 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, everybody. I wanna thank you all so very much for joining this session. And I wanna start today by setting a very clear purpose and intention for this meeting today. So we're gonna be here for the next 90 minutes and together we're going to tackle and unpack some of the complex issues around how donors and media coverage shape the ability of the international and local organizations to provide protection. If I could just remind everybody to mute themselves kindly when they're not, when they don't have the floor that would be so appreciated. So just to briefly introduce myself, my name is Catherine Mahoney. I'm currently a Global Spokesperson for UNHCR. And I'm so happy to be here today because the reality of how news coverage can influence how the international community has the ability to provide protection to people who have been forced to flee, as well as a government's interest in funding certain crises is a part of my daily work. So it's incredible to see that there are so many people here today that are ready to engage with this topic. Right now I see there's about 288 of us here and that number is climbing. We have a huge agenda today. So I don't wanna waste any time and I wanna get right into this. And we are so very lucky to have a number of very distinguished speakers with us today. So if you'll just give me a few minutes, I would love to introduce who we have with us for this session today. I'll start off with by introducing a fellow Mahoney. So first off, we have Liam Mahoney who will be providing the opening remarks. And Liam has been both a practitioner and an analyst of the dynamics of protection by presence since the 1980s. You've probably read his 1997 book written with Louis-Enrique Agrin, Unarmed Bodyguards, International Accompaniment for the Protection of Human Rights, which analyzed the power dynamics underlying the protective impact of such presence. Now a decade later, Mr. Mahoney wrote the book Protective Presence, Field Strategies for Civilian Protection for the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in 2006. And that book analyzed how larger scale international and multilateral unarmed missions in conflict zones have a protective impact. And he's developed trainings on field protection for OCHA, WFP, DPKL, OHCHR among others. And he's currently a member of the Procap Senior Protection Advisor roster. And earlier this year, he's completed a study for the ICRC on current trends in protection work. After hearing from Mr. Mahoney, we'll kick off what I really hope will be an engaging discussion with three of our other distinguished guests. We are very honored to have with us today, Samira Nuri. Now, since 2013, Samira has been working as a humanitarian worker and a civil society activist in a number of emergency response disaster risk reduction and disaster response projects, including education and emergency protection and environmental awareness. In 2017, she founded the organization named Asian Local Leaders Organization for Humanitarian Aid, ALOHA. And she's currently Deputy Director General for the Citizens Organization for Advocacy and Resilience. We also have with us today, Francesco Mota, who has 30 years of experience. And prior to working for the United Nations, he's served as a lawyer, political advisor, Minister of State, Judge of the South of Australia. He has over 20 years experience working with the United Nations, including UNHCR, UNR, and OHCHR. And this is mostly in conflict and post-conflict countries, including Nepal, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Sudan, but also Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Among his roles, he's worked with UNR, UNHCR, UNAMMA in Afghanistan as a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Chief Human Rights Officer in UNAMI. He's currently the Chief of the Asia Pacific, gave it, excuse me, Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa branch of OHCHR, which is responsible for field operations throughout those regions. And lastly, we're so lucky to have with us today, Yasin Abbas, who's a humanitarian protection expert for the whole of Syria since 2020. Yasin has also coordinated the protection cluster in Libya from 2017 to the end of 2019. He has over 15 years of field-based experience in protection and emergency, and complex humanitarian protection crises, including Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, South Sudan, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. And throughout his career, Yasin has served in several senior management and emergency positions with international NGOs, including NRC, DRC, IRC, as well as IOM and other national NGOs. Now, after that panel discussion, we will open the floor for a Q&A session. And then finally, we'll ask Anne-Sophie Lancombe to deliver some closing remarks. Now, just a minute on Anne-Sophie, she's a thematic expert on protection, gender, and education in emergencies. For the European Commission's Directorate General for Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, DG ECHO, excuse me, and she's based in the regional office in Bangkok. She joined DG ECHO in 2011 and she's previously been based in Nairobi and Amman regional offices as a protection and gender expert. Prior to this, she had 15 years of experience with programming and implementing humanitarian protection assistance programs in contexts such as Uganda, Kosovo, North Caucasus, Central Africa, West Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Yemen. Now, I know you're all very excited to hear from everybody. So now I'll pass the floor directly to Liam so we can hear his opening remarks. Thank you very much, Liam, please take the floor. Thank you very much. And thanks to the Global Protection Cluster for inviting me to participate in this important discussion. I want to introduce myself further as you've already done so. I just want to, I'll jump right in to try to make this short and lead time for the other panelists who have, I think, probably more interesting field perspectives from where they're working now. I hope that what I present now will overcome some of the basic misconceptions that I think are out there about protection by presence. I'm not going to speak as much about the issue of media and donors because I felt that what we really want to establish first is a clear understanding of what we mean by protection by presence because I think it is a frequently misunderstood or an oversimplified concept. And what we mean by protection by presence is kind of the basics of my expertise in any case more than media and donor roles. Some of those misconception include, for instance, the idea that people think that protection by presence just means having an office somewhere or driving a patrol through a village. And another misconception is that people think that violent actors who commit the kind of horrible crimes that we see on the ground are impervious to such presence and pay no attention. And a third misconception I often hear is that times are changing and maybe this just doesn't work anymore. And I hope that what I present right now will help on all of those three, among other issues. The basic two sides of the role of protection by presence is on the one hand, deterrence and dissuasion, the impact it has on people who use violence. And on the other hand, encouragement, the impact it has on the people who are threatened by violence and on all their allies at the local level who are trying to help protect them. The dissuasive impact is based on the differential power and perceptions of different actors on the ground. The basic thing is if the person in the role of protector is perceived to have more status or power on any level than the protected person such that the actor who uses violence is considering that difference and considering the consequences of their actions in front of this other role, this other actor with more power, this can affect their calculation of how and whether she is violence. And that's where protection by presence can make a difference. Protection by presence is not simply being there visibly, it's about projecting a message to try to change the calculations in the heads of people who are using violence against others. Now, what are these power differentials that matter? Well, it's clearly not just international presence that we're talking about. And in fact, most protection by presence is done by national and local actors. And where you see power differentials are, for instance, actions by community leaders, by religious actors and religious leaders, protection by presence by local professionals who are respected such as teachers and lawyers and doctors, protection by presence by journalists, protection by presence by representatives of institutions with power. For instance, national human rights organizations or Ombudsman's office, public defender offices who are engaging to protect others using the status of their own government as the power basis. So the international actors have their own types of power that they represent, including economic, political and normative influence and they are an important part of the protection by presence by dynamic. And in fact, often what we've seen in the field is that local actors who are themselves doing by protection by presence are using international actors to protect them while they do it. So it's actually a complex linkage and network of impacts that we see. Why does this work? Because violent actors are always calculating expected consequences of their actions. They are looking at their reputation, they are looking at the impacts of pressure on themselves, they are looking at resource and how it might affect their access to resources. And they are looking at their ability to have social control over the territories they control and how their actions affect the actual attitudes of the population around them. So how do we then project this dissuasive and deterring impact to those actors? Well, at best, protective by presence should be done transparently and in a sense, pre-announced. In other words, the actors who are going to use violence should know that we're there and they should know who we are and why we're there because otherwise they don't have time to put it into their calculations