 and the ability to stay safe are not the same for all. Without protective actions based on a proper understanding of the context, women, children, persons with disabilities, the elderly and other minority groups are often particularly in danger of being impacted, risking the risk of being affected. And this is a very important point. And particularly in danger of being impacted, risking, displacement, trafficking, economic hardship among others. We know that as protection actors, we must see ourselves as front and center in terms of understanding how climate change and disasters are shaping the realities of those we work with and the related responses needed to strengthen rights and advanced solutions in accordance with international law. It's important that we, as a sector, as humanitarian professionals, as protection personnel, are able to play our part proactively, not just reactively, and in advance in responding to the challenges faced and in ensuring that protection concerns are recognized and appropriately dealt with. Here we know that this guidance around preparedness actions in the context of climate change and disasters is about starting that process now. We know the cycles repeat themselves in many contexts. We know that the awareness and the interplay between climate and humanitarian crises, whether it be conflict, violence, are all interrelated in that awareness level, the planning, the application of our responses and catering them to those types of issues is needed now, not just for today, but also for tomorrow. This will help us translate and concretize our approaches, particularly in terms of a no-regrets basis as well. From June to December of 2021, the Global Protection Cluster consulted field protection clusters on their preparedness efforts in the context of climate change and disasters. Following these consultations, guidance on climate change and disasters in an accompanying toolkit were produced and shared. These documents are intended to supplement and contribute to other guidance related to disaster response and risk reduction by outlining key protection concerns and issues. Today, in this room and also across the world for all those participating online, we intend to briefly outline the scope and context of the guidance and toolkit. We'll then have some interventions from two of our colleagues based in Mozambique and South Sudan who will outline challenges and issues faced in their context and how they and the wider humanitarian team have responded to them. We'll then have time for a discussion among those who are with us in the room and also, again, thanks to all those joining us online. So without further ado, I will hand it back to Nancy for facilitation. Thank you. Thanks, Sam, so much for those opening words. And now I'd like to introduce our next speaker, Graham Carrington is our consultant with the GPC, the Global Protection Cluster. He's worked with other colleagues in the GPC to hold consultations about and then develop our guidance and toolkit on protection preparedness in the context of climate change and disasters. He's also been involved in our roll out in the region, both in East Africa and also recently in the Middle East. With an original background in public health, he has worked in both humanitarian assistance and development for over 20 years, including on issues related to disaster preparedness in the Caribbean and issues related to drought conflict response and recovery in East Africa in particular. So over to you, Graham. Thanks. Yes, thank you Nancy and good afternoon or evening wherever people are. So I'm going to just spend a few minutes going through what I'm going to talk about a little bit is what's in the guidance, copies of which have circulated to people here but which are available online and we'll put the link up in the chat. So start off really just to think, well, climate change and disasters. Next slide, please. Sorry. You know, what are the protection impacts and concerns within the guidance? We've addressed this in a number of ways. We started our next slide, please. We started with definitions and just to I'm not going to read all of them out just to go through them. I think we'll recognize that defining things. We all think it's obvious, but sometimes there is a need to make sure we're speaking a common language. So within the guidance, the definition for climate change that we've used is the one that's used by the UN framework and the Convention on Climate Change. You know, and it's quite important to state that because climate change in other contexts can mean all sorts of different things. And then obviously when we start talking about natural hazards, we've spoken about a hazard and there's been there's a lot of debate when we were developing the guidance about at what point we should or shouldn't call a natural hazard a natural disaster with quite a lot of people unhappy with increasingly unhappy with the term natural disaster. So we've defined hazard, you know, as a process of phenomenon that can cause a lot of life or injury. But often is, you know, if it does so it's a failure in response. It's a failure to prepare or failure to respond. Although I think we can all agree that some events, for example, the Indian Ocean tsunami, whatever would have been done preparedness, you know, there would have been terrible impacts. But you know, this discussion around a hazard and a disaster are quite complicated. Next slide, please. And through other guidance, we've used the definition of a disaster as the one defined by the UN Office of Disaster Risk Reduction as a serious disruption, et cetera. And I think that's, you know, that's quite an important one to use. And we recognize that there's an interaction with exposure to vulnerability and capacity. You know, and that's when we start talking about the disaster event. For protection, unsurprisingly, I think people would find we've used the Interagency Standing Committees definition for protection. So it is quite clear what we're talking about and, you know, it sort of is based within international human rights law, humanitarian law and refugee law as well, by definition. So that's the one we've used throughout the guidance in that context. Next slide, please. When I look to this, even though I've been kind of around humanitarian development work for many years, and I thought I kind of understood the impact of natural hazards and disasters, this is a graphic, and it's a bit old now, but it's taken from the IDMC's 2020 report. I was still very surprised by this. The blue circles basically represent the number of people that were impacted by what you might loosely call natural hazards, which became natural disasters, with a large number of them being weather-related events. They're the blue circles. The orange could have more conflicts than what we traditionally kind of think of in terms of complex emergencies. And in that period, out of 40.5 million new displacements, 30.7 million were related to non-conflict events, of which 30 million were weather-related. I was really surprised when I saw that. I think we have to note that possibly quite a lot of that displacement was temporary, was quite temporary in nature, because it may well have been to do with some of that. I think that year, in particular, there were some very large tropical cyclones, but it's still quite a shocking statistic, and I think it's a growing statistic, and it does highlight the growing challenge that I think we're faced with as we start looking at climate change-related events and issues. Next slide, please. For this other graphic, just to explain, I think we all know that interrelated factors exacerbate risk when we start looking at hazards, and this is taken from our World Bank, a particular World Bank report on small island states. But I think it shows, quite graphically, shows the important understandings that we need to have around the interaction between risk, vulnerability to a natural hazard, and also exposure. And then the sort of compounding factors where you've got issues related to poverty, you've got climate changes and accelerator, and then you've also got poorly planned development. And I think we can all think of examples of where those factors kind of working together exacerbate risk. We try to explore that in the guidance in a very practical way in terms of taking people through how to maybe think around some of those issues. Next slide, please. So let's just think through the protection concerns and issues, and maybe we'll put all of them up, Tim. Thank you. I think we know this, but it's important to remember, issues that we all deal with at the field level are multifaceted and complex. Hazards have got a very complex nature, and they often result in increased protection risks and compound existing vulnerabilities. So for example, somebody displaced due to drought, just take an example in Somalia, may well moving into town, moving into a town, may well