Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everywhere, wherever you are, colleagues. It's a real pleasure to have you with us today and welcome to the event organized by the GPC task team on law and policy. My name is Martina. I'm the incoming chair of the task team on behalf of UNHCR and I'll be moderating the event today with the support of Cecilia Roselli, our colleague from NLC, who is the other co-chair of the task team. Before we start, let me quickly go over some of the ground rules for this event and just to mention so that this event will last one and a half hour. We invite you all to please mute your microphone when you're not speaking and make sure to turn your camera on when you do and we are really hoping that you will all engage in this discussion, so please share your comments, your observations and questions in the chat throughout the event and make sure please to send to all attendees so we can all see and follow the discussion. Keep in mind that this event will be recorded and then the recording and a report from the event will be made available over the next week or so. And finally, if you're tweeting about the event, remember to use the hashtag below a protection forum 2020. Now I would like to go quickly through the agenda for today. I hope we'll have William connected, is that so, yeah, so perfect. So we will have some welcome remarks from our GPC coordinator William Cermali and this will be followed by an overview of the task team and its work given by Cecilia Roselli from NRC. We'll have some opening remarks from Dr. Chaloca Vellani, who is certainly our global champion of the IDP law and policy area of work and we will have a fantastic panel. We will hear from the experiences of colleagues in Niger, Honduras and Ukraine. And this will be followed by a plenary discussions with concluding remarks that will be offered by Corita Tassi from ECO and myself on behalf of the task team. Now we look forward to a fruitful event with all of you and I would just like to leave the floor to our GPC coordinator then William Cermali. William, good afternoon, can you hear me well? He can, thank you William. Very good. So here is the thing. If someone tells me that I have to open a session on law and policy for protection in the presence of Chaloca Vellani, I would have advice against it. What can one say that can add to the practical experience, the diplomatic mastership and academic record that Vellani brings? Yet, here I am, stuck. So dear colleagues, partners, friends, dear Professor Vellani, please be kind with me. Big welcome to our session on leveraging law and policy for effective field responses. International protection is constant work and progress. It will always be. Each new generation of protection actors takes up the unfinished work of the last to carry it further, to build on the achievements of the past and attempt to fix the cracks. The challenge to our generation now I see as threefold. First, we continue to fight the same battles. Some hard fought winds of the past on the absolute basis that make the foundation of protection have been somewhat taken for granted. The inherent dignity and worth of every single human being is challenged by an age of harmful politics, practices and crimes. While nothing new, international human rights law and humanitarian law is broken every day. The consistency and intensity of disregard for rule of law. We see today in men in Syria and Somalia and Burkina and Mozambique forces the question. How do we keep that law relevant? How do we keep it alive? The responsibility to protect and rise in international protection work is hit every day by both deliberate and unintentional misconceptions. And somewhat, that I say, de facto acceptance of its descent. So that is the first challenge for our generation. We confirm the basics every day. Second, the landscape and players have changed and are fragmented. The numbers of armed group is exponentially higher than that of member states. Hundreds of millions of civilians live under their authority. The respect for national and global law and for the lives for which they hold control, very widely on context to another. The dependencies of these armed groups and that to that effect that of states is becoming more and more complex. So real power and accountability are elusive. They run across nations, they're regional, they're global. So who do you tend to respect? How can we leverage laws and policies in such an environment? Where are the clear mechanisms for engagement? And what are the legal and ethical pathways we need to navigate? So this is the second challenge for our generation. We need to make the basics work and figure out how they can be understood by duty bearers and adhere to in a fragmented environment. Third, we have changed as well. Protection actors have changed. Protection actors have always fundamentally been the national and local societies, women-led organizations, youth clubs made first respondents by necessity, faith-based actors, local leaders, community organizers, grassroots organizations, local activists and civil society, yet still much of the decision power, resources and knowledge of the existing laws and policies remains outside this generation of protection actors. Despite commitment after commitment, it is still those who know the most about their society's needs, the appropriate interventions and the roots to influence who are absent from the table. So here's the third challenge for our generation, enable the paradigm shift in international protection work and hand over the tools, resources, know-how and decision for working on laws and policies to the frontline protection force. So what does all of that mean for our session today? I am convinced of the enormous value, practicality and concrete impact of laws and policies. We see that every day in our operations. However, we can never take this relevance and value for granted. To remain relevant and useful, laws and policies need to be constantly stated, translated, interpreted, debated, discussed, criticized, reviewed, are they being implemented? Why? Why not? Do this gap analysis? Follow through with the participation of actors on the ground. Relevance is not a gift. Relevance comes with daily engagement for laws and policies that provide protection. Relevance comes today from positioning law and policy as a key enabler for the humanitarian, human rights, peace and development nexus. A key enabler, have we succeeded in that position? Field protection clusters have an important role to play. First, keeping it up and reminding everyone of their responsibilities in front of the laws and policies. Second, understanding the existing laws and policies and using them for protection outcomes. Third, triggering reforms, triggering conversations and creation of new laws and policies to deliver protection outcomes. And finally, monitoring the reality of implementation and supporting institutions. I can see a day where mapping laws and policies against standards is systematic in all operations. Where analysis with local and regional universities and think tanks is similar. Where advocacy is initiated to have the right laws and policies in place, where their implementation and utilization is mastered by local protection actors and those impacted by the crisis themselves. I'm looking forward, so today's discussion helps me and us understand better this vision and how to get to it. So thank you all and have a great session. Over back to you. Thank you very much, William, for this inspiring words. And now I think we can have Cecilia. Thank you so much, Cecilia, for being there to present the role of the task team so that we can maybe see a little bit how starting from us, how we can help William's dream to become true. And up to you, Cecilia. Thank you, Martina, and thank you all for joining today. A warm welcome also from NRC. Now, the challenge is mine to speak between the dreamer, William, and Dr Beiani. So I'll do my best. My task is very simple. I just have to present you what the task team is and what we are working on. So the task team was established in 2015 as a global platform for coordination between UN agencies and NGOs, but also other relevant stakeholders on law and policy engagement. So it's an important platform where we can exchange to promote regular dialogue, experience sharing, and most importantly, taking action because we don't want only to have nice features like the one we are having today, but also take action and implement what we say. The mission of the task team is to fold. We want first and foremost to support governments and local authorities in discharging their responsibilities regarding IDPs and populations affected by displacement. And we do so by promoting and supporting states efforts in developing and implementing domestic legal and policy framework. Second, we support field clusters and relevant partners in contributing to the development implementation and monitoring of relevant legal and policy framework. So we do this in two different stream of work. And what we do concretely is highlighted through five key areas of work. So we do a capacity building. And an example is the training of trainers on law and policy that is currently under redesign and will be ready in November. We have online. It could be also available online due to the new way of working that we are all adopting. We will continue also having in person workshop. We do so through knowledge sharing. An example is the regional exchanges that are happening amongst member states and their partners on law and policy like the one with eco bus West Africa in 2019. We do also promote knowledge sharing through the global database on IDP laws and policies that is currently available on the GPC website. We do so through guidance and technical advice, the review of the draft IDP on law and policies, advice on specific thematic issues and aspects related to law and policy making processes are good examples, but also the guidance and checklists for field clusters that is currently under development is another one. We do so through legal audits. So the country level reviews of legal and policy frameworks related to IDP protection to analyze gaps and inconsistencies with the international law. We do so through specific studies and research. And another example of this is the units here I am comparative study on IDP law and policy in situation of conflict and disaster and climate change. So this is what we do and who we are. I would like to take this opportunity to thank UNHCR and in particular Martina for the really extraordinary work that she has been doing to prepare for this session. And I welcome any question or comments in the session on Q&A that will follow the presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Cecilia. And now we can move to the next slide. And we welcome Dr. Cialoca Bellani who needs no introduction, but in any case is a former special reporter on the human rights of IDPs. Currently a member of the expert advisory group to the UN Secretary General's high level panel on internal displacement, as well as a member of the UN high level fact finding mission in Libya. And Dr. Bellani is also one of the main drafters of the Kampala, the main drafter of the Kampala Convention is our, as I said, our champion on the issue. And so we would love to hear from you, Cialoca, if it is possible, particularly in relation to two questions. You know, the first one being why should field protection cluster colleagues engage with law and policy making processes? You know, in your experience, you know, what are the benefits for them? Why is it important? And secondly, what are some of the key considerations that colleagues should keep in mind? You know, from your, again, your perspective whenever they embark in supporting similar processes. So now up to you for the next five minutes. