communities and their trust towards civil society actors with who really do have quite a profound local knowledge of needs and access points and continuous on the ground presence and access to hard to reach communities including those under direct attack. Another tool kit we've developed. It provides concrete guidance to communities and stakeholders and was piloted in Ukraine and Niger, and is now being piloted in Indonesia, the UK and in Estonia. It's a resource for civil society actors which draws from practical experience both sources and international law and best practice. The goal is really to provide these civil society and local actors from different sectors, whether it's humanitarian, human and race building, and local organizations, really with a common language and a common basis to work together to diagnose needs and come together for a shared set of actions. Quite often we see that states are keen to distinguish themselves whether or not they often whether or not they comply with international humanitarian law. But we know from experience that compliance isn't always the most effective incentive for really changing practices and really by comparing and exchanging best practice and addressing some of the most critical protection needs. We can see that there's a that there are other opportunities to engage. So the framework, the toolkit includes an evaluation framework, which comprises several categories and subcategories that that civil society actors can use to the level of engagement and performance of security actors. These include four categories. The first is on national commitment and enabling environment. So these have to do with the laws and policies and other political areas. Do they engage with international human rights bodies? Are there independent oversight of security institutions? Are there national laws that allow for civic and civilian participation in public policymaking including in security policy? The second is preventing and mitigating harm. So this has to do with planning and operations. What are the standards for the rules of engagement in the use of the force by security actors? Is there specific guidance on targeting on assessing civilian objects? Is civilian harm mitigation built into military training modules? Do security forces engage communities on their own protection concerns? And do they apply a do no harm approach? The third area is civilian harm response. This has to do with reporting investigations, tracking and recording. Do they use civilian harm tracking? Are there systems for public oversight and transparency of civilian harm? Are there systems and processes to account for the dead injured and missing? And there are there credible investigations into instances of harm. The final area is around amends and reparations, which has to do with harm that results from lawful or unlawful conduct, including expressions of condolence. So for example, are there public acknowledgment of harm? Are there policies which govern victim-centered condolence payments? Is there a claims process for reparations for the victims of IHL violations and access to information on remedies, as well as criminal systems to hold perpetrators accountable for international crimes? So for example, our partners, Wana, will speak next on some of the implications of this practice. There they chose, in Niger, they chose to focus on the legal and policy frameworks for Niger. While in Indonesia, they're looking at community engagement and civil military relations in Papua. Before the Russian invasion, our Ukraine team had worked with the Ukrainian Red Cross to assess opportunities for improving community protection. The second part of the toolkit is an advocacy guide, which really takes actors through each stage of this collective advocacy strategy and allows it to be tailored to the unique needs of protection agendas. So we know that no tool is going to solve and overturn all of the invisible and explicit restrictions placed on civil society that can prevent local organizations from playing these roles. But one thing that has come up again and again is that each restrictive environment, in each restrictive environment in which we've worked and our partners have, is that civil society is much more powerful when they work together for common outcomes. And because tools are only as good as their implementation, I'd like to turn the floor over to Clement Coco Gbede, the National Coordinator for the West African Network for Peace Building. This is a one-up which is focused on protection, peace building, and human rights in Niger. Over to you, Clement. Thank you very much Wendy. So I'm here to talk about how we used the assessment toolkit to see how to bring community actors to engage with armed actors for their own protection. And this has led us to see how we could start a dialogue between the two stakeholders and to see which strategies and factors have allowed or prevented this protection. So we want to see the engagement of community and of armed actors to strengthen the outcomes of protection. And I will talk about how to support the actors of protection and of peace building. So we are in a context where safety concerns are growing, violence against civilians. So in this fragile context, it contributes to the intensification of the conflict and of insecurity and violence towards civilians. We also have an intensification of the safety response of armed group activism that have created many incidents. So how to engage the community for their protection? First and foremost, we have to say that the only reason why the communities and the armed groups need to be committed in order to have a good response is based on the terrible consequences of the actions of these armed groups. It may have a huge impact and dire consequences for the local communities. And consequently, it's important to have a dialogue between the armed groups and the community. So it's crucial in order to have our activities there. So first and foremost, we need to have a dialogue so we can get a safe access to these communities and to these peoples who are living on the same area as those armed forces. And we also understand that it's thanks to this dialogue that we can make sure that everyone can understand. And we need to ensure that we can guarantee the safety of these communities and is with a dialogue that we can promote the humanitarian law and the international law and all the legal tools. So once again, the communities are at the core of the activities. So let's move on to the strategies and the mini obstacles. So the context is very difficult for the commitment of the engagement of your communities because we are violence against populations and we have forced displacements of populations. And it has huge impact on the traditional structures and the customary mechanisms in the communities themselves. So we need to use this framework in order to have a civilian military collaboration. Because in this framework, we need to have sit around the table with the many stakeholders and the actors, the non-state actors. And we need to sit around the table with them in order to defy indicators and which will favor the collaboration. And one of the important and potential factors. So for example, you have a leader of a militia or a leader of armed groups. So no one is being sued for everything they've done, so they're not held accountable. And this is why it's becoming very difficult to have a collaboration in Asia, for example, even in the Sahel region. So most of the time we have communities with their own structures. And this is one of the potential factors in order to have an efficient protection. So we have to work on prevention and mitigation of risks. And this is why, thanks to the collaboration with civilians, we wanted to draft an action plan. And we also wanted to have an advocacy guidebook. Okay, so as I was saying, so in the assessment framework, so we