then be living on marginal land, which becomes vulnerable, particularly vulnerable to floods when they occur. So I think we all know that kind of existing risk can compound vulnerabilities. So very often we are seeing, in a sense, the people that we usually see affected, we are seeing them particularly affected. So I think it's important to remember when we're looking at some of these issues, we rightly worry about the displaced, but perhaps we also, I think, also need to recognize that there's groups of people that sometimes cannot move for a variety of reasons. I mean, I think we can think about disability, people who are very elderly, but also maybe particular groups that can't move because of other tensions in a community, which mean that their options become very limited. So just even displacement, it may be a big problem for them. Increasingly we're seeing relationships with conflict and insecurity dynamics in many contexts, particularly of the Sahel again, where we're seeing people dropping out of livelihoods, for example, young men dropping out of pastoralist livelihoods or agricultural farming ones, being more vulnerable, arguably, more vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups, that creates its own dynamic and is a major risk. And I think the response to that is something we need to all be very aware of, but also the concerns we have about the response to that sometimes becoming over-securitized as well. And that's a challenge, I think, for both humanitarian and development actors. One of the things we do raise in the guidance is the issue around changing profiles of vulnerability. I mean, like I said, we are lucky in many cases of people that we normally think of as being vulnerable, having increased vulnerability, but in some cases there's new groups, new communities being affected, think of the Pacific Islands, they're perhaps groups being affected by climate change and people suffering tropical cyclones that we didn't see before and weren't at risk, and that's bringing dynamics. But also then just to say that, you know, throughout the guidance, we talk about the importance and the value of preparedness in terms of response to protection challenges and concerns. You know, there's things that can be done to mitigate and things that can be done to prepare for some events to make sure that some of the main protection risks that we see are not felt in the same way. Next slide, please. So just very quickly, I mean, some particularly mentioned this. So why guidance and what guidance? Next slide, please. The, you know, close to the, you know, felt that there was a need to write this particular guidance was, again, as we've mentioned, recognition of the growing challenges across all countries and regions. I think all the teams that are interacted with recognizing the problems and the challenges. It wasn't the intention to replicate all the very excellent guidance. There's lots of guidance, as you all know, particularly from some of our DRR colleagues who have done a lot of work. And, you know, I think even in our guidance, we flag to some of those other resources. There was a perceived need to do some very practical raising of profiles on issues related to protection, and we'll hear more from colleagues in a few minutes about that. Also, just to flag the, you know, the issues around the impact of rapid onset hazards are often highlighted, but perhaps, although perhaps increasingly we do, humanitarians have sometimes been a bit slower to recognize slow impact, slow impact issues. When we get an acute exacerbation of vulnerability and a drought, for example, I think that becomes something that requires a humanitarian response. But sometimes communities year on year, bit by bit, you know, traditionally are recognizing some of those kind of issues. Again, to flag understanding of context is key to understanding groups that may have protection needs. So again, throughout the guidance, we flag the importance of local partnerships and localization efforts and issues, recognizing that that's, you know, if we're going to have proper protection responses, it needs to be based on an exacerbation factor, the fact that these issues, you know, do tend to play on each other, and they are multiple. When we talk to groups about the guidance, it was seen as potentially important and useful, but one of the things that was fed back to us very clearly was the need for it to be practical and compact. So that's why what you find in front of you is not too difficult to read. It is deliberately simple and straightforward and quite a lot based on issues related to things like checklists or pointing people to checklists. Where they can sort of basically have issues to consider and to think about in that sense. Next slide, please. So just very quickly, the development process for the guidance is that we, when we did it, I mean, some of you, some of the online people certainly, some of you may have been consulted. We had a series of bilateral calls with people in over 14 countries, as well as at the global level. Some of those were sector specialists, some of our UNDRR colleagues and people from other agencies involved in DRR as well as protection specialists. We also set up a series of regional calls with the field protection clusters. I think we had probably over 100 people participating in those from the Pacific all the way across to Latin America through Africa and Asia. And obviously we did quite a lot of work on looking at background and documentation, country-level documents as well as some of the policy, some of the overarching policy frameworks related to both protection and DRR. Next slide, please. So what's in the guidance, as you'll see, as I said, we spent quite a bit of time looking at definitions, recognising that those are important so that people could speak a common language. We tried to balance overall scope versus detail and points of emphasis. The feedback we strongly got was the need for something to be concise, clear, not too long, and then focused on having a toolkit approach which people could dip into. So that's why we didn't make the scope too broad and we didn't make it too long. People particularly wanted to see context and the importance of context analysis. So we did throughout the guidance try to make use of examples, particular examples to illustrate points and within the toolkit you'll also find more country analysis and country examples. Issues around localisation and partnership were stressed to us, around the need to make sure that that was emphasised. We've translated the guidance so far, I think it's into Spanish and French as well as English but there have been calls to do more. I think there's always a balance to achieve there. I think we tried to make the toolkit something which most of the documents, for example, are online, they're all online, but most of them are deliberately put in Word or in a software which can be manipulated with the intention that the end user can use them to develop their own materials or their own course based in their own language or context. We highlight issues related to synergies with conflict issues and also the multipliers. We've also tried to stress the work across humanitarian peace development, nexus and the integration. I think we all see that and I think particularly with climate change that becomes very clear that there isn't kind of development, there can't be a development in humanitarian, there can't be walls, there have to be links and connectors. I think perhaps usefully, increasingly, some of the climate finance instruments which we're seeing developed are helping or at least in theory should help to bridge some of those divides, but we'll see. Next slide, please. I'm going to very quickly just flag the areas of focus which you'll find in the guidance, conscious of time, so I won't go through them all, but they're there to see. We do talk about the responsibility of the state, obviously to flag that as a clear issue, but also to flag to humanitarians the importance of being willing obviously in an appropriate context, being prepared to work with local partners and national governments. It's sometimes easier to do that in response to a natural hazard or shock than it might be in some of the conflict situations that we work with. And sometimes in doing so in an appropriate way, it can even maybe build bridges for other things to happen. I think we all know some of the wider examples of natural hazards have ended up being something which has led to discussions with actors that perhaps people find difficult to work with. We talk about the importance of context analysis and preparedness, and that's flagged in a number of ways, and again there's a series of checklists available in the toolkit related to that. The issue related to age, gender and diversity, there's a lot of colleagues working on those issues, and again we try to make links. Do no harm is stressed as you won't be