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Martina. Thank you very much, William. And thank you very much, Cecilia, as well. It's a pleasure to have to meet virtually as times are now in the past. You might have met face to face. And it was one of the things that I always looked forward to a special report that is meeting with the global protection cluster, the protection clusters. And obviously now it's quite a long time. I go from 2016 to 2020. That's about four years. And I see that lots of things have happened, which is reassuring. But I've also reassured William that as Martina introduced me, you heard there was no academic there. So I'm just here to speak as a practitioner in the field very much on the same ground that you're covering. No high sounding academic or intellectual phrases at all. It's low and making low and police making at the grassroots and from the point of view of practice and the issues that Martina put out. So for a start, why should protection clusters engage with law and police making? And why is this important? What are the benefits in the experience that I had as a mandate holder and beyond? I saw that law and policy making offers protection clusters avenues to engage with IDPs and also to appreciate the range of protection issues involved. They provide opportunities, for example, for the protection clusters to advance some of the issues of concern that they're dealing with. This was the case in South Sudan during the time when we were involved in making the law in South Sudan about 2018 to 2019. The protection clusters had very special concerns about housing, land and proper rights and how to have those included and reflected in the law because this was a special problem. And I think that towards the end, as the draft had been prepared, there was a specialization with the protection cluster to go through the draft and the way in which the draft had addressed these issues. And for them, at least to use that partly as a tool, advocacy, but also as a protection tool. But I also noticed that protection clusters are very good at advocacy, promotion and monitoring protection, but mostly for refugees and less for IDPs. The engagement with IDPs is of mixed quality and varies from cluster to cluster. And I think this is an area that I would like to encourage the protection clusters to be more involved in. And of course, law and making processes provide avenues and opportunities for doing so. And I think the main challenge here is that law and policy making offers protection clusters opportunities to enhance these qualities, i.e. advocacy, promotion, monitoring, protection in the context of IDPs, but also to link protection with operations and solutions for IDPs, which is the new integrated approach. And this integrated approach is being applied very widely and at least in some of the select countries that I'm aware of. It's aided by some of the things that the mandate has been doing with the enhanced resident coordinators. The enhanced resident coordinators have begun to establish platforms for durable solutions, as was mentioned. And Watt and I work very closely in Ethiopia during the lawmaking process there because he had worked with resident coordinators office to at least establish a framework for durable solutions which was integrated in the law and policy. He had done similar work in Somalia and currently I'm drafting a law for Somalia and integrating some of the earlier work that was done on durable solutions. And Watt is also working in the Ukraine, although I haven't been to Ukraine ever since my last visit there in 2016. Although the process is expert led and it's expert led in order to try and make sure that it's seen as neutral, it's not tribal. Some of the local actors are painted with IDP colors one more another and engaging national and international experts is one way of avoiding attributions that may otherwise jeopardize the process. However, within that, it must be ensured that national ownership and legitimacy is uncut in a law and making and policy making process. We're making a law for the government, not for ourselves, not for the international actors or other bodies. And so great care should be taken to ensure that the government is involved at almost every stage and that governments and activities in terms of their own product is important. Most governments would not be happy that you have a draft, you have an outline and within 24 hours it's doing the rounds on the internet somewhere. They tend to safeguard law and making processes very much. These processes establish a collaborative relationship with government, other stakeholders, and the whole range. In South Sudan, of course, the focal point was the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, but you also had the Commission for Disaster Preparedness. You had the principal secretaries across all of the government. And you had a range of MPs, at least 60 to 65 MPs because they belong to the two committees of parliament on human rights and on law injustice that have been at least the basis for making recommendations that the law and policy on IDPs should be adopted. And the speaker of the parliament no less was involved. So one has to map out who are the main influential stakeholders within government, who are the main partners that government should be working with. So the expert lead process means that the expert has to map out all these processes and engage and identify with these actors. More because the local actors usually have dynamics with governments, one or another. You know, in one country that I shan't mention, it happened that a new director in a ministry had served somewhere in Geneva and relations were awkward with in Geneva with someone who became rep in the country in which they were. But as an expert, at least you can try and navigate around those issues, smooth them all over the place and bring the process to bear to fruition. I think part of the benefit is also that low-making processes create a space for dialogue, open opportunities with relevant national and local stakeholders, as well as a variety of international stakeholders, including donors and development partners. So the South Sudan process was fairly thorough in looking at who are the UN partners, for example, UNDP because of their interest in promoting law and policy, the UN mission and its rule of law program. And it had mapped out the national laws of South Sudan as a legal system. And quite critically, they also engage with parliament during presentations of bills in parliament proposed as law and prepared speaking modes for members of parliament. And they're very crucial in filling that legislative gap and making sure that when the bill would get to parliament, you have dedicated MPs, fully informed and a partner who engages with them. We also had international donors, USAID, the EU and others all speaking in support of all of this. So it does help very much. I think in Somalia we have gone a little bit further in identifying the key donors and engaging with them because we discovered that at least three quarters of the budget in Somalia is funded by international partners and donors. So it made sense to bring the donors on board to make sure that the donors sent the right kind of messages to government and vice-versa to create special structures that both the government and the donors were aware. For example, the creation of an IDP fund, which emanates from the Kampala Convention, requiring states parties who have ratified it to create a fund specifically for IDPs. Because of the experience that almost everywhere IDPs are marginalized in the ministries, functionaries that deal with IDPs are also equally marginalized in terms of resources in government. And that was one way of making sure that that particular state of affairs is addressed. And even before or after the Kampala Convention, I did find out in Azerbaijan that they have a special fund for IDPs, which is based on some of the oil revenue earnings that the government makes. And a certain percentage of that goes into fund for IDPs. So innovation in terms of not just the law, but how do you look forward to implement it and also make sure that it does work. Other benefits include galvanizing momentum when addressing internal displacement from the onset of a lawmaking process. A variety of international stakeholders, including donors, development partners, as has been the case. But I think here the situation of IDPs is discussed. It's an educational process. And not all the stakeholders understand who an IDP is. And so you start from A to Z, the guiding principles, the Kampala Convention if applicable, IDPs. And of course, you will find some from especially the development world who say, well, but why are we privileging IDPs and not look at the vulnerability needs of everyone else in this context. So all of those issues that dealt with at the first level of the actual situational analysis of what the state of affairs is and building on that within the workshop, how that would be dealt with. This was the case in South Sudan and in Ethiopia as well. And South Sudan, it was actually quite remarkable because when I had the mission there, I think it was in 2013 just before the conflict broke out and we went to Zhonglei people and places like that. And then the government had assigned a governor who he was a governor of Zhonglei at that particular time to go with me. And when we got to the sites, he said, oh my God, I had never seen an IDP before in my life and I had never seen the circumstances in which IDPs live. By the time we were holding the workshop, that former governor had become the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and therefore a point for IDPs. So he needed no persuasion at all. And in fact, he was key to persuading others. You recall in Afghanistan, the workshop started even with the importance of profiling. Martina was there, led that session. And so it's a process in which you put all the benchmarks that are important to protect IDPs that they understood as the process goes on right up to completion. You can contrast with Ukraine, for example, at the outset of this placement. It was mainly the provincial authorities that were attending to IDPs together with NGOs and churches. The national government was more in a state of shock. But one of the issues that prompted the importance of the law in the Ukraine was that these local authorities would only give budgetary support to IDPs for no more than three to six months. That was the emergency power. If they did that beyond that period of time, the measures would become unlawful and they may be arrested for unlawful use of government resources. So a law in IDPs was therefore required to alter those powers in order to make them be able to provide continuous assistance to IDPs. So there may be other laws that are hindrance and the lawmaking process is then an opportunity to trend a line, you know, all of those laws. And this is now being done in the context of a whole of government approach. What we have called coordination before, building on the New York declaration, the global compacts and of course a whole of society approach in the context of durable solutions. And both of these have been applied in the Ethiopian and Somali context and are now being applied as well, you know, elsewhere. Coming to the second question, I can end. I think Martina is getting a little... I will see you in an extra minute. I could listen on and on, but I'm afraid we're going to struggle otherwise. I'll just make complete points with regard to your second question. What are the key considerations? Well, stakeholder mapping I think is important. You need dedicated champions, experts and others to see the law throughout. You have to identify the spoilers because there are people who are anti-IDPs. There were people in government in the Ukraine who say they should stay in the East and not come to where we are in the Ukraine. In the Philippines, you have government advisors who say, well, this law came from the National Commission on Human Rights. It didn't come from us government and therefore persuaded the president not to sign it. You know, the importance of making sure that the lawmaking processes are carried forward. So, build allies in this whole process and have a low-jam breaking mechanism when you hit the buffers. Identify where the roadblocks are and speak to the people involved directly. Most of them hide behind institutions, have a sense of self-importance. But once you identify them, things change. How to involve displacement-affected communities? In South Sudan, we used a questionnaire first devised by the Global Learning Centre, which was very helpful as a method of engaging with IDPs and asking them questions. So, look at what's available and what you can make use of. Technical support, resident