focused on the political dimension. Because we, the President of the Republic, is a man and is a leader. And he funded the whole, his action based on the protection of civilians against violence. And that was something important because he helped us to get organized with civil society. So we are creating an advocacy that we want to have in the parliament so we can have an abduct to draft and to vote a law for the protection of civilians. And also with the institutions and with the military. So we have a commitment and we have an influence. But unfortunately there's still an element of distrust of the civil society against these armed groups and the military. Because unfortunately the army is not held liable for everything that may happen or things that may do against the populations. So these are the many factors in order to have an efficient protection of civilians. And this is why we need to take some time to draft a common agreement, a common action plan with the main stakeholders. So and furthermore it's important to see how the protection stakeholders need to create dialogue with the people at risk. And to make sure that all these people at risk can participate fully to these activities. So we need to define the needs to plan and we need to design protection activities and to do a follow up on these activities. And to have a correct assessment of the outcomes. So what's important is so we need to make sure that all the back things that may have happened previously should not happen ever again. So this is why we have a pretty efficient framework in Niger and we see that all things are improving. And before the law is voted and comes into force in order to protect the civilians in our country. So we'd like to thank you for your attention. Many thanks Jamon and for your patience with having your connectivity in and out there. But thanks so much for both of your interventions Wendy and Jamon. I think it's really interesting to see sort of not only the framework that Sivak's been working with partners with, but also how that's been playing out and practice. So I think your points on the need for trust, for dialogue and communities at the core with full participation in order to promote protection outcomes is absolutely key. Our next panelist is Mike Jobbins who is the Global Affairs and Partnerships Lead at Search for Common Grounds and International Peacebuilding NGO. So maybe from a peace perspective, Mike, you can let us know what mechanisms you use for community self-protection and what external actors need to consider when working with such mechanisms. Thanks a lot, Gemma. And it's really wonderful to be here with you and everyone on the call. For those who don't know, Search for Common Ground were one of the world's largest peacebuilding organizations. We have about 60 offices across the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. I think we work in all of the countries that I see being introduced in the chat, and I'd love to keep connected with all of you and from my colleagues around the world too, as well. At the core of our work, we're fundamentally a global but decentralized organization that's quite rooted in the local communities that we serve and with a mission of supporting healthy, safe and just societies. And that's led us over the four decades that we've been in existence to increasingly work with protection actors, with humanitarian actors, as well as the community civil society, faith groups, governments to see how to better reduce the threat of violence and improve social cohesion in all of those places. And as we design our interventions, Gemma, you alluded to some of our toolkit, but we also keep that grounded in the philosophy that you can't start with what you don't have. And so when we're designing a program to prevent violence or improve protection outcomes, we always begin with an appreciative inquiry approach and looking at what there is within each country and what are the assets. So it's working well already as civilians are navigating incredibly complex, challenging and threatening security environments. To your question, Gemma, about sort of interventions and where we see a real evidence base around what works in supporting civilian engagement with armed actors. There's the five types of interventions that I think there's a pretty broad and strong evidence base for from the peace building community. The first is the creation of peace committees, many of you will be familiar with this track record that there's pros and cons in the employment, but it's one of the best known. And most common at point, for example, in the Central African Republic, a country that has perhaps 1000 2000 villages, and there's 1000 peace committees out of the 2000 villages it's been widely adopted, first and foremost by the Central African people. And 80% of those committees receive no international support, but for international actors, there's a strong evidence base and we can point to some of our own studies of those groups really being particularly effective in preventing mass atrocities and engaging with armed groups and encouraging a demobilization of anti block or and select a combatants and exit from armed groups or the prevention of particular forms of abuse. The second intervention at point to be early warning and early response systems, we support those in in South Sudan, Nigeria, DRC, Molly and a number of other places. And what's common across all of those is community based multi stakeholder efforts that have the ability to signal and bring in the appropriate authorities and the appropriate protection actors to raise the alarm when threats are emerging. We have had highlight media interventions. We know we produce radio, we use WhatsApp we use television we use new technologies to engage armed actors and to sensitize as well as shape attitudes towards civilians. We know for example from defectors that three quarters of Boko Haram combatants in Niger, from interviewing defectors listen to our radio programs, and there's a tremendous ability to shape how armed groups behave an individual and group level. I think similar to civic and some of the things that Wendy was highlighting we support security force training we have seen at least a strong evidence base on behavioral change work with police with soldiers often at the point of deployment. That's a connection to some of the more classroom style IHL trainings in Congo we've seen a 20% increase in public safety, where there's been that kind of in situ training for deployed units or deployed for DC units in that context. We've seen a lot of conflict scans sort of the just in time light touch analysis to inform not only protection actors but also wash shelter food security, and particularly context of like IDP returns or internationally facilitated returns on emerging protection risks that go beyond sort of the the desktop conflict assessments that 60 pages 100 pages and six months too late to really get that just in time information on the changing context to the, to the frontline of humanitarian workers and protection actors government agents. So on your question about the recommendations I would in what we've learned I highlight three C's capabilities continuity and collaboration on the capabilities. As more and more humanitarian organizations look at the HTTP nexus. I really question all of us to think about how we take the P the peace building elements seriously within that nexus. Whether or not that is its own field of knowledge is one we've been very involved in. And I'd encourage my 10 groups to think about how they build partnerships with local actors with international actors, what kind of capabilities they want in houses they engage on the piece, the peace side of things because it's a context where it's incredibly easy to do harm in this space. That kind of capability needs to go beyond just sort of one piece advisor or one sort of consultant to