 Hello, everyone. I think we can get started now. My name is Enharad Lang. I'm the Executive Director of PHAAP that's short for the International Association of Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection. I'm very happy to be welcoming everyone to this webinar today, Coordinating Access for Humanitarian Protection. This is the final webinar in a series of four events organized by the NRC, the Global Protection Cluster, and PHAAP with financial support from USAID, in which we're looking at the challenges faced by practitioners related to access and humanitarian protection. So with that, we'll turn to the substance of today's event. In this series, if you've joined us for previous events, you know that we've looked at access and protection challenges from the angles of how to best negotiate access for protection. And then in our most recent event, how to avoid doing harm to affected people in the process. As we all know without access, humanitarian actors are unable to reach affected people with assistance as well as protection. Indeed, access is a condition for protection, both protection programming and protection by presence. In most crisis response contexts, multiple protection actors are seeking to access affected populations at the same time as humanitarian actors are interdependent with the actions of one affecting all other actors in a response context. They often face situations where there are coordination challenges related to access and protection. In today's fourth session of this webinar series on access and protection, we'll be focusing specifically on issues related to coordinated negotiations and approaches to access, including the use of armed escorts, civil military coordination and coordination with peacekeeping missions, and how these can all have implications for protection. As in our previous events in this series, we'll be looking at the concrete situations submitted by you, the participants, so that we can focus the discussions on issues that concern you the most. So to help us examine these situations, we're joined today by a panel of experts who bring a lot of experience working on coordination related to access protection and civil military coordination. First joining us from New York is Aurelien Boufflet, Chief of the Policy Advice and Planning section at OCHA. Warm welcome to you, Aurelien. Hi, hi everyone, and happy to join. Great, great to have you with us. Then in Bamako, we have Marie-Emily Dozin, Protection Cluster Coordinator for Mali. Welcome Marie. Hi everyone, thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. And in Tunis, we're joined by Anne-Marie McKenzie, who's the Protection Cluster Coordinator for Libya. Welcome to you, Anne-Marie. Hi everyone, great to be here. Thanks for having me. And next we have Sarah Vimier, Protection Advisor with the World Food Program in Mali, but joining us today from Geneva. Welcome Sarah. Hello everybody, very glad to be here. And finally, connecting from Washington, D.C. Melody Knight, Global Humanitarian Access Advisor with the Norwegian Refugee Council. Great to have you on the line, Melody. Hi, thanks for having me. Now, before we jump into the discussion, I would just like to take a quick look at the types of issues we're dealing with in this session. More than 300 registrants took the time to complete the pre-event questionnaire for today's events in which types of issues, regarding which types of issues you had faced in your work. And many of you also submitted detailed examples of these, which was tremendously helpful in the preparation of today's discussion. All of the types of coordination issues were experienced by registrants. What really stands out is how frequently reported coordination challenges are that stem from different priorities of organizations. So we can see in that second line there, agencies have different protection priorities that's really standing out as having the greatest impact on your work or really experienced by a lot of people registered in today's event. Regarding issues related to simcord using armed escorts due to the security situation is much more common, actually, among you than situations where the authorities require escorts to be used or when physical access constraints require the use of military equipment. So that's something interesting to keep in mind. We have examples of both types, but just to note that, yes, that in a sense, voluntary use of armed escorts is actually more prevalent issue than actually being required to use armed escorts, although both are of concern. Now, for our first theme, we're going to start with a type of challenge that many of you also reported having experienced that of when authorities with control over access, try to ensure that this access is on their terms by dividing humanitarian actors or in a sense playing them against each other. I'd like to first turn to Aurelien, who would be, so to you, Aurelien, what would be your main overarching recommendations for how to approach this type of situation before we dive into some of the specific examples that we've received? Over to you. Thank you, Angela, and thank you to the PHA team and the protection cluster also for organizing this series of events. Look, to answer your question, the divide and conquer strategy used by some parties to conflict against the humanitarian is not new, particularly in situations where we have significant protection concerns. And in fact, it's probably increasing across emergencies, I mean, from Yemen to Myanmar to Venezuela, Cameroon to name only this. So that's a general pattern. The recommendation is very simple. It's faced with that, humanitarian needs to coordinate. They need to coordinate their approach to access and their approach to protection. Each organization needs to recognize that it is not able alone to address all protection and access challenges. Each organization needs to recognize that each decision it takes has an impact on other humanitarians and may possibly undermine others. So a coordinated approach is absolutely necessary amongst us. That doesn't mean negating the individual identity of an organization or giving the monopoly of access or protection to one partner. It means just agreeing amongst us as humanitarian about the framework, the principles according to which we need to operate and the kind of message we want to pass to authorities. It is of course our charge role to promote that and we have a series of tools to that end from access working group to access strategies to joint operating principles. And I'm happy to come back to that during the discussion. Suffice to say that this works when they're implemented effectively. And I take the recent example of Afghanistan, where the team there, the human and country team did a fantastic job around the COVID-19 crisis and access in that context. Over to you. Excellent. Thanks so much for that, Orelian. Absolutely looking forward to getting into some of those examples as we proceed with the discussion. Turning to you, Melody, as the Global Humanitarian Access Advisor for NRC, how would you say that NGOs relate to this? You have the floor. Thank you. I'd like to raise the value of NGO involvement in these access coordination mechanisms that Orelian just raised, particularly of NGO co-leads in access working groups. For coordination of strategic initiatives, such as the joint operating principles that Orelian just mentioned, we often see that many HCT representatives are conducting their work through local partners, meaning that the decisions that they support or advocate for on access have implications for many that aren't in the room. You and actors are often perceived differently from NGOs in the communities where we work, and they may have to follow different protocols such as security rules that differentiate them from NGOs. And the access constraints that are most closely related to protection, such as restrictions to freedom of movement or denial of the existence of humanitarian needs, are often among the most sensitive to discuss. And effective coordination requires trust and buy-in between members, including the voices of those with a broader presence in hard-to-reach areas, especially local NGOs, who often have a stronger understanding of access constraints in an area. And it's crucial for effective coordination. Over. Great. Thanks for that, Melody. Now, back to you, Orelian. How can we ensure that NGOs and other actors are included in access coordination? I mean, first I'll take responsibility for that because it's, in my opinion, not only in my opinion, it's in the opinion of Ocha, our role as Ocha to ensure that we build inclusive platform and tools and include all relevant actors in our discussion, including, of course, international NGOs and local NGOs. There are ways to do that, and we have several good practices. I mean, Melody just alluded to the co-leadership of access working group between UN and NGOs. We have good examples of processes which are used to foster coordination, like on joint operating, for instance, where NGOs, local or international, are being involved in discussion. The participation of NGOs, local and international in UN is also absolutely key because this is where some of the access and protection issues are needed. I would maybe highlight two areas where I think we need to make progress. The first one is we need to do much more to include our local partners, local NGOs in our coordination mechanisms. These are partners that implement most of the international response programs. They also have a unique view on access and protection issues in the countries where we operate. And I think it's fair to say that we're not always very good at creating a space for them to contribute to the discussion on access and protection. The second area of improvement is about decentralization. And what I mean by that is that our coordination tool, our discussion on access and protection, very often happen mainly at the national level, at capital level, and not so much at government-rate or sub-government-rate level, where in fact front-line colleagues are involved in discussion with participants. So we need to make sure that colleagues in the front-line are given the tools to coordinate. That means that we need to disseminate what we do at national level. We need to make sure we train colleagues in the front-line and make sure they are familiar with the coordinated approach agreed upon at the national level. Very good. Thanks for that, Orliens. Now, before we turn into the specific examples, just to turn once more back to Melody, what would be your other recommendations for how to approach these types of situations when a coordinated approach is needed to respond to pressures from authorities? You have the floor, Melody. Thank you. Yes, coordination should be adaptive to the context. So as Orliens just mentioned, national and formal coordination is important for initiatives such as strategizing, evidence-gathering, policy