coordinators, as I've mentioned. UN missions, you know, the representative of the Secretary General in Somalia said, if you have no access to the speaker whom we tried to reach, he said, I can reach the speaker and we know why he's unreachable at the moment. So, identify people who can open doors to get to specific places. Finally, possible challenges. You know, political dynamics around violence and conflict-induced internal displacement. The forces of displacement are always active and they follow IDPs and they follow the measures that are being proposed to deal with IDPs, such as law and policy. And they will be there as maybe troublemakers or people wanting to get rid of the process. And involvement throughout the duration of the process is key. Don't hand over draft to the minister and think that that's the end of the day. Because government dynamics are such that some of the issues are likely to resurface. In South Sudan, when the law was drafted, the revitalized government had not yet been put together. Now it has been put together and the new members of the government, of course, are raising issues that had already been dealt with. And also because of the politicization of IDPs in the POC's centers, you know, the law has hit some buffers. So just to make sure that the protection cluster qualities of monitoring advocacy are fully deployed and follow the process through and through. Thank you, Martina. I hope I haven't... No, no, it was fantastic. Thanks so much, Chaloca, for sharing all these great insights. And I really look forward to hearing now from our colleagues how they translated some of this consideration in the work at the national level. And therefore, it's a pleasure really to present our colleagues that will be in the panel today. Valery Spobodova, she's the head of the Human Rights Liaison Unit here at UNICEF. I know many of you also know her for her role as co-chair of the GPC task team on human rights engagement. And she's the former Niger Protection Cluster Coordinator. So it's to that experience that she will speak to us today. After Valery, we will have Lorena Nieto. She's a Senior Protection Officer in the Americas Regional Bureau in Panama at the moment, leading the regional protection sector of the platform for the response to refugees and migrants from Venezuela. But she's the former Honduras Protection Working Group Coordinator. And again, it is to that experience that she will speak today about the work that's been done in that country. And finally, we will hear from Elina Shishkina. And she's the advocacy coordinator for the Charitable Fund that run to protection in Ukraine. A very active protection cluster member. And we look forward to hearing from Elina as well. But we are going to start from Valery at the moment. Next. And thanks, Valery. Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon or good evening, wherever you are listening from. And as Martina said today, I would like to share with you an example from Niger, where I was the protection cluster coordinator before coming to Geneva, along with inputs from the colleagues in the protection cluster in Niger who are also online. So next slide, please. Just to give you a very brief overview on the situation in Niger. Currently, there are about 220,000 IDPs. In the time when we were working on the IDP law, they were mainly concentrated in the east of the country, in the far region, displacement because of Boko Haram related activities. And in the west, in Tel Aviv region, where several non-state armed groups are active. We need to understand that the population is very mixed in Niger context. So there are IDPs living in the same areas as refugees, returnees, as well as host population. And in many instances, actually, host population may be even in more vulnerable situations than the displaced population. The IDPs are also very mobile. Not only that they are moving because of livelihoods, seeking livelihood opportunities, but also they suffered from secondary tertiary movement. So in addition to that, being in areas that are difficult to access for humanitarians out of campsite assimilation, so spontaneous sites and not easily reached by humanitarians. This gives us a picture of quite complex situation. So next slide, please. I'd like to share with you how did the process on IDP law actually start in Niger. Niger ratified the Kampala Convention already in 2012 and commented domesticated. However, not much has been happening until 2017 on this front. There we benefited from the actually training of trainers by the Global Protection Cluster which was organized regionally in Dakar, Senegal in April back in 2017. This was an important moment because we went to delegation from Niger, composed of the government representatives as well as production cluster and UNHCR as an agency. And this really allowed us to set the dynamics, set the tone. I have a common understanding and come out of this training with a very simple, but concrete action plan, how we will proceed. So when back to Niger, we started with training sessions and this was very small scale at the beginning in different regions through the Protection Working Group on guiding principles, Kampala Conventions and the topics that Chaloka Beani just mentioned in his opening remarks before. But what was a key moment in December 2017, the government with UNHCR and Protection Cluster co-organized a workshop on IDP law and policy. And this was really the key moment because as a result of this workshop, there was an interministerial committee for the elaboration of the draft law that was established. This was early 2018, composed and well, a delete by the Ministry of Humanitarian Action, but also composed of Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Defence, Interior, Population, Promotion of Women and Protection of Children, Members of Parliament and as observers, Protection Cluster UNHCR or China ICRC. So this was a key moment. Next slide, please. How did it continue and what actually contributed to this process? I must admit that we benefited a lot by official visit of the Special Rapporteur on IDPs, Cecilia Jimenez-Damari, who came to Niger in April 2018. It was fantastic opportunity for us because we had several series of meetings with the government, with local authorities at national level. We could speak to IDPs in various regions, get the different stakeholders to get around a table. And as a result of her visit, we have drafted an action plan how to proceed next. And one of the key recommendations was to advance law on IDPs in Niger. So this gave us an opening how to take it forward. We have then continued quite intensively with training sessions. So they were training sessions to the Interministerial Committee because, as you can imagine, not all representatives were very familiar even with the distinction between IDP, refugee, migrant, why we need to protect IDPs, what are the key principles, what are their vulnerabilities, but also other protection-related topics. So we had a series of training for the committee also externally and bring all the stakeholders on board, including the humanitarian country team representatives of the defence and security forces and so on. At the same time, and this was very useful, UNHCR hired a consultant which was really dedicated to supporting the process and reviewed the existing legislation, carried out consultations with various stakeholders on the draft law and was there to accompanying the Ministry of Humanitarian Action. In parallel, there were several consultations with IDPs that were carried out. This included not only sensitization but also asking them what are the key problems that you would like to see addressed, what are the key gaps that you see. So really trying to see their inputs to how this could be translated into the IDP law. We tried to also work on sensitizations with the local community. So it was done through radio messages, through protection cluster members. We have translated the IDP guiding principles into local languages to be more accessible to different communities in Niger. And I would like to add also one other element which was important for us. If you remember in 2018, the GP20 action plan of action came at global level and what was a useful element for us in Niger that we have contextualized the global plan of action with the four pillars that you are familiar with and looked at what we can do at local level. And as the second pillar is related to legal frameworks, this gave us another entry point, another hook to actually translate it and follow up with different stakeholders including government of course on the IDP law. Next slide please. So, late 2018 December, the law was passed. As you probably know, Niger was the first country in Africa to adopt a law on internal displacement. So a fantastic achievement. Now the question was what's next. And it was important to still, as Chaloqa Bayani mentioned before, not to stop the support or the efforts, but on the contrary, accompany the Ministry of Humanity in action that is at the lead of dissemination of this law, but also sensitizing and building the capacity of various actors on this new law. In our colleagues in Niger that are currently there also share two very concrete examples on how the law has been already useful in concrete situations in Niger. One of them being when there was last year a new displacement of internal displacement in Maradi area. Initially the local authority is very reluctant to admit that there is first of all an internal displacement, but also that population would have some specific needs and they are in need of protection. So after sensitizations after discussion and mainly discussing the new law, they changed the position and provided actually protective space to the newly displaced population. Second example also very interesting is when providing trainings to defense and security forces. It proved to be very useful to have concrete examples taken from the law and share the existing legal frameworks in case studies during the workshop or trainings. And it was really appreciated as a concrete framework by the defense and security forces. So last slide please if I should summarize what are the key takeaways from our experience in Niger. From our experience we would say don't be at the front so IDP law is of course first and foremost the responsibility of the government. It's a process driven by national authorities and what I think led to success in Niger was that we had always the government at the forefront. So there were several initiatives behind a consultant supporting on drafting of the process, protection cluster members supporting on capacity building sensitization and so on. The government was leading it and this is important for the sustainability for the implementation for the ownership and how it is taken forward. What was also key for us that we did not jump I think in Niger immediately to drafting of the law of the document and following a template which is available but rather creating an environment that was conducive. So we invested a lot into capacity building in total. There were over 20 trainings to different stakeholders consultations with IDPs and host community. And I would also like to stress the importance of having the national human rights institutions on boards. They can be a very key player in those situations and having them on board and following up the process from their respective mandate. I mentioned previously that we use the GP-20 action plan as an entry point and actually bringing together the stakeholders and being able to follow up. And the same goes with the support of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on IDPs. So this really created the momentum, the space to discuss with the government and take it forward with stakeholders to have the support. And my final point is on the fact that definitely every actor has a role to play in this process, be it a national, international and international human rights institution, protection cluster coordinators, agencies as such, different ministries. But there need to be a coordination and a willingness to advance together. So this is a short overview of how the process went in Niger and I would like to pass the word back to Martina. Thank you very much. And thank you so much Valérie for this very comprehensive presentation of the great