really build out that in house capability or the strategic partnerships. The second on continuity is very rare that we've seen one approach of work in a tremendously complex environment just a piece committee approach adjust security force training and thinking about how you bring that sort of wrap around a support of analysis, some what we call key people and more people some direct engagements, some support to explicit dialogue efforts and negotiations, some mass engagement, usually for in our case through through media, or other kinds of mass gatherings, in a way that takes a more holistic to reducing the threat of violence and harm against civilians and then finally on collaboration. This is a space with a tremendous amount of opportunity to learn and to learn across sectors across organizations working in a single geographic area. So I'd point people to the connects this platform for those who aren't familiar it's one that we've begun using quite a lot. It's CNX us dot work I'll drop it in the chat, but it's a tremendous opportunity for both local actors around the world, but also peace building and development practitioners to share learning material to participate in webinars and to sort of cross fertilize and cross pollinate. So that we can all work a little bit together better together in order to respond to sort of the holistic nature of the threats that communities face and the single lived experience of an individual of a woman living or a man living in conflict zone. So that holistic response to sort of what is one human life and one human experience of of both actual harm as well as as well as the threat of harm that we're all looking to prevent. So thank you so much I'll drop some links in the chat I'd love to keep connected to all of you. My job is on Twitter my job is on LinkedIn, and I'll drop my email in the chat but thanks so much for having me Gemma. Thanks Mike, and also big shout out to Mike who is calling him from DC and awful time in the morning so real commitment there thank you so much. But I think it's really important and this is exactly where some of the sort of conversations and building a community of practice that you know we're we're looking to work together with with practitioners and operational partners. And with that recognition that there is so much happening in these in the peace space that can be learnt from the in the humanitarian space and vice versa. So I think a really good call to action on taking the P part seriously. And I think it's a really good reminder on that sort of, you know you can't start with what we don't have, and that everything needs to be grounded in what's going on in the community what's working what's not and there's not a sort of one size fits all approach it has to to learn from from there and I think this is where there's some real opportunities for the humanitarian community to learn from from what the peace community have been doing for the many years as have some parts of the humanitarian community but it's also a little bit more of a growing practice I think on that sort of prevention and addressing as you say real threats. So I'll pass over to our next panelist Kiran Kothari from Save the Children, who heads up the civil civil military relations and access unit. So, Kiran, you've recently carried out research in Columbia and South Sudan, along with So it'd be great if you could tell us a bit about the findings what it means for Save the Children's and a broader set of humanitarian and other actors approaches to negotiations and supporting communities in those negotiations. Over to you. And thanks to all my colleagues speaking before it's really, it's really helpful to hear the reflections from everybody, kind of on this, I'll just take a couple of seconds to sort of speak about how we're structured and where, where we kind of started from. So I work with a unit of expert colleagues who do who help us do research and and think about our field practice, and we also support our field colleagues with with kind of humanitarian negotiations with the negotiations that we carry out. But then it was almost a couple of years ago. It's like 22 months ago I was just thinking about it now that we that me and a couple of colleagues sat down and thought about what would we like to do. Well, how could we be better at this and more effective and we were coming at it from two angles. One was, you know, the fact that we've done a lot of work on community child protection. And then we were also looking at how could we be more locally led in crisis. And we have a lot of frontline staff. And how does how does that kind of look. So if we move to the next slide. And, you know, there, you know, it's, it's really, we thought, you know, where can we do research and I'll come to the other locations where we've also been working. But what we're really hoping was to was to see and learn from our frontline colleagues and the NRC frontline colleagues we had this discussion. We made a proposal to the Swedish government for some funding to to really help us think this through. What we were able to do is, you know, we found certain things that are in line with with a lot of research that's been done before but consistent but also more nuanced for our NRC's work and I'll speak mostly to to our work and what we've what we say the children found one is that you know, leaders are less likely to engage in negotiations when they're externals present who are doing the same thing. And that means, you know, how do we, how do we accommodate ongoing negotiations that are fruitful and not undermine others that's that's one big kind of reflective takeaway for us with our practice. And another thing is, you know, this this idea of social cohesion depends on location context region like you know, like our colleagues have just been saying now, very, very context specific, you know, it also the need for that localize context and that fits very well with the preparatory work that you do before you're negotiating like you. You kind of analyze the context, analyze the network of influence around your negotiation counterpart, and then you can build these relationships and see where that space is so there's a bridge there between the negotiations that we do as an experience and dialogue with communities. Then, you know, we found that younger participants are more likely and willing to work collectively with their community and community leaders have greater trust for other community, we know in and from other community members. Next slide please. You know, it's about the perception of the perception of the privation and the insecurity. The women have reported to be more insecure than men, the opposite, sorry, men have reported to feel less insecure than women. And you can see sort of these like you know how do you feel safe versus you know what's the characteristics that a community is experiencing of their situation and capacity so really, you know, this need for nuanced context analysis is really important can we go to the next slide please. So we came up with a tool, and this tool was also presented in a session on Wednesday morning so I urge you all to, to really look at that, that session and what we've done with the tool this this kind of goes to our kind of bridging between the practice of the practice of humanitarians as an entity, and then the practice of communities as an entity. And here I think, you know, how do you, how would you really look at this in terms of the accommodation of communities versus, you know, the need to drive humanitarian action forward as well they can be. There's, there's a need for greater coordination and not displacing others kind of ongoing negotiations. And then how do we, how do we work with existing groups. And then I'll come to the final slide, which is which is basically you know, what are we doing next now that we've we've thought a little bit about this, and we've been learning