Webinar series on exploring challenges and best practice for access and humanitarian protection, April-June 2020

Humanitarian protection is often the most needed in the very conflict zones where access is also the most restricted. From April to June 2020, NRC, PHAP, and GPC organized a series of webinars on the challenges practitioners are facing related to access and humanitarian protection and the lessons we can draw from past situations.

Based on the concrete challenges and dilemmas submitted by humanitarian practitioners as part of a survey earlier in 2020, the webinars focused in on types of frequently occurring challenging situations. To help bring out and clarify the different dimensions for practitioners to think about these types of situations, each session featured a panel of experts that were led through a facilitated discussion on the overall considerations in these types of situations, as well as questions arising from specific examples.

Session 1: Introduction

Thursday, 22 April 2020, 14:00-15:30 CEST

The first session brought together a panel of experts to discuss the basic concepts related to access and humanitarian protection, how they relate to each other, the basic dilemmas and challenges faced in practice, and how to approach these challenges. The session also addressed some of the ways in which we can draw lessons from past situations to how we approach the current COVID-19 operational environment.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sJNItJRMcA

Read more and access audio recording at: phap.org/22apr2020

Session 2: Negotiating access for humanitarian protection

Thursday, 28 May 2020, 14:00-15:30 CEST

The second session of the webinar series on ‘access and protection’ focused on challenges that practitioners face when trying to gain or maintain access for protection, whether negotiating directly for protection programming access or negotiating for humanitarian access in general while considering protection concerns.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fxQRw66Hmc

Read more and access audio recording at: phap.org/28may2020

Session 3: Access and protection: Avoiding putting people at risk

Thursday, 11 June 2020, 14:00-15:30 CEST

The third session focused on issues related to when there is access, but either the access itself or the kinds of programming possible leads to protection risks.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxZT6idqGI8

Read more and access audio recording at: phap.org/11jun2020

Session 4: Coordinating access for humanitarian protection

Thursday, 25 June 2020, 14:00-15:30 CEST

The fourth session focused on issues related to coordinating negotiations and approaches to access – including the use of armed escorts, civ-mil coordination, and coordination with peacekeeping missions – and how these relate to protection.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTmjTelBMc4

Read more and access audio recording at: phap.org/25jun2020