work that was done in Niger. Thanks for highlighting the importance as you said of capacity building, of the engagement of human rights mechanisms both at the national level and international level with the strategic use of the special procedures. And for the practical examples that you have shown of how the law was used as well as we already heard and as we know the work doesn't end once the law is adopted. So that's fantastic. And I would like now to leave the floor to Lorena and welcome again. Thank you Martina. And good morning everyone. So yeah, this was supposed to be a deck lock, but due to time constraints, we will make it a pentaloge. And I hope this might be useful for your work on IDPs. Next please. So when we got to Honduras, basically what did we have? We had a recognition of the situation of the problem by the government with a decree in which they stated that the situation was real. They acknowledged the situation and then they were creating an institutional commission that was joined by some of the members of the protection working group and included all key entities within the government. They had already agreed on the need to have a law, which was of course an added value. And then finally, we already had a profiling on IDPs that didn't really have national coverage, but provided an initial figure, which we could work. So this was 2016 when we started the process. What did we miss? The situation of violence in Honduras has been, of course, knowledge known to everyone. We didn't have the time to meet protection needs. What I mean by that, the decision of having a law was there that was positive. But of course, the drafting of a law, the approval of a law and then the implementation of a law takes a lot of time. We couldn't just answer to the communities you have to wait because we are just doing working on the law. We needed to resolve some of the protection needs and gaps that we were identifying. Then we knew we didn't have political will and this is something that one of the participants has shared as a question in terms of parliaments. We knew that the parliament had a different agenda. They were agreeing on doing the law, but the situation in the country had a lot of different elements in which IDPs were not the priority. Resources, you know, that Honduras is a country that is really depending on the money that families are sending from the U.S. It doesn't really have a strong economy. So the resources in terms of budgeting, financial, technical scars. And there was an issue in terms of trust between communities and the government. And this was the basic situation in which we needed to work on. Next, please. So what did we do? And this is the pencil that I was mentioning. The first thing is that we knew we needed to make a reality check. So when do we, where do you start when you do that? You need to take a look on budgets. And this is the initial point. You can have a law that is great, that is well written, but if the government doesn't really have the resources for the implementation phase, then you might be approving a law that will never be implemented. So what we did, and this is one of the key steps in the process is that you need to go through the budget of the nation. You need to see the efforts that the government is making. How much money do they have? And when we did that, we understood that many of the entities that were key in the national treasure didn't really have any money. Or some of the members of the protection working group had more money that the entities in the government. So we understood the dimension of the situation on the economical aspects and how we needed to make a prioritization. And this was key in the process. And that's one of the reasons why we decided that, yes, we are going to support the process of the design of the law. But in order to be able to address some of this protection needs, we are going to focus on one of the key protection gaps that we are identifying. And that was land and house grabbing. Why was this so essential? Because the magnitude of the violence was so high. And the numbers of IDPs were so low that we didn't understand how communities were coping with these levels of violence. When we did the process of mapping and making an exercise with the Catholic Church throughout the country to understand which parishes had known or received IDPs, we understood that people were moving, but they were afraid of losing their property. So they were just coping, coping, coping levels of violence just to protect their houses and their land. So we understood that if we were able to protect these properties, people would be in the possibility of just displacing with like somehow the tranquility of understanding that at least their property, their house, their land will be registered and protected. And this is what we prioritized within the process. And I will go into depth into that. Then there is something that is really important and is that response can not start from scratch. I mean, you cannot tell a government you have this problem of forced displacement and then you need to start designing everything from zero. Governments do not have the capacity, the political will, the technical capacity, the budgeting to do that. So what we did is that we told them, okay, so let's go through the legal framework that you already have. There are many things there that will work to address the situation on forced displacement. You don't have to design everything from zero. And we focused on the property law that did already provide this entity the capacity to register all these abandoned land and housing. So we understood that, yes, we can move forward with the design of the law, but we have already a legal tool that will help us to address this gap that we are identifying. And somehow this was like a scenario in which we could tell communities, yes, we are working on the law, but you can right now start the process of registering and protecting your property. And this is what we did then. And this is where I believe that the protection working groups protection clusters have a huge added value is that within that lack of institutional trust. What the protection working group brought to the table was their relationship with communities legitimacy credibility. We knew where communities stand. We knew how to address them and within a situation of social and territorial control by gangs. We had a humanitarian space. So what we did is that we started to bring the government to situations of mass displacement so they could understand how that worked. They could talk talk to communities directly. We also made the process of making participatory situations or sessions. So communities could mention what they wanted within the law what they needed and what their priorities were in the process of the protection of abandoned property. We also worked with the Catholic Church to identify abandoned property with the information that communities were providing. And then we brought the government the property institute so they could with communities map and identify each of the houses that communities were mentioning had been abandoned due to forced displacement. So this process of building bridges is really key. This is something that the government doesn't know how to do. And even if they knew how to do it they do not have the relationship with the communities that will help communities to be open and to share the situation and their concerns. So this is something in which we identified that the government knew that the protection working group was bringing an added value. They needed that in order to bring the law into the design and implementation. And this is what we did. Next there are some simultaneous processes that we need to address. And this is what I was mentioning at the beginning in terms of we have the situation and then we have the time that all legal developments will take. And we are talking about public policies. It might be longer. It's the same situation that we were addressing. And we decided to move forward with both things. So we did the process of the designing of the law. We included there some articles to guarantee protection of abandoned property. But at the same time we were providing technical advice to the property institute to develop a module of abandoned houses due to forced displacement within the National Registration Service. So we were doing both things at the same time. Where did we have the gap? The property law provided the property institute the faculty to register these properties. What the institute couldn't do was deciding which protection measures could be taken or who was responsible for that process. So basically that's where we knew that this property law that we already had and the work that we were doing with the property institute was finalizing or needed the law in order to be complete. So we were doing both things at the same time. And this is something that could provide some relief to IDPs and at the same time will bring the mid and longer term solution. And finally you must need data. And all the all existing data works. It's really hard. And this is again going back to the parliament question that one of the participants shared. If you don't have data is really difficult to get into the discussion with the government with the parliament or with any key actors even donors. So we need data to understand the magnitude. We need data to understand how to prioritize the response. We need data to in order to be able to share with the government how to start the process. It's very difficult when we tell the government this is the standard and you need to address all of that is not real. So we need to be able to have the information and the data to share with government and say OK so this is the situation. This is the magnitude. We understand that in terms of budgeting resources blah blah blah. You need to prioritize and these are some of the key elements that you can take to decide how to prioritize your response. In the case of Honduras we had we had the protection of abandoned property which was really positive. And we were also able to prioritize humanitarian assistance for displaced persons. So this is some of the key aspects in which you need to work on. Next please. So at the at the analysis of the overall situation. Where did we find this added value. The first was as I was mentioning before we have the knowledge. Many of the actors of the protection working groups had worked in Honduras for 4050 years. They knew very well the situation the how the situation had changed the trends the profiles and this is something that the government needs in order to be able to design a law or any sort of response. We had the legitimacy for the same reason that I was just mentioning. We had the platforms to make advocacy. I believe and this is something that I'm going to mention when I address the challenges. We are very strong in advocacy at the global international levels we have some gaps in another areas but I will address that. And then finally we also have the methodologies and this is very important. Usually the government doesn't really know how to address communities participatory assessments participatory sessions. And if this is linked to the development of laws this becomes much more complicated for governments. So this is something in which the protection working group was sharing methodologies that we had used for several years that worked in order to be able to establish a communication with communities to understand what they needed what their priorities were their concerns and how they wanted to make this relationship with the institutions and also the international community. Where do we have challenges. I believe that we lack technical capacity in terms of how to provide technical assistance for the development of law and public policies. I'm not saying and this is I believe very key we do not need to be lawyers. This is not what you need in order to be able to support any government in the design of a law. But we do have to improve our skills for example in understanding and reading budgets and this is something that usually for protection actors is very weird. This is some words some skills that someone else within our teams usually has but we don't and we need to have that because all of the law efforts that we have on the table will