 Thanks very much Julie and welcome again to all of you to this session today on advancing risk informed advocacy in support of access that protects. We have a great group of speakers lined up for today and I think it will be a really exciting conversation because we will be hearing some very practical experience and examples and learning of work that has been done in terms of advocacy in supportive protection. We're really going to be looking at the ways that different humanitarian actors from local and national to international actors are assessing and managing advocacy related risks, and also those residual risks that they have on a daily basis. As I said we're going to hear about some good learnings and good practices, but also we're going to be able to reflect on how we as a sector and across the humanitarian system can further advance more collective risk informed advocacy for the protection of affected communities, which can reflect on evidence and experience and not an assumptions. And I think it's really important today as we're getting into the conversations to remember that when we're talking about advocacy, it's not just public statements it's not just that public facing advocacy, advocacy can take different forms in terms of more quiet advocacy influencing persuading others. So there's lots that can go on we may just not hear about it or see it but see it in the public domain. But that all impacts and is essential for ensuring access and protection. I just wanted to kind of highlight a few of the things because there has been a lot of research that's been going into advocacy for protection and advocacy for access that protects, particularly by the humanitarian policy group at HPG. But also in the recent review of the ISC protection policy the independent review. It found that collective action by humanitarian actors to ensure protection is at the core of humanitarian action hasn't yet been achieved and as a result we're kind of failing collectively as humanitarian actors to really help protect populations at risk so I think the conversation that we're having today is particularly important because we need to be reflecting as a community on what we can do better in terms of advocacy to support protection. And that independent review also noted that the interagency standing committee principles so the heads of organizations in the humanitarian sector really need to be agreeing on some collective approaches around how to strengthen advocacy on protection. And really looking at balancing the risk of taking strong positions versus the risk of not doing anything. And I think this issue about the risk management and really having that risk aversion sometimes has prevented us from doing advocacy for protection and advocacy for access to protect in many cases and as one of our panelists I will introduce the panelists shortly, but one of our panelists, Gemma Davies along with her colleague Alexandra Spencer wrote in one of those HPG papers that the risks of carrying out advocacy can often be assumed even overstated so are we kind of silencing ourselves in advance of really assessing what the risks are out there. I think the other thing that's important to reflect on today and I'm sure our colleagues will is the term advocacy can be sometimes a bit of a taboo word in some context as in that same paper, Gemma and Alexandra pointing it pointed out so in some context we may want to talk about advocacy more as stakeholder engagement so that we're not getting the, the challenges up of those that we're trying to engage. And I think there's a finally just before I turn to our keynote speaker and then our panelists in a paper that has just been issued by HPG, which is the synthesis of all the research around advocating for better protection of civilians, Victoria Metcalf who actually I don't know how to pronounce Vicki's last name anyway Victoria wrote, you know, for the majority of practitioners that were consulted in the research, the main barrier to adoption is the prevailing fear of the risks inherent and advocating for better for better protection of civilians, and the broad failure at the institutional and system levels to address this through creating incentives for a more risk tolerant, more innovative approach to protection advocacy is what we need. And so as Julie said I see that many of you are introducing yourselves and I see we've got a lot of people from all around. I do encourage you throughout to please put in any comments or any questions that you may have to our panel because we will have some time further down to be able to ask some questions to our panelists. But before I turn to our first speaker I wanted to introduce our first mentee question because we're going to make you work during this session as well. And our first question I hope we can get that up on the screen and then you'll be able to see the link so you can join or provide the answer to the question. This is a sliding scale so either you know never to always. To what extent have you experienced protection advocacy, causing risk to access operations, partners, communities, or others. So really kind of how much of that risk have you, how much of this you've seen advocacy causing risk. I'm going to let you work on that and I will come back to that after we hear from our speakers for a bit, and it is my pleasure to introduce Louise Obain, who is the resident and humanitarian coordinator in Niger for the United Nations. It's a pleasure to have you here today. Louise has more than 25 years of experience, leading emergency field responses in refugee and internal displacement context in Africa and Asia. Prior to joining as the RC HC in Niger. She was the coordinator of the global protection cluster at UNHCR and then became the UNHCR regional representative in the Pacific in 2019. And she's been resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator in Niger since January last year. Louise, can I invite you to reflect a bit on some of your experiences in managing collective protection advocacy efforts and the related risks, including any challenges or opportunities that you've seen. And perhaps you can also touch on whether protection advocacy is different compared to advocacy done by other sectors for access and how are those risks being mitigated. Some positive examples of protection advocacy that you've seen. And also what do you think is needed across the humanitarian system to further strengthen more consistent and courageous protection advocacy to support access and rights. Louise. It's a pleasure to be able to engage on this subject, but also, importantly, with other practitioners and I really appreciate also the angle that's being taken for these conversations and it is a bad experience because I wish I could say that either protection or advocacy are a science and we all know that there's a lot of behavior, a lot of psychology, a lot of perception issues that are behind both those topics. So I'll start off with a very recent very tragic example in attack by a non-staped armed group in August 2020 triggered a real turning point with regard to the humanitarian access environment in Niger. In Niger, where I now serve seven staff of two international NGOs with their guide were ambushed and killed in a nature park about 70 kilometers away from the capital city of Yemen. So if you look at a map, you do realize that Yemen is also near border areas and particularly with the Mali border areas are very troubled, volatile, very violent area of the country. Why did this, this was not the first last incursion or incident, but it did incur the loss of international staff. And so the reactions were very swift and sweeping the country from which these seven internationals came from that declared pretty much all of Niger as a red zone meaning no visits, no tourism, no really blocked off everything but the capital city. And in reaction also the authorities of Niger declared pretty much the same thing from their perspective which meant no movements outside of urban centers and mainly outside of Yemen could be done without an armed escort. And this lasted for quite some time so really in the wake of the 9 August 2020 attack. A lot of advocacy went on, a lot of trying to dialogue the issue. I arrived as you mentioned Manisha in January 2021 and much of this was still going on. We hadn't been able to move the needle. A really strong point here in Niger that authorities are very accessible. Authorities are usually always open to dialogue, but we weren't able to cut across. We weren't able to engage differently and move back this very blanket requirement of armed escorts. And here I think we're learned. One data alone did not seem to cut across data. We collected how costly it had been since that introduction of moving without an armed escort. How costly that had been to our programs