and figure out whether it should affect the violence they were planning to use. So having communication with armed actors in a protection by presence dynamic can be very important wherever that can be achieved, which admittedly sometimes is difficult. So now look at the second aspect of it, encouragement and solidarity. And I think this is often underrated or undervalued. We don't recognize how important it is. But if we recognize that it's mostly local actors who are doing the protection of their own communities and the people around them, then in fact, we should also recognize that for them, they are more enabled and encouraged to do that when they don't feel isolated. People pay a lot of attention to who their allies are and who they are networked with. And the presence of outside allies can really play a role in expanding their space for action to take protective action towards others. So the presence both reduces the risk of local actors who are taking risks to protect others, but also expands their sense of what they can achieve and what they can do. So in a sense, paradoxically, it can encourage them to take more risks, but in a way that basically they are choosing to do because they're trying to protect others. So with those two aspects, encouragement and dissuasion, we have to back up and say, yeah, but in fact, doesn't always work, certainly doesn't work perfectly. And it's dangerous. There are risks, okay? The risks are very real. Disvasive pressure is intended to try to limit the space of action of people who are very dangerous and armed, and therefore it can provoke reactions. Those reactions often include threats or public anger and sometimes retaliation against the organizations that do protect the presence. So such a role has to have careful risk management strategies associated with it, but that should not mean risk aversion and avoiding doing it. It should simply mean we should be behaving prudently trying to minimize the risks but recognizing that there are some, okay? Now, just jumping to the two topics at hand, media and donors to close and leave space for others here. I think we need to recognize that journalists are a key, they are protection by presence, okay? The presence of journalists in conflict areas has played a major role in limiting what actors do because they realize the world is going to find out that they do. We need more journalists on the field. Part of our role towards the journalistic and media community should be encouraging them to get more journalists out into areas where people are at risk. And part of the work of field organizations and people like humanitarian and human rights organizations out in the field should be to try to encourage journalists to come out and report on the things that we're seeing on the ground. And what's interesting is that we don't do this enough. And part of why we don't do this enough is because there's a lot of fear of the media in our community, in humanitarian and human rights communities. We're so worried about being misquoted or being manipulated or having the media say something that will damage us that we don't take advantage of the positive protective capacity that bringing media into situations can have on those situations. And I think this is something we should work on more careful strategies to take advantage of. Secondly, journalists and media people who are out in the field doing this good work, they need protection. And we should be doing a lot more to try to encourage the international community to be protecting journalists because their role doing protection of others is so vital. Finally, looking at donors, we should recognize that most of the donors that we're considering are not just donors. They are embassies, they are foreign affairs ministries, they are linked to bilateral power and bilateral politics. And in that sense, they also actually have an important capacity to do protection by presence. And we should be doing much more to try to get, for instance, delegations and missions and visits out into conflict areas and out into the field by representatives of donor embassies and donor agencies and just in general by embassies and foreign ministries because those visits are a type of high level protection by the presence because it is very much noted that they are there, that they are paying attention and therefore that they may come back. And that kind of presence can actually last a long time even though they only pay a short visit. So we should be doing more encouraging of this kind of protection by presence by high level people, even though it's short term. And even though actually it can be real pain in the neck for a local actor, for us, our local offices to try to organize all these different delegations that come out to the field. And just my last point, the most obvious protection by presence is very labor intensive and therefore it costs a lot of money. And that means we have to be constantly educating donors about why it's worth it. I'll stop there and leave more space for the other speakers. Thanks very much. Thank you so much, Liam. That's really exactly what we needed to hear to dive right into this discussion. I wish we could have a chat about this for the next 90 minutes. But as you say, there are others that we're all gonna be lucky to hear from. So allow me to just kick right off and to start with some questions to get our panel discussion started. And I'd like to start with Francesco Mota. So Francesco, we all know that OHCHR is the human rights organization that is mandated to promote and protect human rights around the world. We all know that it deploys its local and international staff in conflict situations and it's their visibility, their presence on the ground as well as the public denunciations that constitute a deterrent for human rights violations from being committed. Now, the flip side of this is that OHCHR like many other organizations depends on funding from donors. So I guess the question to you is considering the increasing human rights violations and the greater need for protection, how does OHCHR drive donor's interests to certain crises? Wow. Good luck. Yeah. First of all, I just wanna thank everybody for organizing this event. I think it's a really important issue to discuss because it is something that's a constant in terms of the work that we do. And I think it's incredibly important. And I do particularly appreciate the comments that Liam made in terms of introducing the topic and then discussing the breadth and complexity of it because this was also some of the stuff that I wanted to advert to, not as sophisticated and as experienced way as Liam did, but a lot of the issues that he pointed out are really cogent for us in terms of the whole issue of dispelling some of the mis- protection through presence. There's one of the things that I think that's really important for us from the human rights perspective is, and this is something that I still hear a lot of in terms of humanitarian service providers. I often hear from humanitarian service providers that they don't do human rights. So human rights doesn't have anything to do with their mandates, their service providers, et cetera, and they stick to that. But of course, our short answer back to that, of course, is that if you are providing basic services, life-saving sustaining services to people in crisis situations or people who are at risk, you are promoting the realization of their rights, whether it be to food, to health, to education, to clean, hygiene, water, physical safety. But it extends also from the human rights perspective into the legal protection aspects. And that is how people dealt with when they're actually subjected to the authorities of local power brokers. Are their rights being respected by them in terms of arrest and detention, in terms of mistreatment, in terms of finding solutions for those people whose rights have been abused by local power brokers or by state power brokers, whoever they may be. And of course, we can't oversimplify, it's dangerous to oversimplify the mere equation that physical presence equals protection at all times. I think it's a very complex issue. But I think it's really important to take knowledge that also given the environment we're operating in, is that I think in this day and age too, with the extension and availability of all forms of mass media, and this brings me onto the media issues and the donor issues later on. There's a lot of ways to have presence which is not just confined to physical presence in locations. I think we also have to be actively exploring ways in which new media in particular gives us an avenue to extend our protection into places and communities that we may not necessarily have had physical access to or physical presence in. And this is one of the things that we have been doing in OHCHR and a lot of the places we work, such as where I've worked in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are a small office, as many people know. As part of the UN, we only received 3.7% of the regular budget of the United Nations, yet we're supposed to be the third pillar of the United Nations. Now that's a political choice by member states and it may indicate to some degree how important member states view human rights. But the fact is we are very poorly resourced, which means of course it has impact on the physical presence that we can have in many countries in many situations. So we have to learn to maximize our physical presence and our engagement with local actors to ensure that we maximize the effect of protection and also our mindful of the basic humanitarian principle of do no harm. Because while it's fine to say we have physical presence or we can act in a way to encourage certain duty bearers, people who hold power to respect our colleagues on the ground, our national actors on the ground, service providers, the human rights defenders, et cetera. If we're no longer there or actively seem to be present, of course there can be risks that can ensue from that. And the moment we're not there is when some of the dangers actually take place. So this is why I'm making the appeal to be inventive and creative about the ways we approach presence, because there's ways to make it clear to a lot of duty bearers that we still have presence even