surprised. It's widely used in both humanitarian and development programming. But I think it's primarily been often used in situations where conflict and security are key challenges. But it's also important to remember that do no harm in response to preparing for natural hazards is equally important. I think of some of the things I was once involved in around, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with, the importance of thinking about if you're going to have to create temporary shelters to think about all the issues related to that before they happen around how do you make sure that the people manning the shelters are appropriate people to do so? How do you make sure that women, children and other minorities are safe in such environments? You can think of lots of examples where that's been a quite significant problem. And then again we talk about work across the HPDN and we also go through a little bit about how people might try and establish priorities recognizing that that's a significant challenge but one that we all have to do including in response to these issues. So it's a quick tour through the guidance or a quick run through what people can expect to find. But I hope people, you know, people get the chance to look at it in more detail either here or online. And again we will put up the link to it and we'll talk about it later. I think we've already done it. Thank you, Tim. I'll hand back to Nancy. Thank you. Thank you so much, Graeme. Thanks for that overview of our guidance in the toolkit. Graeme has been an essential part of the work with the GPC on our guidance. So now I'm going to now give a quick introduction to Hugo Reichenberger. Hugo is a senior protection cluster coordinator in Mozambique. He's based in Maputo at the national level. He's been working closely with national authorities within Mozambique, especially the National Institute for Disaster Risk Reduction as well as other protection cluster partners. And OCHA to ensure protection is at the center of the cyclone and the rainy season response. The protection cluster in Mozambique has been actively supporting and developing a number of practical tools to ensure protection is mainstream during preparedness and response to the cyclone season, including protection-sensitive evacuation simulations, protection early warning messages, protection checklists to mitigate and reduce protection risks in evacuation centers. And Hugo has previously worked in Ukraine, Myanmar, Chad, Central African Republic, Bukina Faso, Algeria, Brazil, and in Geneva. So without further ado, over to you, Hugo. Thanks. Thank you very much, Nancy, for the introduction. Thank you very much, Graham and also Sam, which are opening remarks. So dear colleagues, welcome to Mozambique. Mozambique, as Sam was mentioning, disasters do compound protection risks. And of course, this is the case for Mozambique. I'm glad there's a map there over, and you can see the flag of Mozambique also on that map. Mozambique is actually very extremely vulnerable to climate shocks. It has a 2,430-kilometer coast. And unfortunately, most of the population is concentrated along that coast. And what we've been seeing in the last years, I think you've all heard of Cyclone Idai. And since Cyclone Idai, we've had cyclones hit the Mozambican coast on a yearly basis. So we mentioned, of course, Idai as a disaster in itself. It was a cyclone of historical catastrophic proportions for the African continent. And yes, Africa does get hit by cyclones. I often get that people are surprised by that. But suddenly Idai has been a disaster in that it welcomed a series of cyclones. It really was a start of us seeing cyclones on a yearly basis and no longer with the years of gaps between them. Maybe the next slide, Graham or Nancy. And you can click the next. So as I was saying, we have, of course, a country that is very, actually the previous slide. So very vulnerable to climate shocks. And what we've seen this year was a particularly strange and phenomenon, which was cyclone Freddie. It actually broke the record of the longest cyclone in history and all recorded history of cyclones with 35 days. And it actually hit Mozambique twice in 24th of February and the 11th of March. Very unfortunate for Freddie cyclone. It chose very vulnerable areas to make its first and its second landfall in Mozambican territory. We often refer to them as Freddie the first and Freddie the second in Mozambique. So even right now as we speak, we still have 1.1 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, 123,000 people in evacuation center and around 132,000 homes that have been hopefully are partially destroyed. So how have we supported as protection cluster? And I'm really looking here from the perspective of a coordinator of a protection cluster, right? I will also share with you the full plan in the text message as soon as I stop the presentation so that you can also appreciate the entirety of the plan. But I will focus on some of the examples on how we've ensured protection mainstreaming and integration within the preparedness phase. So I think key of course has been to work with the national authorities and the lead agency in Mozambique is the National Institute for Disaster Risk Management, the INGD from its Portuguese acronym. And INGD has really come a long way from Idai cyclone. They've learned a lot from that experience in 2019. What is really, what we've seen to be a gap in the previous responses in 2020, 2021 and last year, 2022 has been really that mainstreaming of protection, right? Graham was mentioning the importance of looking at persons with specific needs, persons with disabilities, those who cannot, do not have the luxury of fleeing, of displacing themselves to a safer area during cyclone. And this is what we've been trying to do together with the INGD. So one element of it, this of course is participating in their continuously planning processes, right? So we've at the provincial level, the most exposed provinces, we've reviewed the plans together with them with the INGD and found opportunities through participatory workshops to integrate elements of gender, of inclusion of persons with disabilities, AAP, and of course community engagement. At the national level, now at the more strategic level, we've actually signed the partnership through UNHCR, the cluster lead agency on providing capacity build to the INGD. And this is where the role of the cluster really plays an added value, right? Because we don't only bring our know-how as UNHCR, but as a coordinator, I'm able to bring then, for example, UNSF on issues of child protection, UNFPA on issues of GBV, Save the Children's Care, Oxfam, just to mention a few of the partners that have been supporting us on the ground. Strengthening local disaster reduction committee, so Mozambique has quite a very good network at the community level of these community level committees that prepare communities for disasters and especially in this context, cyclones. So what we've done was a pilot workshop last year in Sofala where we did evacuation simulations together with protection cluster partners. And we would pause the simulation as they were going and propose improvements in those simulations. For example, evacuations, how do you take into consideration person with disabilities on transmitting messages? How do you take into consideration persons that cannot hear, for example? So it was very practical. I must say it was very fun as well. We met these heroes on the ground that are really working with their communities. And it was really a dialogue between protection cluster partners and the community. Next slide, please. So also what we've done on the preparedness level is develop a number of what we call tools, right? But these are, of course, let's call them SOP, standard operating procedures. And I'll highlight three of them. The first one that you see there on the right is the protection early warning messages. As you know, there's a commitment worldwide for early warning messages to reach everyone. However, it's not often spoken about what is included in these early warning messages. During the Gombe section of last year, the authorities turned to us for any messages you would want to share with the community. And this really was for us an opportunity of developing these messages for the authorities. Things like, for example, prepare a run bag where you would include your civil documentation, right? We've found that many have been losing their civil documentation during evacuations and then they are unable to access a series of services. Things like avoid being separated from your family during the cyclone landfall, right? Make sure you are together. Make sure you coach your children on where to reunite in case you get separated. Make sure the persons with specific needs in your family are evacuated first. And these messages were used at the radio, also text messages, and they were transmitted by the