 Good. Welcome dear colleagues and I think we will be, we are now ready to start. So let me wish you a good morning, afternoon or evening wherever you are joining us from because we have all the continents with us today and thank you for joining today's event when we are launching the compilation of good practices on engagement with human rights systems in the context of displacement and statelessness. Some of you may know that UNHCR has issued actually previously two compilations of good practices on engagement with human rights mechanisms at the time but those were internal back in 2014 and 19 so we were not able to share them with partners and exchange and have this kind of open dialogue and discussions about the how to use more strategically the human rights systems in our interventions, protection and advocacy work in the context of displacement and statelessness. So this time this compilation is collecting over 40 good practices from different contexts, different situations and including examples also from protection cluster settings which may be of interest to some of you and the context in which you work. We really hope that this will be an inspiration for you and for colleagues to try to use more strategically or more regularly the human rights mechanisms and systems more broadly but let us hear from colleagues also how they have used it and as you know very well already how our events work. We will have about one hour and a half together. We encourage all of you to be active in the chat. We will be constantly monitoring the questions comments and ideas that you will be sharing so please do use it actively but keep your microphone on mute so that we can have quality connection for everybody. So without any further delay I would like to present you today's agenda and the panelists so we are very fortunate and lucky because we will hear the opening remarks from Julian Tricks, the UNHCR assistant high commissioner for protection about her take on the use of human rights systems and strategic use of human rights mechanisms. Then Peter will very very briefly present us the compilation so that everybody feels comfortable with the guide and knows where to find relevant information and actually the variety of examples that is collected there and we will then really go to our panel discussion and hear very varied examples from colleagues how they have used this in practice in their work in the field, UNHCR and I hope this will give you also some insight and bring it much closer in terms of what it means really in practice. Firstly we will hear from Mamadou Yanbalde who is the representative in Ethiopia. Thank you Mamadou for being with us. Followed by Bettina Gambert working in Morocco, she is senior protection officer followed by Lisa Warshie from the eastern horn of Africa bureau and Patrice Dosu Awansu from the west and center Africa bureau. So a big variety also you will see that the examples they will share come from different angles use of different types of mechanisms so that we have a full picture of what it can represent for us and we will then have a an opportunity to exchange so colleagues get ready if you have questions or any points or further examples you would like to share we will have enough time to do so and our event will be closed by Madeleine Garlic who is the chief of the protection police and legal advice section in the division of international protection. So we have very interesting agenda ahead of us and not to take more of the time I would like to ask please Julianne if you could open our event over to you. Well greetings everybody and thank you Valerie very much indeed it's terrific to be with you because I think this is such an outstanding achievement to get this information these examples into the public arena for the first time so can I begin them by congratulating Valerie and all her team but as she has of course pointed out these examples come from the field it comes from people who've actually done this at the field level and so this is a whole of UNHCR effort with very very practical examples of the key question of how one can use the human rights systems to advance the fundamental principles of human rights law but to do so in a way that advances refugee outcomes which is of course what we want so congratulations to you all and can I recognize not only Valerie as the leader of the of the human rights liaison unit but a Madeleine of course for from the division of international protection Peter Svaniowsky I think he's going to host some of this and also of course Mamadou, Bettina, Lisa, Patrice I will really be interested to see how you describe how you how you did this and what success you had and what lessons we all learned from working within the system. Well I'd like to make a few very very general comments and then I'll pass over to you but first to make the very perhaps obvious point that the principles of international solidarity and humanity are all parts of international human rights law and critically if we can respect human rights law then I think we will see fewer people uprooted and and compelled to live in displacement environments or where they completely lack citizenship where they're safest of course a very very major example of this is the situation of the Rohingya in Myanmar where they have been denied birth certificates denied nationality absolutely fundamental principles of of human rights law and that has been of course a fundamental principle basis on which we've seen acts amounting of of course to to genocidal acts but acts which have led to a million now seeking protection as they have done in Bangladesh. So I think we can really make the link between the lack of respect for human rights and human rights principles and and the level of displacement we're seeing globally and I'm very firmly committed to the view that while the 20th century was one in which we developed all of these laws including of course the refugee convention itself more than 70 years ago but the challenge for the 21st century is to implement them and and what this compilation does is to show how the system can be used a human rights system can be used to give practical implementation to the fundamental principles and that's really what I find so extremely exciting because you will all know very well that the fundamental human rights law strengthens the mandate that that we have at the UN refugee agency because human rights laws complement and go beyond the protection set out in the 1951 convention and the statelessness conventions. I'm always amazed when I do go back and reread the 51 convention just how revolutionary it was how far-sighted it was because not only was it of course the normative principles of non-reformant and right of access to asylum but it also talks about social and economic rights that took many many more years to to be implemented in terms of treaty obligations and and still remains one of the areas that we have struggling to give that realization to in contemporary times. So one example that I think I'm always very aware of is in the context of refugee law is the importance of the right to family and the convention on the rights of the child they really do give a depth and substance to the work that we do in refugee in refugee law. There are many many mechanisms that give effect to human rights law and I know you're all very well informed about them. One that I've had quite a bit to do with has been the universal periodic review and there will be many in the scholarly environment who will say these systems don't work that they are they're talk fests they are they are they're highly formalized environments that governments are less than forthcoming with the truth and that it's extremely difficult to get any outcomes of for example the universal periodic review but one thing that I find particularly heartening about this compilation is that you demonstrate that using the mechanism of the universal periodic review and the recommendations you can actually use this as part of your advocacy and strategy to achieve outcomes on the ground and one that I particularly wanted to mention just because I've just returned from there is Liberia. Of course one has to understand the history of Liberia and I won't take up time you probably very well aware of it but very unusual environment for Liberia but it has in its laws made a number of very restrictive laws in relation to acquiring nationality and at the 36th session of the UPR's working group UNHCR made a number of recommendations on the right to nationality and the right to free birth registration and this UPR recommendations ultimately was taken up by the Liberia by our colleagues in Liberia who then worked to gain agreement by the government that recommendations would be made to ensure that all former refugees and refugee children born in Liberia would be given birth certificates and and a meeting was then held to ensure that national identity registry bodies would or then issue the ID cards to