though we're not physically located. And this also can extend a protective envelope or a protective umbrella around many of the people we work with and can continue to do so even if our physical presence is no longer in a dedicated area. But in many ways, in terms of dealing with local power brokers, it does come down to their own enlightened self-interest actually as to what they hope to obtain by allowing presence and by respecting their protective obligations towards their communities, towards individuals, towards human rights defenders, towards humanitarian service providers. And to us in human rights, one of the most important things to highlight here is the obligation that it's about empowerment. And in working out strategies to optimize effective protection for our colleagues who are working on the ground who as Liam rightly pointed out are often national actors. It implies that behoves us to ensure that the approaches we take are fully consulted with and participated and decided by the colleagues that we're working with. I think there's a danger sometimes that we may think we know best from an external position, but it's really people who are acting on the ground who come from these communities who understand the risks very, very well. Sometimes they can underestimate the risks because they're used to living in that environment and we can help them to navigate that. But we really do have to work in a collegiate and empowered way with local actors to identify what the best courses of action are in terms of protection through presence and for enhancing protection generally. Now, this brings me very briefly to the issue of the media. I have a big problem defining what media is these days, right? Because everyone is potentially a journalist and that has a good side, but it also has a very ugly side because there's also a lot of misinformation out there. And we saw this in relation to crises such as with ISIL. When ISIL were rampaging across parts of Syria and Iraq, there were a lot of people on social media and people who purported to be journalists who were misrepresenting and distorting the situation on the ground, which of course had a very big impact on the protection we were able to garner for people in terms of providing facts and information as to what was happening on the ground to encourage the right responses from a range of actors, whether they be humanitarian, whether they be UN, whether they be international governments, to that crisis. And at the same time, everyone can become a journalist. So that means that direct information coming from people on the ground as to what is happening can also play a big role in informing the full range of actors and stakeholders as to what the situation really is. And this can also bring a protective presence. So again, I'm saying that there's a lot of opportunities that new media brings to promote journalist activism, if you will, from local communities themselves in a way to enhance their protection by providing information on what the situations are on the issues they're confronting and linking them again with actors who exist at the national, regional or international level who might be able to act with those duty bearers to enhance the protection of these actors on the ground. So there's a bigger circle here that can be drawn. And again, as I say, it comes back to exploiting these new medias as a way of driving opportunity. And the third thing is the donors. I mean, this is something that we put at the forefront of our advocacy protection, early warning and prevention and protection are cornerstones of our advocacy when it comes to member states to not only drive financial support for programs. And of course, our advocacy goes beyond just trying to get support for OETHRs programs who are always advocating also for the interests of humanitarian service providers to draw attention to international donors to the needs of humanitarian service providers to ensure that they are also properly resourced. But it also comes to political support. It's not just financial, it's about political support and the influence that they can wield with many of these actors on the ground. Because many member states, whether they be in the regional or international global level do have influence or levels of influence or contacts potentially with a wide range of actors on the ground. And those political interests can be leveraged in order to be able to enhance the protection not only of the United Nations, but also of our colleagues and those organizations who are working with us or independently of us to promote human rights, but also to ensure humanitarian action on the ground. And I think this is also a really important factor. And one of the most important things for me, it comes back to is empowerment. And we're seeing this challenge in Afghanistan at the moment where you have de facto authorities who are very hostile to participation of women in all areas of life, whether it be political, whether it be social, whether it be cultural, but also importantly, in terms of ensuring provision and access to basic services. So we really do have to ensure that when we're talking to our donors that we move away from this idea that there are beneficiaries and there are providers, but that it empowers beneficiaries as an integral part not only of the decision-making process by which they identify what the needs are and the best way to deliver those needs, but they're also actively included in the delivery of those services themselves. I think this is a really key point because in a situation like this, it implies how important that group are, the delivery of those services. But by doing that, I think also we can actually help in terms of the ability and the protection of the community. So this is a very complex issue. I'm just touching on a few points here. I'm even going to check. Oh, somebody doesn't agree with what you're saying, Francesco. I'm so sorry, there's mass disagreement. I hope it's not me that's causing the baby. I think it might... We've got an empowered baby anyway, which is really good. To you. The next generation is okay. I just wanted to say that I think there's a lot of opportunity, there's a lot of stresses and there's a lot of challenges we're facing in the realm of protection by presence. And we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing a shrinkage in civil space. We're seeing a shrinkage in the capacity for humanitarian and human rights actors to operate within their communities. But I think with those challenges also come a lot of opportunities that need to be explored positively to be able to make the most of protection through presence. And by expanding it away from the traditional interpretations, I think... Yeah, and you've covered so much ground here. And I think one of the important points when you talk about the shrinkage of this space, I think one of the things that I think we'd love to hear from you on is when you talk about your budget and you talk about the resources that you have to do your very important work, how do you prioritize your interventions on the ground? And if I can combine sort of how do you prioritize, but also at the same time, how do you do that in a way where OHCHR can try to shed light on those protracted and forgotten crises, the ones that you oversee, the ones that you've witnessed. You've witnessed Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Myanmar all on your watch. So how is it that you do that prioritization in a way that's shedding light on these very kind of invisible crises around the world to do so among media, among donors? And what are your thoughts on that? I think one of the most important things is by consistency of monitoring and reporting and analysis. And that comes back again to our linkages with our local communities where we're operating, because I think OHCHR, you and generally, but I think OHCHR particularly, we're like a giant with small hands. People think we're really big, but when it comes down to it, our resources are really small. And I often say that all OHCHR has in many ways is its wit and its charm, which is to be able to convene power, if you will, to be able to bring people together, to be able to highlight what the issues are. I think our modern media system is partly to blame for this, and I'm sorry to bash journalists here, but the big multinational media companies with their 24-hour news cycles tends to mean that something hits the headlines, and you can guarantee it's on the headlines for three hours, and then it's replaced by something else. And while there might be active reporting on a crisis for a couple of days, maybe sometimes even weeks, it seems to be that their own need to drive viewing numbers, et cetera, means that that cycle moves on and we inevitably lose interest in it. And we've seen this with a number of really cogent crises, which are continuing, Syria, Yemen, Libya, even Iraq, where Myanmar, you know, there are these crises that are suffering, and yet they're not what they deserve. And so our role is that we constantly refer, and in our bilateral undertakings with member states, the need to focus on these places, the need to ensure that there's an adequate humanitarian response because keeping people alive is the most primary and important thing to do, but also to focus on the aspects of their protection and how they can enhance protection through targeted programming by ensuring that humanitarian needs are met, but also by other programs that they can implement. And again, as I say, to me, in the vacuum of the international media, I think one of the most important roles is the citizen journalist, is the person on the ground who can keep actively, despite the challenges, to keep people informed of what's going on in their local communities. And I think that's a very powerful tool that, as I say, can link into protection if it's done the right way and if there's a will there of other actors to embrace that. But it's complicated. I wouldn't grossly oversimplify it, right? Because risks involved. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Francesca. We'll come back to you in a second. I do want to pass the floor to Samir, who just is a friendly reminder. She's working for the city's organization for our participation in Afghanistan. Samir, let me turn to you. What in your opinion has been the impact of donors and media attention in Afghanistan in your protection work over the past year? We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you so much. And thank you so much once again for inviting me to the second session to speak on behalf of my organization. And share my reflection on the donor and the media attention in Afghanistan, especially in the past year, that was like 15 August 2021 was a dark day for all of Afghanistan. People were just faced with many, many challenges and still we are facing with the challenges that after the fall of the government, like after the 15 August, or guess like all the development and even humanitarian donors just stopped their operation. While there was dire need of these donors to be in an area, to be in on the ground, to response to 40 million people that they are affected by war, by different disaster, but unfortunately, a full of the international organization lived the country. And all the development donors suspended their projects. And the experience that we faced that we had in the past year that core organization along with other national organization, we had that development projects that from past like one year we only received half of the like one installment for these development project. When this incident occurs like all the projects suspended and none of the organization like pay the staff like core only core had a 20,000 staff in the country. So these staff for the different projects they didn't receive the salary from past 10 months or eight months or seven months. When this incident happened like all the development and all the international community stopped their operation. So in that critical time all the staff like the employee of the organization did the protest that we did the contract with organizations not with the donors. So we have to receive the salary. So that was a very challenging situation for the national NGOs for the local NGOs that how to respond for the remain emergency and how to respond to these steps from where we should provide these staff with the salaries. So this was very challenging a situation for us that on that time like it was needed that international community should support it the national organization or should respond on time but all the focus like when it comes to the media the media and all over the country just stop their like this stop their work stop their operation because you know an experience on the Taliban that they were afraid that they are all killing the journalists and these people. So on the spot all the famous media televisions that we had in the country they stopped their operation. So only a few of them that remain and the other like 90% of the journalists and the media stopped their working and they left the country. The remain that they were in the country like 10% of these after two weeks of their the de facto authority made a meeting and they invited all the medias that what you have to share what you have to broadcast and what not to broadcast like they put the limitation the restriction. So on that time like there was a need that the international media should really focus on the affected people because in 40 million population half of them were in a dire need even now because sanction was there even now all the banks are blocked even I even none of us can withdraw the money $200 all the donors stop when their operation the donors also weren't able to send the money the installment to bank because the bank stopped their working they were there was sanction. So there was a quite critical situation that we like local NGOs another platform get together that how we find a solution for this but you know the role of media and the support of donor is really important in such a critical time of humanitarian crisis because they are the one to support they are the one to reflect the real needs of the people why we are requesting the international community support because in such a crisis they are the only responder like based on the fund but the real responder like the frontline or the definitely or the local NGOs but the local NGOs not have the resource to spend response but what we had we did it so that was the situation and when it comes to the role so media like playing a very vital role but unfortunately we didn't have that media in place to reflect the needs of the people in the country no thank you thank you so much Samira you've had a year you all have had a year thank you so much for sharing your thoughts we're going to come back to you in just a second right now we're just going to give the floor to Yasin we'd love to hear your thoughts just to paint a little bit of the picture we all know that we're tragically 11 years into the war and Syria remains one of the most severe and the most protracted humanitarian crises in the world and we've seen that donor coverage media coverage donor support and media coverage has radically fluctuated over the years with almost no attention and very little funding this past year we've all witnessed these difficult negotiations around the renewal of resolution 2165 which was eventually extended for six months we know but that shows the impact that member states in the UN Security Council can have over defining humanitarian programming and life-saving assistance so I guess given your role in Syria how do you explain how do you see this tension between news coverage and donor interests in the very specific context of Syria over to you Yasin thank you first thank you for TPC colleagues for giving me the opportunity to be part of this important discussion and good morning afternoon good evening for all colleagues over the world okay thanks for the question well I'll I would like first to acknowledge that's many other colleagues here in Syria on the ground that donor contribution and also the media interest for the Syrian crisis at the beginning so without all that generosity we will not able to provide protection and humanitarian intervention for millions of civilians in Syria however and while understanding the donor fatigue in many protected crises now like in Afghanistan in Ethiopia in Yemen in Ukraine and other places in the world it is absolutely key to highlight this is cannot leave behind around 13 millions of displaced Syria inside and outside the country who left everything behind security Syria still a crisis or crisis or Syria crisis still one of the greatest we call it human disaster of the 21st century we have around 15 millions of population civilian is still need a humanitarian protection assistance with a budget of financial requirement 4.4 billion to cover this needs and unfortunately up to date we received only 27% of this financial requirement and understand if you look a little bit go back to history understand the political interest shifted following the news which is followed the direction of the camera where we have seen at the beginning of crisis there were a lot of public interest there were Arab Supreme people protesting asking for freedom to save influx of refugees and IDPs in the country we also have in 2015 a massive arrival of refugees in Europe and then ISIS attack North East Syria and part of Iraq where there were a lot of interest and that's media interest in a way on other influence donor interest in the Syrian crisis but now we can see that all camera in a way shifted to that influx of Ukrainian refugees towards Europe which is of course understandable and we can understand it's close to the public and the interest of population in Europe but this should not democratize the humanitarian situation and crisis in Syria because we know that the humanitarian situation in 2020 can only be addressed globally giving the global impact of each and every crisis whether caused by conflict or climate change or nature if protection partner are not trusted to stay and deliver assistance and cannot or will not receive minimum requirement to provide assistance in Syria that simply means that 80% of the protection activities currently implemented in North West Syria will be disconnected and we can imagine the impact of the civilian of over 4 million civilians are in very small space with a lot of harsh protection environment so staying despite access challenges in all locations in Syria will ensure for us will ensure proximity with local actors and local communities and will ensure certain level of sustainability of protection civilian and the trust we had with the civilian so and also staying in Syria enable us to deliver humanitarian and protection assistance to survival of torture to survival of psychosocial emotional sexual violence and also be able to provide basic assistance and to ensure people get their legal identity receive civil documentation and also support them in their freedom of movement and of course to ensure people have the choice for voluntary return in safe and dignified manner it's true and we cannot see it's true that Syrian refugees and flux is not there anymore that we don't have million of refugees arriving to Europe it's true that military confrontation being reduced in a way it's true that ISIS being defeated in a way or another in the country we can see that the protracted nature of the conflict, the economic crisis the food insecurity that grows the water crisis it's increasing the humanitarian protection need in the country if we don't have resources as a humanitarian and protection community to respond to this need unfortunately we will face with a reversible damage and will be late to deal with it and then the donor at one point they have to deal with it and instead of Syria they have to deal with it somewhere close to their border so I can see this during two years and a half I have been here in Damascus where I talk to people I don't know in Kamishli in Derizor or in the south in Dar'a people have no hope like the hope that's left is very limited because people they have seen the movement in them protection of crisis or access to income etc and I also seen like a lot of young educated motivated young people leaving the country in the last few years because they are having no hope anymore and unfortunately this is the fact of the country Thank you so much I think it's important to raise this in the context of the ripple