and how costly this had been to the actual number of missions that we were able to conduct in hard to reach areas. That data with you know millions of dollars at state programs that were unable to be monitored and our proximity to people really suffering in the process. That didn't seem to cut across it is not that the authorities were insensitive to this. What I came to realize when I arrived is that perhaps we weren't acknowledging sufficiently that the reason the authorities had declared this no movement approach unless it was with armed escort is because of their own responsibilities towards our security and the security of the populations. They took that very seriously. Of course there was a reputational risk issue that was at play. We didn't seem to be acknowledging this sufficiently. And when we started thinking in those terms, we were able to devise a formula. The formula was the following. We were able to push principles, but proposing a mechanism that actually agreed with the terms of government. The principle was to recognize that armed escort had to be not a default mechanism, but a last resort mechanism. To be able to achieve that we negotiated formula whereby the decision to use or not an escort and therefore it goes through the options the security options could be decentralized instead of having a one blanket decision from central government. We would recognize the responsibilities of more local actors, in this case, the governors of the different regions of Niger, to make that determination, thereby also giving us the opportunity to strengthen civil military collaboration and cooperation frameworks that we had at varying strengths in the different regions. So it was actually we ended up having quite a win-win, but government agreed to issue a different directive, recognizing both the principle and the decentralized approach to security. Just to break down a few things, we had a lot of difficulty getting to that point as a community, as a humanitarian community. We had to recognize not just diversity for diversity's sake. Of course, in a humanitarian country team we have UN, we have international NGOs, we have national NGOs, we also have donors. The issue is not just diversity, the issue is recognizing that we also have different requirements and security mechanisms within those different groups. The UN has its own security requirements and mechanism, and I was wearing in that circumstances three hats. I was a designated official for all programs and all staff, UN in the country. So anything to do with exports, anything to do with movements, etc, goes through a mechanism supported by UN DSS. NGOs had a different way of working out their modalities for movement and access. And donors had some of the requirements in terms of legitimacy of some of their programs or preserving some of their programs. So there were a lot of dynamics at play. How do we break through that? I think the first issue to be able to recognize diversity, recognize the interests at play and the concerns of different parties, including the authorities, I think was key. It was also about investing, investing time in setting out on paper, what were the principles at play, what were the competing interests at play, and to create some space, a better understanding of the different positions of different actors. And what we ended up doing is identifying representatives of this diversity to sit around a table with the authorities, and in this case it was the prime minister, no less, with key ministries, and to work through what it is that we could actually work with. So in other words, the UN had a position that we were not saying never military or armed escorts, some NGOs, it was a no-go zone. So what we agreed on paper was an options paper, recognizing that armed escorts, again, were the last resort, so creating space for different options. Secondly, strengthening that dialogue with a very necessary dialogue at more local level, so that we could share what had not been shared sufficiently until then, and it was an analysis of security and our own perceptions of security to be able to function. This very practical mechanism, which made everyone involved, you know, it was recognizing the role of more frontline national authorities in the regions, it was recognizing the diversity among NGOs who would have trouble simply easing into a more UN mechanism, but it also recognized the UN's capacity to be able to feed. So I think the recent example in Niger was actually a real reminder of the steps that we need to go through to be able to achieve a result. I've got a second example that's quite stark, and in fact it contrasts two countries you would normally not see in the same sentence. It's the Central African Republic and Australia. And there the issue is about a systems approach to advocacy and protection, and evidently having human rights at the center of this. In Central African Republic at the time, and if you recall the conflict in about 10 years ago, it really was besieged communities at imminent risk of attack by another group. So what we were seeing our protection officers going to visit these communities, offering up with the humanitarians normally offer up and it's medical assistance food etc. But in return what populations were requiring and asking and begging us to do was to extract them from harm's way. The offer wasn't meeting the demand, or at least the definition of protection wasn't the same. And we had to be very attentive and listening to these people to be able to activate something I'll describe very shortly. Similarly, strangely enough, in Nauru, and in Papua New Guinea, a system of offshoring refugees had made it by the domestic policy at the time of Australia. It gave us no opening to be able to continue advancing in terms of advocacy in terms of Australia's PNGs and Nauru's responsibilities towards refugees and I'm using a refugee issue purposefully as well to show that protection advocacy has a lot of similarities and does need to be thought of more broadly than just single agencies with mandates to be able to achieve some of the results. There we had 20 years of advocacy, reminding, insisting on responsibilities of states towards the protection and the asylum regime that they're responsible for. And we weren't gaining ground as many who have followed the issue would remind us all. The starting point here was to recognize at some point, the definition of protection needs to be acknowledged the definition of protection is first and foremost defined by people concerned, how they want to see the resolution to a specific issue. Refugees in Papua New Guinea in Nauru saw no end in sight to this offshore situation, which provided no solutions to their refugee status. Similarly, in Central African Republic, more humanitarian assistance was not resolving the issue of protection that was core to their to their survival. We had to call in a different way of thinking. If something needs to happen, and you're unable to make it happen as a humanitarian, the matter should not stop there. We have to stop self-flagellating. We have to recognize that if something needs to happen for protection outcome for people concerned, it must be someone's responsibility and capacity to put in to be able to effect a systems approach to advocacy for protection outcomes, be it access, be it a durable solution for refugees or IDPs, means that sometimes we need to think much more out of the box and often contemplate even solutions that are seemingly unorthodox. Extracting people from a village, from within their own country to be able to extract them from imminent harm could not be done by UNHCR, could not be done by humanitarian actors. It needed political and military means to be able to secure their exit and with a lot of engagement at the national level, but also at New York level with the human rights upfront mechanism that we had at the time. It was really an enabling situation where we called in the responsibility of actors who don't normally look at issues in the same way, in other words through a protection prism. CR was a successful operation for many communities where we were able to activate either corridors or physical extraction outside the country of CR. For Australia, Papua New Guinea and Nauru, it meant breaking with advocacy around responsibility and going through much more quiet advocacy and asking for a more internationalised response to solutions whereby you've seen, for example, Canadians come up with how do you say sponsorship of refugees to relocate refugees from Papua New Guinea and Nauru to Canada and other similar initiatives like through the Vatican etc. So it was not removing the advocacy of responsibility towards some states in the matter of asylum. It was much more showing and trying to reframe advocacy showing in how international support and