have to have money. And in order to be able to do that to develop a law that will be that that can be implemented we need to be able to have the resources to do that within the reality of the country in which we are working. So technical capacity to understand budgets and how national budgets work I believe is key and one of the gaps in which we need to work institutional approach and this is something that I believe is key. I was mentioning before that we cannot address governments from the standards point of view. We need to be able to address a relationship in which we understand the reality that they are facing. We acknowledge the efforts even if there are many few but we acknowledge the efforts that they are making. And within that we are able to build a constructive collaborative relationship instead of someone who is pointing that you are not doing what you are supposed to do or that you address these specific international instruments if we are not able to level that relationship within reality it will not work. We also need to be able to provide assistance for the short, medium and long terms and sometimes this is a huge gap that we as protection actors have. We commit to the emergency phase we commit to the initial needs of populations and then we just leave the government to do what they have to do. And there is a problem with that we need to understand that the process that we do from the onset of the emergency or the situation will have to have a continuation needs to be sustainable. That means that we need to have the capacities, the technical capacities, the budget strength to support the process. In Honduras the recognition of the forced displacement was done in 2013. The law that is very well reading that includes 88 articles was finalized in 2016 and it has not yet been officially submitted to the Congress. So it can fail, we can fail in what we do. The situation there is linked to how can we engage a government from the different secretaries or ministries that doesn't have the money, doesn't have the political will. And I believe that in terms of building medium long term interventions, we need to be able to strengthen our skills and our capacities to address new actors. For example, as the colleague was mentioning the parliament, how can we and then I connect to the to the final challenge advocacy. We are good in advocacy in this kind of scenarios talking with people that already believe in what we do and that share our concerns. But when we have to move into other scenarios, not as known as these ones, and we need to convince politicals, politics, I'm sorry, of the importance of forced displacement, we are not as strong as we should be. I believe we need to have some training on that. I believe that even if you follow all of the steps, we can fail.  It has not been submitted to the Congress. There is no law in forced displacement in Honduras so far. We had we have been able to provide registration to several IDPs for their land and housing and that is very positive. However, the situation, the political environment in the country, the political will, the political interests have not make it possible to move towards the operation and then the implementation of the law. So these are some of the areas in which I believe we need to have a strength and support capacity and training in order to be able to meet the added value with the challenges that we have already identified. Thank you very much. Thank you, Lorena, for an excellent presentation, really helpful to hear about your recommendation around the bridging role that the protection cluster can play, you know, bringing together the government and the communities, the importance of consultations with communities that has already come up. In Valérie's presentation with regards to Niger, as well as in Dr. Chaloca Bayani's presentation with regards to South Sudan. And for reminding us that there's a lot that we can do to use and use law and policy in different ways, even when an IDP law is not yet in place, there's still much that we can do to advance protection for the populations or concerns that we are ultimately trying to serve. And I will leave it at that for the moment. Thanks again. And I would like to introduce again, Elina, who's going to speak to us about a different challenge that has been in Ukraine in the current COVID context to you, Elina. And welcome. Thank you, Martina. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone who can hear me. I hope you hear me well. And I'd like to tell you, I'm happy to be here and to present the experience of Ukraine in the context of restrictions of freedom of movement in the east of Ukraine emerged as a result of COVID related restrictions. So, and I hope I will able to demonstrate to show you how protection and advocacy measures in the field of IDPs and conflict affected persons rights are connected for any example in Ukraine. Next slide, please. Next slide. Yes, thank you. A little bit presentation about the organization I'm presenting here right now, Right to Protection. Right to Protection is one of the leaders of NGOs in Ukraine in the field of migration for almost 20 years. Our beneficiaries are refugees and asylum seekers, stateless persons or persons at risk of statelessness and IDPs and conflict affected persons. Next slide, please. Yes, thank you. And as you can see, advocacy protection and illegal aid for IDPs and conflict affected persons is the biggest program launched in 2016. We have eight offices in five regions mostly in the eastern of Ukraine. And the next slide, please. Thank you. And a little bit about armed conflict in Ukraine. You can see that territories highlighted by green and blue and pink are temporarily occupied territories. The green is a territory of Crimean Peninsula occupied since 2014 and affected regions of Ukraine in eastern Ukraine affected by war by armed conflict are Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast. Donetsk is a blue one, Luhansk is a pink one. Next slide, please. So the conflict is ongoing and the hostilities are in the eastern Ukraine are ongoing. So you can see that it's a little map more closely that grey zone, it's not the grey zone, it's actually a non-government control area. And the line is that device GCA and NGCA is the line of contact and there are five entry exit checkpoints in Ukraine along the line of contact. And these ECPs are served for crossing for persons who reside on GCA or on NGCA to go back and forth. So a little bit numbers for instance, last year there were almost 14 million of crossings through the line of contact. And persons who live on NGCA for instance, they have to cross the line of contact through ECPs and come to a government control area for receiving some services like administrative services or receiving pensions or social payments and persons who are IDPs who fled the armed conflict in 2014, 2015 and even now in 2020. They sometimes visit NGCA where they left their houses or even relatives. So they have to cross the line of contact from time to time to go to NGCA. However, due to quarantine measures this year because of COVID pandemic on March of this year, the government of Ukraine suddenly closed all ECPs. And it had a huge negative consequences for persons who planned to cross the line of contact through entry exit checkpoints. Next slide please. Yes, and first of all, the freedom of movement of persons who live either on GCA or on NGCA was restricted because even if they planned to come for NGCA to visit their relatives for instance, they couldn't do this because all ECPs were suddenly closed by the government. And it affected a lot of families because families were separated. For instance, grandparents and grandchildren were left on NGCA and parents who came to GCA for some social payments or administrative services were left to GCA. So it was a huge challenge for them. And individuals stuck on GCA or NGCA without housing costs for living or medical care. Next slide please. They were deprived from possibility to return to their homes and to visit their relatives, particularly elderly people or to receive some social benefits, pensions or administrative services. However, the crossing was allowed only for humanitarian reasons like serious illness, death of relatives or they need to reunite families. I'd like to say that after ECPs were closed, Ukrainian NGOs and international organizations affiliated in Ukraine have united their efforts in order to negotiate with the government to reopen entry exit checkpoints. However, it was quite hard. It was a complicated process of negotiating because the main point was not in the governmental will, but the main point was to negotiate with joint forces operation headquarters. And two months ECPs were closed totally. However, for humanitarian needs, there were some possibilities to cross the line of contacts with ECPs. And in April, May of this year, only 297 persons were allowed to cross the line of contacts with ECPs for humanitarian needs and exclusively for humanitarian needs. I'd like to say that RTP collected all information about persons who stuck on ECPs and who tried to cross the line of contact. And we share this information with international organizations like OSCE and RTP assisted many people to reunite with their families and to cross the line of contact back and forth. Next slide please. However, in June of this year, because of negotiations with the government, with the Ministry of Integration of Ukraine, etc. ECPs were reopened, only two of them are fully operational. But there is now another problem for persons who crossed the line of contact from NGCA to government controlled area. They have to install the mobile application at home on their smartphones and indicate the location for their self-isolation. If they do not, they have to undergo the 14 day observation in location provided by local authorities on GCA or return to NGCA. So if they are not able to install this mobile application on their smartphones, they are not allowed to cross the line of contact through entry exit checkpoints. Next slide please. And this is another big challenge for RTP and other organizations in Ukraine who work in the field of IDPs and conflict affected populations rights. We united our efforts again and particularly RTP collects information about all troubles and all problems, technical problems with app.com and observation that persons have to undergo. For instance, we identified some problems, some challenges for people who crossed the line of contact. First of all, all smartphones do not support the application at home. In this case, individuals are not allowed to cross through ECPs. Another problem that observatories where people have to pass observation after crossing are absent or are overcrowded. And another problem if the persons are not allowed to cross the ECPs, they have to pass a night for instance or even some days in the neutral zone between ECPs on government controlled area and ECPs on non-government controlled area. It's a huge risk for persons and humanitarian needs because they are left without costs for living there, without housing and medical care and other services they have to be provided. Next slide please. Thank you and I'd like to say that in order to negotiate with the government, with ministries, RTP collects all information about technical problems with mobile app installation, about observation and self-isolation of persons who crossed the line of contact. And we transfer this primary information to the governmental bodies in order to improve the procedure of crossing or even in case of mobile application at home, we negotiate with the Ministry of Digital Transformation regarding the technical improving of the app. So based on our primary information, the Ministry of Digital Information is currently improving the application at home and we hope it will be soon improved totally. Next slide please. Other activities that as I mentioned, we inform the ministries regarding all problems not only related to the mobile application but related to the observation of persons who have to pass it after they cross ECPs. And we advocate as well that the discriminatory restrictions for those who arrive from non-government and control area must be cancelled. And we advocate as well the general conditions and general procedure of crossing through entry, exit checkpoints should be improved. I'd like to say that even foreigners who come to Ukraine from green zone countries, they are not required to install the application at home, but they have to have an insurance from COVID-19. However, citizens of Ukraine who reside on NGCA have to install this application and have to pass observation regarding quarantine measures in Ukraine. Next slide please. And as I mentioned, ITP joins its efforts with humanitarian community in Ukraine with international NGOs and protection cluster members in order to unite our efforts to advocate measures that help IDPs and conflict affected persons to ensure their right and freedom of movement through the line of contact. So after the reopening of ECPs, we observe the situation, we monitor the situation along the line of contact and we monitor how governmental acts are implemented in terms of quarantine measures. And considering information provided IRDP and other NGOs and international organizations, the governmental bodies now improve the procedure of crossing in terms of quarantine. It's a long process and it's a quite complicated process. It's an ongoing process and I think that we do all our best in order to ensure IDPs' rights and in order to cancel all restrictions for freedom of movement of persons that they can come to government control area and receive all administrative services, social benefits or other payments and unite with their families and be like all their rights regarding their citizenship of Ukraine. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to your questions or remarks. Thank you very much. Elina for your presentation. I think this is an excellent example of how we can use our protection monitoring and the analysis that comes from the information that we collect to really push for the advocacy, to advocate for the legislative change that we want to see. It's excellent that you were already able, through your advocacy, to lead to the change in the reopening of the border crossing through the decrease of the ministry and hopefully you'll be successful in your other efforts as well. We have three questions in particular that we would like now our colleagues to address in these last few minutes before we pass the floor to, we leave the floor to Eco for Corita for some concluding remarks. I wanted to mention in particular one question around the role of the international community. So how we from the global and maybe I would add the regional level as well can help the country level efforts in supporting national laws and policy development and implementation. There's another question in relation to engagement with parliamentarians in particular for the case that was brought forward is one where the IDP bill has been presented by a minority member in the parliament and you know what happens when the government has different priorities. How can we engage successfully parliaments in this in this context and a question also in relation to the role of NGOs more specifically of course we heard about Ukraine, but perhaps in the case of Honduras and how can we whether any backlash is from the government for the involvement of civil society in some of these processes. I must also mention that Dr Chalokabeyani unfortunately had to leave the event so I apologize for those questions that were directly directed to him. But in relation to South Sudan we must mention this is something there's a draft law that has been presented and he requires everybody's efforts now to to be pushed forward actually so this is certainly something that we should we will follow up on. And now maybe Valerie first thanks. Thank you so much, Martina and other colleagues panelists and of course participants for those interesting question I will be very brief because we have limited time. I will touch on two questions one is the support of international community and regional platforms and actors definitely. Yes, make the most use of it and actually coming from the field and having served four times as the cluster coordinator now coming to the global role. What my recommendation would be don't be shy to reach out to the GPC testing online policy to the GPC testing on human rights engagement to the GPC support cell and we are fortunate to have the all actors on this call please make use of their support of. And we will be happy to discuss further.  And where states are actually recommending other states under review some key elements in relation to also amongst other. For example legal legal frameworks and necessary adjustments so there can support as needed as the human rights engagement task team how to frame that how to use and leverage the global advocacy networks how to. With other governments and state to support such recommendations I mentioned in my presentation use how useful it was to have the special reporter on IDPs come in a critical time to Niger and how it helped our process again I think this would be very useful for other context as well something to consider. But don't be shy also to leverage other advocacy platforms and is linked to for example sustainable development goals and broader than just the humanitarian bubble in which we are many times working so. This was very briefly on the question of international community the same goes for regional platforms mainly in Africa and Latin America. On the role of the national actors and NGOs our experience was very positive because we had regular presentations in the cluster meetings where any actor could participate and chair either in the. During the meetings or bilaterally on confidential basis if needed we did not face any backlash. But I would also recommend to reach out more proactively to civil society members that may be their human rights actors that are working on the topic already for years maybe. It may have complimentary skills knowledge and experience to the one of humanitarian actors and protection clusters. Thank you very much and I will stop here. Thanks so much for this and now Lorena and maybe to you. Yes. On the first question I will add that in the case of Honduras having the post governments like to be acknowledged and recognized and I believe that the participation that Honduras with the protection of abandoned property had in the steering committee groups. They were in Geneva invited three or four times. That was amazing. It really worked because even though the government knew they had gaps for them as a Central American country being able to address the global community really really supported the process. They were committed. They already had the eyes of the global community looking at them and they felt in a region in which Honduras of course is not the strongest country being sitting at the table with Columbia and Mexico to talk about this for them was really important. So I believe that this is something that we need to leverage. We had this massive structure of the GPC and all of the committees that they have. We need to have we need to use this better and bring our countries and our governments to showcase showcase whatever what they do. The other thing is that I believe the GP 20. It's a strong tool governments like that because they are showing what they do they are being recognized. And I believe that what the gap that we have right now is linking the GP 20 and all of the steering committee and so forth with governments and the high level panel. That for me would be the cherry on the top. How can we bring governments to address the high level panel to fill them really close as Valerie mentioned we were lucky enough to have Dr. Bayani in Honduras and the report that they did was one of the strongest advocacy tool that we have. If we were able to bring high level panel to a specific dialogues with these countries that are within their capacities trying to do something. I believe there is some leverage that we have and we need to use better on the second question of parliaments. That's really tough. I this is one of the gaps that I feel we have. We don't know how to address the Senate. We don't know how to talk to politicians. We don't believe in them.  So we have the like the cultural barriers that we need to be able to overcome and then find the tools to talk with politicians. And I believe this is something that we don't know how to do at the field level. So how can we address that we first need to improve our skills. I believe that bringing politicians to the field building that relationship showing them how people are facing a specific protection gaps is the route in order to be able to make them sensible to the situation. And then maybe not for sure we could be able to move parliaments but we need to gain some skills on that. Maybe this is one of the areas in which that question is very important and very difficult because I believe we don't have the tools or the skills to address parliaments and legislative agendas within political will. And finally on NGOs the government in Honduras was very strategic and very smart because they included NGOs in the process from the onset of the process. So when things didn't work it was everybody's fault. It was not only the government because the government was working with NGOs and the UN agencies. So we all felt that we were all failing and we could not say is your fault because we were all part of the institutional commission. So no there was no backlash on the other side on the opposite. They were very strategic involving everyone for everything that we all felt that every time we felt it was everybody's fault. So this was an interesting approach from the government in Honduras is not what governments typically do. They do not want us to be so close or so involved in Honduras they did and that was positive for them because we all felt that it was everybody's fault. So this is what I would share on the questions. Thank you. Thank you very much Lorena everybody's fault or everybody's merit. So that's but this is a very very helpful reflection from your side as well and Elina would you like to add from your perspective as well. Thanks. Thank you for your questions. I'd like to say that I totally agree with the first two panelists regarding their answers for the first question. So actually I have nothing to add and I totally agree with them regarding the last two questions I try to make my united answer. So what about Parliament actually here in Ukraine R2P has quite a strict connections with the ministries and Parliament and MPs. Actually we have connections with them and we can provide when we share with them a lot of information primary information we collect from the from field I mean from the ground. So we share with them all information regarding IDPs rights all troubles all problems IDPs face not only regarding the freedom of movement now in quarantine time but actually in the field of property rights for compensation for damaged or destroyed property or in the field of social benefits and pensions and we have huge problems and challenges there in Ukraine. But we negotiate a lot with the ministries with other governmental structures and with MPs as well. We have a new Parliament since last year it was newly elected so it's only one year of MPs and we negotiate a lot with the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights and which is responsible for IDP policy as well. So we have connections and we establish working groups with them and for instance me I'm one I'm the member of one of working groups with the committee under the committee of Human Rights in Ukrainian Parliament. In order to elaborate the law on compensation for property damage or destroyed due to hostilities so actually our experience is quite good here. But what I have to say that it is really hard and complicated to negotiate to show all the problems IDPs face and it's hard to like to push MPs or function of high public officials to understand where that IDPs rights are violated and why and where. So but we negotiate we share all necessary information we show them we write road maps for instance we even write bills and draft bills and actually this our contribution to the policy making process in Ukraine in the field of IDPs rights. So I hope that I answered your two questions and my minor answer is United so all channels you have actually you have all possibilities to introduce your interest in policy decision making process and you have to take