all persons of concern to UNHCR in that country. Now there's more work to be done having just been there I did raise the constitutional provision that only those of African descent can acquire Liberia nationality at birth or through naturalisation. The ministers that I spoke to smiled said it was extremely difficult they understood our concerns and they'd work on it so I'm not pretending we found a solution to that one but what I am saying is that using the UPR process has proved to be effective at least to make sure that the birth certificates are there and that is the core problem that we see through through many many parts of the world but perhaps recently of course in Africa. There are other examples that I can quote that are all in here one is the working with the special rapporteur on LGBTIQ that working with those rapporteurs can be enormously effective and with regard to sexual orientation issues that rapporteur helped us with a round table the first I think we've held for over 10 years that led to many recommendations 600 advocates and victims of discrimination came together and came up with a number of very very positive recommendations which are now forming our strategy in as you will all know an extremely difficult political environment but forming the basis of our strategy for continuing to work on LGBTIQ rights for refugees and the last example I'd like to mention is again one I've had a little bit to do with myself which is the the committee on the rights of persons with disabilities. We have joined the June 21 session of the Conference of the Parties in the in the hope of contributing to a background paper to protect the rights of refugees with disabilities and we know the numbers particularly in armed conflict and humanitarian emergencies are very very high numbers and I think that that work through the Conference of the Parties for the Convention on People with Disabilities is another area away in which we can use the mechanisms under the UN Human Rights Law to achieve outcomes for for refugees with disabilities and there are many but I think somebody said there are 40 examples in this in this collection and I very much look forward to seeing this getting out into the public arena to to really demonstrate that these processes which are a long way from perfect and do not produce immediate outcomes can be taken up by UN agencies and other bodies like the UNHCR to achieve real impacts and outcomes on the ground and I think I congratulate all of you for the work that you've done and I'm really delighted that Valerie and her team have have had such good collaboration from the field because you're the ones people in the field who've been actually producing these outcomes and been had the vision and they put the strategic time into working with a relevant human rights treaty system so thank you all very much congratulations again and I look forward to hearing more of the examples that that you'll provide in this session. Thank you so much Liane for sharing with us not only in the opening remarks but also a lot of key messages actually from your experience and linking it to your recent mission to Liberia and actually how you could make the link immediately with the UPR recommendation and see what the impact has been on the ground is extremely valuable to hear it from you to hear how the lack of respect of the human rights impacts directly the situation of displaced and stateless persons and how those systems can support UNHCR protection and advocacy strategies is extremely important and valuable so thank you so much Liane for setting the scene for our discussion today and I would like to give the floor now to Peter to walk us briefly through through the compilation please over to you Peter. Thank you Valerie I think you should all be seeing it on the screen now and I'll also be putting in the chat I'll just be doing three things I'll briefly present the tool I'll help you get familiarized with the index and how you could use this tool in practice and then I'll just highlight some related resources and provide links as well so you can also take some of these practices and link them with other UNHCR tools and resources and our external tools as well to see how you can apply them best in your particular context so you'll see and it's been mentioned by colleagues as well that there are a number of themes and different a wide range of examples included in this compilation now we've broken them into categories of the type of engagement and the objectives so this allows you to kind of see are we looking to in this case you can see work on our advocacy or dialogue with the government in that case you may want to look through the different examples that are highlighted there and you can see some of you know a snapshot of what they're about you can go down into the guide and look at them further we also cover things beyond the traditional engagement with UN mechanisms like the special operators and UPR so we also talk about things and we have examples of partnership building ways we've used these mechanisms or engagement around the mechanisms or with with human rights related partners to build build stronger partnerships other things as well working on UNHCR's planning activities you can see that we have some examples there as well as on capacity building training and technical assistance as also mentioned there are a number of cluster examples in here as well from protection clusters so you'll see that marked as well in the guide where we've put protection cluster with the title you'll know that relates to a an IDP context where the protection cluster was leading the engagement there as well so that's also a unique advent to this this particular compilation versus our prior ones when you identify a practice that you think is relevant you can also click directly from the index and you'll jump down to that practice further in the guide so I encourage you to look through the different categories look through the different examples see what might be relevant for you and interesting for your context we have everything from directly engaging with human rights treaty bodies to respond instances of reform all the way to partnering with universities like our legal our liaison office in Vienna partnered with a human rights masters program to find opportunities for sponsoring a refugee and in the sound seeking students in masters education programs so a wide range of practices in there that you can look at look through and and see what might be relevant to your context I would also then perhaps mention a couple of other tools that you might be able to use in combination with this and one is this is an internal unit start tool but we've also developed a brief dashboard on how to you know quickly identify where these examples are taking place and also to see by a particular mechanism what these what these mechanisms have done in the different examples that we have so if you'll allow me I'll just share my screen and you'll see here I'll also again put the link in the chat for your news we have an interactive dashboard it'll just take a moment to load also put the chat link there as well so for UNHCR staff you can access this as well unfortunately it's internal because it includes as Valerie mentioned those previous compilation examples that were confidential but for colleagues in UNHCR you can take a look at this dashboard and you can see here as well the global picture of where these practices are coming from you can zoom in on them and see you know what what happened with a good practice in Canada or you can say you know what practices are there that relate to national human rights institutions and get a picture of of what that looks like across UNHCR's operations so I wanted to flag that tool as well it might be useful for you also in in cross referencing these examples with the guide so we encourage you to take a look at that for UNHCR staff as well another tool that I'll also briefly mention is our human rights engagement toolkit and if you've been in our other webinars you've seen me mention this many times but UNHCR has developed a toolkit for human rights engagements and I put it in the chat as well that's an internal one but we've also developed a two pager which is an external tool for colleagues who want access UNHCR is publicly available resources on human rights engagement both the dashboard and this compilation feature in the toolkit so you can take a look at the toolkit as well and see you know what are the resources once you identify a good practice example that may be interesting to you you can go to the toolkit and see where can I find the resources that I need to engage that mechanism in my particular operation so I wanted to just give that quick snapshot but I will leave it there I won't go into too much more detail you can always message us at the human rights liaison unit if you have any questions about any of the practices or if you want to see how you can adapt some of them