international efforts can come to the fore. I think just a couple of last words Manisha, I know I'm coming running out of time. I think a framing document among different actors is a useful exercise. It might seem petty sometimes in the face of urgent issues etc. But it does build trust, I think we end up appreciating more deeply the mandates and limits of some of the actors to then be able to identify what are the common areas for action. I think necessarily the participation of people concerned and checking in regularly about what solutions they see to the protection gaps that they feel is absolutely critical. And I think the issue of engaging more broadly than the immediate community of humanitarians is often times, even if not required to put in motion the solution of the advocacy response, it is important to keep knowledge alive about what humanitarians can and cannot do. So thanks a lot Manisha I really look forward to hearing the examples of other colleagues and to bring this and to a collective discussion. Thank you so much Louise and I think those are really helpful examples to really show that you do have to go through some very practical steps to really understand and unpack what are some of the restraints or what are some of the challenges. I just want to encourage all of you to answer the mentee poll before we take a look. But huge thanks Louise and hopefully we can get you to also come in on the Q&A after but I think those points around really having that framing document building the trust, but really also engaging other actors who can do much more than humanitarians is really critical when it comes to protection. So before I introduce our panelists, I just want to take a look quickly at the answers that we got from that first mentee poll. And the first question we had is to what extent have you experienced protection advocacy causing risk to access operations, partners communities or others. And it's a little bit closer to always, but kind of in the middle there so I think we are seeing that risk is a real challenge, but I think it'll be interesting to sort of unpack how real are those risks and where have they come from, what have they, what's caused those in different places. And I think the points you made Louise about really understanding you know why are certain reactions put in place like the government did in Niger. You know really unpacking that and then identifying ways to mitigate those concerns is also an important way forward. I'm just going to introduce our second mentee poll which again you'll have some time to answer that before we come back to it. Again, it's a sliding scale between no or yes one to five. Are there ways that risks caused by advocacy could be better managed and I see already we have yes is a first to answer. We'll leave that up and the link will be in the chat for you as well. And then I am going to turn to our panelists and we have four exceptional panelists today, who will be giving us some perspective so the first one is, Gemma Davies, who is Senior Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute. Hey Gemma. We have Isaac Bandu. I hope he's been able to join us. I know, yes, Isaac, you're here. Wonderful. Bonjour Isaac. Isaac is the President of the President du Conseil d'Administration du réseau de plaidoyer du Kichanga, which is the President of the Advocacy NGO in Network in Kichanga. Next we have Yasmeen Shawab, who is Deputy Director of the International NGO Forum in Nigeria. And last but not least, we have Kate Moder, and I think I've pronounced that wrong again. I'm sorry, Kate, I apologize. Who is the Regional Vice President for the Great Lakes of the International Rescue Committee. I'm going to turn to each of you and I'm going to then come back to all of you at the end with some questions. And I thank those of you who have been dropping questions in the chat. We're collecting those so our panelists hopefully can reflect on those while you're not speaking so that we can come back to those. Gemma, I'm going to turn to you first because as I mentioned at the beginning, HPG and ODI have been doing a series of research pieces around advocacy and protection. And I'm hoping that you can share some of the risk related findings from that research from your Advocating for Humanity program, as well as any new research that you've done on collective protection advocacy, please. Sure. Thanks, Manisha. And just to say this has been quite a long research program. So it's been carried out over the last three years, where we've been considering the state of play, dilemmas, risks, opportunities to carrying out advocacy to strengthen the protection of conflict affected people. And as Manisha said, we looked at all forms of advocacy. I won't go into definitions here, but Alex will put in the chat, but from private to public persuasion to denunciation. But first, let's consider the notion of risk in carrying out advocacy, because while there's widespread agreement that advocacy is central to humanitarian action, the fear of risks associated in carrying out advocacy on protection issues is a major barrier for organizations to more strategically use advocacy as a tool to strengthen protection. Lack of incentives and indeed disincentives are barriers in carrying out effective advocacy. So for example, performance of humanitarian organizations and their leaders are often judged on the number of beneficiaries reach the activities delivered the funding that they've spent. And host states in crisis countries are aware that even the threat of retaliation is enough to silence humanitarian organizations who in recent years often prioritize maintaining presence at any cost. And of course, it's true that there are many potential risks in carrying out advocacy, but risks are often considered in terms of risk to humanitarian operations staff reputation. So don't necessarily always consider what effective people need and want from the humanitarian and international community. Silence in the face of abuses needs to be recognized as taking an advocacy position. It can negate the critical risks faced by affected people, as was the case in Tigray, when you and officials challenge the level of sexual violence taking place. In extreme circumstances, it can lead to perceptions that humanitarian organizations are complicit in abuses experienced by civilians. And without humanitarian organizations putting in place a strategic approach to address protection issues with red lines agreed between them and within them, they can be contributing to a culture of impunity. And if organizations don't develop tools to manage risks and minor harassments and major harassment, they risk being more easily controlled and manipulated by host states and duty bearers. But as Alicia suggested, our research found that in reality, retaliation for advocating on protection issues isn't necessarily as pronounced as often assumed. Across our research, we found surprisingly few examples of retaliation directly relating to advocacy to strengthen protection. This finding was supported by a survey that we carried out last year with a broad range of some 500 national and international humanitarian actors across all global and crisis levels, which found that 68% of respondents had not experienced negative repercussions as a direct result of undertaking protection advocacy. Now, obviously, that's a little bit sort of skew from the findings in there in the Mentimeter today, but I think it's really interesting to hear of others experienced in this. And link to this, as Alicia said earlier, the impact of such risk can also be overstated. The expulsion of staff from a country is often perceived as a significant risk with significant impact. But that's not necessarily the case. In many cases, it doesn't lead to a major disruption in programming, and it can even lead to positive results. And I know I'm going to sound controversial here, but we actually found in South Sudan, for an example, when an MSF staff member was expelled for the organization publicizing the exponential increase in cases of sexual violence that they were treating in the clinic in Benji. Despite this expulsion, it actually led to concrete positive changes in the lives of survivors of sexual violence through increased visibility leading to increased services. And while international public advocacy gave a lot of confidence to national actors and survivors of sexual violence to demand change. And actually a key result of this was a dialogue between survivors and authorities, for example, so there was some very tangible positive impacts as a result of this. But regardless, such factors can lead to humanitarian actors facing difficulties in finding the right balance of maintaining access and delivery of services, while retaining space to raise sensitive, often unwelcome protection issues. So how do