 صباح الخير أو مسأل الخير حسن أو يستخدم الهواتف لذلك لدينا الكثير من الأشياء الأسفل والأسفل والأسفل والأسفل وذلك أتمنى أنه سيكون أفضل للأسفل للأسفل والأسفل أخبرت أن هذا الأسفل سنكون لن يكون لديه لديه لدينا أسفل لدينا أسفل في المدينة الأسفل وننفتح على إراق، سيريا، ويمان أتمنى ومن أعطاء الأسفل لدينا الكثير من الأسفل وننفتح على أسفل أتمنى أن هذا الأسفل ستتعود أو تفتح بعض الأسفل يمكن أن يكون لديه لدينا الكثير وننفتح على أن نتفتح على بعض الأسفل وننفتح على الأسفل وننفتح على أسفل لدينا حوار في this conference في أضافة بالنسبة لتصميم وإنحافظ العديد أتمنى أننا ستكون لديه ممتنائي لذلك لكي تعملنا ويمكننا أن تعمل على مدينة فيه معزمنا. لدينا مرسل من الشركات very prestigious list with people posting a long experience and quite reputable in the region basically in peace building and facilitation and before giving the floor to each speakers وبعد ذلك يجب أن أخبرني أن أخبرني بعض المقاومات المقاومات المقاومات المقاومات لأولاً من المساعدة، أرجوك أن تقوم with your microphones so that we don't have or we don't suffer interference as I said interpretation from Arabic into English and if you want to use the interpretation you will unfortunately see Korean and not Arabic but we will use Korean for the purpose of interpretation into Arabic here unfortunately that's a technical problem with the zoom actually and these are the technical matters I wanted to shed light on at the beginning and after listening to our speakers we will open the floor for Q&A session so without further ado I will give the floor to Dr. Mike Yiffey who is going to be the first speaker he is the deputy president for USIP and before joining USIP he worked in many other senior positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs our department of state in the US and he worked on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and also worked with the special envoy on the MENA region and special envoy and he also has a career or has had a career in the university in the national defense university in the US and he had contributions in various conferences and without further ado I will give the floor to Dr. Mike so that he gives us his opening remark Mike with floor is yours the Mike actually yes thank you thank you Ely and good day to everybody on behalf of the US Institute of Peace I'd like to welcome everybody to this webinar the US Institute of Peace has been very active during the coronavirus in trying to understand how the coronavirus is impacting regions around the world in which we are working the institute as many may know was formed in the 1980s as an act of congress to provide a non-partisan independent place for analysis and for conducting peace building around the world and as part of this we have actually now set up offices in a variety of places including what we call our hub in Tunis which Dr. Ely is the manager of that the director of that so let me at least begin with them by thanking my colleagues who have been working on this program from USIP we have the Middle East North Africa team which includes Ely, Suher and Fatma and then it is with great pleasure that we have partnered with the Overseas Development Institute particularly with Dr. Shirin Atarabusi who will be speaking next but again I want to thank them for this partnership this meeting has been coming about for some time it's been coming about since we've been watching this pandemic take and grab hold of places around the world and we have been very concerned of course as it was spreading to the North Africa region and what would be the impact of the coronavirus and we look at that in terms of first order effect and then second and third order effects and by that I mean to say the first order effects is actually on the physical health and safety of individuals but we don't want to miss out on what are the second and third order effects what effects the political dynamics, what effects overall security what effects the economic situation and so there's lots of elements to understanding how the coronavirus impacts each country and we know that it impacts each country differently and so as we have seen in terms of both in terms of how it impacts the number of people who become ill the number of people who are able to get healthcare and the number of people who have actually died from the coronavirus and then we see that it also impacts then how it affects individual freedoms within countries we see that it has had an impact on the ability to have freedom of expression freedom of assembly, freedom to demonstrate so we see that it has that kind of effect it also has impact on food security and in addition to unemployment and the whole basic social contract between the government and the people itself has been impacted by all of these kind of dynamics by the coronavirus and in many cases these it has exacerbated already difficult situations to begin with even those conditions that were there prior to the coronavirus so it is also a moment then where this is where we as peace builders have been trying to grapple with these issues and in this sense there has been a lot of elements where peace builders have been trying to deal with the fragility of the individual states and it is hoped that an outcome from today's meeting will be that we will have a better understanding about what the peace builders have been doing to try to grapple with the effects the first, the second, the third order effects of the coronavirus so I'm really looking forward to hearing the discussion today and getting updated on what has been happening and how better we can deal with the coronavirus and going into the future so again I want to thank our partners who helped bring this together thank you all of you who have joined us today and now I'm going to turn it over to Shareen for her open remarks from ODI Shareen yes, thank you Mike just to introduce Shareen so the second speaker she is Dr. Shareen Trabosy-McCarty and she is a senior researcher she is more than senior she is a senior research follower in ODI and she has a prestigious career in research on conflict and humanitarian policies and security and she worked on different pieces and many research projects in Africa and globally are honored because Shareen is a partner to USIP in more than one initiative and USIP has benefited a lot from the experience and the input provided and presented by Shareen so thank you Shareen for everything not just for this event thank you Eli thank you Michael and I thank all speakers and audience at USIP and as Dr. Eli said we are partners for years now it's not the first time and I'm very pleased