and working. And then we tried to work with our own staff on the front lines and with partners. So, last year in Mali we had sessions where we brought together our frontline staff and partners to to work on humanitarian negotiations. And what we found is that, practically, you do need separate spaces to to kind of work and skill up and practice those skills. So for your organization and its mandate, and then also for other organizations but then it's also important to come together and share this analysis and that's, that was a really hard practical lesson that we learned it was really difficult in that session, but then we found that we built really good relationships and it really deepens our trust and understanding. Next thing that we found is, you know, we are, we save the children we focus on education protection including child protection and health care. And then how do we build this for. So really in each of those negotiations we've, we, we often build or, or set up or work with existing structures in those communities. And this is where we, where we kind of talk about education dialogue so safe schools guidelines implementation. We work with safe schools committees made up of teachers and some students and how do we, how do we build that forward with our community child protection systems were working a lot with those structures. And then in healthcare you know you're working with the communities and also with kind of healthcare. So how are we looking at pediatric healthcare emergencies and how can we learn and make sure that we're recognizing the goal of communities in that. So really what we want to do now moving forward is, is to adapt our tools both for our own normative dialogues, and at the same time to kind of find spaces where we where we cooperate much more effectively with with communities and then there is a really good balance. So I've, I'll stop there and then maybe take some more, some more questions when we come back to thanks. Thanks very much, Karen. And I think really interesting findings of your of the research that you've carried out there and again sort of hearing on ensuring interventions don't undermine community capacity, you know that that need for local level nuanced analysis and really learning from existing dialogue I think is a sort of quite common themes that are coming out in our event today but have also been coming out across the week. And I think a really interesting point on who is best placed and willing to engage in dialogue in this point that you found on sort of interesting to note that sort of youths were at times better placed or more willing. I think you know these are sort of the very granular analysis that's that's needed in order to consider where external factors can engage in in negotiation and mediation. And before we go to our next panelist, I'd like to open the floor to encourage the audience, not verbally, but to send in any relevant questions in the chat. And after Nils has spoken, we can then start going into a Q&A so please do use the chat function to put in any questions any any comments. So, to go to our next panelist Nils Carstensen, who is the founder and co director of local to global protection and has worked in humanitarian crisis response since the 1980s. Nils having worked across the humanitarian conflict transformation transitions to peace type initiatives for a number of years. What do you think are the most important considerations for external actors to consider when supporting community led approaches, including engagement with our actors to strengthen protection outcomes. I think, again, this is one of these questions that I would really all only want to answer in context. I've seen the very few context that I happen to have been privileged enough to to to work with with local and national colleagues and help to joined up research. In those places, what I've seen is, it's the standing back, it's our ability to stand back. It's our ability not to not to I was just going to use a swear word, but I'm not. Ruin things, not get in the way, not suck all the oxygen, the energy and the and the initiative out of what might already be happening. So the first step for me is this very, very granular understanding of what is already happening. Is there actually a need for you. And I'll give you one example from one particular part of Sudan. I will not say which particular part of Sudan right now because of the situation in that country in many parts of that country. But in one particular part of Sudan, we've had for more than 10 years now about 1 million people trapped in in sometimes intense sometimes less intense conflict zone. That area has been for large part of that time cut off from the rest of the country and from the neighboring countries with that within that particular context. And I'm talking about things now that I've just observed. There's all activities done by local conflict transformation and and and peacemakers with smart sensitive and very limited really support from outside actors who understood the need for them to take a backseat but be there with those limited resources with that extra knowledge, et cetera, et cetera, networking advocacy, et cetera. But what we found in that particular area a couple of years ago was interesting also into your discussion here I think because the activities of these local peace actors. I mean a lot of it builds a network and relationships that crisscross ethnic and political divides some of these con connects are very personal, very individual, and some of them go back 20 years 30 years 40 years old as schoolmates, people you worked with in the same organization but now happen to be on it. So it's a very, it's a very sort of granular and personal and multifaceted network of individuals on both sides of the frontline that have managed to time and at that time again, negotiate access routes for humanitarian assistance, where a humanitarian assistance would otherwise simply not come and here I'm quoting verbatim one of the community leaders. And here I think, hugely important thing we saw when we started digging into the nitty gritty of it that this peace and concrete transformation from the very beginning had a very clear focus on trying to re-establish the traditional and exchange patterns across the frontline, but at a very, very local level, almost in hiding. And they've succeeded and have sustained over six, seven, eight years. And that's enough of these so-called sometimes moving sometimes canceled and then reopened peace markets to enable a situation where you when you visit this area today, you're seeing goods there that were not there during a previous conflict. They were not there. So basic commodities like fuel, salt, food stuff, etc. makes it way its way through these peace markets, which is in the best interest of everybody on both sides of the frontline. So it pays into some commercial interest. It pays into the interests of the population. Not only does it mean there's an influx of essential goods. There's an outflux of livelihoods, which is being sold out, which is the traditional trading pattern in the area. So we could only guesstimate, but within just a year about at least $20 million worth of goods were being exchanged. And that's huge into a humanitarian context where people were very, very poorly off and where the humanitarian access was limited. So the humanitarian assistance was limited from a protection point of view. This also means that there was opening up channels for people to move so people could access services across the frontline, not for competence, of course. Just a whole set of things that follows from this work done by local peacemakers, leaders, and in a manner so that it has been sustained. Every market has its own committee that brings together traders and officials from both sides. And of course, this could not happen unless armed actors who are the ones who hold sort of the day