local committees that I was mentioning earlier. And we were actually very happy to see that before the landfall of Freddie, Freddie I, those names are a bit silly, but Freddie I, the evacuation centers actually had, for example, the elderly person with disabilities evacuated first as an impact. The next slide, please. Graham, you might need to click a number of times because there are some bubbles there. Yeah, the next guidance document that you see there is a guide for protection mainstream of those managing evacuation centers. What happens in Mozambique when a cyclone hits is that the air that gets impacted, which as you can imagine in this long course is not easy to predict, the schools in that area becomes evacuation centers. So that school director, that school teacher who was enjoying his or her job as in the education department, all of a sudden has to manage for a week or two or three or four, as you've seen in other situations, a fully fledged displaced camp with evacuated persons. So we've created this guide that provides them with guidance on how to mobilize community for those volunteers to identify person-specific needs, prioritize them for assistance to make sure that unaccompanied separated miners are swiftly identified, to make sure that toilets are well separated between men and women, that toilets are well-lit, that the bathing areas are not in dangerous places, that there's a security perimeter. All that protection really one-on-one stuff that really becomes important for protection risk mitigating on the ground. Next please, Graham. Or is it Nancy? Sorry. I think one thing that we also do is basic protection cluster coordination activity. So these are the referral pathways for example for Sofala province, which of course is your bread and butter of protection cluster work. But what we've done this time around is that we've included, there you see in green, the box of the emergency focal points of the IGD. The IGD has these district level focal points. We've included the name of the district and the name of the responsible focal point and their phone number. So for example, if you needed to be evacuated, if you needed to be, if you needed search and rescue to come in your area, you would have those phone numbers. This of course also includes all the other protection services that you normally see in a humanitarian response, psychosocial support, child protection, GBV and so on and so forth. Next slide please, Graham. So very, very briefly on the response phase. And again, this is I would say an added value of the protection cluster. We try to then of course ensure a protection by presence in the different evacuation centers where we provide, let's say a crash course on those very same messages I was speaking about earlier, those tips on how to reduce protection risk in evacuation centers. So we go to these evacuation centers, we meet with the managers of these centers and we pretty much go through a crash course, right? It takes an hour of it. We also walk around the center to see what can be improved based on the list. And we also ensure that partners are visiting those centers on a regular basis to refer people with specific needs to a specialized service. The next slide please. PSCA of course is always a risk and the initial or SCA rather, sexual exploitation abuse is a huge risk in the initial phase of the response. And we also work very closely with the PSCA network of the UN to ensure that populations are made aware, right? Of the various complaint and feedback mechanisms and Mozambique we have a hotline and also that humanitarian aid is free. And so on and so forth. Next slide please Nancy. I will actually ask you to go to the next one. So this is an example also of what we produce together with partners. So the partners that are regularly visiting these evacuation centers, we have them also input their findings in a COBO and where you have the different evacuation centers mapped and the different risk levels for each protection topic. So for example, is GBV a risk in this center? Is child protection a risk in this other center? Is PSCA a risk in which centers? And this map gets then shared with authorities because they very quickly look to close accommodation evacuation centers as the populations start to return and how to say concentrate them in accommodation centers. So they've often used this tool to then see which of the accommodation centers are better equipped for hosting populations for a larger period of time. Next please. And actually I wanted to put some images just to give you an impression of what we see on the ground but I'll ask you just to go next. These are very simply some very what we call quick protection fixes thanks to our presence on the ground we ensure of course that toilet bathing areas are well lit and separated by gender. We identify where there's specific issues with other sectors for example food security and we increase capacities of kitchen and of course the activities for the kids who might stay longer term in evacuation center. Well these are just some very illustrative examples. The next slide and we also as protection will support the nature we support in visiting areas of origin and areas of resettlement right to ensure that the correct sphere standards are in resettlement what they call and was a big resettlement sites. I think internally in the United States we agree there are more relocation sites and we provide of course guidance to the authorities on those as well and the next and final slide and I think very importantly a bit what Samo's mentioned in the opening when you think of disasters right you're quick to think of shelter you're quick to think of food but protection often gets overlooked right the protection risk often gets overlooked so reporting and communicating those protection risks is something that we do also during emergencies we've been producing reports on a weekly basis in the first weeks of the Central and Freddie emergency really to communicate the various risks being observed on the ground of course not only for awareness and advocacy but no secret here also for fundraising for our partners to be able to scale up and respond on the ground because a lot of the coordination we do in the first few weeks is really risk mitigating but at some point we really look to our partners to scale up and be able to respond and it has been quite a challenge to be able to of course fundraise on the importance of protection within those few weeks but things such as for example the guidance that has been produced by the GPC has really supported us and placed protection at the center of cyclone response so that's it for Mayen back to you Graham and Nancy thank you very much for your attention thank you so much Hugo that was very helpful and a really good insight into how you're preparing from the cluster site in Mozambique so now I'd like to introduce our next speaker Salma Abdelahai she's the protection cluster co-coordinator in South Sudan Salma Abdelahai is an experienced protection cluster co-coordinator who's currently based in Juba, South Sudan with over five years of expertise in protection programming enforcement issues in the East and Horn of Africa regions she's developed particular skills in providing technical program learning support in the implementation of durable solutions programs Salma's focus has been on working with consortia to support displacement affected populations in Somalia and Ethiopia her in-depth knowledge of these regions and her ability to provide technical support has been essential in the implementation of effective programs for those affected by displacement over to you Salma thanks thank you very much so today's presentation is just slightly going to touch on the impact of climate change as you all know South Sudan is experiencing a multi-dimensional life crisis and this is as well as the social economical the public health crisis security and political instability and how climate change is already exacerbating these issues that we are experiencing within the country next slide please with that said as you can see currently in South Sudan we have an estimated 2.2 million people who have remained displaced by conflict as well as natural disasters in 2022 we had an estimated 1 million people who were severely impacted by the flooding and this was across the 32 counties across the country essentially making South Sudan the top 10 countries that are easily more vulnerable to climate change when we look at also additional tracking tools just to also support this data on the IOM displacement tracking matrix also indicates that 29% of displacement have happened because of disaster of course we do acknowledge with total of displacement that we have within the country is not only attributed to climate change the protection cluster also launched its protection monitoring system last year October 2022 and it also collects information around displacement and the reasons