every possibility every chance to speak with them to negotiate with them to work with them. It's cooperation I would like to say that cooperation is a key word for in this field. Not the conflict not the confrontation but the cooperation. So take your chance and cooperate even if you think that politicians are corrupted we think in Ukraine as well so we have the same opinion but we don't have other choice choice but to cooperate with them and to show them all problems IDPs and war prisoners and conflict affected persons face. It's our mission to help persons to help people to protect their rights so we take this flag and we take this mission on us. Thank you so much for your questions. Thank you so much for your insights the recommendations that you're compelling answer and call to action for all of us which is perfect for concluding the event but before we do that I'd like to leave the floor to Corita. Corita does use the regional protection and gender thematic experts for echo currently covering Latin America and the Caribbean region and our thanks to you as to Lorena for getting up really early in order to participate with us in this discussion and Corita you're welcome to speak. Can you hear us well Corita can you can you please let us know on the chat if you can unmute yourself you're unmuted we cannot hear you can we turn on the camera maybe. No we cannot hear you. I'm not sure what that could be the issue. I don't know. Yeah. Yep. Can you hear me? Yes. Can you hear you now Corita. Great. Please go ahead. I think it was a problem with my headphones and thank you very much so thank you very much Martina I will try to be very very briefly. Good morning afternoon and evening to you all. I'm Corita Tassi I'm the echo protection and gender thematic expert currently covering Latin America and the Caribbean and based in Panama. Today we had a very rich and fruitful exchange and I'm very happy that we had the opportunity to learn more about these interesting experiences in Niger, Honduras and Ukraine. And I'm thankful that we also had the opportunity to discuss about the global engagement political will and the role of civil society. I think we can say that echo key messages are very much in line with what we heard today. First of all, there is certainly an urgency for more attention to law and policy related issues and the need to develop those within a comprehensive a contextualized risk analysis. The risk analysis should remain at the core of the protection strategy, both the protection cluster level but also national electricity level and the analysis of the legal framework and the national legislation remains a crucial component to identify and address. The context specific impediments and barriers for for people to access and enjoy their rights. Secondly, we should reinforce evidence and either agency effort so more data need to be collected as already mentioned by the panelist more information need to be analyzed and more evidence needs to be developed. On how the lack of or the incomplete or inadequate laws and policies actually affect the access and enjoyment of people rights. And it is in this direction that the role of the cluster and all its members should be reinforced. This has to be a collective work and that includes the support of all cluster members but I would even say love all the humanitarian actors even beyond. And finally, our good friend and old friend the Nexus. It remains absolutely essential to coordinate and join efforts with development actors and stakeholders. We all agree that governments have the primary responsibility in protecting their affected populations without discrimination and therefore developing a national instrument, whether a law or a policy is a particularly important reflection. Of this crucial low and this national responsibility in this direction. We think that protection cluster have also but not limited to a crucial role in analyzing the state of play and the legal framework or lack of it. Building evidence based advocacy and pushing towards change and monitoring it and it remains so crucial that the accompaniment of the government. The coordinated engagement of all stakeholders at all levels local national regional and global and the support to low and policy making processes is jointly supported with development partners in order to find and achieve meaningful and sustainable solutions. These global protection cluster and all forum event gave us the opportunity to enrich this discussion among all of us. And of course the active and diverse field participation and provide the crucial insight and for sure the concrete examples of realities and operational challenges. I'm sure this is just one step on a long and very rewarding process and we really look forward to further working together on building a better environment for the protection of the affected population. Thank you very much and over to you, Martina. Thank you very much Corita. Thank you summarized really well some of the key points that we will take with us from this event. As you said, but before I close and it's about time we close. Thanks so much for everyone for hanging in there until now. I just wanted to say a couple of things from our side as a task team. We are working on developing a few tools that we hope will be helpful for you and in particular as it has been mentioned, a redesigned law and policy training package. So please, if it comes to any request that you may have on capacity building, please reach out to us and we will be happy to support. A guidance and a checklist on the role of the protection clusters and AOS in relation to law and policy. And in relation to this we are developing like a survey that we would like to share with you soon enough. So a short one, I promise, but we really hope to receive your feedback on that because it will be very, very important. And yes, I just like to also know that we noted all the questions and we will address them in a report. And I even if we were enabled maybe to address today during the discussions, but thank you so much. There is an evaluation link for the session today that has been shared on the chat and that you can find. But please really feel free to get back to us and send us get in touch for any request. Any questions do not hesitate. We are there to help you. And thanks again, everybody for joining us today.


Water covers more than 75% of the Earth's surface. Even though humans have mastered travel over these vast expanses, every day an aircraft has to ditch. If you ever have to ditch, you will be faced with one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. Being properly equipped and prepared is the best way to increase your chances for survival. For training purposes, we will concentrate on the hazards that are unique to open water survival. An important fact to remember is that a survival situation begins at the time of an in-flight emergency. Once it is apparent that ditching is inevitable, you should operate as though you are in a survival mode. The main objective is to get the aircraft safely into the water with as little damage as possible. There won't be much planning time, so it's important to consider some what-if situations ahead of time. Each crew member should have a specific task to perform. Use a checklist to ensure that all tasks are completed. A checklist also helps everyone to think and act in a rational and logical manner. A checklist is helpful in any emergency situation, including survival. Before ditching the aircraft, there are some fundamental steps to be considered. Communicate your distress signal early. Don't fall into the trap of denying what is happening to you. Delaying critical decisions like this can decrease your chance of being rescued. As soon as a problem arises, the pilot should report the identification of the aircraft, the aircraft's present position, the nature of the emergency, and the pilot's intentions. Life preservers should be donned before you make contact with the water. All passengers and crew members should be wearing an FAA-certified life preserver. Life vests should not be inflated until evacuation from the aircraft has occurred. Inflating life vests prior to evacuation may puncture the vest while also making it difficult to fit through the emergency exit. So wait until you have completely cleared the exit. It's important that your life vest fit properly.  The greatest loss of body heat is through your head and neck. You should also know how to inflate it manually in case the CO2 canister fails. Again, learn this maneuver prior to an emergency situation. The next step is to remove hatches or establish an emergency exit. If you know you are going to crash onto the open water, prop open a door or window, or remove a hatch. Once in the water, the pressure may prevent you from opening any exits. Also, upon impact, the airframe may twist and warp. If this happens, doors or hatches may be impossible to remove. All loose items should be stowed. Anything that is not secured could become a projectile. This also means you if you are not wearing a safety restraint. Make sure that you and all crew members are strapped in with the proper safety restraints. Locate and secure survival gear. Secure all survival gear near the emergency exit so you can access it quickly. Before we discuss survival techniques, let's review the principles of successful ditching. Wind direction. With smaller aircraft, wind is a primary consideration. At night time, it may be impossible to tell the wind direction. White caps on the ocean will give you some indication. Sea conditions. When ditching an aircraft, look below at the wave patterns on the water's surface. Try to look for the primary swell. Primary swells are described as large swells with some distance between them. Large swells become your primary targets for landing. Land parallel with the swells if you can and on the top or backside of a swell. At all costs, avoid the face of a swell. You may also see secondary swells. These are created by winds and may run a different direction than the primary swells. Touchdown during ditching should be at the lowest speed possible. It should be a rate of descent that permits safe handling and optimum nose-up attitude on impact. Once impact is made, there is little a pilot can do to control a land plane on the water. If your aircraft has retractable landing gear, keep the gear up and belly skid into the water. Be aware that high wing or low wing aircraft with non-retractable gear have a tendency to flip in the water. Because of this, it is important that you maintain a reference point inside the cockpit so you will know where the exit is after impact. This is much more difficult than you may realize. The best way to prepare for this maneuver is to practice it in an aviation dunk trainer. As soon as the aircraft stops, evacuate. Check all crew members and assist any injured. If time and conditions permit, gather as much survival equipment as you can. Next, locate the raft and get it out of the aircraft. The first person out of the aircraft should inflate the raft, making sure it is moored to the plane. Those exiting the aircraft should use the mooring line to get into the raft. This means getting into the water. The raft needs to be away from the aircraft so that it does not become punctured from the metal debris. The mooring line will break away from the aircraft as the aircraft begins to sink. It is best to be moored to the aircraft as long as possible. Once in the raft, ensure that all crew members and passengers are present. There are several basic raft actions that must be accomplished. One individual should assume command. In accordance with international law, the pilot in command will continue to be in command onboard the raft unless he or she is injured or prefers to appoint someone else to that leadership role. Retrieve accessory container tied to raft. This container will typically have items to help keep your raft in good repair. A hand pump, repair plugs or patches, a bailing bucket and sponge, a sea anchor and first aid kit are just a few of the items located in this container. This kit should be closed and tied to the raft. Retrieve hand pump. Keep the raft cells fully inflated as this will help the raft to be more rigid and stable. Dry the raft using the bailing bucket and sponge. If the inside of the raft gets wet with