this way in the area on the day were informed and somehow consented it. That didn't mean that the government consented to it, but local armed groups or position groups, but also local armed groups, militia groups that usually would be loyal to the government, saw that it was in the best interest to keep this going. So this is actually when we looked at it, I had to just as a humanitarian stand back and say, wow, this work which has been funded with next to nothing compared to the humanitarian interventions has paid off probably more so in humanitarian dividends than all of our combined humanitarian efforts. It really, it blew me off my feet. What was interesting to this discussion also was, the peace actors from outside who were supporting and funding it and some of them possibly on this call today. They were not really aware of this humanitarian impact. They were they were focused on their log frames of their sort of immediate peace conflict transformation indicators, but never paid I think sufficient. And this importance to this huge protection, just the level of reduction of violence was a huge protection outcome. It could change. But if you look at it over 10 years that they've been able to manage this and reduce significantly was was I think super interesting. And that would be my last point I'll leave that case and then just move on to to what we said, sometimes referred to as the survivor in the community led crisis response, which is more just about how, how can we as insight system actors support all of the mutual efforts or the local agency that is happening out there and and some of you may have heard of this way it's a way we have evolved together with a lot of local national actors and a few high NGOs and actually is just an interface between the outside system actors affected individuals groups people and then the system. And if I look at for instance Palestine were protection groups. And they take the lead when I talk about locally led here I'm sort of on the file left of it the radical one, it is leading it is owning resources it's owning the decision making process with us only supporting facilitating it's surrendering power and seeing yourself exclusively as a facility sager. But what we see there for instance were the survivor in community led crisis response I could say a lot of great things about it now you could keep me talking for an hour body but I won't, but I would never call it a protection tool as such, but what we do see come out of it when we allow that space for people to go in and make their own analysis, decide on priorities and get access to then the resources and own the implementation. There's a lot of really interesting protection outcomes that that that comes with it in some places in others less so, but it is a way of working that delivers to protection outcomes that probably would be difficult to get from an outside sort of intervention some of them in Palestine just a few off the top of my head would be reduction in settler violence documentation and reducing settler violence. It would be increasing the chances for girls or girls around puberty to continue to go to school. It was the awareness and referrals around domestic violence gender based violence within the communities. It was about securing the continued use of agricultural land that always would have been lost to to Israeli settlers. And then during COVID it was it was really interesting to see where these groups already existed and already had that sort of kind of agency as just an extension of what they did. They would come in and really kind of safeguard the community when that community was being was being let down by obviously these radio authorities big time, but even their own Palestinian authorities and NGOs couldn't access the communities. They were the ones who organized assistance to people mostly need they were the ones who stopped those who travel across to Israel and smuggle themselves back in and isolated them but under under under decent but kept them away from taking a possible transmission back into into the community. So a lot of things that happened there that also I think speaks back to at least a wider protection so I kind of think of set my piece and hand it back to you. Thanks Nils and as always some very thoughtful and challenging provoking can I say but it's good it's it's what we need as a is as those in the international community particularly and I think it's a really good point on this standing back and don't get in the way and surrendering power relinquish control I mean I think there's a lot of buzzwords for this in the system but actually this is talking about you know what does it mean practically and allowing communities to work towards their own outcomes and I think it's really these these sort of examples that you gave of sort of long term negotiated peace markets and and the extremely, you know, meaningful and yeah, and huge protection outcomes they lead to, but that there was such a lack of awareness both within the humanitarian and peace community. And I guess that sort of leads us to that a bit of a challenge that maybe all the panelists can think about that I might put back to you in a sec on, you know, how do we then deal with this, you know, it's been an overwhelming sort of resounding call for granular local analysis and D linking from this very sort of international progrematized if I might say that approach to programming both within the peace and humanitarian sectors and how do we get around that and what is needed for that within our own organizations but I assume there's also a bit of up the up the chain of donors etc so maybe maybe you can have a think about that. And how can I just say one thing to that yeah actually challenge the assumption that we need to have that. I think that's where we go wrong, we to a certain extent need to have it in the sense of not do do less harm etc etc but we should never think we can own a conflict sensitivity and analysis that is as up to speed as the one that sits on the shoulders of the crisis because this changes day by the minute, sometimes so so I think we should somehow be careful to make this assumption that we need this I think was it Mike or Lee that paid no I think it was Mike the point about this. I mean, I think usually obsolete 60 page conflict analysis done by outsiders who by the end of it might understand a trifle of what really goes on in the country. Sorry, I'm just keeping up the good provocative mode. I'm always happy for a provocative chat mills. And I think we have a good, a good sort of set of panellists here that are very happy to engage in that. Maybe we've got a couple of questions in the chat, particularly directed to you from on. So maybe we can just pick a couple of those up. And just again, if anybody has any questions, please do feel free to put them in the chat now. There's, I think there's a couple of questions that I can put together one of which is sort of through the work that you've been doing. How you're ensuring that this sort of interaction between armed actors and communities aren't exposing communities to retaliation and threats. Perhaps you can answer a sort of additional question on whether your work involves areas where non state armed actors are and and what the implications are for that for communities to, to, yeah, to ensure that they can have their own. Yeah, they can have a dialogue where they don't have retaliation from from state. So over to you. Okay, great. Okay. So we must highlight the difficulties that we have at the very beginning is that we can have a misunderstanding of the communities and the role of the communities and the groups we have two kinds of groups we have the state sponsored armed groups and non state armed groups say any see the communications. The communities are caught between these two groups because they don't really understand. They read on understand the role of these harm groups