we get around these barriers and trench perceptions and mitigate these risks? Firstly, politically astute advocacy that takes into account political and where relevant military interests of advocacy targets, power dynamics and ensure that advocacy positions are targeted towards these interests and dynamics is critical. So for example, a broad group of organizations and member states working to further international policy in the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. Ensure to focus on the wider humanitarian impact on the use of explosive weapons than solely focusing on legal obligations under humanitarian law. They also call to avoid rather than stop the use of explosive weapons which would not be accepted by militarily active states. And it's led to the development of new norms to protect civilians from the use of explosive weapons. And I think that leads to another point that when directly engaging with duty bearers, constructive solutions or into dialogue is critical for effective engagement. And that is Louise referred to earlier, requires investment in and building of trust over the long term, and many have spoken to that this week in across various sessions. Secondly, targeting advocacy positions to the interests and priorities of targets requires intentional framing and tone of the advocacy position. Framing positions based on an understanding of the norms and values of actors and duty bearers and how they align with international humanitarian and human rights frameworks will have greater impact than referring only to international norms and frameworks. And that requires contextualization of the advocacy position. The ICRC has for years sought to frame it by HL humanitarian law in the values and belief systems of parties they engage with. For example, by using customary and Sharia law to undertake dialogue with armed actors in Somalia, and has for some time been working with Islamic scholars to ensure dissemination of humanitarian law is aligned with Islamic values. It's roots of restraint project built on this setting a blueprint towards analyzing armed actors considering norms and values, which align with humanitarian law and using that as an entry point for engagement in seeking ways to restrain from the use of violence. And this has been applied in a number of contexts with positive results. And that brings me on to a critical factor, the need for collaborative approaches. I can't emphasize enough the need to build coalitions to work in complementarity across a diverse range of actors and skill sets relevant to the advocacy objective. That includes national and international humanitarian human rights, peace, political actors and states. Organizations need to consider credibility in how they are perceived by advocacy target. And that is a key role in the success of advocacy efforts at times national actors have greater credibility, acceptance and understanding of how to influence national advocacy targets than international actors. So for example, following the refugee influx and humanitarian response in Jordan, Jordanian national actors highlighted to us how the international humanitarian communities lack of understanding in how to influence the Jordanian government with an over reliance on standard generalized advocacy approaches such as public statements based on international legal frameworks at times had a negative impact, including rebukes from the Jordanian government, which risk closing down dialogue. So a collaborative approach between national and international organizations to frame advocacy positions based on national context, so progress on, for example, refugee access to rights. And effective collaborations are reliant of trust, of course, which can take years to build and seconds to destroy. Going to my final point knowing I've got one minute left, crucially working in collaboration can both offset and share risks. Naturally, organizations have different risk appetites different stakes at play. By working in collaboration organizations can work within their risk appetite and when using mutually reinforcing messages can allow for risk to be shared complimentary approach approaches can enable this. And crucially working in complementarity, those positions must be mutually ensuring reinforcing as I said, because where there are divergent approaches and messages, it can risk undermining stated objective. But this requires joint approaches to the strategic approach to assessing risks between all actors involved in advocacy, identify mitigating factors, and each organization deciding on the level of residual risk they're collectively willing to take. And I'm finishing right there. Sorry for taking too much time. No, thank you very much, Gemma and I think those it was really helpful I think to kind of really talk us through what the research has found because I think that point about the risks and how do we make sure that we mitigate them how do we make sure that we're not overstating them is particularly important. And I think those the case of the MSF example in South Sudan is a really interesting one and I think that maybe we need to be reflecting on is you know, can we do that collectively is there somebody who's willing to take that risk that others can then pick up on and I think that range of issues around collaborative approaches is particularly important. I know that we've got questions coming into the chat but I'm going to keep those were collecting those so that we can come back to them during the Q&A so I'm going to keep them during them. But thank you for those questions. I'm going to encourage you all again to answer the mentee question, and we'll come back to that after our next speaker so thank you again Gemma and we'll come back to you around some of those questions. But for panelists also feel free to write any answers in the chat while you're not speaking so maybe that can also take care of some of those questions. It's a pleasure for me to introduce again Isaac Pandu, the President of the Council of Administration, the President of Kichanga. Isaac, can you maybe share one or two examples of the protection advocacy work that you're doing as an advocacy network in Kichanga, and how you're making sure that access is still being maintained or strengthened. One of the reflections you might have around the risk management approaches, the network collectively in that collaborative fashion that you were just telling us we should use Gemma. You know, how are you using those in advocacy efforts and what more could be done by others to better share risk around protection advocacy. Thank you very much. I'm Isaac Pandu. I'm the president, as you just said, of the advocacy network in Kichanga. I will first introduce the organization. So it's a network that was created at the initiative of Oxfam in 2012 that brought together 12 organizations working in protection and advocacy. And we have been building capacity, mentoring local associations and training on protection and advocacy. Our structure answers to things that are beyond us. We can call on to Oxfam or other NGOs, international NGOs and partners of Oxfam. And we can also work with OCHA for questions that we cannot answer sometimes. So regarding our activities, we have several of them. We have flagship activities. So advocacy, mediation, raising awareness and radio shows that we do. Thanks to our activities, we have pleaded to have one military auditor's office in the peripheral center of Kichanga. Because of the extent of the exaction committed by the loyalist military and the armed groups, they were not punished. So we pleaded and there is now an office, a military auditor's office. We also had the offices of traditional chiefs that were closed for two months. So this office was closed and they were not allowed to work. So we pleaded as well as leaders. And thanks to our advocacy, the office was opened again and they can now work without any issue. We have a motto saying that for local problems, we find local solutions. And this gives us credibility for authorities so that when a partner comes, these authority become our spokespersons. So they have become our spokespersons with humanitarian actors. We share alerts and we give them recommendations as well. And we have become a reference for them for the advocacy in terms of protection. So when there is a case within the community, the community calls on to our network to do the advocacy and to have actions. But there are some risks. We risk being pursued by the armed forces of the DRC, of the loyalist force, of torture, of kidnapping or to be murdered. We do analysis now to analyze the risks and the different powers, what's that take while respecting the principle of confidentiality. And this really helps us and facilitates our work. But to manage risks and to mitigate risk so that we are understood