to your particular context of for use in your operation and so I'll stop there and give the floor back to you Valerie. Thank you so much Peter for giving this very good overview of the compilation but linking it also to the human rights toolkit and the dashboard which is available which really can help you to filter by themes by region by topic by country operation to get more ideas and inspiration how to take it forward but I think with this we can actually go to our panel and as you know we are start starting with Mamadou Yanbalde the representative in Ethiopia who is a very strong human rights champion some of you who amongst you who did the human rights engagement and practice learning program know that we have also videos recorded by Mamadou and different initiatives how he champions the human rights engagement across UNHCR work but Mamadou please over to you to share with participants your experiences. Thank you thank you very much Valerie and for the kind words but also for this opportunity I colleagues friends I it is really a great pleasure for me to to join the assistant eye commissioner for protection and all of you for the launch of this compilation of good practices on engagement for human rights systems really join Gillian in thanking the colleagues for organizing this but also for all those who contributed to developing this rich compilation of experiences from across different contexts and it is inspiring to reach our colleagues and to see how they have advocated engage with government and be partnerships to advance human rights and how they have raised awareness on human rights issues and integrated human rights mechanisms in protection activities to be very clear this is a critical document I think for our protection and solutions work I wish we had many more of this compilation of good practices I am sharing with you my bias here towards rich experiences that really form I would say the the the foundations of what we do and sharing these good experiences you just heard Gillian and I'm sure we'll be here and more colleagues these are the ones that inspire and and and and make our work really rich and and and meaningful and practical for again protection and solutions earlier DCM I took part in a workshop aiming at bringing together actors to articulate a system wide vision for the UN's approach to protecting and humanizing all facet of its work including through developing a UN common agenda it was emphasized that while that agenda will draw an aspect of international human rights law and refugee law the international human rights regime is its key foundation with a people centered and rights-based approach to protection I know that we have not been saying it sufficiently well but building strong partnership around human rights is also an essential tool to realize the global compact on refugees as you know that has not only some of the solid foundations of the 1951 refugee convention but also the ones relating to all aspect of socioeconomic rights that we are all trying to to really make a reality including through the realization of the first global refugee forum the pledges that were made by several actors not only on again on civil and and order right but also on socioeconomic rights including water access to education and few additional ones what I think we need as part of a group like this to further emphasize is that human rights are not foreign to us or to our persons of concern the right to flee persecution war conflict the right to ensure access to territory and it has again peace and emphasize the right to living dignity these are not things that are foreign to us the right to access employment and to have access to freedom of movement all of them contribute to the quality of our protection and solutions responsibilities I also know that this is very often easier said than done that's why I think most of us who have worked in the field know how challenging it is on how best to advocate effectively with government despite the generosity that they often are provided to people of concerns but this is difficult I think a critical element as much as the compilation is important I think is to also determine what is the right human rights mechanism to use I think whether you are a protection officer ahead of office a protection cluster lead or a representative like me my new functions to advance the enjoyment of human rights means also finding the right human rights mechanism and this is what I have witnessed in my last three field locations in addition to Ethiopia in Chad in Liberia and Republic of Korea you would spend as much time to determine the right human rights mechanism than to really determine how to advance it so I think that is a critical aspect I wish we could also spend a bit more time on in all the situations what I have learned is that if you are able to find that mechanism find the right partners you will be able to make a real difference and advance it perhaps just trying to emphasize here the work that we are trying to do in a context like Ethiopia this is not a past history this is history in the making I will not dwell too much into the details but for UNHCR in a situation that is characterized by violations of human rights as a protection and solutions lead agency or a cluster lead agency for internally displaced persons ourselves or as part of the UN country team I want to say that finding the right mechanism is critical I also want to say that partnering with the the right institutions is critical in a context like this we would not necessarily resort directly to the international human rights mechanism we have we have been fortunate enough and I have been providing briefings to Gillian and to our senior leadership to our regional bureau director that we have been fortunate to have a strong national human rights institution so and that strong national human rights institution has also been able to build very strong partnership with the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that have led to joint investigations that were jointly issued on 3rd of November 2021 they found human rights violations that you know affecting persons of concern the refugees the IDPs but also the general public but they also found some recommendations or made some recommendation pertaining to us and most importantly to the key actors the government of Ethiopia the regional authorities some of the the sub-national authorities as well as to the government of Eritrea but something that is not much known and as I said again I will not be saying too much here on this platform because we are still trading this carefully is that we contributed we contributed as UNHCR on logistics matters on things relating to advice pre-during and sharing our perspectives and now there is an inter ministerial committee that has been established at the Ethiopian level with greater ramifications also to some of the processes that are happening at the international level including through the human rights council so I just wanted to share perhaps as I end three key elements one it is that human rights mechanisms are not foreign to our protection and solutions work two finding the right human rights mechanism is extremely extremely important and will determine how we can improve the quality of our protection and solutions work and three in complex situations like the one we are dealing with today I think finding the right way between the national the regional as well as the global one is going to be extremely critical so I end up here and thank you again for for the excellent document this should inspire all of us and I am certain that we will keep working around it thank you very much Valérie and colleagues thank you so much Mamadou for this very concrete way how even in a very complex situation and operation you are managing to find entry points and the added value of engaging with some less traditional partners maybe for UNHCR or how to you mentioned how to tailor a specific user of mechanisms to distinct context so this is very key and I really take away your point that we should spend as much time throughout the planning process choosing wisely the mechanisms we engage with as much as we engage with them thereafter and follow up so very important key messages and we know that you have been engaged with the mechanisms throughout your assignment so you have very holistic view but also you see the added value it has brought to UNHCR operation so thank you so much Mamadou for sharing this with colleagues and being with us and I would like to now move to our next panelist to Bettina Camber who will give us a concrete example from Morocco operation and the use of special procedures and treaty so thank you very much and Bettina over to you yes good afternoon thank you Valérie and Peter and thank you for your continuous support I am very pleased to present some good practice on Morocco operation the assistant high commissioner I'm very pleased to participate in this panel and dear