because state sponsored armed groups are supposed to protect the communities. And we see that these very soldiers are committing these offenses against the communities and you see the gap between these concepts. We have, for example, we have the soldiers in jail who arrived on the ground, and we have some women got raped and and they threatened their husbands and has rapes and threats and you see, you can imagine the perception of that these communities and in some time this state, the government often said that communities were accomplished to these non state armed groups. And so we're working with communities and so we established two communities to communities we call peace communities. And these communities are members from various social classes from various members of the community. And we wanted to have a platform so the communities and the government, the military can talk about safety and security. And this group and this peace community is really a community based mechanism, a real resilience mechanism so we can fight against this perception. We can actually have strategies in order to strengthen this collaboration because we need to work on this. What we do is civic. It's not only that we train soldiers about how to talk to interact with the communities, but now we have a high ranking officers that need to be trained and we started to work with them and we started to work with the people on the ground and we also need to tell them how to teach them how to ensure the protection of the communities and we achieve some good results. And this is what we did in Niger and we tried to establish some indicators in order to assess the contribution and we were able to assess the hurdles and we were able to work with the armed groups so we can have a permanent activities and so these activities really give us enough strength to move forward. And as we said we worked so we worked with the Ministry of Youth, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Women's Conditions and with the Civil Society so we can work on the protection. And so thanks to Civic and all the elements based on the protection of civil society. We've been able to draft this advocacy guidebook so we can actually have an account on the engagement of the communities so we can have a legal framework which can be used to protect these communities. So you know in the region and just two days ago we had shootings and people got killed and this is wrong for the community so we need to engage with the communities so they can be resilient to face all the threats and all the risks. I don't know if you are able to answer correctly to your questions. No that's great thanks so much and I think it really you know it grounds it in how you're dealing with with some of these really difficult challenges and dilemmas. Perhaps Mike, do you want to talk a little bit about sort of some of the challenges with acceptance of government vis-a-vis non-state armed groups particularly where you're working and supporting communities in areas where obviously there's a presence of both and some dilemmas and challenges there. Yeah absolutely and thanks for the question and those who raised in the chat I mean it's an enormous element to think through for search not only for ourselves but all the people we support in the community we support. Both in terms of illegal the legal framework that the colleague from Manuska highlighted Manusma highlighted as well as the risk of harm and reprisals. In our experience both from the host country government, but in many cases also from international governments at the US government, the UN and some of the other systems that also issue their own sort of terror declarations and things. We would, I would say our experience varies extra is extraordinarily different from place to place. And often a much more helpful conversation where we try to drive it is not sort of dialogue or not dialogue. Our name is just for common ground we have a particular opinion on whether or not dialogue is useful. But it's usually about which group is involved and about what and dividing between sort of access negotiations, the humanitarian access negotiations from other the other kinds of political solutions and so forth. Everywhere we work we do at search work with the clear communication with the state about what we're doing as well as with the UN system. We find that to be an approach that's important so as not to trigger unintended consequences and reprisals from the state against the communities that we work with. And so we generally don't do things in sort of secret or without state partner without at least a clear line of communication to the state. In places where in many places that's been welcomed by the state in some cases there's concerns that participating in a process with an armed group that an armed group participates in a process confers legitimacy on them. In other cases, both national governments and international community have appreciated the kinds of NGO led civil society led efforts we lead explicitly because it doesn't confer legitimacy. Because we're just, you know, at the end of the day we're not a government and therefore don't confer recognition over control particular piece of territory and some in some ways is community based efforts. It can be either useful precursors or parallels to whatever more formal processes governments might be be envisioning in some ways can be quite useful. And it's particularly because they're not they're not legitimate and they don't bring the force of recognition. But in areas where governments, the political situation is just not appropriate for direct engagement with armed groups, or the from the government side or the, or frankly the armed group side. Two things that we found to be particularly useful one is around, you know, the peace committee structures early warning to make sure that you're involving people with influence over armed group behavior who are not necessarily armed group members themselves and most senior most people within armed groups themselves so in in some places it's it's pastors it's traditional leaders it's in some cases the school teacher the former rebel of the armed group leaders school teacher and mentor and other you know so we've had a lot of examples of sort of support to civilians with who are not affiliated formally with an armed group but have ability to influence. But that ability to influence is the main ticket is the ticket to entry in some ways into a lot of these processes. And the second I would just really underscore also the ability, particularly now in the post covert world of engagement via online means, you know is increasingly common, even in many of the crisis affected places where we work zone areas under group or with engagements, you know via WhatsApp. For example, in many different societies we've organized meetings during covert via zoom between people who would never would be able to safely meet in person. Across zones of control or whether the risk of physical participation is so high to be able to use zoom platforms and others to engage. So I think there are a number of creative ways that can be an appropriate things that should be done, even where the direct engagement with armed groups in a fit of physical setting aren't necessarily isn't necessarily viable. Thanks so much for that, Mike. And maybe we can maybe I can hand over to Wendy to talk a little bit more about how civic think through, you know, sort of complimentary approaches between, you know, sort of considering engagement with state and non state actors and and entry points for for that over to you and me. Thanks so much Gemma so many great points raised by colleagues here, maybe just a word on some of these questions that are coming up around how to, you know, support these locally led approaches in a way that is not only sort of context specific is empowering local but also builds in space for