development, advocacy. But area or locally-oriented coordination can also build trust and provide opportunities again to prioritize national voices. I'd also like to emphasize the value of OCHA's role as a direct negotiator in the field, which is particularly helpful when pressure from authorities or communities is mounting as it can give space for NGOs operating in that area. The coordination can be as informal and as regular as a call between a protection coordinator and an access coordinator to share priorities or minimize duplication. It can be time-bound and thematic, for example, responding to a localized event such as a drought in a hard-to-reach area of Afghanistan or prioritizing pool funds for hard-to-reach areas, or even for a specific cluster or sector to convene on an access constraint that affects their work specifically, such as vaccinations in an area under the control of a non-state arms group or as food distributions in an insecure part of South Sudan. It's just really important that we keep access on the agenda of the HCT when access is relevant. Often protection concerns aren't well understood in hard-to-reach areas, and access coordination mechanisms can be heavily involved and responsible for advocating for the needs of those in these access constraint areas. Great, thank you. So now let's take a look at some of the concrete examples that participants have sent in prior to the event. The first one is regarding a situation where authorities ended up dividing the humanitarian actors in the way that they gave permission to access affected areas. I'll just read it out here. This is from someone working with an NGO. In a context where I've worked, the government required humanitarian agencies to obtain special permissions to move and work with IDPs in the affected area. Permissions were only given for three-month periods and given in an arbitrary way to some agencies and not others. This created tensions, particularly where those who had permissions would, quote, keep their heads down for fear of government retaliation or revoking of permissions. So back to you, Melody. What would be your main recommendations for someone faced with this general type of situation? Over to you. Yeah, this is unfortunately a common problem that we face in access-restricted context. Authorities or communities attempting to control access to an area or demanding beneficiary lists and playing organizations off of one another to achieve their demands. My recommendation would be to raise the issue to the relevant coordination mechanism, as we previously discussed. Hopefully there's an access working group, but if not a cluster, an NGO forum, an HCT, the donor, wherever there's space to effectively discuss this issue and define a way forward. As we already mentioned in the previous section, several examples of processes undertaken to develop collective red lines on a specific issue such as taxation payments or beneficiary lists have gone on. But there's times when access coordination mechanisms facilitate these cluster-led consultative approaches that take into account protection concerns and are ultimately approved by the HCT. And yet we find that these processes can sometimes be a bit too idealistic and too top-level, maybe too focused on a perfect process. They may lack a plan or a process to ensure compliance or senior staff are sometimes unaware of the realities that their staff are facing in the field. So we need to make sure that these processes ensure measures to share learning with field colleagues and to work with our colleagues that are based in these hard-to-reach areas to share what the red lines are that have been developed. Got it. Thank you very much. Let's turn to the next situation. We have a participant who sent in a scenario related to non-state armed groups attempting to tax humanitarian agencies. You already mentioned this briefly. Melody, I'll just read it out. This again is coming from someone with an INGO. Members of a non-state armed group have come to our offices to say that other organizations provided daily per diem to authorities to enable access and that we are expected to do the same. So for this, let me actually turn over to Aurelien. What would be your recommendation for how to approach this type of challenge? Over to you. Thanks. Of course, each situation is particular, but what we see that in more and more context, this kind of discussion is happening between the humanitarian and armed groups. In this case, what I would do, I mean, the first step would be really to have a discussion with the humanitarian organization and understand what's going on and who is actually paying the per diem and what is behind. And from now on, have a discussion on what are the short-term interests and long-term interests of humanitarian and how we can agree on the principal common position on this issue of per diem. And once you have this, of course, the discussion between the humanitarian needs to be about how do we engage the non-state armed group in question and how do we convey our collective position. Of course, it's easier when you have a coordination platform that work well, that are in place when some very effective access working group is easier to do that. Let me add a couple of comments. Melody alluded before to the negotiation role of Focha. I mean, just to be clear, I mean, we are happy to negotiate on behalf of other organizations when asked to do so. But of course, we will not take the initiative on our own to negotiate on behalf of others if we don't have a clear understanding with the organization in question. But in this kind of situation, the added value of Focha is that we don't have programs on the ground. So we're just here to convey the position of humanitarian and the armed group in question cannot really affect Focha's program. So I think that's one of the added value. I would also point to something I raised before. It's extremely difficult when a precedent has been created to undo it. So what we need to do as a community is before organizations take the decision to pay program or pay taxes is ideally have a discussion beforehand in the coordination mechanisms aimed for that. And I would end up maybe by one little note on the negotiation with armed groups. I think we need to think about what kind of messages we send to the armed groups when we convey a message. Very often our message is around the human principle and neutrality. We need to ask ourselves collectively whether this is always the best message to convince an armed group to allow access and facilitate access. What is the interest of the armed group? In other words, in a negotiation, you need to find an argument that speaks to the other party in the negotiation. Thanks, Aurelien. Actually, we have a very on point question just building on your comments just now. This has come in in the Q&A from Abdulmanem and he's asking, does Ocha coordinate with all parties in the country in order to facilitate access in those cases where Ocha is undertaking those actions? Does Ocha coordinate with all parties including extremists? Let me just throw that back to you, Aurelien, before we move on. I mean, the role of Ocha is of course to help facilitate access in areas where there are needs. And that means that we need to negotiate and speak to whoever is in control of these areas. I mean, be it national authorities, armed groups, or armed groups labeled as extremists or terrorists by some other state. So absolutely, we engage with whoever we need to engage with in order to get access. There's no restriction on whether it's an armed group, whether it is a so-called terrorist group, or whether it is a national authority. Okay, great. Thank you. Now, Melody, do you have anything you can add on this question regarding this scenario 1.2? Over to you. Sure. I'd like to share a positive example, actually, of a situation where there was a non-government group pressuring mine risk aid agencies with taxation requests in Afghanistan last year. The UN agency received several reports from their implementing partners, and they were receiving pressure from communities and pressure from non-state armed groups to pay taxes. And in response, they convened the NGOs, they reviewed the NGO codes of conduct, including the humanitarian principles. They offered resources for building acceptance of communities and where they were operating and tools for communicating the value of mine risk education and mine extraction to the community. And they really supported their NGO implementing partners. And so this is something that I think could be built upon and could be practiced in other countries as well as a positive practice for dealing with pressure from armed groups for taxation. Great. Thank you for that. Now, we have one more example on this first theme. This one has to do with when authorities are trying to use accusations and rumors to weaken the cohesion of the humanitarian response. This is coming from someone working with an NGO in Cameroon. The government has on many occasions accused a particular organization of transporting arms and delivering them to non-state armed groups in the troubled Anglophone regions. This is to tarnish the image of humanitarian NGOs and limit their cooperation with one another. I'd like to turn to Anne-Marie first on this one. What would be your main recommendations in this situation based on what we know about it from this example? Over to you, Anne-Marie. Great. Thanks. Yeah, so such a serious accusation does require us to try to better understand the situation and verify the information if possible. But it's also important to remember that when authorities try to divide humanitarian organizations with rumors or accusations, it's also very tempting or could be tempting for us to protect our own organizational reputation and programming. So it's understandable that an initial reaction from organizations in such a situation may be to turn inward and avoid joint advocacy or presenting ourselves as a united front with other humanitarian organizations. I definitely recommend fighting this urge and using this as an opportunity for humanitarian organizations to present a united front on what our principles and our policies are. A coordinated front, as mentioned by both Melody and Orzillon earlier, can range from bilateral conversations between organizations up to the cluster level and all the way up to the humanitarian country team or NGO forum level to address these issues. And I think there's really two main ways that we can try to address this. First, by reinforcing within our own humanitarian community what our understanding is of and our adherence to our shared humanitarian principles. And then second, by joint engagement and advocacy with authorities to clearly outline and reaffirm the humanitarian community's commitment to our principles. The first point is particularly important as a means to build the capacity of humanitarian organizations, particularly of smaller NGOs, local NGOs