for this opportunity and I'm looking forward to discussing this important issue on behalf of ODI I would like to express condolences to the victims of Beirut explosion and I hope a speedy recovery to the victims and the casualties it's a real disaster and if it reflects anything it does reflect the scale of the crisis the whole region is going through and I think it all boils down to peace peace efforts local peace endeavors and the impact of Corona virus on these endeavors these crises are the result of the vulnerable state and also the anger the wrath of citizens just as we are seeing now in Lebanon and also weakness from the international community there are many there is a lot of assistance provided by the international community but we are wondering what is the impact of this assistance on the long term and is there going to be real support on the long term for Lebanon not just Lebanon here but many countries in the region which are in a dire situation because of the Corona virus in addition to other reasons for the crisis of course so in ODI we launched an initiative targeting the Mediterranean region and we are calling for thinking about power balance in the region we have many contradictions many congruencies in the region many crises but also many opportunities economic, cultural and other diverse opportunities and through this initiative we want to rethink about the relationship between western countries and Mediterranean countries and use this as opportunity as a platform for a new vision a new perspective to the Mediterranean a new lens to the Mediterranean actually whether through research through rethinking the international security global security and also rethinking peace locally and globally rethinking economic growth and development and also focusing on the grassroots aspiration and not just a top down priority setting so we hope that we will learn from the deficiencies and failures of the past and translate that into viable policies and the objective behind this initiative is to restore trust and legitimacy between international organizations and grassroots organizations and communities by shedding more light on voices stemming from the communities themselves and this is just the beginning and I would like to thank Ili and USIP for their support and belief in this initiative and we are looking forward to more collaboration and to hearing from all of you thank you go ahead Ili thank you Shareen without further ado I move on directly to the third speaker Mr. Ahmed Abdul Wahad from Egypt in addition to being the partner of USIP he is also he has also an office he is the head of the organization working in Egypt and he has a lot of experience in civil society activity and in local governance he worked with local, regional and international organizations and he will tell us now give us more information about his experience on peace building and how the coronavirus is affecting peace building efforts thank you Ili I thank Mike Shareen and all other speakers let me thank USIP and ODI for the opportunity presented I agree and I conquer with Shareen in expressing condolences to the victims in Lebanon and all victims in the Mina region and around the world they are actually innocents but they are paying the cost the cost of something they are not they are not responsible for if I will talk about the repercussions and the implications I would like to focus on the the talks and negotiations that are taking place in Egypt about the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam I think this is a very hot issue recurrent issue that is considered the top priority for the political leadership in Egypt and for the entire Egyptian population in general we are talking about an issue that pertains to water with the security of a whole country of 100 million population we are talking about an economic social and security priority or issue and we noticed that the negotiations and the whole process has been affected by the corona virus and the outbreak all all the phases and all the talks took place virtually as conference calls and to what extent does this have an impact on the trajectory and on the mechanisms of negotiate I don't think it has an impact because of the political leadership and thanks to the support of the grassroots communities in Egypt the political leadership think that this is a matter of top priority for the nation and there is a campaign at the level of the country, at the level of the continent and globally and that has been very clear in the African summit lately where there was an agreement that the dam couldn't be filled unless there is a binding agreement and Egypt was very interested and keen on having an assembly on discussing this matter this is one of the details that is very important if we want to discuss the repercussions of the pandemic on the politics of the nation what we notice also is that there is a complete and absolute community support for the trajectory or the priorities of the political leadership and there is a trust mutual trust on the management of this issue the second detail or idea I want to talk about is the impact on the economic life and livelihood of the Egyptian population those who have low income and those who work on daily basis have been affected in a very dire way and it crippled their economic revenues we talk about Egypt and the social the new concept of social distancing and physical distancing has been very tricky and hard to implement in Egypt in general if we want to shed light on the extent to which the impact was clear and obvious on peace building efforts and on social harmony I can say that the impact was not very remarkable we don't see that there is a real shift or real change when it comes to the peace talks taking place internally, locally or externally Eli the floor is yours thank you Ahmed now I will move to Dr. Taraq Ghazal who is also one of our partners in the Tunisian network of facilitators and he is also the manager of an organization FHI manager of the office in the south Taraq has more experience much more than that he has been working on issues pertaining to violence to conflict and youth engagement and he worked with many organizations and on many projects and through his work in the Tunisian network of facilitators he was a key partner in a dialogue initiative that was implemented in Medinín in the south of Tunisia and the objective of that was to de-escalate the situation between youth and security officials and the security agency of police in Medinín and this dialogue led to a mechanism