why displacement is taking place as you can see 34% of the key informants that were interviewed reported that communities did experience the reduction of movement due to flooding as well as 45% reported destruction of property happening because of flooding and of course with restrictions this is placing the community especially women and girls that more vulnerable increases their vulnerability when it comes to the increased flooding two thirds of the country has experienced flooding so this also indicates flooding has heavily interrupted the livelihood activities of the country and has exacerbated or aggravated the already alarming levels of food insecurity that we currently seeing in the country so it's been recorded or an estimated 16,500 hectares of cropland have potentially been affected by the flood waters and before I move on to the next slide floods in 2020 and early 2022 were so severe that the waters did not fully reside so early little rainfall that we received was causing huge damage as well as just covering the farmlands that we have both of some of the eastern as well as the western equatorium. Next slide please. So when we're looking at climate change and impact it has on protection and food insecurity and displacement in Sam and Hugo has rightly mentioned the flood impact it does exacerbate the protection risk or situation that women and girls especially also persons with disability and the elderly so women and girls are placed in a vulnerable position because they do unfortunately experience multiple displacement not only due to flooding but also to conflict and this severely weakens or impacts coping mechanisms and resilience and this is further made weakened by the fact that women and girls lack access to assets. Early marriage impacts the education of girls again puts them in more vulnerable situation, female household during the flooding season we do see high rates of accompanied and separated children that are coming to the centers of separation and also persons with special needs and elderly persons that are being left behind in terms of when flooding does happen because they do not have the means to move or the resources. So when we're talking also in terms of the livelihood impact and the food insecurity as I mentioned in South Sudan we do have that multi dimensional crisis that we are facing and this just in general does exacerbate the protection situation that we are currently seeing the droughts and floods have affected the food security and livelihood in the country. So according to the latest integrated food security phase classification the IPC about 7.7 million almost this is almost two thirds of the total population it's facing an IPC3 crisis and when the flooding happened this is also worsened by the fact that nutrition centers were heavily impacted by the flood waters and estimated 121 nutrition centers are inaccessible and again this is increasing the vulnerability of the children and pregnant and lactating women. As you can see we've also included a point on the contamination and explosive auditions this is one point that the one of the area of the area of responsibility with of course the support of the protection cluster is advocating for additional resources because now that we've seen unprecedented and consecutive floodings ongoing the country mine action activities have considerably slowed down during flooding clearance cannot be done or mine education risk education cannot be done in some of the locations because the areas are inaccessible and when we're also just talking about the food insecurity and interlinkages with the climate change for example in Jongole which is on the north and unity that is in the north west is facing an IPC5 and important to note that these two states were the most impacted by the floodings that we've seen for the past four years. So when we're talking about floods and displacement again four years of unprecedented floods have led to massive displacement. I did mention in the previous slide that one million people were directly impacted by the flooding and this numbers were verified on as of October 2028 so this has also had a huge impact on the mobility and migration in terms of the livestock had being forced to migrate along new routes and this is mostly towards the equatorias and these areas the western and eastern equatoria of South Sudan were not so much impacted by the flood and we've seen tensions and conflict increase between the cattle hiders as well as the farmers. One key note on this side is of course September 9th last year the government did declare the flood response preparedness plans so the plans were developed for 10 states and the response did commence and they are ongoing but because of the insecurity and violence against aid workers access constraints they did hamper the overall response of the flood response in 2022 we had nine aid workers that were killed and almost 420 incidents were reported this includes burning and looting of the humanitarian assets which is slowing down the response and in 2023 five aid workers lost their lives. The next slide please so on this slide I'm just going to quickly touch on the impact of conflict as well as the political dynamics and as well as just touch on the policies so climate change can exacerbate the communal and ethnic conflicts that we are currently seeing as I've mentioned we have seen increased tensions and conflicts between the cattle hiders as well as the farmers we do have the IDP Act 2019 this has not been endorsed by the government yet of course this does increase the vulnerability of the IDPs due to the lack again of accountability and ownership by the government the IDP Act does look at the domestication of two key documents and this is the Kampala convention as well as the guiding principles and looks at displacement not only caused by conflicts but also human rights violations as well as the adverse effects of climate change on all its phases so basically looking at the prevention, protection as well as assistance during displacement and also does heavily touch on the durable solutions programming in regards to the bill highlights the importance of the whole of government and the whole of society approach but because the act has not been endorsed or adopted by the government this does have the implication on the slow implementation of also the revitalized agreement by the government so when we talk about this is just the impact that the displacement in turn has on the conflict dynamics is amplified where political instability and poor governance undermines the climate resilience impedes the humanitarian support as well as PAVE's way for more communal friction because also important to note the power dynamics that we are also seeing the dominant groups are from the pastoral communities and this again does play into the power dynamics that we are seeing and the kind of support each group is getting from the government and essentially just exacerbating those tensions within the on the on the ground next slide please so how is the protection I mean we are not as advanced as Mozambique but hopefully we will get there soon congratulations to Hugo and the team so in times of how the protection cluster is responding so one of the main things that we do is ensuring that we proposition all the supplies that we need during the dry season even though in March which is usually the dry season we still experience heavy floodings so we ensure the dignity kits that are needed in all the main field offices are there the protection cluster also has a standard flood response package so this includes immediate prevention and response activities that are tailored toward reducing protection risk gender based violence so looking at our GBV sorry GBV colleagues setting up a women friendly spaces, child friendly spaces we set up protection help desk not only to serve the protection partners but also non-protection partners also in the standard flood response we do have also protection mainstreaming in times of just the key highlights that other clusters need to be mindful of we also ensure that we do have protection monitoring and identification of those protection risk that are related to the floods and one thing that we've done like we've said because of the flooding the roads are majorly inaccessible so we do run static responses but majorly due to also funding gaps and resources we have shifted to mobile response and mostly with the support of UNTR doing the response through by using both and reaching those communities that have been completely cut off from everybody and of course delivering core relief items on the last one in 2023 this year South Sudan is expected to receive additional funding for antifamine response so the reason why we also included this point here is that in this response protection was not prioritized so of course the guidance was really useful for us and of course we reached out to the GPC colleagues kind of