colleagues so just an overview of the collaboration next please Peter of UNHCR Morocco operation with different human rights mechanism so in in Morocco we are collaborating with the national institution on human rights but also contributing to the for the UPR for the special procedure and for the treaty bodies for the with the national institution on human rights we are conducting joint advocacy for example joint advocacy for the adoption of a national legislation on islam but also we are organizing joint training and joint our awareness session on values human rights and protection issues we are also conducting some monitoring protection situation and referring some individual complaints for the UPR we are contributing for the for the reports to the OHCHR and also contributing to the UNCT report regarding the the special procedure we are meeting with a special reporter during their visit but also providing command and contribution on specific reports and for the treaty bodies we are providing some confidential commands on the state's compliance and also on the movement on individual complaints now we present some specific good practice so next slide please the first one I represent two good practices the first one is the contribution to the preparation of the visit of the special reporter on contemporary reforms of racism just which took place in in 2018 just a brief overview of the of the of the context in morocco morocco is a mixed migration context so it's a country of of destination a country of transit and a country of departure so they there are lots of of it's mixed with with migrants and and groups and of course persons individuals with international protection needs located at the border with with the Spanish sorry at the Spanish enclaves so at that period in 2018 there were some some increased arrests targeting mainly individuals of subsalient origins to prevent secondary movement to Spain with a lot of detention and forced displacement to the southern localities so in this context UNHR provide a note of information for the for the special reporter on the problem faced by the persons of concerns but also we were preparing and organizing the meeting with the partners with the civil society with association of migrants and persons of concerns so based on the during the visit there were a lot of the special reporter took a lot of testimonies and based of this testimony that was the base for the for the main recommendation and the outcome and the main next slide please so the main outcome of the of the of this report and this collaboration was that a better recognition of UNHR documentation as a protection document and a decrease of arrest and detention of asylum seekers and refugees so all those holding and possessing UNHR documentation were released and at risk and not at risk to be returned to the home country and released from detention so this is the first example now the second example is is preventing extradition of asylum seekers collaborating with the the committee against torture it was we have we have intervened in several cases where asylum seekers were arrested by the government of Morocco on the basis of an extradition request the extradition after the extradition were authorized by the Supreme Court UNHR has collaborated with the representative of the asylum seekers to field an individual complaint to the cats UNHR has provided information and and all support on the risk of torture in case of extradition and the cat has agreed with the individual complaint and said a request to enter a measure while assessing the case and in all the cases this has led to safeguard the principle of non-reformant next slide please so the the principle was saved all the asylum seekers were not extradited to the to the to the country and in some cases they were or they were released and and and now free so this is this is the two examples for for Morocco of course they are still we will still continue to be engaged I have noticed that the the engagement UNHR engagement with human rights mechanism is is increasing and thank you again the all human rights units for the support and guidance thank you thank you so much Bettina and I must say what I really admire in the approach that Morocco operation takes is the very much holistic approach you use the different human rights mechanisms for specific situations but also very much in a complementary way so you really think it's true actually linked to Mamadou's intervention you think very thoroughly as I know in which situation to reach out to which mechanisms and use them very effectively and the cases that you mentioned prevention of non-reformant have been very very effective and I believe oftentimes colleagues say oh but we have cases of non-reformant and what can we do and say well try the human rights mechanisms also to support your efforts so thank you so much for for sharing this with us Bettina I'm sure there will be also questions from colleagues when we come to questions and answers but now I would like to give the floor to Lisa Lisa who will share with us examples on use of human rights mechanisms in Liberia it seems that Liberia is the country to to look into this today because we have mentioned it already twice but Lisa please if you could share with us some insight thank you very much Valérie and good afternoon to all of you colleagues I'm sorry Lisa can you speak closer to the microphone please or louder yes if you okay is it better much better thank you so much okay sorry about that so just to say thank you very much for for inviting me to be part of this when Peter got in touch with me I was like I'm no longer in Liberia and he says well you still worked on it so you can still speak to it and I'm very happy that the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection was in Liberia and can speak to some of the work that we started over there and I'm happy to know that the colleagues in Liberia are continuing with the work that we started over there with Liberia I think that the the situation as Julian was saying it's it's a country that has come out of a 13 year war and it's still although the year the war was over many years ago it's still a country that is struggling very much with anything from documentation to provision of laws or law reform for instance so UNHCR and other UN agencies really work together as a one UN and this is one area that I really saw the one UN mechanism really working very well there is a human rights working group of which UNHCR is part of it is under the leadership of the resident coordinator but it is chaired by the representative of the OHCHR so in terms of the universal periodic review the OHCHR is very much involved and we so we don't work in isolation we meet as a human rights working group and we all look at what are some of the of the situation then we found out that we really had some common areas for instance when it came to birth registration as much as refugee births were not being systematically registered we found out that also national births were not being registered and it was not just because the government didn't want to they just didn't have enough resources to be able to do that so together with UNICEF how do we work together to ensure that this could be something that we could work together on so in terms of giving feedback on the on the UPR process I think in Liberia we gave feedback on on birth registration on statelessness citizenship nationality and as Julian rightly said there's this controversial provision on people who don't have Negro should I say black blood African or not of African descent becoming citizens of Liberia so this is something that we will we have consistently raised and I think we have to continue to consistently raise because it was the same thing with birth registration or a woman not being able to give citizenship to to their children which is in their law but in 2006 that 2016 sorry that was what that was changed in the constitution so at least for now Liberian women are able to give citizenship to their children it is just it now has to be reduced into the national law from the constitution so at least we are getting somewhere with that the human rights group has clear terms of reference and if this is something that other other countries can do it's a very clear process where all the UN agencies are then able to really see where they can fit in and where they can support and I would say that once the recommendations came back and I remember Peter shared that with us the the human rights group met we created a matrix and then we said we're going to create an action plan from this so from 2021 to 2025 there's an action plan that has been created looking at all the recommendations and putting monetary value to it as well so we have and I can share it with you after after this because it's quite progressive to see which UN agencies will work on which of the recommendations together with the government so it's not the UN agencies doing it by themselves