of communication and conflict resolution between the two parties or sides thank you Taraq for this work and the floor is yours thank you Eli I thank you SIP for this opportunity I concur with the previous speakers and I express my condolences to the victims of the pandemic and also unfortunately the victims of the explosion that took place in Beirut Port all my heartfelt condolences to the people of Lebanon which is dear to my heart and to all Tunisians because we have longstanding historic ties with Lebanon though it's being said that the founder of cartridge is from Lebanon and this shows that we have ties that are deeply rooted in the past in my opinion COVID-19 crisis has has always been an opportunity for us as people working on peace building as researchers also to to measure and to understand the dynamics that resulted or that are born through this crisis and I would like to talk about the community resilience in Tunisia I take the Tunisian community as an example here and of course resilience is being defined as the ability of individuals or societies anywhere in the world to adapt to cope with the crisis and to recover from that crisis and this resilience can go through three main phases expecting and anticipating the crisis reducing its impact and third and coping to it without compromising development adapting and expecting the implications cannot be an individual endeavor it's collective excellence and this sends us to the importance of coordination and harmonization between the different parties to reinforce the resilience of a community and I would like to talk about the pandemic or COVID-19 which created a new sort of crisis sanitary or health crisis in Tunisia the crisis erupted with media focus on the matter and we the terminology used was a war like a belligerent jargon or discourse the minister became a general and the doctors became officers and people there are people on the front line that is liable or prone to being sick these terms these military terms used in the past against terrorism and in the past were pretext to compromise freedoms and liberties and here what it compromise is the right to have access to health and also to economic and social opportunities so the fear was to use this war against coronavirus to compromise freedoms and liberties and rights to have access to health for example this created the sort of panic and suspicion an aura of laziness and this led to dire issues in the Tunisian hospitals Tunisian hospitals lack a lot of equipment and a lot of resources and we don't have a clear strategy on how to respond to such large scale pandemic so in addition to that it was a socio-economic crisis as Mr. Ahmad said many Tunisians lost their jobs coupled with that many indicators that a potential conflict may erupt here or there so it was essential and it was necessary that many organization adapted and adjusted their activities to the new reality and to supporting the state effort in this sense I give you an example we talked about the Tunisian network of facilitators it was actually a dialogue initiative and here of course it was in principle between the youth and security or the police agencies or authorities and also to try to de-escalate the situation and the tension between both parties these unofficial or non-official networks and channels work together to provide disinfection kits to police officers and police staff and second or more than that and they worked together on resolving the issues in the hospital of Medin the local hospital of Medin because they expected due to the lack of equipment and medical resources there will be problems to have access to health and to the services medical services so we thank USIP here because we worked together to provide as much as possible medical kits and equipment to de-escalate the situation and to meet the needs of the citizens and there was a coordination between youth and police in order to send a very positive message to the community in Gafsa or similarly to that our youth worked on organizing the queues in front of banks and posts and of course people were clamored in front of banks and in front of postal offices so our network and our youth worked on organizing the queues and working on sensitization and awareness which is raising I will talk also about the project I'm working on with FHI 360 which is about Tunisia Resilience and Community Empowerment it brings together different interveners and different parties locally and regionally and we worked with all authorities in order to identify the needs and we responded with distribution of food and also disinfecting streets and facilities in order to support the effort of the state in conclusion there is coordination I can safely say but there are different pieces and ability to respond that society organizations and communities are quicker in their response quicker than the state and when we notice that the state is following up or accompanying society this can be good in some aspects but it's dire in certain other aspects and we can follow the discussion later in the Q&A session finally I want to say that the pandemic is still pervasive in Tunisia we are just evaluating the first phase of it and we hope that we will overcome the pandemic once and for all thank you thank you Dr. Tarek last speakers before opening the floor for the Q&A Mr. Ahmed Bebas maybe you don't know Ahmed personally but you know his organization for awareness raising and it's a very famous organization in Libya they have been working from 2013 on projects pertaining to sensitization and awareness raising using media they also work on research and peace building and dialogue organization and we have been happy in the USIP to partner with the MUNCAN organization on more than one activity and one project and last or chief among which is the dialogue that was held during the corona outbreak and our team continued with this dialogue process and it led to an agreement for us and for MUNCAN it's considered to be a great achievement in such dire circumstances on the field Ahmed and the team were or played a key role in reaching this excellent result I would like to thank you Ahmed once again for this fruitful collaboration and for the team working in very difficult situation and the floor is yours thank you Ali for this very excellent introduction I am humbled by your words I am Ahmed Bibar CEO of MUNCAN based in Tripoli I will talk about the regional and then local aspects originally speaking corona virus created new channels of interventions in the Libyan conflict for example