effects of the Ukraine war and what those ripples and what those effects are and how they are impacting other humanitarian and protection crises protracted crises around the world and you know you touched on a little bit of the impact or the lack thereof that you have on your ability to provide protection when media attention is lessened but I guess what do you think what can human rights and humanitarian organizations do to sort of meaningfully engage with donors and to support them in making sort of more informed decisions as to where they put their money Yeah So like you mentioned part of that question have been oh I responded part of the question in the first part if you allow me I would like to focus on what we as a human rights and a humanitarian community have to do or can do better in these circumstances and despite all these situation we cannot get discouraged first and we cannot give up on what we are mandated for which is what we have created our mandate for which is to basically raise the voice of those who do not necessarily have the opportunity to speak or to be visible or to be supported we need to continue considering the civilian community in Syria as partner like colleagues mentioned before and not merely victim of the conflict for that we need to continue with the global protection needs are identified and met and that their positive copying mechanism and resilience are supported and strengthened we also should enhance and improve our collaborative protection monitoring and analysis which we have been doing a lot with the global protection class or colleagues which is our key to identify these needs and adopt response accordingly perpetrators are accountable in the country we need also to continue tracking the quality of access and invest in local leadership in access for protection for this we need to leverage any window of access no matter how narrow it is and this is to layer in protection elements for example if we have a convoy transporting non-food items or medicine cross line in Syria needs we need we need to be able also we need to be able to use this opportunity to provide protection activities such as awareness raising such as MHPSS such as trying to understand more the risk of the affected community and also which is also important and linked to Syria principal engagement with the state and non-state actors and civilians is also necessary to significantly reduce harm and improve protection outcome for affected communities it is also help us on reaching most affected population how to reach area to deliver assistance as many of you know or may you know like in Syria like 76% of the community they are reporting they are lacking civil documentation more than 60% they reported they have HLP concern and more than 50% of them they have challenged or they have problem restriction on freedom of movement we also have like 78% reported child marriage is occurring among other around 50% of the assisted community reported there is child labor and of course GBV is having an increasing is happening everywhere in the school and in the home in the road etc which is I think with this information we still do have a legal and more responsibility to stay and deliver using all modalities including being in the country or cross line or cross border and we also need to call for a diplomat support because many of the largest dinner community are not in the country or they don't have contact with the authorities or non non state actors which is leaving us have to do advocacy we also ended with doing advocacy so we need that support also to do advocacy with the state and non state actors to have access we also have to continue telling the story of the civilians and also to understand what they want and we also have to provide an evidence based on the impact of the humanitarian assistance thank you absolutely thank you so much I want to go back to Samira we are running a little behind in terms of who of our panelists and I do want to make sure we leave enough time to hear from our audience so Samira you can just go back to you quickly we are talking about protection by presence and we often want to overlook the capacity of local actors to provide protection we all know the local organizations on the ground who are the first responders in humanitarian emergencies and it's local organizations that provide the support in the services and international actors do not have access or that access is limited I guess in the case of Afghanistan which is another example of a projected crisis how are local organizations like yours providing protection in Afghanistan at the very moment and if you could just give us an answer in a few minutes we'd be most grateful thank you so much sure thank you previously that like in 15 I guess when the incident happened so as all the international organizations of the country don't stop their operation and suspended their project so there were only the local injures local actor were in the place on the ground and some other companies CSOs that they were the first responder and they were on the ground response to such a crisis so for this topic I just want to request like share my suggestion that in every country all the international injures all donors are just agreeing on that the local injures are the first responder in such a crisis that is really sharing my experience of Afghanistan that how we lifted alone lifted behind all the international injures and all the donors left the country so we were on the ground to response so why shouldn't we like the international injures and the donor community shouldn't follow strictly follow the localization agenda which is the WHS 2016 topic that how to strengthen the local injures how to strengthen the local injures how to have a direct access to fund at least 20% of the funds should go to the local injures you know what we have done to what level of fund that we had in hand and the sources we had we spend it we provided the service but you know on the long term we are not able as a local injures that's correct that we are the first responder for any emergency we do not have the core fund we do not have the sources so therefore I would suggest the donor community the donor the international community to really focus on the localization that how they can within Afghanistan within Syria within other countries to strengthen the localization to really follow up that agenda in Afghanistan currently we do not like all the international injures are somehow like 10% they are focusing on localization but to the extent that we need it to the extent that it should be like they are not following up like still like a core organization is like have the 34 years experience have the big capacity like even maybe in the implementation they are very good more than the international organization they are like when there is a competition like core might be in the first place but you know again we are as a local injure as a national injures we do not have the access to direct fund we should be partner with other international injures so we are able to receive that fund so like the last words that I'm sharing that if we really want to response to any crisis then we should support we should strengthen the localization agenda in that country thank you thank you so much Samira very very well heard very strong point and I think that's a great moment for us to go back to Francesco we are talking about protection by presence and let's go to you Francesco as someone from the international organization in two minutes or less how would you respond to what Samira said and engaging with do you think that OHCHR has managed to guarantee a presence that protects and how would you respond to what Samira said about local versus international thank you over to you thank you look I think it comes back to what I said earlier about empowerment it really is we should never be substituting and this is the danger we fall into that sometimes we think we know better because we come from outside and then we can dangerously end up substituting and that doesn't actually create long-term solutions it might be a short-term fix but it doesn't really address the root causes of the problem and one of the things we're seeing in countries like you know in Yemen in Syria in Libya in Myanmar there is a lack of a political process to resolve the overarching issues that would address the ultimately the humanitarian situation in these countries but as a result of the lack of those processes because of all the different political interests that are at play here the situations have become chronic and you know this is matched with donor fatigue as being mentioned by some of the other speakers and by a lack of interest in the media because as I said for a whole range of reasons you know their attention shifts to other crises and to other issues and of course there used to be less to go around to financially support some of these crises in return but there are also some very strong ethical questions and I just want to leave with this and I know it's a bit provocative but you know at what point may we decide not to engage I mean in Myanmar for example there are some entities who would say that well delivering humanitarian services at all costs to save lives is absolutely essential but they can only be delivered if they're done in partnership with the Tapmedaw or the military they're perpetrating the human rights violations and abuses in the first place and many in the communities have expressed the will that they are prepared to suffer they're prepared to go without rather than deal with that military or bring that military into their communities to facilitate their abuse of their rights and so these are really big ethical questions because in some instances you know sometimes the best intentions may lead to the opposite of protection through presence it may actually cause a harm to the engagement with the local communities empowerment of the local communities is absolutely fundamental if we're talking and it should grow outwards it shouldn't come from the outside it should grow from the inside out and that's why I think you can better engage all those different actors the media the international donors and the protection of presence through diverse means not just traditional physical presence