or heard by the authorities, we are legitimate because we are a network of 12 community organizations around protection. We have a whole diversity of people, of cultures. And this strengthens our credibility and legitimacy. And to be within a network amplifies our voice. As in our area, we have different armed actors, non-state actors and ethnic connotations. During the analysis activities of risk, we choose among ourselves the people who can go to specific targeted activities. So we choose who can go to do which activity. We have received threats from a leader of armed groups who nearly went after us because we invited around a round table someone from the loyalist force. We've invited this leader on cohabitation and he nearly went after us. So we did what we had to do to explain things, our intention, and he understood quickly. And some police commanders also threatened us. One of the police men asked for us to do advocacy work with the chief. But there were five of them with two weapons and they wanted to plead so that each one of them had a weapon. And the commander said that we were not allowed to talk about these kind of matters. We explained how we got the information and he calmed down. So we need to master the process of the action to mitigate and to handle risks. When you master the processes, it's very important. I suggest that international organization strengthen their coalition with local based organization as Oxfam is doing with our network by accepting to have some leaders of some actions that expose community and local organization and by funding these local organizations. We collaborate with local organizations. When you do that, you fund local organizations. And this gives credibility to actions and it's sustainable. We also suggest that the UN agencies can copy the model of Oxfam and help local organizations with national organizations as well. This would contribute to the continuity of actions and strengthen the communities to take advocacy actions as their own. So this is one of the best strategy to take ownership of advocacy actions. So it is a good strategy. We also suggest to have exchanges of experiences. We suggest to talk with other actors from other countries to better understand how they take actions when they face complex situations in Africa or elsewhere. So we need to share experiences because when you do that, you can learn more and you have more knowledge to be inspired. I thank you very much. Thank you Isaac. Thank you for these very concrete examples and for really telling us that within a network how you can be efficient with your advocate. Really reinforcing also what Gemma had said and what Louis said about working together collectively to have more effective advocacy. And I think the examples and that slogan that you've got about local problems need local solutions is particularly important because as you said, you've got that understanding of the context you can maintain the confidentiality, but you know with how to manage those relationships and ensure that advocacy to be effective. So thank you very much for that Isaac. I am going to turn quickly to the answers for our second mentee question and give you a third one as we turn to our other two panelists on that before we speak to the other two panelists. We're seeing that there is a large majority of you that feel that there are ways that risk caused by advocacy could be better managed. So in terms of that we're going to now move to the final question in our mentee is, what do you see as a priority for strong protection advocacy that supports access. I'm not quite seeing that question on the screen yet but it is coming up there we go. Thank you. And here we're giving you a number of things that you can respond to so either you're saying that you need as a priority, more leadership from humanitarian country teams, more leadership from states and donors, more leadership from protection organizations or agencies, more collective approaches to managing advocacy related risks, more collaboration with different sectors that could be human rights actors, military peacekeeping what not, similar to what Louise had mentioned. The other option is increased skills and resources of protection actors. And if you think it's something else, please give us what you think that other priority is for strong protection advocacy by putting your comments in the chat which some of you are already doing. And we'll come back to those in a bit. I'm going to now turn to Yasmeen Shuaaf who is the deputy director of the Nigeria INGO forum. Sorry, excuse me, Yasmeen can you tell us a little bit about some of the collective approaches to protection advocacy in support of access in Northeast Nigeria and give us a few examples of that, but also potentially how you're assessing and collectively managing risks. Thank you very much and thank you to the previous speakers. First, I need to admit that it's a privilege to be working in an INGO forum because the risks are very different than from when you are an operational partner, what is at stake is kind of different when you work in an INGO forum but this does not mean that there are no self-restrictions and self-censorship and this is because you have your membership and you need for the positioning, you need to come up with some kind of consensus among your members which is not always an easy thing to do. Talking about Nigeria, public advocacy around protection in Northeast Nigeria is almost nonexistent. We do appreciate some of the initiatives here and there but overall on the sensitive issues, the public advocacy is really not adequate. And advocacy at the regional and the global levels also it remains very scarce and most of the efforts are focused on donors and ambassadors who have already told us that they are very much limited by their own government's priorities, political, economic, etc. So the fear of upsetting the government or getting PNGed reigns over the response. In my intervention, I want to speak about working and collaborating with not so nice counterparts as local actors and other actors as mentioned before but rather with actors that we see that we have competing agendas with. And in Northeast Nigeria, I want to talk about these competing agendas and try to unpack their impact on advocacy for protection and the ability to maintain humanitarian access. I will conclude on the need to work with actors, especially those we are less comfortable engaging with and this is to reduce the fears of being PNGed. By taking advantage of existing channels, resources and expertise outside the normal or the usual humanitarian circles. So while these competing agendas could be perceived by some as undermining the humanitarian premise, they could also be seen as opportunities. And this is only if the right amount of engagement and accountability is introduced. By using the word competing, I don't mean it in a bad way. I just want to say that they simultaneously exist and that there are different actors involved in these competing agendas in Northeast Nigeria. Most notably, they are the humanitarian agenda development and here more specifically on the stabilization efforts and finally counter terrorism. A very simple example to illustrate the three agendas is how we refer to the Islamic State in West Africa province or what is known as ISWAP, the modern Boko Haram if you want. And they are referred to as non-state armed groups as I just did, insurgents and terrorists. And this says a lot about the type of access you will look for and you will try to achieve to the populations living under the NSAC insurgents or terrorists as you may call them. Humanitarian actors perceive in Northeast Nigeria to a large extent that development and stabilization actors undermine the humanitarian premise and contribute to the shrinking access. While the latter, which is the development counterpart sees that this is untrue. It cannot be denied, however, that the nature of the work of stabilization and development, but more specifically stabilization. It contributes to the government's rhetoric that we are in a post-conflict context that there are no humanitarian needs. The denial of humanitarian needs is supported by the idea that now things are being stabilized. We are moving to, we are transitioning into a new phase. And this is or let's say this tension is very completely visible in the example of the camp closures and IDP relocations in Borno State, which is the epicenter of the Boko Haram conflict. Some background on the IDP relocations and camp closures. This has been a commitment of the Borno State government and so far eight camps have been closed across the capital city of the Borno State, affecting more than 150,000 people. And humanitarian actors maintain that relocations so far are premature and they are not sustainable. And let alone that there