to support us with those advocacy messages but also the rationale that was being used was because protection mainstreaming is there then core protection programming is not needed this is also a narrative that as protection actors that we need to push against protection mainstreaming of course is safe programming it's needed but then does not replace the core protection program that is needed to make sure that the people who need those services can be provided so this is really something that we are pushing and fighting on a daily basis so essentially this is in a nutshell what we are doing as a cluster and of course with the support of GPC we are looking into developing advocacy notes just to position ourselves better in terms of when it comes to how the protection cluster can strengthen its response when it comes to climate change in South Sudan and especially now that the conversation is heading towards durable solutions programming so this is it from my end my network was a bit unstable I do hope I was clear but over to you Nancy and Graham thank you very much thank you so much Salma that was a very good overview of the of how you're responding in terms of the protection cluster in South Sudan so now we're going to turn to this section on question and answers where people online and in the room will have the opportunity to ask questions and our moderator for the session is Christine Appio Christine Appio has served for over 14 years in different capacities in humanitarian settings including in acute and protracted displacement context with different organizations including IRC, Care International Global Communities UNFPA among others fragrance cuts across GBV IE program development and management interagency GBV coordination research and advocacy GBV IE capacity development her work spans across the east and Horn of Africa in Ethiopia Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan the Middle East and North Africa the West and Central Africa in region Nigeria and DRC she currently oversees GBV and emergencies preparedness prevention inclusion work streams the GBV we are in East and Southern Africa based in Nairobi, Kenya without further ado over to you Christine Thank you Nancy Good afternoon Can you hear me? Yes we can Thank you I don't see any question on the chat so perhaps I would request that if any participant ask a question you can raise your hand and then get off the mic and directly ask the question to the presenter otherwise I do have also just a few questions that I would pose but maybe let's see if there are some hands Yeah Christine there's a question in the room Go ahead I think it's a lot of awareness for disasters that might strike in the upcoming months which is a great protection angle is something that needs to be strengthened how many Florida speakers online as well most of them how are you preparing for more unprecedented extremes in new areas for example that haven't been affected by extremes in the past flooding or cyclones and also the longer term short term Great over to you Grim Yeah perhaps just summarise your question for the online and for the translators I missed your name I'm sorry this is from the climate centre who basically had a question around noting the information we provided which was interesting is very much around preparedness and a certain amount of response planning for very immediate events we're seeing now but how do we position ourselves better for thinking around some of the unprecedented extremes and events that we know probably over the horizon basically and the longer term perspective so that's the question maybe Christine I'll respond a little bit and then we can see if the other colleagues have got responses as well I think it's a very good point I think in the guidance we touch a little bit on the we emphasise the IPCC guidance but there is a need I agree with kind of over the horizon planning increasingly that's something that we're going to have to start doing much more of I think the advantage we have is that as the modelling seems to be becoming more accurate and you know the mapping and modelling is something that's ramping up then we should be in a better position to start having some of that information available but it is going to be important that we react to it you know it's in my own community I think back to you back to you Christine don't know whether you go or if you have any responses Thank you Is there any question from participants online or those in the house in the room kindly raise your hands We have another question in the room over to you please Just a question for predominantly all of the speakers really and in taking on our unprecedented disasters and issues that come up how has conceptually the issues of health impacted the way you think about protection for your populations I did appreciate for example the way South Sudaner mentioned the whole society you know engagement and I'm just wondering if you've seen that somehow impact how do you approach conceptually what protection is to the populations you serve and to the issues you try to to raise the field Great thanks Aaron from WHO how has health how has health been integrated right how has the protection actors approach the situation following a natural hazard building on the issue of unprecedented health and unprecedented disasters in the context of health building on the unprecedented disasters following a sort of health crisis So Christine do you see any over to you Christine if you have any See any other comments on that Any comments from Salmarro Hugo on that particular point maybe maybe Hugo do you want to go first then Salmarro or maybe Salmarro first whatever works best yeah okay thanks Salmarro gave a thumbs up maybe on the preparedness front and looking at more long term I think what we're trying to do here is really think outside of our small group of humanitarian partners and really looking at strengthening the authorities right both at the national level as I mentioned the creation of the safeguarding division within the INGD has been very instrumental for us to build capacity of these agencies that will be here long after we are gone and also of communities and maybe just a point that I should add is also population movements are either relocating or returning then we've also done some work around ensuring that these are done with protection safeguardings in mind right have your populations been consulted do they even want to be relocated or return have you included the impact of the population in organizing those movements and so forth and we really make a lot of we make big cases out of even small movements for example when an evacuation center is being closed and populations are being moved back to an area that is right nearby because we hope this can also shape the practices moving forward this is a country that unfortunately a lot of its coast will be heavily impacted by rising sea levels and we really want the authorities to think of their resettlement or relocation plans in a more human rights and protection lens on the health I think maybe what we've seen a lot here is especially this at this season is the cholera you know the second landfill of freddy has definitely exacerbated cholera and this has complicated a lot of the response right for example the authorities not wanting the populations to stay long in evacuation centers even though they have nowhere to go back so we really had to adapt our messaging around that issue and also cholera in the country Mozambique has created a lot of tensions there you know beliefs that humanitarians are bringing cholera that the red cross was bringing cholera and so it has complicated the response of humanitarian partners so we've had to mitigate messaging and our approaches around that I hope that answers over back to you and maybe to Salma thank you Hugo Salma over to you Noia thank you very much I mean yes with the flooding we have seen increased outbreak in diseases because the wells or water points are contaminated and of course when the conflict have erupted some of the wells were also destroyed by the people who were attacking some of the other villages I mean when it comes to also how as protection we interlink we do have the mobile response so here we do have the integrated mobile response approach where we also have those key messages about the health the prevention what people can do is also incorporated into our key messages as a protection cluster we have also been at the forefront when it also comes to the access to self safe healthcare at risk because in South Sudan as I've mentioned aid workers as well as health workers and health centres are looted attacked damaged whether it's by flooding or also attacked during a conflict so and because funding is also going down we also have to come up with different modalities that we can closely collaborate so what I would say from the protection part the health cluster yes does support us with the