but also identifying government ministries and institutions that we can work with so for instance the ministry of health takes care of best registration so UNICEF and UNHCR would work with the ministry of health to make sure that and we actually put resources there so it also helps us to make sure that we put that in our plan for the year so on a yearly basis we say that maybe for statelessness advocacy we're going to put $10,000 and we have to make sure that it is in our budget as well as UNHCR so those are some of the concrete steps that we took within within the organization to make sure that we're able to to advance this so I would say that for me that the lesson or should I say the lessons learned was number one having strong leadership having speaking with one voice having strong leadership having an RC a resident coordinator that is able to mobilize the the UNCT and able to advocate with the the donor community because they are all they also play a very vital role in making sure that they push the government with an or even sometimes given conditions that we will only provide funding for this situation if you you follow through on the recommendations that you accepted at the UPR so these were these were working together with different the donor community with the UNC to with the UN agencies and of course the ministries and agencies the government ministries and agencies was and of course civil society as well was very very important Liberia has a very very rich civil society and NGO organized it because of the breakdown in law and order there was there's a lot of civil society organizations that also work with the UN agencies and the government to ensure that these provisions are pushed forward so I will end here if there are any questions I will take it but I would say that lesson learned is having strong UNCT making sure that these human rights working groups we are part of it as as UNH here and be able to push our agenda using multiple agencies thank you thank you so much Lisa and I think this came very strongly at the importance also to work in synergies with other entities to see what is our complementarity and how we can reinforce each other and what I found particularly interesting is also what you developed the action plan once the UPR recommendations came back to Liberia how you put it or translated it into very concrete manner into five years action plan who does what in which manner what are the accountabilities and as you said also link it to resources as necessary so thank you so much Lisa for sharing that with us it's a very valuable excellent so I would propose we go to our last example but definitely not the least to be presented by Patrice in the very strategic way how the western and central Africa Bureau is approaching the human rights engagement so Patrice please over to you yeah thank you can you hear me not very clearly can you try again please can you hear me now okay yes it's better yeah okay no thank you thank you very much Valérie and your team for the leadership that you you have demonstrated you know in in putting all these good practices together and in particular thanks to also my colleagues from west and central Africa who has I mean who are in the corner and have contributed to this to this compilation I think I'll focus on three good practices one of them relates to the point raised by Mamandou when he was talking about knowing knowing you know better the human right mechanism and based on that you can also articulate how to engage with them but also started from you know from that aspect because without if you don't have a better knowledge of your contests and link your contests with the relevance of the on the human right mechanism it might be very difficult to get a protection dividend from that interaction so we started saying okay we need a human right engagement strategy you know based on what has been given up at a global level and we decided to first of all do a survey you understand what is the state of of collaboration with first of all human right institution in our region and the mechanism as a whole and we were shocked to understand that there is a lot that has been doing you know that we have been doing in the past and previous days when the region have been doing when it comes to engagement which have not really been put together as good practices and beyond the the quantitative data that we got based on you know MOU we have the human right commission and various level in the countries you will agree with me that when it comes to the thematic mandate we have 45 of them and we cannot engage with all the 45 you know we need to do a kind of analysis to see the relevance so we we did this kind of analysis a beyond the survey we did in analogies to understand what is the relevance you know of the 45 a a a thematic mandate you know in western central Africa and we came up with two key a a output from that exercise one of them is that as you know we have two country mandates a car and Mali in our region and we we finally agree on 14 a thematic mandate in our region 14 based on the protection challenges we have based on the contest and also based on the protection dividend that we want to get you know from these from these thematic mandates and one of the consequent action that we we took this is now the second point is about the special rapporteur on contemporary from the slavery memory in Mali if for those who know in Mali very well you know that we have a phenomenal it called the decent based slavery decent based slavery for those in the situation where slave status is ascribed to some people because their ancestors you know were allegedly enslaved by the families by the so-called masters and people who are born into slavery work for these masters or without being paid or without or sometimes are deprived from the basic human rights and and some dignity and this has a tendency to provoke a displacement first and also a tendency to put the people in a situation where they don't really enjoy the basic human rights so thanks to the to the leadership from the human rights unit we we took part in a in a webinar in august last year 2021 where Mali colleagues present you know the situation of the decent based slavery in Mali how is it affecting human rights and how is it also provoking displacement within Mali. Consequently we we we had a discussion a separate focused discussion with the special rapporteur on the decent based slavery on a contemporary form of slavery the special rapporteur also on a right of IDPs and the independent aspects on human rights in situation in Mali we discussed concrete ways to address in Mali this situation and throughout the Sahel not just Mali but now the Sahel. So following following this discussion UNHCR provided you know trainings to protection monitors because one of the key a challenge is how to get actually data when it's coming today to the decent based slavery so training has been provided to better equip the protection monitors in order to to collect you know data that can be used in the advocacy and also for those who have read recently the the UN position on return to Mali we have also included an aspect on the decent based slavery to see how we link it with the with the refugee state and refugee state or determination process. So these are two key things that we got from from this section and we do hope that the the remaining IPM that are being discussed also with the various mechanisms namely how do we push for a for a policy from the state that can address the decent based slavery and its consequences and how do we push also for for a law criminalizing the decent based slavery in Mali. These are two outcomes that we do expect that with the engagement with the Special Rapporteur we will come to the to the to the good conclusions. Third point which is also important to quote is you know we are in a region where the regional economic communities are very active and I'm talking about the ECOWAS economic community for West African states where we have a court of justice UNCR working closely with the court of justice to a partnership that we we have signed in 2015 but it's important to say that this partnership has been in a kind of hibernation for the last couple of years. So we have not really been able to to engage them when it's come to supporting the courts to implement its mandate as a community court as a human right court as a as a tribunal also as an administrative tribunal and also in the habitation tribunal. So we we we decided last year to organize a retreat with the with the court with the ECOWAS sort of justice. The idea is actually to revitalize our partnership and see how refugees, IDPs, and people at the risk of stateless or stateless you know can can mutually benefit from the from the mandate and the competence of this court. What we came up with is that is an action plan you know that can be centred around let's say four points. The first point is design and implement the capacity