we noticed the Russian intervention growing more and more with selling more arms and weapons and also settling scores international scores within Libya for example Turkey Egypt, Qatar Russia, USA France that's regionally speaking what's happening with the international intervention in Libya locally the pandemic outbreak took place with the war it did not really impact the war it actually exacerbated the war negatively but there are some positive opportunities actually because the clashes in Tripoli made the pandemic outbreak slower and slower in Libya because people cannot travel cannot move freely also the emergency measures also reduced or curb the monitoring of money disbursement and financial disbursement for responding to the corona pandemic and how to make communities more resilient with regard to the new situation now people are protesting and are fed up with the situation that's why we are seeing many peaceful nonviolent protests and activities and this shows that the people are jaded with the corruption for example what's happening with the electricity company now with the change of the management what we are seeing in Libya during the nine last years is an increase or pervasive increase in corruption accompanied by widespread of malicious but it's the first time after Gaddafi's fall to have all the population rise against one entity which is the corrupt government citizens in general these malicious or the revolutionaries who rose against after are against the military they don't they don't see in Benghazi the model they want to follow and the reaction from that side is that of course these people are living or acting in total lawlessness but in the same time some ministers within the GNA are rising against corruption and also we are seeing meetings lately focusing on corruption mainly with the disbursement of subsidies and money for the corona virus in my opinion personally stabilization in Libya and peace building goes or depends on fighting corruption also municipal authorities acted differently with regard to the pandemic some municipalities implemented the resolutions the GNA for example the partial curfew and also the suspension of certain commercial activities but in some other activity some other municipalities actually the municipal authority couldn't implement the resolutions and decisions of the GNA notably in the south and in the west mountain we saw how we noticed that municipalities and local authorities were united in their call to provide or to provide the budgeting the necessary budgeting on managing and responding to the corona virus in Tripoli what was what was positive is that certain business men provided support to the medical efforts like providing quarantine facilities and necessary equipment to the hospital so it has created a new cohesion and we have been lacking that in the last years in Libya society is not that strong and powerful there is a limited number of society organizations and very few of them adapted and reacted to the new situation and continued their work taken into consideration that they had to provide also hygiene kits disinfection equipment and so on and so forth in some organizations which adapted to the new situation to the pandemic they provided online learning courses online training to help students which stayed at home because of the suspension of schools we also worked with some teachers virtually on providing online courses to pupils and some organizations like UNDP are also continuing their trainings and training program in general some organizations also worked on de-escalating the situation they worked on developing new strategies to alleviate the difficulties and the repercussions of the coronavirus new methods of distribution of food and assistance another organization ITS equipped in the communication center to receive complaints and questions from the citizens for example on issues pertaining to the corona pandemic also other organizations worked with with American organizations medical organizations on exchange of expertise and experience and this experience has been highly beneficial and fruitful to the medical doctors in Libya and IOM currently working with its partners on providing online courses on peace building how to target youth in order to enlarge the circle of peace builders at the same time we noticed that there is some sort of tension between civil society organization and the government mainly due to the governmental bureaucracy and the suspicion of government with regard to the activities of these civil society organizations and their thinking is that they are working with international intelligence agencies it's like the conspiracy theory they don't understand where they come from and when these organizations provide support or provide funding to national agencies or facilities they ask them why are you providing and in exchange of what and this suspicion and the easiness is still persisting and continuing socially speaking social gatherings have been prohibited like in weddings funerals and so on and so forth but this hasn't been implemented very rigorously and the cases and the new cases outbreak has been the result of weddings being held and funerals also economically and socially the government reduced the salaries of employees or led to the anger and the of course this created an economic crisis and the government is complaining now that they don't have enough money to do the current expenditures to cover the current expenditures this is in summary what's going on thank you I thank all the audience who are already starting to ask questions we have seven or eight questions that are very important and worthy of responding to شرين would like to add something about Libya and the Korean would like to thank all speakers I would like to jump on one important point raised by Ahmed by the speaker from Tunisia and by Libya also at the international level they are focusing more on the implications of the pandemic on peace and conflict but alongside this focus we need to describe the situation where the coronavirus has has broken out for example in Libya there is conflict between warring parties and smaller conflicts in the form of terrorist groups like in Egypt and Tunisia so the point I wanted to further clarify is the need and the necessity to provide an explanation of the political and the military situation in the country in order to better understand the implication of the pandemic on that and regarding these variables or aspects it's clear whether in Libya or in other north African countries there