complementarity of approaches. So one of the things that we found in in our work and especially in testing and this toolkit is that identifying the correct entry points from government departments to parliaments to military departments with very clear practical and well tailored recommendations match to exactly those specific audiences really raise the, the, the prospects for success of dialogue and sustained dialogue. There are a number of good practice, good practices which can help advance those efforts so for example stakeholder mapping, you know, having sort of some of these key messages that are very clear time the engagement to a long term advocacy strategy as well and considering the timing of some of these interventions so, for example, bringing CSO priorities forward when there are large political changes can really make a big difference, and making sure you choose that moment of engagement that can really provide the right momentum for advocacy carefully. As the Clément was saying in the case of Niger, they really, you know, try to identify political windows in which the prospects for success were more likely. Now, with our non state groups, obviously the engagement has to be adapted. In these cases, you know, these complementary approaches can are really necessary so on one level, you know, engaging with state security forces also with legal political and justice sectors, where you may not find traction for example, with the military you may with the National Human Rights Commission or with justice entities, especially on transitional justice issues, but also in tandem making sure that you support some of these community based mechanisms, including, you know, some of the examples that Nils raised were quite powerful, where, you know, we have to be very humble about our role sometimes, not only making sure that we apply a sort of do no harm approach ourselves, building in, you know, measures to mitigate the risk of reprisals for engaging with local actors, but making sure that where there are local systems that they can be empowered to the extent possible. So for example, community based protection mechanism is really warning networks, community alert networks are examples of ways that we can support which we may not be the best best placed actor to support some of these local. Thank you. Thanks very much, Wendy. And I think, you know, I think there's what I've heard today, and actually through much of the week for those that have been participating is, you know, that that need for very humble very sort of granular community led, localised sort of analysis pre any support, and we're running out of time but just want to give all the panelists to an opportunity to come back in. If you'd like, don't feel that you have to, and I'll just go around quickly in the order that we spoke to so you know if you wanted to give, you know, one take away and I know you've given us a lot of food for thought today. But you know one action that you think humanitarian and peace actors need to think about when considering community engagement or one further point that you don't feel that has been adequately raised today, just to give you an opportunity to sort of Yeah, to come back in before we finish. So, Leo, I'll go around in the order that speakers came in on. So, Lee, have you got one point that you'd want us to think about? I think for me that the sort of striking thing was thinking about the these parameters engagement set by these conditions. I think, as we said that external support, you know, it can and help to build capacity can strengthen, you know, civilians, you know, ability to engage, but it's it's also thinking about what's often referred to as wartime conditions that really set the boundaries of the Senate's really thinking about what's feasible in terms of group ideology, you know, this motivation behind the use of violence, and taking those into considerations and thinking about what is actually feasible in terms of, you know, how we support community led strategies because I think at times, you know, there are severe limits in terms of what can actually be achieved. Great. Thanks, Lee. Wendy, over to you. Maybe I'll just pick up on that point and stress the need for really this holistic multi pronged approach where we're looking for wherever possible, trying to create that enabling environment and and and support the momentum and prospects for national commitments, while working also at the operational level for preventing and mitigating harm and building in and supporting efforts to mitigate against civilian harm sort of responses and you know right throughout the harm cycle, including and this often does drop off, you know, where's left to sort of peace building actors later, working on these issues around amends and and and reparations. And in order to do that, as we've heard from almost everyone today, we really do have to find ways to work together that is, you know, much more cohesive there's so many examples of good practice out there that we can build on. So let's reach across the island and do so. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. We need to say that community engagement is essential for protection and in the response to bring for us. We want to use the assessment, the toolkit that has developed to create opportunities. For example, to work with social society on the importance of protecting civilians. To avoid ethnic division in the workplace. And we also want to cover communication matters. It's something that is very important that we want to develop. We want to work on advocacy as well for laws. And it's something we really have at heart. We are in a chaotic situation. At this time, when we hear there are dead people, it really hurts. So we need to have a legal text that protects civilians, no matter the circumstance. Thank you very much. Sorry. Thanks so much Mike over to you. Yeah, I mean, I think we talked a little bit about the importance and practicality of a community engagement, but what underscores fundamentally it's also about power and it's about the power and the influence that members of communities have over the kinds of outcomes that that shape their societies. And often we look at the same forest, but we see the trees and not the animals or we see the fish and not the birds or whatever. But we're not really understanding systems of power in these societies and the ability to move things for good or for bad that civilians have is very easy is appropriate to look directly at the engagement of armed groups. And at the same time also understand that the influence over armed groups isn't just the commanders themselves or the leader. It's, you know, it's the association of women in the market who choose to negotiate whether to pay taxes or not. It's the kid who has 10,000 followers on WhatsApp in the chat he leads. It's not the religious leader. It's his deputy that the, you know, it's his young deputy that the gang members listen to. And so forth and if we're not, if we're closed, it doesn't mean the humanitarian international communities to understand it, but it does mean we need to support those, the people who work with those kinds of people to shift shift the dynamics to shift the outcomes and the protection outcomes in that that society and the degree to which we across sectors, but also in a way that's much more synced between local and global are using platforms and learning from one another through initiatives like connexus and others. The better we'll all be at understanding and harnessing the different forms of power and aligning international power behind the influence for good that exists within communities. Great. Thanks, Karen, over to you. Thanks. So I think for me and for my colleagues to save the children, I think the important thing is is really for us to be prepared and to be structured for timely actions. Right. When can we be locally led versus, you know, when, when do