means but through diverse means and so it can be attenuated and become hopefully more effective and we are well aware of that but it has to be carefully thought out and planned but I think this is fundamental absolutely thank you so much Francesca and I think I want to end this really engaging discussion I want to just go back to Yasin Yasin could you share some of your reactions to what we've heard from Sumira and Francesca what they've highlighted in terms of protection by presence and what in your opinion the role of local actors and human rights actors we'd love to hear from you as the final word before we open it up to the floor thank you so much Yasin Welcome I totally agree with Francesca and Sumira they said something very critical and important like if I look to the Syrian context I can see that the local NGOs they're already taking a leadership role in protection at the field level like if you look 80% of 220 protection partners in Syria are local NGOs and I can give you an example from during COVID where everybody did not have the access to the affected community locally NGOs and as well as the communities where we have over 3000 outreach volunteers and community they were able to stay and deliver and doing protection and this is what I have seen over the context of the last 11-12 years we always have access challenges but the only one who managed to deliver an intervention in the last 10 years were always local NGOs and community and apart from colleagues what they said it is critical to ensure they have direct access to financial support we also need to invest more in terms of capacity when it's come to IHL as many of these local NGOs have no human rights background so at least when they do identification and referral they do it in a safe way to avoid any harming so that's really important and also we need to find a way how to link them with the regional human rights mechanism and it's not only they are just their collective information but they have to take also a leader role at the regional thank you. Thank you so much Yassine and I think that's a great point for us to end on and to segue into the Q&A session and just a friendly reminder to all participants please do put your questions into the chat and we'll try to get to as many questions as we can now I'd like to start that we do have a first point raised to any of the panelists who could answer this and this is from Andrea Castorina from WFP she says I fully agree with the point on the importance of keeping protracted humanitarian crises well funded as opposed to re-channeling scarce resources to the Ukrainian crisis only. However I would like to add also that all our respective organizations and leadership have a very important role to play in terms of educating donors on priorities and resource allocation. Asking donors not to provide additional funds for an already fairly well covered crisis to prioritize other forgotten crises where millions of people are still at heightened risk of starving to death and are exposed to outstanding protection threats is our collective obligation now would anybody like to jump in with a comment on that any of our panelists I can come in just briefly to say this is absolutely true of what was said I mean and part of our role in OECHR is that this is what we do we have field presence scattered throughout all parts of the globe and we're constantly feeding back to donors to highlight ongoing needs from the human rights perspective. One of the problems has been a coordinated agreement on what's happening in countries and sometimes you know the UN we can be a little bit schizophrenic right you know we may look like we're one organization but we might have 10 or 15 different mandates and we're all approaching things from different angles and so getting that coherence of analysis is extremely important and for us it's extremely important to feed into human rights dimension of that analysis as to how is the situation impacting upon rights where are the gaps and then where can donors best focus their resources and that extends from humanitarian service position right across all aspects of protection through into legal protection as well and the other aspect of it is is where can we best devote our resources to helping and other local actors in terms of their capacity in terms of you know understanding human rights perspectives rules of international humanitarian law and how they can translate that into activities like concrete outcomes it's one thing to know about something but it's another thing to action to achieve results and that's I think a facility of role that both OACHR and it's other partners working on human rights can promote. Absolutely yes Senior Samir any comments or should we move to a next question another question No I can say it's definitely it's our one of our responsibility also to to be proactive as a humanitarian community to continue prioritizing or show the gaps globally and also have this continue having this formal and non formal briefing with the donor community also with the lobby beyond the donors also because donors also they usually follow the public interest which is really we also have to focus what the voter want and it's also we need to be able to reach the voter and repeat the humanitarian message so I would like to see like example that High Commissioner Filippo Randy who's coming every year to Syria to the ground and meeting the people and also reflecting the message directly from the civilian which is really important to have the leadership involved and also to be sure that voices of the affected population are herded for for the voters and the public and not only for donors thanks Absolutely Samira any thoughts No pressure No comments Well I think I mean we have a question that's come in that actually links to Yasin's point here and the question to all panelists is do you think that all of our organizations own communication stories and publishing them on our social and the institution social media channels do you think that plays a role in protection by presence I couldn't understand Sure so the question is do our own stories do our own institutional or organizations communications stories posts on social media channels do those play a role or play a part in protection by presence I think that's the Samira first because I spoke post last time To some extent because you know our organization also had a media and radio specifically for the humanitarian for the protection activities that we have done or we are doing in the country to some extent like we are aware of the people that what we are doing in the protection part and to some extent it's good but it needs like in the country like now we are in Afghanistan like the social media even restricted in the country so even if we are sharing these through social medias might be sharing that with the international community but not the people inside Afghanistan like they also want to know that what is going on and who is doing what to whom it's done and how so these are the some challenges also in some of the countries like in Afghanistan that nowadays like even some of the social medias everything is restricted and even they are banding like putting restriction on some social media to be removed and to not work well and even the internet connection is also nowadays is not working well so these are the some challenges but to some extent it's good Thank you Samira Francesco did you want to jump in? Yeah I think we can always do better storytelling because I do think that the UN is a little bit it's not all UN but I think sometimes UN is a bit slow and savvy in the way it presents itself and I think sometimes we come across like you know the old grandfather who's picked up a phone decided he's going to start tweeting you know and we try to be hip and groovy and relevant but I think sometimes we miss the point and I think among all the noise out there with all the competing attention that's needed to rise above that and make yourself distinguish so that people pay attention is extremely challenging and I mentioned already the satellite news cycle you know which even the BBC and some of the big you know international news broadcasters they all adhere to these cycles you know and so to keep the attention of some of these big organisations can be extremely difficult we've found for example that sometimes when we publish a report for example of the impact on violence in Iraq on civilians on at risk or at different groups or in Afghanistan it suddenly grabs headlines and it's on the headlines for three hours we get a lot of media coverage and it comes it goes again and then we have the chronic crises like in Syria like in Yemen which it's very hard to get it on to that international news agenda with all the competing noise out there so I do think you know there's attempts to do it but I think we can do much better and to me the more cogent stories are the ones that come from the ground one of the things that I constantly say and I know it's a bit of a self-criticism but you know sometimes when you read the news the statements made by the high commissioner were shocked I mean the poor high commissioner shocked it just about everything right and sooner or later words lose currency and people don't pay attention anymore so I think we have to constantly be really savvy and I think to me also a way of doing it is not speaking on behalf of people though we have to do that where it's necessary but using the voices of people themselves where it's possible to highlight what they themselves people express themselves they know what they're suffering they don't say it like we do and they don't need to say it like we do we can dress it up with all the legal jargon and the rights jargon and everything else but the simple expression of an ordinary person about how they're feeling and how they're affected I think it speaks volumes I think it really communicates and I think we need to harness this a lot better where it's possible to do so and our job is to make sure that those very authentic real voices reach outside our own echo chambers I mean the constant news cycles and are our messages reaching out to our own choirs I think that's one of the biggest challenges that you're touching on. Yasin, anything to add on that point in terms of