development of judges and lawyers, the unrelievance laws and policies when it comes to refugee law and also international humanitarian law. Second one is ensuring knowledge of the public on the court mandate on the court function and also how do we promote access to the court and finally how do we act as an intervenor in the court whether some do amicus courier and finally build a jurisprudence on on refugee law. A consequent or subsequent dividend that we already got from this less than a year with the ECOWAS court of justice is that we are now working on the on a joint publication UNHCR and ECOWAS court of justice to to to you know share experience on the mandate of the court the processes in the procedure also before the court so that it can be better known to the to the public. So these are just few you know good practices that I can share that we have many many other instances as you can see West Africa is very well represented in the in the continuation of both practices and thank you once again colleagues and and value for your leadership. Thank you. Thank you so much Patrice it's so inspiring always to listen to you to see how the region is taking it very strategically in my opinion you know starting from survey actually getting an overview what are the practices but how we can also take it forward and then prioritize your approach of looking okay so we have some main priority protection issues and linking it back to Mamadou's point thinking through which mandates we will engage with what are the priority themes that we will take forward so this is very important and you gave a concrete example of the special rapporteur on slavery and what it has led to and how you take it even farther beyond of course the reports statements country visits and much more the example you gave on a collaboration with the court of justice of ECOVAS it shows to the importance of diversifying I believe our partnerships on the human rights front and there are many aspects in this collaboration but again as mentioned at the beginning the importance of synergies with other actors and doing a mapping of who can be the strategic interlocutors is really key so thank you so much Patrice for sharing those points and experiences with us I'm sure that it was also useful and inspiring for colleagues and I would like to ask colleagues to don't be shy to put your questions in the chat so that we can take advantage of the wealth of knowledge of our panelists to go a bit deeper or to share exchange around some examples but before doing so I know also that Maria Vences from the Regional Bureau of Americas would like to say a few words about the experiences of America so Maria Vences over to you. Good morning colleagues, good morning Assistant High Commissioner Valerie of course Madeleine Peter and I saw also Mamadou and also all good friends from before around the call so thank you very much for giving us this opportunity I will not be too alone but yes we wanted just to really make a few reflections on the Americas as you know I mean we have a very unique system in which we have the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and also the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights all that together with a heavily politicized environment as you know now we have every day at different elections and different shifts of asylum immigration policies so having the tools the strong tools of human rights is really important for UNICEF when it comes to advocate for the rights of persons of consent and particularly in the issue when it comes to human mobility pushbacks etc so I think that we have actually used a lot the special rapporteur mechanisms particularly in the migrant rapporteur the issue of pushbacks also the violence against women the one on disability and as well the CEDO we also have been contributed last year or the year before on the regional and regional consultations for the general commentary on trafficking of women and girls in the context of migration just to say for us it's a key opportunity to use the universal career care review and also the special rapporteurs because they help us to the advocacy but we cannot really speak sometimes for instance in the Caribbean it's extremely sensitive to talk about human rights issues so we use these mechanisms to advocate and to reach out and be the voice of UNICEF whenever we are not able to do so or it's not appropriate for us so only to say on the important also the dissemination of the tools that UNICEF have actually developed this tool is going to be very important we have also ongoing translations of the tools and also very much the notes that you have actually shared with us on the Convention of the Right of the Child the Convention on the Disabilities and Economic and Social Rights is extremely important for us we would also be able to have been distributed to the field and it's important that we also be aware of what is the use of these of these tools also important perhaps to see what is the intersection with other actors when we come to human rights advocates for instance is mentioned civil society for us the issue of other courts local courts is also important and human rights advocates at the national level in terms of the global issues and then I go to which week we collaborate I mean it's important perhaps what mama do have said in terms of the global compact of global compact on refugees sorry and also the follow up of the human high level official meeting for us it's also important that at this moment when we do the planning 2023 strategic planning this is also embedded on the protection and solution strategies of the country operations we have provided from UNICEF in the Bureau a number of guidelines for the operations not to incorporate the different thematic issues into the planning or strategic planning 2023 I think that collaboration the human rights institution should be one of those in which shapes the protection and solution strategies and also how we can follow up on the on the high level official meeting I think is very important on the on the what we do we actually collaborate a lot with the Inter-American Code of Human Rights I mean it's a key ally for many years not only because it's a human rights instrument at the regional level but also because it has progressively developed international refugee law beyond the convention of the 1951 so we also have the Katahena Declaration but also in terms of asylum and statelessness migration rights when it comes to rights of presence of consent in the migration context for recent the children access to asylum and statelessness has been more progressive when it comes to the standard setting that Inter-American Code of Human Rights had actually developed so it complements very much the the 1951 convention also when it comes to protection of persons of consent which are not the typical ones just to say for instance the indigenous is an issue that we very much using at the moment the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights to advocate for them IDPs I mean it's not been fully mentioned but I think it's important for us also very political sensitive for instance what the matter we don't the government does not recognize the situation of IDPs so IDPs statelessness indigenous at the moment is very important for us that we use these mechanisms with the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights we have a partnership agreement and we use them for advocacy for development of also a standard some recommendations to estates but most lately we have actually developed together with them a guidance on family reunification and another one on access to asylum and asylum procedures which is very interesting in the context as I said when it comes to mixed movements and on what's movement so we actually have that collaboration which is which is ongoing and the last one that I wanted to mention is also we have a lot of collaboration with the ombudsman at the national level and also the legal defenders or public defenders it's a unique figure within the Americas and we have a regional round table is going to be scheduled for the second half of the year with the ombudsman and the legal defenders so this is this is what we are at the moment and I think there's many of the things but I think these are the highlights that we wanted to to highlight and as I said thank you very much for giving us the opportunity and also for learning as well from other regions and what are they doing so and also for the tools that you have developed for us is key in advocating and also to be distributed to the other actors that UNICEF collaboration have partnership with thank you very much. Thank you so much Maria Vences for complementing the picture with the perspective of Americas so there is a lot of course that you have all experience and very specific ecosystem of human rights in in the region so this is excellent so colleagues if you allow me I would like to go to the questions