is institutional vulnerability and failure and this has a dire repercussion and implication on the ability to respond and to be resilient and as Mr. Ahmed from Libya said there are different aspects pertaining to governmental corruption and it's playing a key role in destabilization and in compromising trust between citizens and the government and I remember that on Facebook I saw that someone from Lebanon was saying that we need to be treated as peoples and not as states that assistance needs to go to citizens and to peoples and not to states providing assistance to states has become obsolete as an idea and we have to rethink of a new balance a new formula that can be better welcomed by the communities while also keeping the same or keeping the relationship with the government because it is a necessity and that's a key question that is persistent in my opinion how can we reach the government or how do we keep interacting with the governments while reaching the peoples in a better way and the second issue pertains to the militia groups the armed groups which has claimed authority and power so how can we handle these groups which are unofficial authorities in the status quo and how can we deal with the absence of trust between the government and the grassroots and here I would like to mention one important issue faced by international organizations UN and so on and so forth which is how can we strike a balance between the general interest or the public interest or the state interest and on the other side the ethical and the need to provide assistance and help to these afflicted peoples and who have a dire humanitarian needs like what's happening in Lebanon now and the result of all of that this idea is open for discussion with the speakers as well as with the audience maybe we can't fix it today but it's food for thought regarding peace building programs international peace building programs and strategies it's high time to restructure the idea of peace building and to look for that from peoples perspective not from state perspective and many many strategies many research pieces elucidated that it needs to be bottom up and not top down arrow or process without not taking too much time I will conclude by saying that change should happen at the level of strategies and also at the language used the discourse used in peace building and the need to have more appropriate language and discourse to the economic and social context it shouldn't be a globalized vision or a westernized vision and perspective that's the question how to compromise with all of that maybe in the Q&A session we'll have more time to discuss all of this I'll ask some of the questions we received in the chat room the first question is targeting or is with a targeting Mike and also Shareen so Mike the first question about humanitarian assistance and more specifically on the coordination of humanitarian assistance and whether there are any efforts at the international level to improve the coordination of humanitarian assistance while learning from the pandemic so the Mike is yours and then see what Shareen has to say about it because I know it's part of her interest as well I mean I think we are seeing some real efforts trying to improve the humanitarian efforts but we've also I think have seen how the efforts have been challenged in part by way of the decentralization that has been occurring within the international humanitarian community this is where leadership is really needed to step up to help guide the humanitarian efforts is that the coronavirus comes on top of many crises that have been occurring throughout the region already what has been occurring in Syria the crisis in Lebanon on top of the dire situation that happened yesterday with the explosions but we see where people are seeing that there is a strong need for humanitarian assistance but again providing that that assistance in the middle of conflicts has been incredibly challenging particularly as I said as we have witnessed that in Syria particularly in gaining assets into Syria but for other places of course there's a problem where because coronavirus has been a pandemic it is worldwide the countries have turned inward to try to deal with the problems themselves and so in the United States for example as the U.S. has been trying to grapple with the coronavirus including its economic impact and the U.S. Congress has been providing funding to help shore up the economy to get it through the coronavirus part of that has been a difficult time for legislators to include money for overseas assistance but we have seen that that there have been a number of champions who have been trying to provide as I said money more for the humanitarian assistance it's all occurring at a very taxing time at a time when the systems are being really tried to see how well they can cope with this so and as peace builders you know there's you have this kind of it was interesting I guess when you look at what Tariq was talking about where you have the elements that should be going for humanitarian assistance with the health crisis but it has a knock on effect as you were describing in terms of helping to build trust back between the government and the people at the same time so there's maybe this is what Shireen is talking about in terms of how we think about our terms of discourse in terms of it's not just you can't just look at things in particular grooves or silos that over here is humanitarian assistance over here is peace building assistance that there seems to be now more of a marrying that needs to take place between them and I would just finish there by just talking about saying that one of the big casualties of the pandemic has been this issue of trust and it has really tried individual countries and so on and I think that key part of our agenda will be how to weave back together and make stronger a social compact between the governance and the civil society Thank you Mike Shireen would you like to add anything on humanitarian assistance in my opinion the coronavirus pandemic is a real test to the international community and to the region to our region and in this test I don't think that any of the international institutions or parties can say that they are victorious or successful and it's an opportunity for learning actually we have seen many mistakes and these mistakes cost lives actually and I think two details are very paramount the first one is coordination between the relief organizations and the countries like Yemen where we focus our research the coordination is very