kind of external actors, including ourselves have the most kind of value add when can we bear more responsibility take on more risks and be there for communities in the ways that communities want us to be there for them and how do we how do we find this, this space across humanitarian actors, human rights actors, peace building as community, peace making at the highest political level. So, you know, as humanitarians and as child right actors, save the children, you know, and our work on protection for us. We would really like to see the protection of civilians working across all of those environments, you know, across that nexus of humanitarian development and and peace building, but really what we're expecting is much more participation, even at the at the highest levels of peace making because that's what's going to hold perpetrators of conflict to account. We've seen very significant steps forward on women's participation in peace processes, but you know, we are missing. We can't just put on on women to represent the interests of children. We need to be looking at specific categories because if we look at it from the point of view of communities, you know, as a member of a community myself, I don't want to be siloed off on humanitarian concerns or development concerns or or peace making. While those are important channels for the bureaucrats communities affected by conflict just want to see solutions. And I think that's it's really incumbent upon us therefore to be prepared to be structured for those timely actions and to really think about what we need to do in order to preserve humanitarian space for humanitarian action, but also what we can share with others in order to to give energy to to kind of peace making actions and inform that much more. Let's stop there. Thanks. Thanks and Nils over to you before we go to Sarah to wrap up. Thanks. I didn't. I think an important point here is this thing about yes, the relationship between what we do and what we do to those externals and I think the whole. A lot of it comes down to just do we need to continue to use these very extractive tools where we go in and extract analysis, or should we just see wouldn't we learn just as much by enabling people to make their own analysis their own assessments, their own priority settings and then just listen in. Together we're local national partners, etc. But just to I think this sort of we have this super bad. I think have it in, but I think probably both in humanitarian and in the peace community and development, to a certain extent to doing extractive assessments. No, that we can do a lot better and why be a lot wiser and thus enable and empower people instead of extract analysis. And then I said on community let protection obviously I mean, yes, I'm there wholeheartedly with all the caveats that we need to bring into place and I said before, some of these more sort of extreme or radical versions that we're suggesting. I don't see that as protection programming as such but be very open to the fact that it will probably deliver to protection. In most cases, it has and give you a kind of feedback on what your own programming more protection might be missing out on and get some new ideas so just to play the ball back and the resources back to groups in a responsible manner and you just see your own work and you're not least your own staff, be enriched by that experience. And then just lastly, when it comes to conflict transformation and peace work, I still hold some respect for a bit of a siloed approach, at least in some of the cases I've seen, I do still think that there's a value that some of the conflict transformation people I know the way they work. It sits better slightly in parallel with and deeply informed by your maternal actors. But not necessarily there. Yeah. Yeah, sorry, with our very few minutes left and we might run one with two minutes over time. But just because we've got two minutes left I'll quickly hand to Sarah. Thank you to God who is the Senior Protection Advisor from the Swedish International Development Agency for some final points before we close. Sarah over to you and sorry there's so little time. Thank you very much Gemma and thank you to all of you this has been an excellent discussion and I don't know what I can add to this discussion. Thank you for letting Cida coming in on this. Even when preparing for this event, I realized that we don't speak enough with each other internally at Cida, we have a we have a humanitarian strategy with the goal of reducing risk of violence threats and abuse for crisis affected people. And the strategies being implemented in 21 major crisis at the moment and in other crisis as well. And from the humanitarian side, we do what we can to support actions that mitigate threats, reduce vulnerabilities and enhance capacities for self protection to rich protection outcomes. At the same time, several of Cida's just over 40 strategies are covering the area of inclusive societies. And although they not, they do not express this in terms of contributing to protection outcomes, of course they are. So I think there are many things that we can learn from the session. As a donor, we need definitely to start and continue to discuss how humanitarian protection and peace communities can work in greater collaboration and complementarity to it supporting communities for self protection. And I think among other things, communities can be supported in their engagements with threats to increase their protection. As we have heard today, a people centered and inclusive approach is needed, and that really puts the communities and their protection at the heart of discussion and engagement. I think we need to learn from our partners and enable them to work in a way that puts people at the center. And this can include keeping in mind that communities needs to be involved when defining protection, who decides what protection is or when you feel safe. Communities also need to be involved in the definition of what is harmful trade off and what their risks may be. And I think at Cida and in line with Sweden's humanitarian strategy through Cida, we are testing and developing several tools to support our partners in this important task. We are flexible funding, multi-year humanitarian funding, and currently we are exploring ways of localizing the humanitarian response. But we also work with partners on how to meaningfully measure protection outcomes and moving away from focusing only at how many people have been reached. But we need to do more to encourage joint contextualized analysis with communities and to help development, peace and humanitarian partners to have a common understanding that can support coordination and synergies when possible. I think that shorter and long term investments should complement each other to enhance sustainability, trust and relationship building to make these activities possible. And I can just finish by underlying that we need to better learn and understand when external actors can help and when involvement can do more harm than good through listening and empowering local actors and communities. That came out very clearly today. I think we can also aim at better understanding of how our protection interventions can contribute to peace positive factors beyond making sure that they are not aggravating conflicts. Thank you very much for an excellent session. Thanks so much Sarah. And just to say I know we're out of time. I'm not even going to attempt to wrap up what's been such a rich conversation. Thanks to everyone for all the messages on the chat and thank you so much to all of our panellists for a really interesting and, you know, challenging and in depth discussion. There's been a lot in the chat, but please feel free to reach out to us to take full with that conversation. But thanks again and invite you all our Twitter handle is at HPG ODI, but feel free to get in contact. Have a good day.