are not even two areas of origin. So you see IDPs have either after the camp closure decided to remain in Meduguri, which is the capital city, or move to other IDP camps. And a good portion of them were forcefully relocated by the government to areas that are perceived as unsafe and have no basic services. Humanitarian concerns around this issue have been openly challenged by the government using examples from stabilization projects. So countering the humanitarian needs by referring to stabilization and development projects. And this has weakened the humanitarian community and reduced its leverage, further fueling our self-imposed limitations on advocacy and perceived risks around humanitarian access and presence. Even this usual dilemma of humanitarian imperative versus humanitarian principles is exacerbated by the pressure resulting from the ongoing competition. So your ability to negotiate principled access becomes almost none, because you will always be reminded that another actor, here we are talking about the stabilization actor, is willing to do it and even do it at a larger scale. So today in Northeast Nigeria advocacy around the risks associated with these relocations has been really limited to very few engagements that are very shy and conservative with the government. Which is continuing to insist that they will proceed regardless of the humanitarian position. And you know this is when we start hearing within the humanitarian community lines like we need to be diplomatic, we need to be pragmatic, we need to bring on solutions, we need to see how we can contribute. And you know this is all welcome, but we need to understand that this is coming at the expense of human life. Pressure from the government to suspend aid in camps set to be closed, for example, has gone unchallenged. We have seen food assistance being suspended in some of these camps and people have not received food until today. And this is all because of the risk or the perceived risk that we might jeopardize the already limited access we have across the state. Here I want to take a moment just to talk very quickly about evidence, you know, because we are always told that we need to support our advocacy with evidence. While I'm a big fan of evidence based advocacy, this thirst for quantitative findings has become kind of an impeding obsession, let's say. So what type of evidence are we expected to provide to be at the same level or to be able to keep up with or keep up with development actors and stabilization actors. Like, what more do we need than IDPs who have been relocated into a certain locality have been attacked. This should be enough evidence to carry out advocacy, not necessarily with a statistic of how many of them felt sad or unsafe after the attack, the attack happened. Overall, the international community in North East Nigeria and specifically in Borno State, they find themselves caught up between the development agenda that is somehow supporting the building of these resettlement communities as they are called by the government. Even if not directly, they are justifying the rhetoric around stability and post-conflict transitioning. And then on the other side, a humanitarian community that is struggling to maintain access to people in need. Very briefly, this is all against a rhetoric that humanitarian principles should be revoked in light of counterterrorism priorities. So this is the third competing agenda. Humanitarian actors are often reminded that IHL and counterterrorism are mutually exclusive that when the group in question is designated as a terrorist group, IHL no longer applies. And this is something that we hear very often, which we know is not true because IHL talks about acts and not groups and it applies in situation of conflict regardless of the status of the party involved. And we estimate in the humanitarian response, we estimate that one million people live in inaccessible areas or areas outside government control and these people do not have access to humanitarian assistance. But of course these figures are not something that are welcomed because it goes against the political rhetoric. And we have seen people coming out of the bush like facing grave protection risks. There are other issues related to cash assistance and lists of items. Thirty seconds more please. The conclusion of that is that we need to work with actors such as stabilization and development actors who we are not usually very comfortable working with. We need to take advantage of their close collaboration and close relations with the government and the platforms that they already have to advance protection concerns and asks. Because then what is the nexus about if not to use platforms for protection for centrality of protection and also to engage the financial action task force on issues related to humanitarian exceptions when it comes to terrorism because it's already there. It's just misinterpreted at country level. Thank you. Thank you very much as mean I know that all of you have so many great examples that we could go through but I want to be able to get to some of the questions before and we've only got 24 minutes left so Kate I'm going to turn to you. But thank you again yes mean for really highlighting that collectively you can do things but we really need to be careful about not falling under the trap of, you know, really looking at people the way we refer to them but and also identifying how we can use the evidence that we have. Without getting too far engaged and Gemma thank you for some of your comments in the chat around evidence base and how we could share them more. Kate I'm going to turn to you Kate's the regional vice president for the Great Lakes with the International Rescue Committee. And I know that you've had a number of years of experience and have a lot of advice for advocacy for protection as access. And Kate could you maybe reflect on advocacy around the protection of women and girls and how the IRC works to maintain programming. When some topics that are considered difficult quote unquote like gender based violence, or sexual exploitation and abuse need advocacy efforts to be addressed. Yeah, thank you so much. And thanks everyone. Really great honor to be here. I'm Kate and I would just introduce myself by saying I think I'm a minority on this panel and in this forum, as somebody who is neither an expert on advocacy or on protection. I have been working in the conflict and post complex spaces for a number of years so I'm really pleased to be here and great to do so many names and places that are so familiar in the participants. Manisha I'm going to try and go quick so we save some time for for questions. I RC has been working on advocacy for protection programming for a long time. We're working in over 40 countries. And we know that we must be applying the humanitarian principles in those contexts while engaging in really context specific analysis. We're taking what we would describe as a practical application of principles approach, which means that for us no issue, your topic is completely off the table when it comes to advocacy. And we engage on advocacy for for all protection programming consistently, like others who've spoken, we define advocacy to mean a lot of different types of efforts, including those that are public and those that are private in nature. And we question if there are risks to programming or to staff or to clients to our beneficiaries or recipients if public advocacy efforts are engaged. And we would say that it can be argued that being risk averse in certain circumstances is not wrong. If that being risk averse is based on an understanding of the context and learning from previous experiences. And in my experience is always essential to understand who is most at risk. And what are our obligations as an external actor as an international NGO to those people as I hope to illustrate from the example I have from the DLC Ebola outbreak. So that said, in all of the context we operate. We are engaging privately at the front line with local organizations where we can to Isaac's point and at country levels to open access to our activities, including specialized protection activities. We evaluate the access for protection challenges that we're having and think about as other panelists have spoken to do we need to change the behaviors of authorities or donors or UN or is it something else. We think about what advocacy activities or tactics and most likely to change the conditions we're facing. And we maintain an internal community of practice on humanitarian negotiation, which provides trainings and other work on negotiation tactics for better protection outcomes. And we will consider doing advocacy, even at the risk of our programming if our principals call for it. I think a very relevant person an example of that is we've been