or non traditional humanitarian partners to ensure that all organizations understand the humanitarian principles both in theory and in practice. And the united front and collective advocacy and engagement with authorities is a way to combat divisions or rumors rather than letting the divisions be a driver between humanitarian organizations. Alright, thank you Anne-Marie. So just checking to see if we have any other panelists wishing to come in so not seeing any hands raised, we'll just move on to the next theme. So here we're looking at when access is challenged by different priorities of humanitarian agencies, whether this is due to their programming, advocacy, or otherwise. So let me go to Marie first on this type of issue. Marie, what would be your overall recommendations for what to keep in mind when faced with this type of challenge? Over to you Marie. Thank you. Well, first I think it is fine and it's actually very important to recognize that different agencies have different mandates, protection expertise and protection priorities. We have a lot of actors doing protection work, national, international actors, UN, NGOs. Some are faith-based, some have their mandates that is deeply rooted in IHL. In protection in particular you have thematic interests, protection of refugees, protection of children, GBV, mine action. So we may share a similar objective, which is protection, but we have different identities and different approaches. And so as O'Lean was saying in the beginning, it's actually those differences that is the exact reason why complementarity and coordination is so much needed for protection. So initially I would rather see it as an asset rather than a threat because protection crises are very complex today and so it requires a wide range of different solutions. And the fact that we have a diversity of approaches in the protection sector, I think it can really increase the scale and the impact of our response and it also enriches the analysis. So for example, if you take advocacy, you could come up with a joint protection advocacy strategy that draws on the comparative advantages of the different actors. So who is best placed to access duty-bearers who has access to communities? For example, human rights actors are generally going public about the violation of human rights. At least that's what we've seen recently in the Sahel and it can be combined with quiet community-based strategies that are implemented by human rights actors and it has a multiplying effect. Now that being said, I acknowledge completely the fact that some agencies have different protection DNA, different red lines of what is acceptable and what is not. And sometimes it leads to confusion, to misunderstanding, even to mistrust. So we need to ensure that our action is not going to compromise the activities of another protection actor. And to do that, I think we need to carefully assess the different mandate strategies priorities of other protection actors operating in the same area. And this is first an individual responsibility of the organization itself, but it's also a collective responsibility. And I think that if you have a well-functioning protection cluster or any other inter-agency protection working group, it can actually be the right forum to use to find common grounds. And find common grounds for me would be on two different aspects. First, complementarity of actions and second, complementarity of principles. So on actions, I think that if as a protection actor you realize that your action may jeopardize access for another agency, my recommendation would be that, well, first you should act only after giving the matter the most careful consideration, understanding the risk and finding ways to mitigate those risks. And second, in all circumstances, a protection actor should always proactively advise other actors who might be affected by its actions. And on principles, I think that humanity, impartiality, non-discrimination is central to protection work. But some protection actors maintain the principle of neutrality and independence also as a core value because this neutrality allows them to gain access. And if an actor decides that he doesn't want to or that he's simply not able to implement the principle of neutrality, he should acknowledge and respect the commitment of those who are trying to abide by the principle. So in particular for actors who are not neutral or who are not perceived to be neutral because of their activities, their funding source, their association with a specific country, I would recommend that they be very careful not to publicly implicate other actors in their actions. And they should also be aware that those actors may not engage in the same way in coordination. That's the example of the ICRC or MSF who may prefer to liaise on a bilateral rather than a collective basis. So I think the aim is not to propose a uniform approach to protection work and it's fine to acknowledge our differences. But it's also important to establish some minimum standards on action and on principles. And the spectrum of collaboration is very wide so it can go from coexisting together because maybe in some context we just cannot agree on common priorities because the level of trust among ourselves is just insufficient. But the spectrum also goes all the way to full cooperation when you have protection actors actually engaging in joint analysis and joint activities. And where you decide to put the arrow on the spectrum will very much depend I think on the context and on the actors that are involved. Thank you very much, Marie. And thanks for helping us to look at this through the lens of humanitarian principles. I think very, very helpful to aid in understanding and analysis of the challenges here. So in our first example from a participant looking on this theme, we're looking at a general lack of agreement among humanitarian agencies as the challenge. So this comes from an independent professional working in DR Congo who writes in the DR Congo while drafting the protection strategy for the HCT, restrictions on access due to armed groups prevented important protection work for affected populations. The response was difficult to coordinate due to interagency squabbles. Increased advocacy was the, quote, lowest common denominator that could be agreed on while coordination on concrete programming was limited. So Melody, let me turn to you first. What would be your recommendation to this participant? Over to you. Yes, my recommendation is that these interagency processes aren't necessarily mutually exclusive to field oriented context specific initiatives. So I'll share an example from South Sudan of a coordinated approach that minimized protection risk. This is a few years ago, there was a part of the country where multiple communities were in conflict with each other and were extremely food insecure. And so aid agencies had experienced food distributions that had led to further violence against communities, and they were fearing that their food distribution would further generate insecurity and attacks on their beneficiaries. So a handful of NGOs and UN agencies worked together to coordinate the large scale distribution of food simultaneously across the front lines of the conflict to mitigate the risk. And it didn't require a formal coordination mechanism. It was a relationship between a few people who understood that coordinating their work would reduce the risk to the population. So I guess my recommendation is that sometimes we don't need to over technicalize or over formalize our access coordination work. It can be more based in kind of common sense and relationship building. Thank you Melody. And thank you Melody. And turning to Marie, do you have any points that you can add on this type of challenge? Over to you Marie. Yes, in this example it seems that protection actors could not agree on common protection priorities to draft the HCT protection strategy. So I wanted to give an example of where an HCT protection strategy can actually be a useful tool to agree on protection priorities and to make progress on access. So in Mali the HCT protection strategy is going to be being drafted thanks to the support of a PROCAP. And the HCT members have agreed on three critical protection issues. And they have agreed that this requires a system-wide and a collective approach going way beyond the responsibility of the protection sector. But what I found interesting is that they have included a geographical focus because of issues of access for protection. So you have the Liptaco-Gurma, which is the region where you have the three borders, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. And this is the epicenter of the protection crisis in the Sahel region. And it is also where we have major access issues. So we have agreed that this is where we need to invest our resources and our effort. And so in the strategy we want to suggest that we build on each other's strength to deliver protection. So if one organization has access to a remote or how to reach community in the Liptaco-Gurma, and this organization is the only one able to deliver programs, we want to make sure that they integrate protection into assistance programming. And that all programs that will be implemented in this region are built in a way that they include both an assistance objective and a protection objective. And in some areas of the Liptaco-Gurma, that will be the only way to provide protection because access is extremely limited. So partnership is important. And I think we need to be ready to work with other partners that may not be protection experts, but can have integrated programming that ultimately leads to a protection outcome and to overcoming an access issue. Great. Thank you, Marie. I'd like to move to our next example. This is regarding an example of the specific programming of an NGO leading to difficulties for other NGOs. So this is looking at that interaction between the activities of one affecting the others. And it comes from someone working again with an NGO in DR Congo who writes, an advocacy project focusing on demobilization, repatriation and reintegration of ex-military has put other humanitarian organizations at risk when a local population considers that all NGOs are working to collect guns for money. So staying with you, Marie, what would be your reflections on this specific challenge over to you? Well, the example is from DR Congo. So it resonates also a lot with the context that we have here in Mali where you have a UN peacekeeping mission with a strong protection of civilians mandate. So the mission is conducting conflict resolution and mediation activities, providing physical protection and building a protective environment. And this is an example of a DDR project, which I understand is implemented in a context where you have humanitarian actors and a peacekeeping mission. And for me, it goes back to the issue of distinction and perceptions. So basically making the distinction