post-rep kit treatments which WHO supports us with which is greatly appreciated but then also we make sure we collaborate with them when we are deploying our response themes just to make sure those key messages are captured into also the awareness raising we are doing within this isolated communities by the floodings thank you may could I maybe make a couple of points Christine Graham I think on issues related to some of the health related factors I think there is also this longer term which I presume is what you are raising is that we are starting to see with climate change we are starting to see disease profiles new diseases emerging old diseases getting a foot on things like weather and malaria outbreaks with rising temperatures which I know we have seen in East Africa but also even some of the recent mapping I saw was mapping even Ebola epidemics and outbreaks to periods of very high rainfall I just wonder if some of the issues that maybe protection actors working with health colleagues may be able to bring to the table is the importance of being able to work with communities and communicate with communities together looking at what appropriate messaging is in terms of preparedness and prevention I think it is some of the lessons coming out of the West Africa Ebola epidemic which was very much focused on some of the lessons around getting the technical response right but also making sure that we get the community and kind of anthropological response correct and I wonder if that is an area where particularly protection staff working with health staff perhaps have quite a lot to offer thinking thinking about the future as well sorry back to you Christine I think Christine back thank you thank you before we go to the two questions online I just wanted to quickly add that one of the biggest challenges we had in thousand Malawi last year following the tropical storm was the lack of healthcare kits available in health facilities in the affected districts in the south of course being a non-cluster countries it's also definitely grappling challenges with underfunding so one of the issues the thing we have been pushing for was to to pursue advocacy with the government to ensure that post-rep care drugs are actually part of the government protocol that needs to be procured by the government and I think this is something that WHO could actually help push especially in countries that do not have formally activated clusters yet we know expresses natural hazards on a yearly basis moving forward we have two questions from online participants the first question is from Mahaira Farouk I hope I have pronounced your name well the first question is what role do protection actors play in addressing the impact of climate change to how was the guidance and toolkit developed and what are the key components and I think Graham spoke a bit during this presentation about the component and the toolkit so Graham I don't know whether you would want to take over that and then the first question maybe could go to Ugo and Salma either Ugo or Salma or both over to you role of protection actors in addressing the impact of climate change that many of you want to respond yes Ugo no yes I mean the impact of cyclone as we were discussing I mean for example some of the activities when I think of my role as protection as a coordinator I think of my partners and the activities they are doing so for example we've created protection committees and relocation sites that are receiving a lot of these populations that have been displaced by cyclones along the different years the early warning systems that we were talking about of course a lot of our partners are renewing civil documentation this has been a very important activity by protection partners because many have lost their civil documentation during the cyclone which then complicates it complicates their very access to humanitarian support another one of course is MHPSS you know cyclone die have it been so terrible many small winds that you see creates a lot of anxiety in the population so PSS has been very important supporters of disabilities with assistive devices for example communication with communities activities MHPSS activities for children in evacuation centers and relocation areas and so on and so forth family tracing obviously and we hope to have soon partners doing more on cash for example for protection I hope I hope I answered that one back to you Thank you Hugo Salma do you have anything to add from South Sudan? Yes just a maybe yes thank you Christine maybe on South Sudan what I would say in terms of the what the protection cluster actors and also the protection cluster has supported with as I said of course is that available analysis we did launch the protection monitoring system and one of the protection issues that we track is also the the reasons why displacement happens and we do collect information around the restriction of movement, destruction of property as well as documentation so apart from this because we do deploy mobile response teams sometimes we are in a good position where we have access to locations where our other colleagues might not have so we do release flash reports do those presentation and lots of the ICCG and we basically put ourselves in a position where we've become an information hub our early warning system is still not perfect but it has been very very useful since towards the end of last year and beginning of this year and I will definitely say the mobile protection response has been a big win for the cluster in terms of how we respond to the climate change and adapting our modality of response especially with the funding going down thank you Christine over to you thank you Salma Graham do you want to just quickly in one minute maybe summarize the question on the GPC the guide in the toolkit how it was developed and the key components over to you Graham yes certainly I think the approach that was taken was very much to to basically base it on the express needs and views of the of the field protection clusters as well as some consultations with obviously experts at the international level so that's why we as I did briefly mention we particularly had a series of calls with field protection clusters which involved you know from across the different regions which involved large numbers of people obviously people as an agency level but also we did consult with quite a lot of community based organizations so that the what's in the guidance really reflects the kind of topics and content that they stressed with again with this emphasis on practicality and not reinventing the wheel and also recognizing that there is broader guidance out there on issues related to DRR so that's why we ended up trying to focus on protection related issues thank you Graham perhaps the next question from Natasia Zulino probably go to either Ugo or Salma the question is whether any of the clusters or protection actors have worked with national civil protection organizations and all IFRC in terms of climate change and protection over to you Ugo or Salma or both of you if you'd like yeah okay thank you I mean from South Sudan yes we unfortunately we haven't had a close collaboration with IFRC but yes we've had a close collaboration working relationship with the civil protection agencies and again this has been majorly through our mobile response team I think also this pushes towards the localization agenda that we're also looking at even though here in South Sudan this conversation is picking up right now and the terminologies we haven't fully agreed on when we say localization exactly what it means and who we need to empower unfortunately but yes so these are the agencies that we've worked with but not so much with IFRC thank you Ugo do you like to add something yes no on our side I mean as you know the shelter in FI Plus during climate shocks is coordinated by the IFRC the IFRC has deployed colleagues for those specific seasons so we've worked closely in the sense of ensuring that their shelter response of course is observing and ensuring protection I think also what should be added here is that one of the main responders in Mozambique is the Mozambican Red Cross and so we've included them in these exercises that I've mentioned for example these simulation these evacuation simulations we've included the Mozambican Red Cross and also in some of our regional workshops back to you thank you Ugo then we I hope that answers your question Natalie the next question is from Matt the first word is around partnerships and collaboration terms of how can partnership and collaboration be managed to address the impact of climate change on protection for example in South Sudan, Mozambique and then I think the next question probably would go to Graham after publishing the toolkit and guidance what are the next steps for GPC to address climate change and protection risk so perhaps we can start with Salma and then go to Ugo on partnership and