and answers and we will go back to the panelists I see we have a question in the chat from Goreti she would like to add that the importance on strengthening the work on collaboration with national human rights institutions also how they can contribute to the monitoring initiatives and the importance of supporting it so also what Mamandou mentioned I think the strategic collaboration with national human rights institutions and what Patrice shared from the region of western and central Africa this is very important thank you Goreti for bringing it to the chat as well. Roberta over to you for a question please. Hi good afternoon thank you so much for the very rich discussion I'm just a question and I think I said in the chat that also Leonor has the same question I want to know more about the civil society involvement in this process as to what extent civil society actors were involved and the advantages of involving those actors in strengthening the protections of human rights thank you so much. Thank you so much Roberta for this question and how the dialogue with the civil society has contributed to those efforts that's excellent I see Tobias so over to you for a question please Tobias and then Max. Thank you thank you so much Valerie and the colleagues the panelists Patrice and Bettina and the rest of the colleagues I think this has been very informative and I you have demonstrated to us the best the best part of it I am very much interested also to see you know what could the situation look like in the worst practice I mean if you have ever encountered you know any worst practice and what could we learn from this because you know what you have presented are all good and sometimes the situation does not in the field doesn't doesn't look like that and it's good to go back and look at how best can we prepare for the worst in case we encounter and I think that is where we are always dealing with our lives in the field in everything so I would really from the penalties if one can give a worst case I mean a worst scenario and worst best practice and how best can we learn from and prepare maybe you know in the future thank you so much very I mean I'm just very abstract there but of course we know that we have encountered a lot of worse encounters with difficult governments so that is where I'm coming from thank you. Thank you so much Tobias and maybe this question also on lessons learned is really interesting Max over to you. Thank you hello colleagues greetings from Mexico it's always great to be part of these inspiring sessions my question is very practical how can we in the field support in the dissemination of this tool is there any maybe global event plans that we can link up or or any other ways that you recommend that this external document is brought to the attention of practitioners thank you thanks and congrats again. Thank you so much Max a very important question as well so maybe I would like to go back to panelists with this first set of questions and then we go back over to you Latina maybe if you would like to start if there are any elements to take Lisa Patrice. Just to give an example two examples regarding the collaboration and the relation with with a national institute on human rights and also to the civil society still giving example in Morocco in Morocco there is sort of the national institution on human rights and they have some regional commission on human rights so they have they have established kind of protection monitoring mechanism in the in the whole country and especially in in in western Sahara where unfortunately UNHR does not have access and where there is a some some some violation and protection situation that we do not have a lot of information and they are the one who are providing the information together with the civil society so the work we are doing with the national institution is mostly to yes to gather information to to have some regular meeting online or presential with the the regional commission on human rights so we are targeting of course the localities where the asylum seekers and refugee are located because in Morocco they are located in more than 70 different localities so it's very difficult for UNHR to have to monitor all the protection situation in the in the in the whole country so we have this mechanism but also the here in Morocco the the the the national institution on human rights is also has the lead for african national institution of from other countries and there are some annual meetings with other representatives of other african representatives of other african countries and this is a great opportunity to to have some kind of of of course so awareness session and sensitization and and capacity development activities but also to try to harmonize and to yes and to strengthen the collaboration with this national institution with UNHR in other countries so that's one and with the civil society we have in Morocco that association very very engaged in in in defending and in protection monitoring especially in specific localities at the border with algeria or at localities close to the border with Spain and this is the the so we are closely working with the civil society one to to get of course information to have like still some protection mechanism but also they are very very acting in in releasing publicly info information and for for to just to sensitize the government and to denounce the violation and publicly to inform the society this is the two points of work like I wanted to to get back but thank you and Valerie maybe you can you can respond what about the role of the civil society or so and that would be very interesting with the question on how now to disseminate the the report thank you fantastic thank you so much Bettina before we go to Patrice I see also a question from Juliet about what is actually the strategy to incorporate human rights and work with human rights mechanisms into the protection and solutions agenda and are there some concrete action plans in terms of incorporating into our programming and implementation so as we go to you Patrice I thought you may have some elements on this so I brought it as well if you can please address it over to you thank you no thank you Valerie thanks the colleagues for all these observation comments and questions I think they are too when it's going to work with civil society in the national human rights permission we have seen in for instance how we give you an example in Egypt that we have seen now last year I'm sure some of you were the G5 Sahara forces that is that there was a situation where some some forces you know from town from a specific country we are not going to monitor here we're involved in the in in some gender based balance in the region called theta in the general and what happened it happens that really if you have protection monitors happen to be the first on the ground you know to collect data and also to we have not only information about the survival but also information about the about the the the the perpetrators the presumed perpetrators so what we have done because we we know that there is also an important aspect of legal support to ensure that the KVs are prostituted we have a brief you know the national human rights permission in Mali in Egypt and also the civil society in a in a closed order system in the way the one who came up with now a public public communicating you know talking about the violation and urging the parties and the specific countries where the militaries are coming from actually to take action in terms of prosecution so for us this is a very important fact a a concrete example that we can give you and this comes again to confirm what Bettina was saying is how do we organize our protection breathing you know activities and what are who are the allies so this is important to know who are the allies how can we count on them to see what we are not able to say in order to push the protection agenda the same another example that I can share with you during the COVID let's say in the first in the in the second half of 2020 2020 you know the national human rights commission in the region where the first NTP that came up clearly talked to this advocating in the state ensuring that refugees, IGPs and other vulnerable persons are included in the safety of plans to address to address them and this was a kind of burden sharing between UNHCR and the national human rights commission to at least turn forward and say refugees, IGPs need to be included in anything that has been done and beyond that we have seen for instance in in in Cameroon, in Mali, in Guinea how there is very vocal to you know public communicate you know asking states to to to take action to include refugees in what were working on the second about the question of Juliet I will reflect upon one conversation that I had with Trava I remember with Valerie when we were preparing the last year the human rights learning program I think something that that stick more to me today you