very vocal in Afghanistan on the fact that we won't operate without female staff. And we have been able to successfully negotiate in many cases to allow female staff, which are about 40% of our staffing in Afghanistan to continue working despite despite the huge obstacles that are very well known in that context. So to answer the request for a real world example around GBB. Many of you will remember the DLC North Kivu Ebola outbreak that started in 2018. ILC undertook multiple lines of effort to ensure that protection programming was strengthened in that response. It's important to note that advocating protection needs in an outbreak is not in itself inherently risky. We actually deployed someone dedicated to increase protection in the outbreak response. And we together with many other organizations were advocating for increased GBB response in the outbreak, and we have donor support on this advocacy. We also had a series of released documents, reports, like everything on her shoulders was one of our reports which included findings from a GBB analysis in Benny in DLC. We also had to contest with a serious situation when attempting to respond to the concerns and cases of SCA sexual exploitation and abuse identified in our gender assessment. We also had to say that this information was released. So the problem was not that we had data on sexual exploitation or abuse, all that we were working to use that data to increase actions to prevent and respond to SCA, but the way in which the advocacy unfolded. So to make a very, very long story as short as I possibly can, I'll say we had shared information from our initial data collection in a coordination meeting, a closed coordination meeting with other actors, responding to the needs that some of the panelists have mentioned about the importance of sharing information when we get hold of it. Additionally, that data was then shared with without being completed and was picked up by the media who issued a media report, a press release and a news article about this, which used the very clickbait headline and was immediately picked up by the government of DLC Ministry of Health and who told us that they would like to leave the program because to leave the country because they didn't agree with these findings. So once the information is shared, it's no longer in your control and you have to be very mindful about who you share with it. The media then controlled the narrative. Our learning was we have to do what we can to control the analysis so that erroneous reports are not in the public sphere, because obviously incorrect information doesn't do anyone any good. Because this information was released publicly before we were able to engage with all of the relevant colleagues, including the government and the UN, on what we could respond to and what we could do together. It led to a situation in which we were dealing with the threat of being thrown out of the country rather than responding to what the women and girls had told us and responding to the protection risks that it posed. So the when of advocacy is critical and it's critical to take the time to plan and get the advocacy right instead of rushing ahead even in an emergency when the needs feel so dire. The key learning for me from this situation was that recognizing our responsibility protect, even and especially as protection actors is key to how we manage risk. So throughout this situation, we prioritized our commitment to elevating the voices of women and girls and the information that they had given us, even when that posed existential risk to the IRC. And I think in centering their protection and their rights, we were able to navigate these different pressures by remaining true to those principles. The other takeaway that I have from this, which I know is different to colleagues who were affected by it in different ways, but that was even though this media report was completely unplanned and not how we would have chosen to do it. We did get that report as a consequence of that made it to the desk of the president of the Republic to the head of every single agency in the Democratic Republic of Congo and up into global capitals throughout the world. And so it was it was actually in terms of the advocacy impact while we weren't able to reduce the outcomes for women and girls and the very well documented abuse that happened through that response. We did signal it in a way that we might not have always been able to do. Thank you so much Kate and I think again you've provided another good example where even though there are some risks that are some consequences for what happens there can also be some positive impacts in terms of getting attention there. I'm going to quickly look at our mentee answers before I come back to our panelists and give you a chance to answer some of the questions that have been in the chat and I'll flag those for you. And also to maybe give us one final priority action from each of you before we wrap up so I'm going to let you decide which questions you'd like to answer. Maybe I'll just tell you some of them were how do you negotiate with non state armed actors that are unidentified. How can UN states do real advocacy when there are political forces behind the armed groups without going up against them. What is there a difference in risk appetite to individual versus collective advocacy, who should get involved if human rights are violated. What's the link between advocacy and collective leadership and what are the limits of advocacy and fragile context. And I know Gemma you've answered some of those questions but I leave it to the four of you plus Louise the five of you. So you just think about any of those questions so that I can let you answer them and then give us one final priority action from each of you. But right after I turn to the mentee quit answers so we've got that gives you a minute or two to think. So here we've got as a priority, a strong majority thinking about more collective approaches to advocacy and managing related risks so those points that many communities have made around that collaboration and collective approaches, being really strong is important, but also more leadership from states and donors, increasing skills and resources, less so interestingly on leadership from humanitarian country teams from protection organizations, and the other I had noted what they were and now I've lost them but I will come back to them. So I'll let you read the chat for those other two. So really interesting that there's more of that collective approaches and it's great that that's reinforcing what has come out of the research that HPG has been doing. So thank you all for taking the time to respond to those mural questions. And maybe Louise I can turn to you first because I think a couple of those questions really around that negotiation of non state armed doctors and how do you get the UN states to do real advocacy might be ones that could be interesting for you but also any one other priority action that you would see in terms of advocacy for protection. Thanks Manisha it was really quite fascinating to listen to all the speakers I mean, your experience but also your observations of what is currently not just being discussed but how we're working out some of these issues really quite interesting and obviously a follow on to this, this great, this great panel. First up, you know, not I'll come back to one of the first things you said Manisha, and maybe call advocacy, you know, engaging stakeholders because with me not engaging is simply not an option. And protection issues are identified it's just not an option. Think of who we are an international NGO, UN natural and local NGO it's just not not an option so the issue is how the modalities and who to engage and trying also different angles you fail once, hopefully with not too many reconcilable, you know, fall out, but you try differently and you keep having to to engage. I was very quite taken also with listening very closely to just means example of stabilization. And I think they are the linkages with niger quite interesting stabilization is an approach. Because when we've made the mistake of identifying actors with stabilization or actors with development actors with humanitarian. Honestly, when you lift the veil you realize that one actor can be involved in all three approaches. As same donor, regardless of the source of financing, it's the same donor saying something to an NGO on what to do with the limits of what they can do. And it's the same donor doing stability was funding stabilization and development etc. When you put them in the same room, you are talking with the same people. It's great. We created a different forum. We call that the nexus, you know, committee or whatever. And actually identify we're talking about some of the in the UN family. I've got