weak between the relief and assistance organizations they don't work together unfortunately and the absence of coordination between these organizations is one problem but the bigger problem is that they don't have any relationship with the grassroots organizations and they are not using the same language they are not coordinating and they are unaware of the power dynamics locally and as a result to that as a result to the lack of coordination I can say that these mistakes are now opportunity for learning for the future not just for the relief organization but also development organization and we have a larger scope in order to provide a response to humanitarian crisis thank you Shareen there are many questions about Libya and I would like to give Ahmed an opportunity to respond to these tough questions but before that there are two aspects that I deem very important one the implication by civil society in some countries and the second question is about the implication the impact of the corona virus on women so the to what extent women were affected by the pandemic we will cover these two questions and then we will move to Libya because we have plurality of questions about Libya so let's start with a civil society space in the region Shareen in your opinion how how can we perceive the impact of the pandemic on civil society regarding civil society and I don't see this as a inextricably linked to the corona virus but the tightening the tightening measures and society has been there even before the pandemic and the pandemic now has become yet another reason for the tightening of measures for the tighter spaces provided for the society organizations yet at the same time in some other countries like Yemen civil society is playing a paramount role in responding to corona virus and in building social cohesion and community response yet despite all of this society momentum there are certain problems like access to finance access to funding whether from the international community or from local organizations there is lack of financing and inability to respond and to interact with other organizations working in the region and I think the problem lies in the international organizations which have to get closer and provide more and to get closer to the society and to the local civil society let's go back to the question we have to assess civil society depending on the state some countries civil society cannot cope and in some other countries the tightening is not as noticeable but there are other challenges when it comes to financing and to resources and it's an opportunity to the international community to intervene and to provide more support and gain more legitimacy can you respond or reply to the question regarding the impact of the pandemic on women Ahmed you wanted also to add or to jump on the previous points so go ahead thank you Dr. Ali and I thank speakers and I thank Shereen Shereen talked about international support mechanism locally and I think from the experience we are seeing on the ground on the field there is a growing demand that we are treated as peoples and not as states I think theoretically this is very ideal but implementing that on the ground is very unlikely to reach all targeted categories so the international community is providing funding officially through the government or through the NGOs but I think there are two issues here how do we use or how do we capitalize on the funding provided I'm not talking about Egypt exclusively but I'm talking about the whole Bina region now and I think that we are not planning collaboratively and collectively and that's a big issue we are not seeing planning between society sector and governmental authorities even if there are certain attempts they are very limited and our colleague from Libya talked about a very important point to what extent society can provide support because there are always suspicion and mistrust to where this funding is coming and it always down to trust building I think society organizations couldn't build trust or with the grass root communities they did not gain the trust of the communities of their targeted categories or targeted beneficiaries and at the same time our society organizations did not play filling the gap between what the people what the citizens need and what the country what the state will be implementing and will be developing so society sector is being perceived as sector that needs to focus on relief work on charity and so on and throughout the last 5 years we are seeing this in the meaner region and many international organizations are trying to support civil society to lead or to to get engaged into policies, policy development and participatory planning and that's happening in countries where decentralization is being implemented and the second point pertains to the current applications you talked about Lebanon and one of the projects I'm leading now is the research on society organizations in Lebanon and how they are Yemen sorry not Lebanon and how they are interacting with the coronavirus pandemic and through a war from a long time ago so the humanitarian assistance sector is very strong some of the the budget of some organizations is more than 28 million dollars so UN also is holding cluster meetings on weekly and monthly basis with them but there are yet two main issues corruption that is rife and our colleagues from Tunisia and Libya talked about it and corruption is inextricably linked to what extent can regulations and laws organize civil society work and community activities and how are they going to be followed up and regulated by the government that's a key point and if one of the think tank wants to focus more and look in depth into the participatory method of developing laws and you still haven't answered the question we are talking about women now please let me give you or tell you a strange anecdote I've heard recently many are saying that the corona virus have led to a very central change at the level of the family the father now is discovering his family his children again because of the obligation to stay at home and that's an opportunity for fathers for men to stay more in their homes and with their children but it also there is another facet because we have seen a growing rate of violence household violence we also perceived a growing rate of complaints from women about the family conjugal violence or household violence or husband let me tell you also about the support provided by the international community women have lost a lot of the social space they enjoyed