know after taking also talk of all the activities that the human right reaction unit is doing and all the good practice that are being shared with the dividend that we get from the UPR something that needs to be pushed is how do we talk more about centrality of human rights instead of talking about centrality of protection because to me centrality of protection really doesn't translate what we want to say when it's come to enjoyment of civil economic civil rights civil and political right and also the social economic right so this is how I see more things and I'm very glad to know that the Assistant High Commissioner for protection is here now that there is a discussion on going when it's come to the to the vision of the transformative agenda this notion of centrality of protection is not very I don't see it very concrete what I see more concrete is centrality of human rights and this gives us more room to ensure that all the rights you know are included in our in our strategy when it's come to Malaysia protection yeah over to you Valerie and thank you thank you so much Patrice for those insights and responses to colleagues Petra would you like to share with us some few hands how would this guide and a compilation can be disseminated as well before we come to the concluding remarks sure just very quickly thanks for that max of course you would be happy to see it disseminated well as we said this is the first time it's been a public good practice compilation so we encourage you to to take examples from your region as a basis for reaching out to civil society as we just discussed also national human rights institutions if you think that there's examples from your region that could serve as a basis for exploring those same things with those partners please feel free to do do so please feel free to reach out to us as well and see if we can brainstorm around that also you're welcome to share this you know in any events or activities that you have ongoing as well as the two pager of external tools so I'll put those both back in the chat as well you can share this good practice compilation but you can also share the external tools and and with those you can pull from those different elements that might be relevant for different events and mainstream it through the different activities that you're doing but again if you want to talk about a discrete project or or particular event please feel free to reach out to us and we're happy to support so thanks for that comment thank you so much Peter and it's a bit late for colleagues in Asia Pacific region but also to share that they are organ they are planning to organize a dedicated event in the region and to add it to the NGO consultations framework and to focus on human rights engagement in Asia Pacific region so it can also be an inspiration but Madeline I'm now turning to you if possible to bring this all rich discussion together and take us forward for the concluding remarks please Madeline thank you so much Valerie and really let me first of all extend a very warm thanks and congratulations to all of the colleagues who've taken part today I think we've heard invaluable insights about not only the potential but in fact the concrete actual impact that's many of our human rights tools and our human rights based strategies are having on the ground what we've really heard today is that human rights principles and UNHR's commitment to them are not just words on paper rather we have examples in this guide that highlight in over 40 different cases the rich and varied ways in which colleagues have and are continuing to use human rights principles to support their protection work and objectives it's really a testimony to the determination to the expertise but also to the innovation and the skill that our colleagues have brought to bear in many very challenging situations in which it may seem that the climate is difficult and the receptivity low but where they have worked together with partners to achieve really impressive results I think it's noteworthy that we see good practice examples in this guide that span across a range of different categories of activity we have clear positive examples of the way in which advocacy and awareness raising goals around the rights of all of our categories of persons of concern have been served through effective work with human rights partners we've also seen very importantly the way in which accountability for human rights violations and threats to human rights can also be brought home through work with courts as well as other adjudicative bodies and this is extremely important because of course this can really lend seriousness and can cause our interlocutors to see how crucial it is not only to listen to UNHR's encouragement to be aware that there can be consequences that follow their failure to respect the rights of our persons of concern we see also the way in which capacity development objectives have been served through human rights engagement related activities and this I think is a really important and extremely a productive aspect of our human rights work because it goes to show how we can really bring something positive to our partners at national level and through supporting capacity development also seek to ensure the sustainability of some of our work it doesn't just need to rely upon you and HCR to take action to ensure that human rights standards can be respected but we can help put in place the elements the building blocks to enable others to take this work up and then finally but certainly not least the partnership aspect we have on the line here today colleagues also from some of our key partner organizations and of course the guide highlights just how rich and diverse the partnerships are this element I think is really crucial because it does serve to highlight that we can achieve so much more working together and drawing on the respective strengths the insights the expertise and the mandates of many of those that we work with in national situations around the world so I guess as we come to the end of this event the really big question is then indeed what next and I think Juliet's question is a really important one for us where she asks what indeed what the strategy is for incorporating human rights into our protections of solution strategies and in many sense colleagues this really is up to all of us now we need to think about the way in which we can at our national level in our work in our own work plans those of our teams and those of our operations how can we build in these standards use of these tools that we have at our disposal in order to achieve protection goals the planning process is underway for many of us now as we look ahead to 2023 and 2024 and it's an opportunity to signal that there are ways in which we can work with human rights mechanisms in order to pursue some of our goals one of the fortunate things is I think I can say quite positively this need not be work that requires large amounts of ops budget this is things where things that we can undertake with our protection resources with our own resources our staff our colleagues ourselves but look at ways in which we can strategically use the tools that are there in the partnerships that are either existing or are potentially there for us to develop in order to achieve protection goals I think that what we hope this guide can really do then is provide some inspiration you can see that there are colleagues who have taken very different and creative approaches to using human rights mechanisms I would encourage all of you to think about how you could adapt or draw upon some of these examples for your own national or regional contexts and please do feel free to reach out to us in headquarters in DIP at any time if you'd like to brainstorm about how best to do this or if there are particular forms of support advice or tools that could help you to do that we are there as a resource to help you in that regard so really once again let me thank everyone who's taken part to our panelists for their time thought and inspiring examples also to everybody who contributed to the compilation of the guide to the partners with whom we work on an ongoing basis to the assistant high commissioner for protection for her inspiring and encouraging words but let me also particularly thank Valerie and Peter and other colleagues in the human rights team Kate and Flo who are on the line for all of their work this is one of the last times we'll be joining together with Valerie in this role and really I think we all need to recognise that she's made a crucial contribution and that this is just one of the latest tools which demonstrates her commitment and which we hope really is going to mean that all of you in the field have greater tools to draw on in going forward in this work so once again thank you so much colleagues looking forward to continue to work with you in this sphere wishing you all the very very best and thank you all thank you so much colleagues bye