seawater, it will be very uncomfortable for all the occupants. Bail out as much water as possible using the bailing bucket and dry the raft using the sponge. Inflate the floor. This will make the raft more rigid and stable as well as providing additional insulation from cooler waters. Check the sea anchor for proper release. A sea anchor will reduce drift and increase stability of the raft. The length of line should be adjusted according to the condition of the seas. Usually it is best to keep the sea anchor line long. Adjust its length so that when the raft is at the crest of a wave, the sea anchor will remain in the trough. Keep survivors distributed evenly and low in the raft. This will help to prevent your raft from capsizing. To prevent from falling out, no one should sit on the top or edge of the raft. Secure and adjust the canopy. Overhead protection from the hot sun and a barrier from the cool sea is a must. A protected environment can be provided by utilizing the raft's canopy. Protection is essential in helping to maintain the body's core temperature. If available, activate the Emergency Locator Transmitter or ELT. Once activated, allow it to run continuously. Otherwise, to potential rescuers, it may seem that the ELT was activated accidentally. Gather an inventory all survival equipment from the aircraft, the raft, and all personal survival kits. It's a good idea to categorize all equipment and have it ready and available for quick use. But more importantly, make sure all items are tied down in the event that the raft flips over. Any medical problems that arise during sea survival can be debilitating and life-threatening. These problems should be treated as soon as they arise. Shock. After experiencing the emergency situation and ditching, survivors may suffer from shock. Once in the raft, it is important to keep everybody as warm as possible without overheating. By erecting the raft's canopy and raising the spray shields, the temperature will increase quickly. Some survivors may suffer from shock more so than others. Watch for those who turn pale and have cool skin. Shock victims may sweat and breathe rapidly. Their pulse may be weak, but rapid. They may act dazed or be unconscious. If you notice any of these symptoms, suspect shock and treat it. Lay the victims flat with feet raised and keep them warm with extra clothing. Saltwater sores. These are produced from a combination of the saltwater environment and the constant rocking and shaping action of the raft. These sores have a blister-like appearance and feel like a mild burn. Do not open or squeeze these sores. Apply an antiseptic and try to keep the affected area dry. Immersion foot. Trench foot. Immersion foot is an injury caused by prolonged exposure to damp conditions. The feet will have a cracked and pruned appearance. They will be red in color and will then become pale. The foot will swell and become very sensitive to the touch. To prevent this problem, keep your raft and feet as dry as possible. Never wear wet socks for long periods of time. Use body heat to dry them. Promote good circulation in your feet by wiggling toes and ankles. Do not wear tight-fitting shoes. Immersion hypothermia. Hypothermia is the cooling of the body's core temperature. With immersion hypothermia, the rate of cooling is greatly accelerated. Sea water freezes at 28 to 29 degrees Fahrenheit. Water near icebergs is usually this cold. A person who comes in contact with water at such temperatures goes into an immediate form of shock. Upon submersion, smaller blood vessels and capillaries contract, causing the blood pressure and heart rate to increase. The victim will be unconscious in 7 minutes and could die in 20 minutes if not rescued from the cold water. Many individual factors affect survival time in cold water, age, body size, energy levels and type of clothing. All of these do influence survival time to some degree. The University of Victoria, British Columbia conducted a study to establish the correlation between water temperature and potential survival times. Subjects in this study were wearing life jackets and light clothing while remaining motionless. Swimming may seem to be the best way to keep warm in the water, but this is not the case. As a person swims, blood circulation increases in arms and legs, bringing more blood in contact with cooler water. As the blood cools and continues to circulate, it lowers the body's core temperature. Also when swimming, cold water is continuously being circulated outside the body, accelerating hypothermia. Studies have shown that swimming cools the body 25% faster than just remaining still. The average person can swim about 0.85 miles in 50 degree water before becoming incapacitated. As a general rule, if water temperature is 50 degrees or below and you have a flotation aid, don't swim. Instead, go into a fetal position and conserve your body heat. By remaining motionless in cold water, it will also heat the water around the body, which will help to insulate your body against the colder water. But if the raft is 100 feet or so from you, should you swim for it? Common sense would say yes, but this is going to be a judgment call. Dehydration. Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. This old saying holds true even in an open water environment. Finding drinking water to fight dehydration while stranded at sea will be a challenge. You may find packaged water in the survival kits, but not in great quantities. The primary precaution to remember is that you should ration your sweat, not your drinking water. If there is water, drink it. It's better to have it in the body where it's doing some good. The temptation to drink seawater must be avoided. It could be lethal. Seawater is not a substitute for drinking water. If you drink seawater, you also consume large amounts of raw salt, which eventually poison the body's cells. The only safe substitute for drinking water is rainwater. Keep a lookout for rain showers. Prepare rain catchers, whatever you can find to collect rain, and have these ready for quick use in the event of a quick rain shower. In your raft accessory kit, you will find a reverse osmosis pump. This pump brings in seawater and removes the salt water from it, purifying it for consumption. By simply pumping one stroke per second for one hour, you will receive one quart of potable water. The sea is the greatest source of food on earth, but as a general rule, do not consume any food unless there is ample drinking water. Fish from the ocean can be eaten raw. Most all fish are edible, although there are a few that are poisonous to humans. As a general rule, if it looks like a typical fish, it is probably safe to consume. Fish that have the following characteristics should be avoided, brightly colored fish, fish having bristles or spines, fish that puff up or expand, or fish that have beak-like lips. Hazardous marine life in the ocean is more a psychological threat than a physical one. Most people who feel apprehension about what is down there do so primarily from fear of the unknown. A shark's primary role in the oceanic food chain is that of a scavenger. There are 300 or more species of sharks in the world's oceans, and of this number, only about nine are considered a threat to humans. Chances are you will probably never see a shark. Concentrate your mental energies on something more productive, such as being rescued or performing tasks instead of focusing on an unlikely shark attack. Sea snakes Sea snakes occasionally come to the surface. Do not try to capture or provoke them, as their bites are lethal. Jellyfish and the Portuguese man of war. These invertebrates have a bulbous-shaped body and long tentacles that can reach 100 feet in length. The tentacles have stinging cells used to stun small fish. If a person comes in contact with these tentacles, it can deliver a painful sting. Both species use water currents as transportation and float just under the water's surface. Watch for these and try to avoid them. Here are several ways you can avoid hazardous marine life. Do not splash water around your raft. This is an attraction to sharks. Throw all body waste far from your raft. If possible, enclose it in a plastic bag before discarding. Keep all hands and feet inside the raft. Try to keep all blood and wounds out of the water. Keep clothing on. Wear layers for protection. Do not fish if you know sharks are in the area. Stay in the raft at all times. Survival has but one goal. Rescue. The survivor's chief responsibility is to get the attention of the rescuer. Remember that extraction can be accomplished through many means. Rough seas can present a challenge to the most experienced of rescuers. If rescue by helicopter is evident, there are some precautions you need to take to ensure a safe rescue. Let the helicopter come to you. As it approaches, it will typically drop a pickup device in the water and drag it to your position. While this is occurring, you should partially deflate the cells of the raft. This will prevent the raft from becoming airborne and damaging the helicopter. As the device is being lowered, there will be a buildup of static electricity, so do not touch the device before it has made contact with the water. Once the helicopter gets in the optimum position, it will hover. You can then approach the device. Due to the downwash from the helicopter rotors, it will be very difficult to see. Try to keep the rescue device in sight. If possible, a rescue diver will be lowered with the device to assist you. If you have to don or enter the device on your own, look for simple one-word directions. When secured to the device, let rescue personnel know. Give a splashing thumbs up. But remember, rescue personnel may not be able to see due to the rotor wash, so exaggerate your signal. Remain still on the way up. There is a possibility that the device may start to spin. Try to keep your movements minimal. Do not assist when entering the helicopter. Listen for instructions. Let rescue personnel remove the device from you. The particular pickup devices used to extract survivors is dependent on the type of helicopter used. Rescue Strop Sometimes called the horse collar, the rescue strop is essentially a padded loop. The strop is designed to fit under the arms and around the torso. To don the strop, take the open strop and roll it around the torso. Make sure that the strop fits underneath the armpit area. Next, take the D-ring, the end that is not connected to the cable, and bring it to the front and insert it through the sliding buckle. Then connect it to the hook. Locate the safety strap and place it between the legs, attaching it to the sliding buckle. The safety strap should remain loose and not fit tightly. Prepare for ascent.  Cross your arms on your chest and turn your head to one side. The penetrating rescue seat is a device designed to accommodate one to two downed rescue victims. The device is lowered with the seat arms in the closed or up position. Upon reaching the rescue victim, the seat arms are open to the down position. The victim straddles the seat arms, wraps the safety strap around the torso, and snaps it to the D-ring on the device body, and gives the rescue crew the ready-to-lift signal. The victim should hug the device body and turn their head to one side. If two persons are to be lifted, they should hug each other. Those being lifted should not attempt to separate from the device unless assisted by rescue personnel. Rescue basket or Stokes litter In the event of rescue involving untrained civilians at sea, a rescue basket or Stokes litter may be used. The procedure is safe and simple. The survivor climbs in, lies or sits down, and is then hoisted out of the sea. It is imperative that extremities remain inside the basket or litter. If the basket swings into the helicopter or door frame, injury could result. Hopefully you will never be faced with an open water survival situation. But don't take the attitude that it can't happen to you. Being prepared will increase your confidence, and it could save your life. If you're not sure about what you need or what to do, take the time to learn. There are excellent resources available on survival techniques. Share your knowledge and skills with others who fly with you. You'll then have the best chance for survival, not only in open water, but in any unfortunate situation.