agencies doing development I've got agencies doing humanitarian I've got agencies doing stabilization. Most agencies almost do three. How they seek of those approaches makes a difference. You cannot say as a development approach, you're there to support government priorities and not refer to whose development you're actually speaking of. We are still talking about communities we are still talking about sustainable development goals, where the measure of those goals are people. We are most of the SDGs. So you can't say that, you know, because I'm a humanitarian. I can't even refer to this work that I do with authorities and I'm only aware of a community. I'm sorry. And maybe it's the double hat and I've had to, you know, learn quite a few things about how to speak as a development actor. No, there's no difference. There's no protection whether you know humanitarian context or development context or a stabilization context, bringing the people together and actually working through how strategies interlink and where they need to be distinction. I think really I think for us in Egypt and very helpful. I'd really like to have a conversation with you just need to exchange a little bit further because we're probably talking about some of the same programs in border areas. Action. Not to focus on is very short and simple. And I wouldn't also undermine collective advocacy is not possible in many circumstances. It's not the collective. It's the complementarity and to reach complementarity. You don't do this by accident. It's not just that. Oh, you know, we're saying kind of the same things that we're doing kind to reach optimal complementarity. You do have to share your advocacy strategies. You have to identify red lines, common red lines. That's where the commonality comes in. And if you add conditions, if you add conditions agree and be very forthright and transparent. When those conditions are not net backsliding repercussions on populations, etc. Then the advocacy strategy stops there and needs to be restarted on other grounds. And I think so the collective and the complementarity really rely on open dialogue among actors and really trusted relationship to be able to share the right information and the right time. Thanks very much. Thanks very much Louise and I think that point about trust and sharing the information and having that approach collectively is important. So that we're each able to do things because we have such different ways of working. I'm going to turn to our other speakers again to go in the order in which you spoke, I'm going to ask you to be very quick in a minute I'm sorry because we've only got five minutes left I apologize. Gemma, can I come to you. Any quick responses to the questions or your one priority action for the way forward on protection advocacy protection. Yeah, thanks for an issue so I guess on the question that came in the chat around the link between advocacy and leadership. I would just say it's critical leadership is obviously critical it sets the tone vision direction for protection. But also leadership at all levels of humanitarian response need greater empowerment they need greater incentives to prioritize protection at the institutional and structural level. And I think there are some sort of key opportunities I mean the emergency relief coordinator has really set the tone to prioritizing protection, but that really needs to come into every organization and across the range of actors. And then just in terms of critical action I guess my plea would be to remember that humanity is the core objective of humanitarian action over and above the tools of neutrality and independence and the reason I say that is because quite often these tools. I think sometimes actors a barrier to actually engaging and fully agree with Louise when you have massive protection threats you have no option but to engage. And then just to say complementarity is not nice to have it's critical so fully agree with Louise's points there. Thanks. Thanks so much Gemma. Isaac, can I turn to you please for any responses on the question. Maybe you can just tell us one priority action to ensure the advocacy for protection. The flagship action was to be able to call the authorities in the region and when we call them. We have introduced policy brief of advocacy that are very detailed regarding incidents. And we explain why there is the advocacy so we start by the province authorities then territorial, then local, and we have recommendations for local communities. And we show these recommendations to leaders and authorities and they sign pledges. So we managed to get them to sign the pledges and we continue to do the follow up work. We can even we could even create a follow up commission. And this improves the situation. Thank you very much. Thank you. And one priority action please I'm going to I've got to cut down kind of time sorry. I will not go into details because I think that the HCRC has already mentioned most of it. Working together is key. We need to look beyond the usual suspects and look what is already there and how we can take advantage of it. And we are also lucky in Nigeria to have a double-handling HCRC. So also the avenues are there to explore. So thank you. Thanks very much, Yasmin. Kate, to last but not least to you please for one priority action. My take away my action is the call that I've heard from this group to to bolder more courageous advocacy and to understanding risk for affected populations rather than for organizations. Thank you very much. And thank you to all our panelists as well as everyone in the audience for taking the time to provide your questions and comments. Just to say I think we've had a really interesting conversation lots of really great examples that have been shared that and really saying that when we're working together and we're very clear about our plans we can be very effective with our advocacy and that's from any type of advocacy, not just public, but really engaging with stakeholders we can improve protection for affected populations. And I think that point about, you know, it is critical when there are protection concerns we've got to do something is the bottom line and we have to do that together and collectively by sharing our information but also making sure that we are using our different avenues and approaches with different stakeholders to be very complimentary in that advocacy. And I think working with local organizations because of the sustainability that you have and the credibility is critical and as international organizations supporting local actors to be able to do that and to manage the risks that you face is also really critical. That point also about not overestimating what the risks are but really having that understanding that we can go further sometimes than we think we can. And sometimes if that means somebody getting PNG we may actually have more positive outcomes in the end. And I do think you know humanitarian principles are really practical tools they're not like a Bible it's we use them so that we can gain access. We can provide protection and assistance and I think that's really critical when it comes to protection advocacy. Just to say finally the global protection cluster will be launching a set of policy and practice change priorities to strengthen access that protects by the end of this year. And advocacy and ways that we as a humanitarian system can further use risk informed advocacy to really strengthen protection and protection outcomes will be a key element so we're not just treating advocacy as a risk or threat to access and operations. But as a really critical element of humanitarian response. And again it's not just about public advocacy but using all those different avenues and channels that we all have as different actors to be complimentary so that we can change the tactics of the behaviors that are causing harm to the billions and making sure that we're better protecting them. And it's also really critical that we do this and risk informed approaches that can actually support and strengthen access. While we've got to get better at managing risks, we also need to shift away from this narrative that advocacy is causing the risk, but recognize that it can really support access that protects. I'm going to close there, sorry for going a couple of minutes over but thank you again to Louise, Gemma, Isaac, Kate, Yasmin, as well as all the organizers in the background Alison, Lena, Anna, the global protection cluster more broadly, PHA, all of our interpreters and thank you to all of you again in the audience and look forward to us working collectively to have much more complimentary stakeholder engagement as we advocate for better protection that really protects civilians at risk. And thank you all have a lovely rest of the day and see you all soon I hope. Thank you.