collaboration please Salma yes thank you so in terms of exactly what the protection cluster is doing when it comes to partnership and collaboration again through our GBV area of responsibility we have strengthened the capacity as well as information sharing with the women led organizations this the colleagues on the ground mostly are our first frontline responders when it comes to any disaster so this has been advocating for them to be getting the resources that they need as well as information sharing and of course capacity development the other capacity development and leverage that we've used as a cluster I would say is with our other clusters with the wash the health as well as the shelter clusters because sometimes because of the resources or the funding that they receive they do have more coverage than us so when assessments or activities are being carried out we tend to tag along in those missions and this actually really has helped us to reach to areas that we will not necessarily have I think the other collaboration that we leveraged on has been with UNMIS at the field level we do have a very strong collaboration with our UNMIS colleagues this is in times of course we cannot do patrols but through our early warning system or the flaggings this is flagged to UNMIS for example in Malacal where we pose request of patrols in some of the locations and with many thanks to UNMIS colleagues have responded so this are just few of the people or agencies or clusters that we do collaborate again because of the funding shortages that we do experience so we want to see where we can just pick it back on to just expand our reach to the communities we might not necessarily be reaching but over to you. Thank you Salma. I just wanted before proceeding I know was supposed to end the session at 4.30 but also considering considering we started a bit late I'm wondering whether we could stay a bit for just 10 minutes to enable us present as address the last remaining questions and then the concluding remarks. Maybe Christine because yeah maybe for maybe another five minutes if that's okay if it's if needed yet 10 minutes for Hugo and Salma and Graham to answer any further questions so over to you. Thanks. Thank you. I think I mentioned the partnership with the National Institute of Disasterous Reduction but I would say this is really the added value of the protection cluster in a response. I think Salma mentioned very well the low funding in our operations right it's really through these partners that are on the ground that we can maximize the response for example in Mozambique being this very long country there's some districts some provinces rather where you have very few partners but you do have for example some NGO partners such as Care World Vision Save the Children to name a few working on development issues so we've been really been able to rely on those partners to be able to pass to participate in protection monitoring, response and communicate the needs back to us if you weren't able to be on the ground also for example you have FAMOD which is a association of persons of forum of associations of persons with disabilities in Mozambique that's a mouthful and they are present throughout the territory and we've really relied on them as well and yeah again for capacity building this is really where we can bring UNICEF for child protection UNFPA for GBV FAMOD for persons with disabilities a cluster approach really can maximize capacity building back to you Apio. Thank you Ugo before I go over to Ugo I participated at the annual Southern Africa Development Community meeting in March and they announced that the Southern Humanitarian and Operations Center in Mozambique together with IFRC will be developing and integrated regional early warning systems so I'm wondering whether that there could be opening for the global protection cluster to leverage on such to ensure mainstreaming of protection gender and other issues Yes Apio you are spot on this is an initiative they were very much aware of this position itself as a leader in DRR the president of Mozambique has been called the champion of DRR in the African Union so they're really position themselves and this SADEC early warning system in the city of Nakala we're very much aware of it and exploring different entry points on how to support them on protection mainstream integration and we're actually using the experience to showcase what we can do and explore how to proceed it's very much at the initial stages even on the ground there's no center yet it's still to be built but very much for that thank you very much for that yes we are it's on our radar Thank you Now over to you Graham for the question on next steps for the GPC to address climate change and protection risk Okay thank you I'll be very brief because I think this is an issue Nancy will also touch on in her closing remarks in a minute or two but just to say that in terms of what we've already done or what the GPC's already done we've had a series of we've had a series of online events this being one of them but we've had actual events with the clusters with some of the field clusters colleagues online we've also had two face-to-face events one in Nairobi and one in Oman in Jordan so we've been rolling out that way but to mean you know this is an ongoing issue it's one thing having guidance as we know another thing if it sits in either an electronic or virtual folder so this is why I think it's important to have events such as this to kind of get people talking and to get people using I think Nancy will say a little more about future plans in a minute or two thank you and over to you Nancy yeah thanks Christine if there are no more questions I think we can wrap up now thanks so much Christine for moderating that section of our question and answers so just to say thanks so much to everyone I think what we've learned today we've spent a lot of time highlighting the impacts of climate change and disasters and that fact that it's still increasing in frequency as well as severity as you've seen in many countries whether it's in the Northwest Syria or in Syria and various operations in countries in East and Horn of Africa and Southern Africa in terms of protection risk we've seen that these two are often multiple and complex and further emphasize that we as protection actors need to be central to climate change disaster preparedness and response in terms of the impact we've seen with hazards and the lessons learned from elsewhere including preparedness and response we we still need to work closely with our partners and understand more with our local partners the women led organizations that Salma mentioned the protection committees that Hugo mentioned in Mozambique and understand their capacities and their challenges and that localization agenda is really key to the work that we're doing we also saw and heard today from from both Hugo and Salma as well as Graham that the importance of work across the humanitarian development peace nexus is important it's not just the work that we are seeing on climate change by the protection cluster but the need for strengthened institutions communities and flexible responses in order to respond and to prepare with the challenges that we have in front of us some of our colleagues already that we've referenced involved in disaster reduction and resilience have of course been doing important work on these issues for a number of years and have made really key contributions to this work we hope that our GPC guidance and toolkit that we prepared and you see here in the room and online will help those working on protection issues to ensure that these are included in the context in our work whether in GBV SEA and other issues and protection risks and challenges that both Hugo and Salma highlighted in both their cluster operations we've seen these examples today across the clusters and we hope to take these issues forward and continue to work with that finally I'd like to thank all of you in the room and online that have come and participated in our webinar our online event and have had the chance to look at our guidance and our toolkit I'd like to encourage you to continue to use this in your work and also we will post this in the chat and we can share it you can look for it in our Global Protection Cluster website it's our intention that this guidance will be responsive to and adapt to the needs as we've seen fit so it's constantly evolving and as the question asked we're going to continue to roll out our guidance and toolkit both in the Americas regions as well as the Francophone regions for the clusters that we cover and hope to continue to work with the partners on the ground and I also want to thank our colleagues Tim, Humaira, Marie and Emma of course Graham who's been essential for our guidance and our toolkit and of course Hugo Salma, Christine thank you so much and all the colleagues online thanks and have a good rest of the day bye