voices from the ground and our social media? Yes, something we we always dropped and do mistakes when we drop in numbers when we only been asked about numbers how many people fit, how many people in need, how many and I think we have to find a way to tell the humanitarian story because humanitarian or human being cannot be numbers and unfortunately I can see a lot of humanitarian partners including you and I and yours they're always trapped with this issue so we really to bush back as a human rights and protection partner and to tell the impact of the crisis on the human beings and how and which these have no cost basically you cannot come and tell me how much cost or the unit cost to human rights violation and this is the challenge it's not in if I distribution or liter of water etc so we need to be sure that's to improve in our key messaging when we talking to the donors and the public about the human the human suffering or the impact of the conflict or natural disaster in a humanity and how that will impact everybody else like I mentioned before you cannot disconnect the crisis in Syria from the global crisis if you don't deal with this crisis now you have to deal with them later if not in Syria maybe you have to deal with them at the border with Greece or the border or in the sea between Libya and Italy unfortunately that's what I want to say thanks can I just add to that this is a really interesting because even in our own reporting sometimes the reports that get picked up by the international news cycle are what we call our protection of civilian reports in Afghanistan or Iraq for example and what they are is their body counting right it reduces the impact of violence and conflict to how many people died and how many people were injured but this doesn't encapsulate the full range of the impacts of violence that human beings are experiencing on the ground nor their needs nor the risks nor how that can be addressed it really does reduce it to a deep personal in many ways a deep personalised or dehumanised process and I think we have to be very careful about that this is why I don't like referring to protection of civilians anymore because immediately the people I speak to it's immediately equated with body bag counting you know how many people died how many people were injured no no no it's about impacts of violence on all aspects of civilians and their rights and it has to go beyond that and this is why we have to be very careful about the language we use I think absolutely absolutely can I step in here Catherine sure yeah I just on the issue of the telling of the stories and I think it's also worth you know coming back to the logic of protection by presence which is that we're trying we're trying to get the people who use violence to think twice about using violence because there's a presence there there is no storytelling and if there's if the news is not getting out about what we're seeing then they have less reason to think twice and the fact is there are some there are some crisis that are in the news but even for all the countries that are completely off the radar one thing you can usually be pretty sure of is that they are watching pretty carefully everything that is said about themselves they are watching Twitter they are watching Facebook they are watching to see what people say even if they're not going to see it on CNN even if they're not going to see it on CNN and if they succeed in getting all the actors that are present on the ground to simply shut up and be quiet then they don't pay any cost and the whole idea is that we want them to believe that there are some costs to be paid that there isn't complete impunity for what they do and part of that cost is the notoriety of stories being told so it's not just about telling stories it's a certain extent it's also about taking risks to tell the stories that the powers don't want told and I think that's where for actors that are present on the ground it's a very very difficult dilemma which is that for local organizations or even for international organizations that have a presence in a place like Damascus for instance if you tell the wrong story then you're worried what's going to happen to your national staff or whether you're going to get thrown out of the country if those are risks that need to be taken a little more often than they are you need to push that envelope and try because otherwise basically the powerful parties that are trying to keep it all silent they win they succeed Thank you so much for jumping in Liam and so please please please stay here with us and be in this conversation that's such an important point about taking those risks to tell the most important stories we have a question from Hannah about how against the backdrop of reduced resources how are local and international organizations together ensuring that they're coordinating between them that the actions and the resource to ensure that the actions and the resources are optimized would anybody like to jump in and tackle that one Thank you so much Well I just want to share the experience because you know when we are doing the protection program there is three key points that we should know we should understand that who is doing the advocacy like who is doing the protection program and how it's done by whom to whom and also important to understand that if we are doing the protection to the audience that who is receiving this do the audience really understand that was the what type of the activities come under the protection and if we are doing these programs or these activities there is a collaborative coordination among the national and international NGOs so the effect of these activities will be very good but unfortunately sometimes in the country like it's my experience that there is a somehow lack of coordination among the NGOs especially among the national and international NGOs therefore some of the activities when we are implementing or the resources should be coordinated among the national and international NGOs like there is a lacking in our own so that's why most of the programs are the result is failed because there is no coordination the coordination resources is very important to do this is the experience in my country but I don't know where about the other countries but that's very important to be like if we want the positive impact of the protection in the country so the coordination cooperation of the resources between national and international NGOs is very important thank you thank you Samira go ahead Yasin thank you giving a practical example which I see the cluster the sector they are playing an important pool of that if they are function if they are call it by UN agencies are now NGOs to be equal fitting and also when you have strategic advisory group which is you also have national NGOs sitting in body in decision making body or its resources don't go only for UN agencies and international NGOs ensure that funding it will be also prioritized for national NGOs through advocacy through the cluster lead agency or the leadership in the country so we did like looking for Syria we also work with the global protection cluster in the last few months to have a lot of meeting to develop key messages for the donor sitting in Brussels also in Geneva and also in New York where the GBC also help a lot to have these bilateral meetings to talk about gap of the funding and how we can prioritize the protection activities and how we ensure that pool funding or more funding will go to the national NGOs who are already leading who are already covering majority of the protection activities on the country, thanks just one important point here too is that a trend we're seeing lately in relation to funding is the increasingly a result of by donor states to earmarked funding there's a move away from just general funding oh yes we will fund for this crisis, no we will fund for A, B and C activities and nothing else and so this also I think the UN does have a good role here a convening role to help spread awareness among international actors as to how to best access funds that are earmarked I think this is extremely critical if this is the trend that we're witnessing because it does make it difficult much more difficult and challenging to obtain funding it's just one of the environmental factors that I think we have to contend with absolutely, absolutely now I think we have time for one more question and we'd like to direct that question to Liam and the question here is understanding the valuable role of NGOs in the UN and also how the UN works differently especially in relations to structure and systems for advocacy, security risk, protection risk assessment question is do you have ideas on how the UN and bigger agencies can get better at the various aspects of protection by presence over to Liam that's a whole book let's see so yes I do I think one of the key things that we need to do is clarify for instance the big difference in the way we look at protection between protection services and protection as prevention and I think that the fact that we don't make that distinction in the humanitarian community is part of the reason why we are constantly criticized for basically doing services and provision of goods and services all the time and doing almost nothing on prevention and that's because there is such a huge need for those goods and services and it always exceeds our capacities and it's always urgent so one of the things the UN needs to do I believe is to really much more conscientiously fund basically aspects of the work that are firewalled to do prevention work and to do advocacy and prevention and presence and monitoring so for instance OECR is an obvious case in point there the only ones who do the kind of monitoring they do can get the funding they require I think if you look for instance at the huge successes and I would say quite successful operations that in past history DPA has had with monitoring missions on the ground in places like all going all the way back to El Salvador and Guatemala and Haiti and then in Nepal and in other places is that a mission that is solely focused on prevention and trying to protect and not on policies and responding to every crisis that happens can stick with that task and pay attention to it in depth whereas an