and that had a negative implication on the services provided directly to women previously through the meetings held in the social centers the mechanisms of these activities have changed now like virtual platforms like zoom but we are talking about countries or places where technology is not available already available and these women maybe cannot use the technology as we expect others to do and this can be tricky with the most vulnerable and most vulnerable communities also شرين would you like to add something you would like to say that violence against women has grown due to the the outbreak of the pandemic and people having to stay at home more but that's not the only negative repercussion on women most of those working in hospitals are women prone to the pandemic itself and if one of the family members is in the woman has to stay home to take care of the son or the daughter or the husband so studies conducted recently on the impact of the corona pandemic on the Arab world have shown that the impact on women has been negative and in some other examples I can say it is positive but the rule of women has been more paramount and more visible in their communities and let me go back to Yemen there are regions which has been more reserved when it comes to women engagement and women's role in society but now this has changed and women are playing a more important role and are giving more space outside in the public sphere so this can be considered a positive impact and we can see here and there a positive light out of the tunnel and ultimately the research conducted we shouldn't focus exclusively on figures or numbers because many women who are subject to violence do not complain do not speak up and they stay at home and they bear their destiny however more studies focused on the status of women and the impact on women from a women perspective and from the experience of women themselves in the Arab world not just through statistics and figures but of course this does not mean that statistics are of no importance some statistics of course speak up themselves and in Tunisia we have 4,000 cases of women that have been registered in which within a period of within a period of 2 months actually the 2 months of quarantine actually of confinement let's say this is a very important topic for me and conquer with Ahmed and Shireen because in other countries it's not only violence against women but also discrimination when it comes to quarantine and some women some quarantined women in some places were not provided treatment we have seen this in certain places in Iraq actually some tribes refused to have their women quarantined in quarantine centers and they demanded that they stay at home and that's very dangerous also access to treatment and to health services has been a topic of discrimination so women have been impacted negatively from more than one aspect we are running out of time and let's now shift to Libya because we have many questions about Libya we have 2 questions and then we'll see if we have time for more questions the first question despite all the efforts exerted in Libya on peace building and the escalation we are seeing that the crisis is growing and exacerbating so one of the questions we have what's the impact of these efforts if we are seeing that the crisis is growing and the conflict is exacerbating you are a peace builder on the field how do you see the balance between or the incongruity between the effort exerted and the absence of a result there are 2 types of conflicts there is a Libyan-Libyan conflict and the international conflict the internal conflict can be considered a stratification of previous regimes of discrimination against certain tribes and regions so in general we can consider that it stems from local and internal reasons like the ownership of land the Gedefi regime took and truly took the land of all citizens and after the revolution people started reclaiming their lands and their homes so that was one of the trigger or one of the biggest trigger of the conflict in addition to tribal land for example this land is famously known to be the ownership of that tribe but then another tribe comes and claims the ownership from before Gedefi's regime so it's actually a dilemma we are supposed to go to the state to redeem for these problems but we don't have a state most of the internal conflicts are related to a legal framework the governmental policies or because of corruption and just or unfair distribution of wealth that's why we need to build strong municipalities because each region has different needs and that's why decentralization is key to resolving the conflict and developing a peaceful atmosphere and of course the escalation of the armed conflict and most of the Libyans are fed up are jaded with the armed conflict and sometimes you see strange news for example the GNA reclaims control of five towns in one day that's proof that the Libyan citizen is fed up with fighting and with the armed conflict they just aspire for peace and prosperity and services and electricity that's the top priority for citizens but corruption is impeding all of this oil rich state but still we have problems that we don't see in very poor countries we see that the minister is talking about combat and corruption but that's something new they are talking about a war against corruption and that's a good signal actually thank you regarding the international or global conflict we are seeing that there is an agreement between Turkey and Russia on the conflict in Libya that's actually absurd and laughable and it's like as if we Libyans we don't have anything to do with this unfortunately the Libyan conflict has turned into a third war there are two questions please let's try to answer them before we run out of time and we know that in Libya there is polarization between opponents of the GNA or the GNA team party and the opponents of Haftar and his circles so is there a space for a third party or a third choice in Libya if you are not with the GNA or with Haftar can you live in Libya, can you think can you have a role to play this party should not write about the two other parties or maybe you should stay out of Libya and Tripoli we have more freedoms than in the other region and we can criticize the GNA and we can protest there are some violations of press freedom for example but we resist that and we resolved it these habits die hard actually because it's been there for more than 40 years and now we are trying to change everything in just 9 years so things will be tough actually we consider