between the blue UN and the black UN, so the civil and the military part of the UN, where sometimes in context like in the DRC or in Mali, it's very easy to blur the line. And it's the distinction that is not always well understood by the community. So my first recommendation would be that we need to first change the perception that communities have about the project. This requires a lot of effort to explain humanitarian principles, to articulate the nature of the work that we do, to clarify what is a humanitarian activity and what is not. And it's an endless and crucial task. But I think we should never consider that we have spent enough time explaining those key concepts. We had an example in Mali recently when a protection actor wanted to conduct an assessment in a village that had been attacked by an armed group. And it happened that the UN team drove past the same community the day before the attack. So the population associated any humanitarian actor with the attack. And the protection actor found a lot of resistance and they had to come back for seven consecutive days to engage in a dialogue with the community to explain the purpose of their work, their mandate, the principles. And in the end they managed to build acceptance on the long run through a direct presence in the community and by working on perception. So I know it's time consuming, but in itself it's already a protection activity that is providing access. And second, my recommendation would be to anchor the principle of distinction. And that for me is the role of Ocha and civil military coordination mechanism who have, particularly in a peacekeeping context, an important role to make sure that those types of activities are undertaken in coordination with the humanitarian actors. Because in this example, the DR project is very much linked to building a protective environment, which for those who know the egg model is one of the three types of protection activities that are implemented by a humanitarian actor. So coordination for those types of activities for me again is essential. Got it. Thank you for that, Marie. Next we have an example where organizations are concerned about information sharing due to potential access restrictions on the part of the government or armed group. I'll just read the example here. Protection organizations in our contact collect potentially sensitive information that they fear if published or shared widely would impede their access due to the government and or non-state armed actors retaliating for collecting information on violations and protection risks that they perpetrate. And Marie, can I turn to you first for this example? You have the floor. Yes, absolutely. So this is definitely something that we've seen a lot and that is quite specific to protection organization. This fear is particularly valid for partners who may have high visibility, such as being the only protection organization working in a specific geographic location. This is an example where coordination structures can be particularly useful and can strive to find creative solutions to protect the organization while still ensuring effective populations are able to access protection services. One way a protection cluster or the coordination system can help to alleviate this issue is through organizing joint assessments between multiple organizations or agencies, which in an ideal setup would include national and international partners, UN and NGO organization. This is obviously not always feasible and also might not provide even enough protection for the organization. And such a second recommendation is using the cluster to further our advocacy and reporting. So through the anonymization of data and information that's collected by partners, the partners can share this information with the cluster and the cluster can then disseminate the information with the coordinators then engaging directly with humanitarian leadership or other key stakeholders. The cluster can conduct bilateral and sort of private or quiet advocacy with appropriate stakeholders on behalf of the cluster members. Both recommendations, first of the joint assessments and second of advocacy conducted by the coordinators on behalf of their members are meant to diffuse liability from a single organization to a forum, such as the cluster that has the ability to withstand a bit more exposure in a way that operational partners might not be able to. Great. Thank you for that, Marie. And I'd like to turn then also to Marie. Do you have anything you can add on this? Any examples? Over to you. I fully agree with what Marie was just saying and I'm not sure I could say it better than the way she just presented it. I wanted to add that we don't acknowledge, I think, enough the risk that some actors are taking, particularly those who are working within the communities and who have to collect sensitive information about protection issues. For example, the role of frontline NGOs conducting protection monitoring activities and sometimes rightly so that they are reluctant to share the information for their own safety but also for access issues. And so, as Anne-Marie was saying, the cluster can be helpful and it's also fine not to go public about certain grave violations if this is going to hamper access for operational agencies on the ground or if the reporting is going to pinpoint exactly which organization provided the information because, as Anne-Marie was saying, maybe they are the only one operating in the area. So again, advocacy here can be done either by an organization that has less operational presence and that takes on the role of denunciation or by a coordination body. But I think that do no harm and duty of care principles should really apply in a situation like this and we also need to be bound by those principles as well. Good. Thanks very much for all of the reflections, the insights on that theme. We're going to move to our next type of issue. It's related to the last one but focuses more on the professionalism of organizations and their staff and how it affects access for everyone involved in humanitarian action, particular protection work. Turning then again to Anne-Marie, what would be your recommendations to those facing this kind of issue when it comes to more of the professionalism of organizations and their staff? You have the floor, Anne-Marie. Yeah, so I think that issues surrounding negative behavior by staff can include anything from not adhering to our professional technical standards, exploiting or putting affected populations at risk of exploitation and abuse, or compromising our humanitarian as Marie was just talking about the do no harm principles, the principle of humanity and neutrality, partiality and independence, all of these need to be at the core of our response. So when we see staff behaving poorly or professionalism and accountability not being upheld, that we need to reshift how we train our staff in the conversations that we're having within our organizations and within our humanitarian community as well. I see a lack of professionalism or I guess a presence of bad behavior as a symptom of not enough training on principles and standards, but also as a symptom of not engaging properly and effectively with affected populations and having a lack of accountability to the communities that we work with and in. One point is the one that I want to focus on as this is where coordination mechanisms can be more fruitful. We should actively work to enhance our community acceptance through meaningful community engagements and building robust mechanisms on accountability to affected populations. It's critically important that we ensure at both the coordination level and the implementation level that our responses are centered around the populations we serve as a way to shift power dynamics between organizations and affected populations to ensure that we're held accountable and to ensure that the communities receive the assistance that they want and that they need. That can be done through capacity building, the creation of two way dialogue between communities and humanitarian organizations, and the establishment of coordination mechanisms that are meant to enhance our accountability to affected populations, such as the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse networks or common feedback mechanisms. And some addressing bad behaviors requires a multi-pronged approach of building capacity for staff on professional standards or codes of conduct and principles, creating a coordination mechanism dedicated to accountability and through meaningful community engagement. Great. Thank you very much. And Sarah, if I could turn to you, is this something that you've also experienced in your work and how has it been addressed in your experience? You have the floor, Sarah. Thank you very much. Yes, absolutely. Unfortunately, I have encountered that as well. Unfortunately, bad or poor behavior might be difficult to detect because of a few issues. First, very often, affected populations do not know their rights and they are afraid to denounce specific behavior of those who provide assistance. So sometimes, apparently, they even receive threats from those who provide assistance. They hear that if they call, contain, and feedback mechanism, they won't receive assistance anymore. Also, very important in some communities, people don't speak negatively of those who provide assistance. It's just something they don't do. So don't, if humanitarian actors have complained and feedback mechanism in place, participation of some do not know about them and or do not trust them. Also, we see that the multiplicity of mechanisms sometimes with the multiplicity of those mechanisms, sometimes the population do not know which one to use, what question or what issue. It's a bit confusing, honestly, even for humanitarian actors sometimes to know who is doing what and for what. Third, humanitarian actors sometimes have little understanding of humanitarian principles, standards and cuts of conduct. They're not always, they are not always aware of the potential consequences of the behavior, terms of perception and accept, of course, but also the consequences for them and for their organizations. I'm saying that I'm thinking mostly of WFT partners, local partners in Mali, who are, who turns quite late to towards humanitarian assistance with, for more, maybe in the, in development. The fourth issue in context like Mali or GRC, for example, it may be, it may be difficult to access most areas and thus monitor humanitarian action in an impartial way. So it leads to, it may lead also to a lack of access and leading to issues. So for me, it is very important to engage population with their rights and needs and including on the way it works and on the confidentiality aspect. Also, we should engage a bit more on what kind of mechanism they feel is the more appropriate for them. And when I'm saying that, of course, talking about men and women, differently, and even children. Also, systematically provide feedback to the people who use this mechanism. This is something that is very much appreciated with using it in Mali with WFT. And also communicate more widely to communities on the changes that were prompted by the feedback and the complaints. Also a very important element, as I mentioned just before, is to train partners on humanitarian action, humanitarian principles, and also warn them on the negative, on the consequences of the negative behaviors. And then they do not really know what are the consequences of sexual exploitation and abuse. They don't really know what is sexual exploitation and abuse. So I think it's very important to engage a lot with our partners. We do, as agencies, have a responsibility in doing so. And finally, I think coordination, again, is extremely important. So in terms of production, the percentage of accountability to a particular population, and specifically, as Anne-Marie just said, the essentialized component and feedback mechanism is key to increase protection monitoring, but also to reduce potential confusions around existing mechanisms for populations. Also, it helps provide more consistent information to populations through these common mechanisms, information mechanisms, for example. Also, it provides opportunities to coordinate, for example, with the access working group, if there is one, to improve general perception, and this is a key tool to increase access. And of course, this could also reduce cost and maximize impact. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Now, our first example on this theme focuses on how this type of situation concerns about the professionalism or reputation of work of one entity can affect others. How this can play out within the UN system and beyond. It's submitted by someone working with a local NGO in DRC. And I note that it does echo a number of the issues that have already been raised in the session, but I do think it's large enough concern. It's certainly worth examining again from this angle. I'll just read the example now. In remote areas and even in cities, populations do not differentiate between an employee of Monusco and an employee of an agency of the United Nations Common System in the DRC, or even INGOs for that matter. When the population makes a negative assessment of the intervention of the UN mission in terms of its work of protecting civilian populations, all of the UN agencies are pinned down. All protest events aimed at the eviction of Monusco simultaneously target the entire system as a single body. On several occasions, barricades were erected against the movement of system vehicles, including the throwing of stones on the installations and rolling stock or vehicles indiscriminately. Ann Marie, if I'll turn to you, you're currently working with an NGO, but I think you've also faced similar situations as this. What would be some reflections from your side on this kind of challenge? Over to you, Ann Marie. Yeah, so I will take a slightly different lens. Drifting away from the UN peacekeeping missions and instead highlighting as well that UN political missions can also impact humanitarian access or acceptance by communities due to their different priorities as well. This can specifically impact protection organizations who work on protection issues and violations, which in some ways may overlap with the work of a political mission. There is certainly difficulty in navigating this as a UN mission in a country has a very specific mandate and specific work to do distinct from our humanitarian imperative. It can also be difficult as this example points out for us as humanitarians to differentiate ourselves from non-humanitarian partners or political arms or Monusco as the case may be to the communities that we work with. What this is indicative of to me though is, as I mentioned earlier, the need to strengthen community engagement. We really have to do the hard work, which is meaningful and robust community engagement and acceptance. This could ensure that affected populations are aware of who they're working with in the humanitarian sphere. Robust and meaningful community engagement requires that affected populations be actively involved in all aspects of the humanitarian program cycle and that the humanitarian organizations have a regular and sustained presence on the ground and within communities. But when or if an organization is able to achieve a level of community acceptance and engagement, this issue of a sort of mistaken identity so to speak is less likely to happen. Additionally, effective community engagement really underpins our commitment as humanitarians to provide assistance with dignity in a way that is meaningful to the communities that we work with. Effective community engagement can be fostered through coordination mechanisms by the sharing of best practices by actor or stakeholder mappings of communities and key community focal points and groups, as well as the creation of key messaging or training on how to effectively engage with communities. This also requires us to discuss with communities who we are, the work that we do and our relationship with a political mission or a peacekeeping mission. As mentioned earlier, the key is really to get to know the communities who we work with, as well as for them to know us as a way to strengthen our access and avoid being confused with non humanitarian partners. Thank you very much for that. I'd also like to highlight we're getting some great input as well from participants responding to the poll here sharing your own recommendations for how to address situations where access for protection is put at risk due to the behavior or professionalism lack of professionalism of other organizations. Some great inputs there I do recommend scrolling through and you can use you'll be able to see that in the recording as well of the event. So if you'd like to go back after afterwards to review some of the participant input as well. That will be a very valuable resource. We're going to turn next to a set of examples that look at the problem of staff of certain organizations, sexually abusing community members. Unfortunately, this is an issue that we continue to see in multiple contexts and we did receive a number of examples, sadly from participants who are aware of this kind of issue where they're working. Apart from the direct effects on the victims of this abuse. This of course also affects the humanitarian response as a whole, in particular, in terms of trust and then by extension, access. So I'll just read these in succession here. The first is coming from someone with an NGO again in DRC who writes, one staff member of an NGO broke the code of conduct and abused a girl in the community. Other humanitarian staff from different organizations were then threatened by the local population. And we have a colleague with a UN agency in Uganda who writes from that context. In the recent past, several protection related accusations have come up and been reported. Cases of requests for financial or sexual abuse have been lodged against some agency staff. This has been linked to access issues. And then from a colleague with an NGO in Nigeria, who writes agency staff taking undue advantage of beneficiaries for sex, which communities found unacceptable and drew a backlash against other staff. Anne-Marie, like many of the other issues we're looking at today, this is of course a huge topic in itself. But what would be some reflections or just your main recommendation for how to approach this type of problem in terms of its relationship to access. Over to you, Anne-Marie. Yeah, so as you rightly mentioned, this is definitely a huge issue that perhaps even merits a further conversation and ideas to be presented that we might not even have time for today. What this situation really highlights the need for is investing in robust prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse or PSCA mechanisms at multiple levels. In order for prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse to be effective, it must be addressed at both the individual organizational level and at the country level through collective efforts or coordinated efforts such as a PSCA network. The robust and active PSCA network plays many different roles, including ensuring individual organizational commitments, such as mandated to ours or codes of conduct for staff. And the network can provide training on what power abuse and exploitation are, and also can create mechanisms for reporting suspicions of incidences and investigation mechanisms. A PSCA network can also establish a coordinated effort to strengthen outreach with affected communities to ensure people understand their rights, the roles of humanitarian organizations, and very importantly, reporting mechanisms for PSCA allegations. The outreach by PSCA network members should also include information about retaliation. Abuse, exploitation and retaliation or are antithetical to our humanitarian ethos. However, we know that they do exist and they hurt and threatened as you mentioned earlier, both the survivors and people, communities who are potential beneficiaries. That's why it's incredibly important for us to have the conversation on how to strengthen our response to PSCA, and to also create a culture of zero tolerance. We have a long way to come on the issue of abuse, exploitation and power within our sector, and it will require a serious amount of hard work to ensure that we do not tolerate abuse or retaliation. I do think that, like I mentioned earlier, this requires a bit more of a comprehensive and in-depth discussion, but the way that coordination can really play into this is through this collective effort through a PSCA network and through reporting mechanisms to show our accountability to the populations that we work with. Thank you, Anne-Marie. And now we'll turn to our final type of issue that we'll be looking at today, and that is of civil military coordination and how it relates to access for protection, in particular the use of armed escorts. I'd like to turn first to Aurelien. In general, what would you consider to be the most important aspects to keep in mind in these kinds of situations where we're looking at the use of armed escorts? Over to you, Aurelien. Thank you. Maybe just one general comment on civil military coordination in this context. I mean, just to reaffirm how essential it is to our mission to have a dialogue with armed actors in areas where we operate, to negotiate access, but also to discuss some protection issues. And in that regard, single officers are here to open doors to protection actors and raise some protection concerns with military actors. So this being said, now turning to armed escorts, I think the angle or the thing we don't look at enough in my opinion in some context is the specific risks created by armed escorts. When we use them. Security risks for humanity themselves, of course, because the armed actors we use