organization that has to respond every day to the urgent crisis of someone starving who's just been displaced is constantly having their energy pulled away from the work of prevention and it's never very thorough so it needs to be earmarked and very sort of firewalled to be done well and it needs to be funded and that's definitely one of the areas that's needed the other is that what we've seen is that governments have gotten very savvy about basically keeping OHCHR out of the places that they don't want them to be and so what a government can do if they don't want that kind of monitoring and preventive protection work going on is they just don't let OHCHR in the first place and this is where I think the UN has really not lived up in any way to what human rights up front should have been pushing it to do which is that basically the UN country teams and the humanitarian country teams need to be developing some kind of alternative monitoring model that can be put into place through the agencies that are present on the ground and have permission to work already hand in hand with OHCHR working on the outside so that the simple decision of blocking OHCHR from getting into a country completely ends the capacity of the system to do monitoring and protection which so far actually governments are finding it's a really easy way to solve their problem just don't let OHCHR in and no one else steps into that gap when in fact the human rights up front doctrine was telling us we had to figure out a way to fill that gap that we have absolutely thank you so much Liam and I just want to give a big thanks to our panelists for today it's been a really engaging discussion and thank you also to our participants for those very great questions you know for the last couple minutes I want to pass the mic to Anne-Sophie Landcomb from ECHO who will provide us her closing remarks for the session Anne-Sophie over to you Thank you very much Catherine and thanks for giving me the opportunity to provide closing remarks to the session which is not necessarily an easy one I have to say and in many ways in many ways also goes far beyond protection which is my usual domain as it goes into how donors fund and how that works I'm going to spend a little bit of time on that first I want to say do you state interest in media attention shape the capacity to provide protection yes it does I think there's no way beating around the bush but it is also not the only thing that shapes it luckily so I mean and of course we never allocate enough we know that but there is limited resources so we have to do it in the best way we can right so I just wanted to spend one minute on how we actually try to do it as ECHO we do this based on a range of risk and crisis severity indicators combined with on the ground assessments from our partners all of you but also ourselves because we have a field network of almost 400 staff actually based in the field and I do think we're probably one of the humanitarian donors with the largest field presence and so but of course the interest and priorities of our member states also plays a role yes we are in many ways a ministry of humanitarian affairs for the European member states right so that does come in and we do face a challenge that if there is a big conference in let's say May to raise funding for a specific crisis well then a pledge gets made and then that is actually pre-allocated from next year's budget no matter what other assessments then say if we have said in the previous in that we would I don't even know what we fund on Syria now but that we would fund 200 million on Syria then that money is locked right and I just do want to highlight also because there's been a lot of talk about Ukraine diverting funds I don't know about other donors what I can say is that despite having put around I think half a billion euro by now on Ukraine response we have not reduced funding anywhere else because of this so we have not channeled the way funding from other other crisis and then also to highlight that we actually do and it is linked to our principal needs based on global approach we do specifically allocate 15% of our initial annual budget to forgotten crisis there's a specific definition of forgotten crisis which is a severe protracted humanitarian crisis where people are receiving insufficient or no international aid and often there's also no or not enough political commitment to solve it and there's a lack of media interest sorry I'm not really sure okay we will make sure everybody's muted okay thank you and and the list of these forgotten crisis is based on the risk and severity indexes on media coverage level of humanitarian aid per capita and again qualitative assessments and so I guess the question, the big question here with respect to the donors I'm not going to go so much into the media because I don't know very much about that is how new as humanitarian protection and human rights actors be you international local influence us as donors to make more informed decisions that enables you to better have access to protect and we've definitely heard some good examples here I think but of course also all the challenges that this implies and yeah I've tried to also incorporate what has been said but obviously I also had to prepare some of the remarks before so it's a bit of a mixture and the first part I think is by being present and yes that is kind of catch 22 because you must be present for us to provide funding but of course you need funding in order to be present in the first place right so that's I'm not really sure how to solve that quack mire on the other hand I do know that at least in most cases there is presence of some sort so there are people on the ground that can provide the evidence and that links to the second point which is really by providing quality assessments and analysis of needs and particularly of the protection risks now the protection risk analysis I see Yasin Norden he knows this is a key point for echo and it has definitely improved in many places but we still way too often see that the assessment and analysis remain either very generic we see lists of incidents which honestly we as donors cannot really use for much or in some cases the analysis or the product that comes out is sanitized in order to not antagonize the concerned government or whoever is in power right but this analysis this is really it's not only needed for programming of course that's key but also to feed us with evidence so that we can advocate internally for the need for funding for specific crisis because if we don't have that information it's very hard to raise the interest of as we would say our hierarchy and that is even more so if a concerned government themselves are not asking for assistance then they will question why do we have to put money here I think another key point is by collaborating better and more and this is between humanitarian and human rights actors between local and international actors and between different clusters competing gets you know where collaboration does and we're not generally interested in receiving 4, 5, 6 different protection monitoring reports every quarter we would like to see one solid analytical reports with all to which all key protection actors have contributed in line with the grand bargain commitment we would like to see much stronger meaningful engagement of local actors in coordination in analysis and in provision of services and assistance and by this I also mean protection and although we are limited because as Echo we cannot fund local actors directly it's simple because of our legal framework we have and we do subscribe to the commitment of 25% of funding going to local national actors this can be through partnerships with our international partners or UN country-based pool funds we would also like to see much more collaborative approaches on advocacy be it advocacy for funding and highlighting needs and risk but also collaborative advocacy against rights violations and conflict and here I was very happy to hear from both Francesco and Yasin that they also think that donors could and should play a role in this advocacy so I think we can get much further by working together on that we are an ally in this donors providing protection by presence I think it's very contextual I think it can work in some places I think unfortunately we've recently seen the totally reverse in Myanmar where it actually can put communities at risk so I think we have to be very careful and analyze each context for us is by and I'm almost done both by prioritizing according to which are the biggest risk a population face in a given context and how can these best be reduced, mitigated and responded to rather than priorities being based on mandates or organizational interests this links directly to the needs based I know this one is definitely difficult also but by demonstrating outcomes measuring whether what is done actually contributes to improving safety, dignity and well-being of the population and finally and this links directly to the protection by presence and that concept and I recognize there are probably many misconceptions also on our side on this but for us the importance remain a presence to deliver but deliver can be services assistance or evidence and evidence that informs programming and advocacy and the preference there would be in for us is always in the hardest to reach areas whatever we call them in different context but also let us try to be more creative help us find ways to ensure provision of protection where protection is such is not even allowed and we need solutions for this we want to fund it but you know and anyway by doing all of the above I am not saying that you can necessarily influence how much funding goes into a specific crisis but you can influence what it is used for what gets funded within a crisis thank you Thank you so much Anne-Sophie and your words will ring in our ears as we close out this session on behalf of the Global Protection Cluster Human Rights Engagement Task Team I would like to thank all of our participants Samira, Yasin, Liam, Francesco and Anne-Sophie and for the active participation of all of you who have joined us today so thank you so much and have a lovely afternoon or evening wherever you find yourself in the world. Thank you so much