that we have more freedom and liberties in the western region in Tripoli that is but the solution perceived by Libyans now is election constitutional referendum and elections and getting rid of all the political actors we have now and that's the main solution perceived by everyone now we are listening to you but we in order to have fair elections we have to provide the propitious environment the conducive atmosphere for that we can't have the eastern region under the control of one party and the western region under the control of the opponent and then aspire to have fair elections and maybe with fair elections we can aspire to recover and to overcome this crisis Mike of the sanctions on the response to the pandemic how the international sanctions on some countries have affected the ability of the international community to deliver on the response to the pandemic the pandemic has been interesting as a phenomenon and I think that almost everywhere people have been taking it incrementally hoping that that the whole thing will go away in the next month and now people are beginning to grapple that this is a long term issue particularly until we have a a vaccine that is readily available so I think that people so it's been easy in this situation for people to say let's just keep the sanctions on which are done for political reasons but they're not necessarily taking into account yet how those sanctions interfere with the ability for humanitarian agencies to get into countries to help them deal with the coronavirus so so again I think that there's been just a tremendous lag with the international community when it comes to thinking about sanctions and how they have had impact on humanitarian elements and how to place the humanitarian elements as a top priority to say that we have to deal with that we have to deal with the health crisis we have to deal with the food crisis we have to deal with the economic crisis of these places if we are going to get our arms around and deal with the pandemic itself so there has not been a lot of action to bring sanctions off if I might just take also one moment here to have one more thing when there's been a number of issues that have been raised on gender and so on I would highlight for people if they haven't seen it would be to go to the UN Secretary General's speech that he gave as the Mandela lecture on July 18 when he talked about basically that not only is there a health pandemic but an inequality pandemic that the health pandemic has exposed even more all the inequalities and one of those key inequalities is that of gender but there's many other inequalities that are being exposed by this and so he kind of pulled all that together in his speech and it's really worth reading if you haven't all seen it so I highly recommend that the last question not because we don't have questions anymore but we still have only four minutes Dr. Taraq in Tunisia before the pandemic we have seen that we were seeing the international community setting strategy and the plan for Tunisia for the economic recovery and the resuscitation there were certain pillars the international community was focusing upon in order to support Tunisia economically after the pandemic do you think that the same pillars will remain or is there going to be a change or new priorities for example by the international community and the Tunisian government I will start by talking about an example and we worked in Tunisia on decentralization and municipalities and their role on local governance but the surprise with the pandemic is that the work has been central predominantly and in the ministry and municipalities were not the ones setting the plans they had to refer to the minister in order to consult with them and then to get the orders and I think that this is a blow even though small blow but it is considered a blow to decentralization and to local governance in Tunisia and the crisis has shown that there are many deficiencies and shortcomings and decentralization and the implementation of decentralization in dire crisis like the one we are going through now because we need to have financial and logistic resources and that's something non-existent in Tunisia because municipalities are waiting for support and for everything actually from the center and from the ministries so I think there is more work to do locally to reinforce and develop the capacities of municipalities regionally and locally to be able to handle such situation that's the top priority and another priority is trust building between all parties we have to work more not just in towns and cities we have to go to neighborhoods to villages to target everyone and I link or I conquer with Shaleen a new perspective of peace building and a new lens bottom-up lens thank you before ending this event do you want to say something I think I have only one minute and I would like to use it to thank all speakers and the audience it has been a great opportunity to rethink many of the methods and mechanisms we are using in peace building in different regions and countries and I hope this is an opportunity and a first opportunity of many opportunities of collaboration between USIP and ODI and we will get to have other opportunities of fruitful discussion before concluding I will use the last minute to tell you that many questions haven't been replied to unfortunately but they will be used in our publication and in the future research we will be conducting so don't worry your input will be taken into account and all speakers expressed condolences and sympathy with Lebanon and I thank you personally speaking and beyond that when we go through such crises in the region we sense that there is a high level of sympathy and solidarity despite the lack of resources in many countries we have seen a spontaneous movement to support Lebanon even from Tunisia which is going through a crisis itself the international government is sending assistance and support to Lebanon and that's a very good as a beacon of hope in the region and I would like to thank finally ODI, Shareen, Robert and the SIP team so here Fatma and other colleagues for this organization and as I said we will have a publication issued in the aftermath and the future event will be focusing on the MENA region and I hope we will have such prestigious speakers and thank you I would like to thank Mike thank you for your time I would like to thank our interpreter Shareef for the interpretation and I would like to thank all speakers for their valuable input and hope to see you very soon thank you