with escorts might be targeted by others. Security risks for humanitarian actors who don't use armed escorts because they might be put under pressure to actually pay escorts. And most importantly, security risks and protection risks for the population we serve. And colleagues, Marie-Emelie, in particular, working in Mali know very well what kind of protection risks for population the presence of the peacekeeping mission has created. That's why the ISC have come up with some guidelines on the use of armed escorts and made the use of armed escorts a last resort. And what it means is that before deciding to use armed escorts, as you mentioned, we have a responsibility to explore alternatives. These alternatives include, of course, building acceptance and community engagement, building an environment with communities and armed groups that allow this to operate. It includes also, for instance, the area of security. So having a dialogue with military actors to not escort us, but provide increased security in the area where we operate. And this approach has a good result. I mean, we saw it in Mali with the guidelines on the use of armed escorts which were implemented at the level and I believe were enacted in 2013 and are still in use today. Maybe two last comments on that. I think one thing which is important is to train and disseminate these guidelines and these principles with armed actors themselves, including peacekeepers. Too often we focus the training on new methods and staff and this should continue, but I think we also need to make sure that military actors, armed actors really understand our principles and what these guidelines say. My final comment is to say that, as I said before, it's always very difficult to undo something which has been implemented to come back on a precedent. So when you decide to use armed escorts, if you do it in an uncoordinated manner, you risk undermining others. And we saw that in DRC in the context of the Ebola crisis where part of the humanitarian decided to use armed escorts. This really created enormous problems for other human actors in the effort to respond to protection and emergency needs in India. Over to you. Thanks, Orliya. Now, Sarah, you've been working on these kinds of issues in Mali and elsewhere. What would be your thoughts on it? Over to you. Thank you. Yes, there are three key aspects that I would like to consider. First, it was mentioned earlier, but I think it's worth repeating that humanitarian coordination plays a key role. It is a lack of common understanding of the risks in terms of perception in the case of armed escorts and the impact on access and protection are huge. So we really need to, yeah, to build a common understanding. Also, once a common understanding is achieved at CHCT level, common standards and practices need to be trusted. I think that's okay. For example, in Mali, with the galleys, and in DRC as well. But also it needs to be communicated well to the colleagues at the local level at the front lines and also help them adapt it and implement it. Because very often, I think there is one understanding at very principles at the CHCT level, but then it is not necessarily communicated at the local level. And very often there is a risk transfer from international organizations to more local organizations that are not necessarily equipped with that. And that might come from, and the staff might come from the same area. So they're not necessarily subjected to the same kind of risk. I think it's something we tend to forget sometimes. The standards and the practices need to focus on the impact in terms of perception on the long term and not only in the next week, but really on the long term and also on a broader geographical scope. Because, for example, what we do in Mali at the moment may impact human nature and action in both in FSO and in nature, for example. So this coordinated approach and consistency between policy, discourse and practices is obviously key at all times. Also, I think it's very important to agree upon the same, like a common terminology on how to qualify armed actors in the way we will engage them. Also, another thing, another point here is to train human nature and actors and are to share best practices and how to engage at local level. So which I did facilitate these kind of discussions in Mali or in the RC in Dukasai, for example, where NGOs who had developed tools, very specific and tailored tools to access shared it with other actors. It's something that works quite well. Another aspect I wanted to highlight is to identify acceptable alternatives to the use of armed escorts. When I say acceptable, it's by both parties, by human nature and actors and in this case the government and then the military. So this is very key and it was said already by Ovalina, I think it will help having a stronger way to engage in authorities and armed groups. So I think it's very important to have this consistency and this coordinated approach. So those more acceptable strategies can be, can include security areas like patrolling, security bubbles, like in CAR, for example, where human nature and actors and the military do not leave at the same time, at the same place and they are not in the same area at the same time. Of course, engagement with community to accountability to effective populations, for example, is key at all times and it really remains a central aspect to prevent risks and increase access. Mali, for example, we see that incidents against national and international NGOs occur, specifically when populations and armed actors do not really know who the region actors are and what they are doing in the area. They are often suspected of being spied, so it's very important to engage in the long term. I also would like to emphasize that engaging any actor including armed actors on access and communities on acceptance is often seen as a one-time event, while it's a very long-term strategy. And it's also prerequisite to successful negotiations because before negotiating, some level of mutual trust needs to be achieved. Also, the type of negotiation needs to be tailored because it depends a lot on the type of actor, on the type of assistant. So, I think it's very tailored to the specific, locally specific kind of engagement and negotiation needs to be conducted by each organization, even if, of course, which I can support the whole process, facilitate the discussions and also engage some of the actors when necessary. Also, I mentioned it before, but I really want to emphasize that the risk is often transferred to local actors for different reasons, which would then attract much more than expatriates. And very often, like in the case of Smali, I was based in Moti and we realized that it was sometimes much easier for expatriates to engage some of the armed groups in the area. And the last aspect, which is more operational, is obviously to once the government has agreed upon an acceptable kind of alternative to the use of armed escorts is to engage both the humanitarian actors and the military on their respective mandates. That's also like a long-term process because we often forget that the respective mandates are not always very well understood by each of the parties. We'll get back to that later with another example. And also, it's very important to ensure to follow up on the implementation of alternative. And that can be done by Ochan, the military coalition officer. Yes, I have some other examples, but I'll leave it for after, maybe. Thank you. Okay, very good. And looking forward to getting back to some of those examples then that you have. We'll look first at a set of scenarios submitted by participants that concern when authorities require the use of armed escorts. The first comes from a colleague working with an INGO who writes, due to instability and risk of attacks and or kidnapping, we have had a requirement by the government to have armed escorts when travel involves going out of the capital. These have usually been in a vehicle that the organization hires so that it travels in a convoy with the vehicle taking NGO staff. We also have an example shared by a colleague with a UN agency in Mozambique who writes, when government armed forces require an armed escort convoy to be used in certain areas, they often insert or try to insert their armed personnel into private and or NGO vehicles, thus increasing their risk of becoming a target by the insurgents. Can I ask you first, Sarah, what are your reflections on these two kinds of examples? When we're looking at a requirement to have an armed escort. Back to you, Sarah. Thank you very much. So, again, this matter is more linked to engaging the government, I guess, more than SIMCORD, which is, as I see it, at least much more operational because obviously the military obey a governmental agenda. So, again, as mentioned earlier, it is key to have a common human transition first on how to engage the government on the question and then to have a red line in terms of alternatives to the use of escort. Then agree on standards and also, again, the common terminology. So, then, in that case, it can be conducted by humanitarian actors, by the HCT, led usually by UTSHA, based on the principles of humanitarian action, also re-explaining what humanitarian actors do, how they do it. It's worth saying that governments often fear that humanitarian actors will support armed actors that are qualified, but this has obviously an impact on the civilian population if we are not able to engage them or if we use armed escorts to access some of the areas that are not necessary under the government control. So, it's very important to engage at the highest level with positive examples of humanitarian actions and reminding the government also its duties and obligations under IHL towards civilian and military. I know that at the moment, for example, in working efforts, it's extremely difficult to engage the government on those questions because the negative fact that it's a non-international armed conflict seems to be qualified. There are comments there, which, of course, from an IHL point of view doesn't make sense, but it's very difficult to then remind the government of its duties. It's also very important, I think, to remind each actor and also the government of the only interest of the humanitarian actors, meaning to assist populations that are affected. It's also important to remind the government that the use of escorts might also increase risk not only for humanitarian actors but also for the populations we are serving. In a second time, then, humanitarian and civilian military coordination can take place. And it's very, first, the synchro officer or focal point, usually it's Ocha, and it's, of course, Ocha's mandate to play that role. And then, for the synchro officer to identify synchro focal points among humanitarian actors but also the military and armed groups. Also, what we've done in working at FASA, for example, two years ago was to organize workshops with military and humanitarian actors to exchange on challenges, to exchange on good practices. I think it's very useful for both parties to know more about the mandate and the challenges faced by the other parties but also to define solutions that are agreed by everybody. Also, obviously, provide training to both on a regular basis. Synchro meetings can be very useful. And later, when a relationship of trust is established with the military, the synchro officers can also serve as tools to engage military on sensitive topics, for example, on the protection of civilians. But this, in my opinion, should be done in bilateral by Ocha and, of course, in coordination with the protection classes. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Now turning to Anne-Marie, you've been sharing with us already several times in the session a perspective using humanitarian principles to analyze the situations we're looking at. This case with the requirement from the authorities to use armed escorts, it's a classic example when we want to look at humanitarian principles to help us explain humanitarian action to other actors and also analyze our decision making in a context. I wonder if I could turn to you now to look again at this situation through that lens of humanitarian principles. Over to you, Anne-Marie. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that something the use of armed escorts to deliver assistance requires is understanding how the principles that we have are not necessarily static or monolithic but at a given time one principle might end up weighing more heavily than another such as humanity or the need to respond weighing more heavily than the other principles and then thus potentially necessitating the need of us to use armed escorts. Of course, when or if your organization deems that the need to respond is critical, you really need to think concretely about the potential consequences, the benefits and the risks of armed accompaniment and ways to mitigate those risks. I do think it's really important that as Sarah was mentioning, there's a creation of collective red line. So this is where the coordination really comes in is at the HCT level or the access level. It depends on I guess the operational context, but the creation of red lines can be used on and written on the use of armed escorts to be meaningful and practical on the ground for partners to be able to use. I also do think we ideally first search for alternatives to using armed escorts. As Orlion said earlier, armed escorts should be a last resort. And this is where SIMCORD teams and coordinated approaches through them can really come into action through the confliction and facilitating negotiations. Coordinated in collective efforts really do play a role here and we can consider how doing humanitarian convoys for the provision of assistance the use of humanitarian quarters or other high level negotiations can actually aid in our ability to maintain fully our principles without having to reach the step of using armed escorts. So definitely coordination can provide some of these more higher level decisions on or action, but ultimately at the end of the day, the various protection actors and organizations as Marie discussed earlier have different mandates and different understandings of adherence to the humanitarian principles. So this is ultimately going to impact how an organization decides to proceed on the use of armed escorts. And it's not necessarily a common understanding at the HCT level that's actually going to impact the decisions our organizations make. It might be our own mandates that end up making us decide one way or another on the use of armed accompaniment. Thank you, Anne-Marie. Let's look at an example submitted by a participant that looks at how community acceptance can be affected by the use of armed escorts. They write in Afghanistan there were areas where armed escorts were required for service provision. However, we were able to use community acceptance as a way around this given that the use of armed escorts resulted in greater exposure. We tended to use beat-up vehicles that were never labeled with our logo and very rarely branded any of our work. We'd also primarily use the acronyms of our organization name without explaining what they meant and only verbally explain about the organization's mission and background to community members, being careful not to draw too much attention to our staff. Orlea, can I ask you, is this an approach that can work in general or for only some types of organizations? What do you think? Over to you, Orlea. Yes, thanks. It's very difficult to answer whether it can be used in general. As we said earlier, each context is different and we need to have solutions which are adapted to the context. There are several things in the example you presented. I would note that the low-key approach, if I can use this, has been used in several contexts, sometimes with huge success, sometimes with mixed results. What I like in this example is that partners on the ground really didn't resort to armed escort as the first resort but really tried to explore alternative and build community acceptance. And I think that's something we need to do, in fact, everywhere we are present. We need to invest in community engagement. We need to invest in community acceptance. That means we need time and resources. It's a long process. It's not being done in one day. And it means we need consistency. What I mean by that, it cannot be simply a posture. If you want to establish a trust relation with the community, it needs also that you act, need to be in line with what you preach. I would add also that what we need, it's really for image and organization and donors to invest in frontline responders and make sure they are equipped to build this community acceptance. That we deploy staff that are seasoned enough to operate in this kind of environment. That staff deployed have attended the training necessary to operate in this kind of environment. One challenge we have in many contexts where we operate as a community, it's of course how we coordinate on this approach, whether to use on this court or whether we build acceptance or both. Between the UN, between local NGOs, international NGOs and the Red Cross movement, we have very different cultures. And that can create misunderstanding and can create differences of views on what is the best approach. We're trying to really improve on the UN side at least. And I'm happy to report that now community acceptance has become one of the indicators in our security analysis. So it's not only security analysis based on incidents and underscores, but community acceptance is one issue we look at in particular. And I hope that we help also coordinate better with our partners. Obviously. Okay, thanks Aurelien. And Marie, I want to make sure that we hear from you as well on the general issues, civil-military coordination and related. Can I give you the floor over to you? Thank you. I just wanted to share. I'm sorry, it's not related to the use of ARMS code, but I think it's an important point on how civil-military coordination can be used for protection outcomes. And it wasn't a tool that was used in DRC by the protection cluster. They had a matrix in which they would identify areas where you had pressing protection risk into which peacekeeping units must, should or could be deployed to provide protection. And we tried to use a similar approach here in Mali in 2018 with the protection of civilians units of the Minousma. And I mean, I have to say that there was not a consensus within the protection cluster members, some feeling very uncomfortable with the idea that human-military reactors would provide information to the military force about areas to protect. But I think that much of the confusion came from a lack of understanding of how civilian and military reactors have different mandates and can contribute to collective protection outcomes so the SIM code can be used as a tool to also buffer the risks that are associated. And I have to admit that a lot of the lack of knowledge was really on our side, the humanitarian side, because I think that at least as protection cluster coordinator we are sometimes not equipped to build those relationships, to understand the value and the benefits of such interaction and to see how civil military coordination can lead to protection outcomes. So it's a bit of also a plea for an area where I think the protection cluster and the global protection cluster should invest on training us and giving us the right skillset to have those discussions and to engage into those interactions because ultimately it's also a way to improve protection outcomes and to achieve things that we might not be able to achieve at all. Thank you. Thank you for that, Marie. Very helpful to have that example as well. Now we're running to the end of our time but we do have a couple of additional questions that came in that I would really like to bring up. I'd also like to thank again the participants who are also submitting their own reflections and recommendations related to the situations that we're examining. We see now when it comes to the question of armed escorts the participant inputs really emphasizing the need to consider the perceptions of the community to analyze the impact and also the need to provide clear communication to communities on why the NGO is using armed escorts so some great inputs there as well. Now I have a question for Melody. This has come in from Florence and Florence is writing in some of the rapidly deteriorating situations we find ourselves with leadership that is reticent to undertake negotiations with armed groups. Is there some guidance for humanitarian leadership that would help to promote access to affected populations that can be shared? So some guidance perhaps to encourage humanitarian leadership to undertake negotiations with armed groups that they may otherwise be reticent to undertake in situations that are deteriorating. Over to you Melody. Thank you and thanks Florence for your question. I think there's two ways we can look at this. One is what humanitarian leadership guidance there exists for them out there and I would say that I would reference the stand deliver report authored by OCHA and NRC Presence and Proximity Five Years On. It covers a number of recommendations that are relevant to leadership on issues of humanitarian access but it's absolutely critical that our leadership is providing clear support and communication to their staff and to all relevant stakeholders and parties to a conflict. And this sort of internal clarity and the policy setting is important not only as a strategy for a negotiation and as a way to present ourselves to various actors, armed actors or communities or governments but also as a form of duty of care to our staff so that they're clear internally about who we're communicating with and how we're communicating. And the second component of Florence's question that I would say is it's really important that members of our humanitarian community that we hold our leadership to account. We need to keep access on the agenda at HCTs. We need to advocate for needs in hard to reach areas and it's absolutely paramount that we continue to advocate for areas and safe spaces to discuss principal dilemmas, possibly risk sharing or ways that we can foster an environment where we feel more comfortable bringing these dilemmas or these questions of concerns who we're speaking to with our donors. So there's a part that we can play as well in that conversation. Great, that's very helpful indeed, Melody. And some important points to leave us with there. I have one more question. This is for Aurelien and it comes from Salome who writes, in the context of lockdown due to COVID-19, for example, where the access is challenged by the pandemic, even more than security issues as humanitarians are facing now. How has Ocha been addressing this so far and are there any recommendations for operational continuity? Over to you, Aurelien. Yeah, thank you. I'm just going to, I'm not going to go into access issues into country related to COVID, the humans and her and everything. I think that's a separate discussion. But in terms of how we operate within countries, I mean, that's a really good question. We've done several things to try to improve access in the context of COVID. I mean, the first thing we did is really negotiate with authorities in these countries to get humanitarian exemptions. You know, the way to get the permission from these authorities for human attempts to continue operating and moving around while the governments are fighting the pandemic. And I have to say that in most countries these negotiations have been successful and we obtained exemptions. One challenge we have, of course, is with the implementation at sub-national level of what has been agreed at national level with the authorities. And here I think there's still work to do in terms of operationalizing some of the policy decisions taking at the central level. I would also add that one of our concerns in terms of access in the context of the pandemic was not to become as humanitarian an additional risk for population we're supposed to serve. And of course, human and programs have been adapted in many countries in order to address this risk. By practicing social distanciation during food distribution or in implementation of program. I would maybe, and to answer this question with two challenges we have. What we see first is in some countries the increased involvement of the military in the response to COVID. And that means that from an access perspective in these countries we have to invest in civil military coordination to have a dialogue with the military in these countries on what we want to achieve as humanitarian in the context of COVID and how we can coordinate with the military. The second challenge we see is around the rising of hate speech against humanitarian and increased attacks on humanitarian in the context of COVID. Humanitarian being accused of bringing the disease to communities and here too I think there's a lot of work that we need to be done in terms of communication community engagement and explaining what we do for communities. If you allow me I would just like to end by reacting to a question I saw in the chat from Isabel on the risk created by a low profile in Afghanistan. Is that okay with you? Yes, absolutely. Please go ahead. No, just to say that I completely agree with Isabel that of course before any strategy, access strategy is adopted there needs to be an evaluation of protection risks for population and of course this kind of low profile approach strategy can create some risks and that's what I was referring to when I said that we had mixed results in some context. I mean this is something which we need to consider very carefully. Great, thank you so much Orlyen and now we're going to wrap things up. I'd like to go once more very rapidly around the virtual table here for brief closing remarks. If you have something brief you'd like to share with us before we close I'll first turn to Anne-Marie over to you. Yeah, thanks. So what I was hoping to drive home throughout this session today is that a key component of access and protection is ensuring strong linkages and engagement with the communities that we work in and that the onus of responsibility is on us as humanitarian actors to make ourselves known and accepted and affected communities through meaningful engagement and not reach. Also it requires that we really understand and adhere to our own humanitarian principles and that these principles should guide our work and these questions and scenarios that we may find ourselves in just continue to reflect and interrogate the principles that we have especially with regards to understanding how we can better our access and for protection actors out there particularly that these principles should be at the forefront of everything that we do as should community engagement. So I'm hoping that access can be strengthened, made better through our effective community engagement and through adherence to these principles. Great, thank you. Anne-Marie, it's been great having you with us today. I appreciate that. Now over to Sarah for brief closing remarks. Thank you very much. So yeah, great data. Anne-Marie mentioned the engagement with communities. I think they also have an issue we need as humanitarian actors to increase coordination in terms of accountability to effective population. So we have more coordinated and more consistent approach in that area. Also very important engagement with all armed actors based on humanitarian principles and I think it's really key for each humanitarian actor to engage separately and to them with the help of OSHA has discussions and share experiences and challenges with other actors also and also of course good practices. And finally consistency between our practices our approaches and our discourses among humanitarian actors and also more consistency between the national level and the local level. So we really translate our discourses in policy for standards into practices. Thank you very much. Thank you Sarah, great to have you with us as well. And now to Marie over to you for brief closing remarks. Well, first I wanted to thank you all for the very fruitful conversation. I've personally definitely learned a lot and I'm thinking with me that access is a fluid concept and that we shouldn't see it as a snapshot but rather as a long-term endeavor and that protection that is sometimes seen as being quite complex with different priorities it's actually just reinforced my conviction that coordination is so crucial coordination on our action and on our principles so it's been quite motivating to actually hear from everyone because I'm in this world of the protection of the coordinator so thank you for that. Thank you Marie and terrific to have your inputs as well. And now to Aurelia you have the floor for brief closing remarks. Yeah, I mean, unsurprisingly I'm going to stress the importance of coordination everywhere where we take a decision without coordinating with each other to take the risk of undermining each other and undermining the whole response so really making sure that we speak together that we agree on common approach common principle is absolutely key if individually and collectively we need to be as effective as we should in the response and this discussion showed that there are tools to support effective coordination I would also stress the need to invest in acceptance and I don't think we are where we should be this take time, this take resources this requires that we deploy seasoned staff in really field location but this is absolutely key if we want the response to be as good as it should we need to have this acceptance of armed groups of communities and engagement with communities in order for us to operate and finally, I would maybe close by stressing the importance of linking access and protection which was the point of its series of seminars but the protection aspects really need to be at the center of everything we do and what it means practically it means for instance that any access strategy needs to integrate an analysis of protection including for instance in the use of MS score including the key approaches to access with this let me thank you Andegar and panelist for participating today and thank you for all who attended today thank you thank you Aurelien, I really appreciate your inputs and indeed the emphasis on coordination is very welcome indeed now last but not least Melody for closing remarks, over to you thank you very much and thanks to the rest of the panelists for the rich discussion that we've had today I think it's pretty clear that despite all the challenges we've heard some positive examples and practice of how coordination in its many forms can reduce protection risks and reduce the impact of access constraints in the communities we're serving and ultimately that coordination can lead to a more principled humanitarian response so thanks to everyone for the discussion today and I hope we all take these learnings away with us for our response Excellent thank you so much Melody and I agree it's been an incredibly fruitful discussion, we've covered a lot of ground today I'd really like to thank again all of the members of the panel and not only for contributing their time today but also I know there was a lot of preparation all of looking at all of the examples that had come in from participants to really make this a practical discussion and as you say Melody to highlight the positive examples of practice that we can all take away so thanks to all of you also to our colleagues at NRC and also the team here at P-HAP for all of the preparatory work behind the scenes and of course to our participants for their very active contributions in the chat in the polls, in the Q&A very rewarding and great that many of you I know were able to join us for the entire series now to wrap things up I'll just mention that a recording of the event both in video and audio only podcast format will be available on the event page in the coming days and as mentioned at the beginning this event was the final in a four part series on access and protection if you missed any of the first three live sessions you can also access recordings of those sessions as well on the respective event pages you can also continue the discussion in the P-HAP online community there's actually been a lot of discussion already among participants in the community specifically on this topic and I hope that you'll continue in this channel until we're able to all come together again in this different format for a related discussion in the future so with that once again I'd like to thank everyone both panelists and participants for a very interesting and fruitful discussion today this is Inherid Lang signing off now from Geneva bye bye