PHAP: Learning sessions and webinars

Latest Episodes:

Partnerships and principles in conflict contexts: Voices from Nigeria and South Sudan Jun 03, 2021

Show notes

Partnerships between international organizations and local actors are key for the delivery of principled humanitarian aid. While progress has been made through the Principles of Partnership, much more is needed to implement these principles. This is particularly true for applying the humanitarian principles in conflict contexts – the delivery of principled humanitarian aid is a challenging endeavour in these settings that requires continuous attention.
In the second half of 2020, two research teams engaged with more than 123 local actors operating in the humanitarian delivery space in the states of North Eastern Nigeria and South Sudan to investigate how partnerships and humanitarian principles were implemented. The research made interesting findings related to perceptions of double standards and difficulties with operationalising humanitarian and partnership principles, that the set of principles must operate in combination to secure principled humanitarian assistance in local contexts, and a lack of shared understanding between partners of what principled humanitarian action means in practice. Based on their discussions, the investigators are suggesting new and stronger models of humanitarian partnership that are more equitable, accountable to local actors and which take collective responsibility for principled delivery of humanitarian aid.
On 2 June, we organized a launch event of the report based on this research. We were joined by the principal investigators from both research teams and representatives of local organizations in these two contexts, as well as experts on global policy, to discuss the results and their implications.
Read more and access event resources at https://phap.org/2jun2021

Community-based protection, early warning, and conflict preparedness Mar 31, 2021

Show notes

In this webinar, the second of a two-part series exploring existing efforts to improve the safety of civilians during armed conflict, we will be discussing “secondary” prevention programs, in particular those focusing on strengthening communities in conflict-affected areas to reduce the risk of harm and mitigate the effects of armed conflict on civilian populations. We will hear from NGOs active in situations of armed conflict around the word about how they approach building capacity for prevention in communities – what the main considerations are and in which situations they are effective. We will also discuss what other organizations can learn from their approach and the implications this has for the humanitarian community as a whole.
To learn more about this event, please visit https://phap.org/30mar2021
To watch the first event in the series, visit https://phap.org/23mar2021

Civilian Safety in Armed Conflict: Strategies and approaches for direct prevention of violence Mar 24, 2021

Show notes

In this first of two webinars exploring existing efforts to improve the safety of civilians during armed conflict, we will be discussing “primary” prevention programs, which focus on advocacy, armed actor behavior change, and direct engagement with armed actors, either by the humanitarian organization or by facilitating this engagement by communities. We will hear from civil society organizations and UN agencies about their approaches to primary prevention – what the main considerations are and in which situations they are effective. We will also discuss what other organizations can learn from their approach and the implications this has for the humanitarian community as a whole.
To know more about the second webinar in this series (Civilian Safety in Armed Conflict: Community-based protection, early warning, and conflict preparedness), please go to https://phap.org/30mar2021
In armed conflict, the humanitarian community continues to witness highly disturbing situations where the safety of civilians is ignored or not addressed, or where civilians are purposely targeted by parties to a conflict. While protection services continue to provide much-needed support to vulnerable and marginalized groups and individuals and respond to protection concerns with remedial service provision, limited progress has been made on contributing to civilians’ safety in armed conflict. As Hugo Slim expressed it in the recent Oxford Lecture Series on Protection: “When you look at protection’s track record through wars, protection is at its weakest here, in this challenge in protecting people from physical harm and unlawful devastating attacks on their persons and homes.”
In the last few years, there has been a push by both humanitarian agencies and donors to examine how we can prevent and protect civilians from physical harm during conflict. Key questions remain: what does prevention mean and look like within our protection of civilians programming? Where does civilian safety “fit” within the humanitarian architecture?
There are, however, several existing approaches to mitigate and reduce risk in armed conflict for the civilian population, including how to prevent violence from happening in the first place and how to strengthen civilian self-protection strategies through community-based initiatives. This two-part webinar series aims to provide an overview of the range of strategies currently undertaken by national and international civil society organizations, UN agencies, and donors, providing examples of good practice, and discuss how such efforts can be advanced and systematized in the wider humanitarian community.
Read more about this event at https://phap.org/23mar2021

Parliamentary action to end statelessness by 2024 Mar 03, 2021

Show notes

Statelessness, the situation where a person is not recognized by any State as a citizen, has devastating impacts on millions of people around the world. 4.2 million people were known to be stateless as of mid-2020, but with just 76 countries included in data reported by UNHCR, the actual number is likely to be much higher.
Statelessness deprives women and men, girls, and boys the right to enjoy basic rights that citizens may take for granted – the right to a legal identity, to move across borders, to own property, vote, access education, health services, and legal employment. As most situations of statelessness can be prevented or resolved through legislation, parliamentarians have a critical role to play in bringing the scourge of statelessness to an end. Join us for a webinar on 25 February, organized by UNHCR, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), and PHAP, in which we will discuss strategies and practical ways of mobilizing parliamentary action to end statelessness in the next four years.
In 2019, the inaugural Global Refugee Forum (GRF) and the High-Level Segment on Statelessness (HLS) resulted in unprecedented 396 pledges concerning statelessness submitted by States, international and regional organizations, and civil society. Seventy-nine States submitted 270 pledges relevant to eradicating statelessness globally, many of which call for parliamentary action.
On 25 February, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, UNHCR, and PHAP organized a webinar which placed particular attention on how to move beyond pledges made at the GRF and HLS in order to strengthen implementation of the #IBelong Campaign and the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness by 2024. Members of Parliaments who have led legislative efforts to address statelessness in their countries shared their experience and also had time for questions and discussion by webinar participants.
Read more about the event at https://phap.org/25feb2021

The critical role of ethics in forced migration research Dec 10, 2020

Show notes

Research on forced migration provides critical input into the processes that help shape policy on displacement and humanitarian response. On that account, researchers should directly engage refugees, other forcibly displaced groups, and the communities that host them. The self-representation of refugees is a principle that has recently been reaffirmed through the discussions around the Global Compact on Refugees, as well as other processes.
However, directly involving vulnerable populations in research comes with ethical considerations for researchers, as well as for “gatekeepers” to forced migrant populations and the forced migrants themselves. These include unequal power relations, legal precariousness, extreme poverty, violence, the criminalization of migration, and politicized research contexts, among others. To help navigate these kinds of situations, the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM) adopted a Code of Ethics in 2018, which provides a starting point for active, critical engagement with ethical issues in forced migration research.
On 10 December, UNHCR, IASFM, PHAP, and the Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network (GAIN) organized a webinar in which we discussed the particular ethical challenges faced in researching situations of forced migration, how these relate to the application in practice of the principle of “do no harm”, and the IASFM Code of Ethics. We heard from researchers, a refugee post-graduate student, as well as a camp manager, who shared their experience and exchanged views on these questions.
Read more on https://phap.org/10dec2020

“Organizational culture matters”: Leadership, staff well-being, and living our values Dec 03, 2020

Show notes

For a long time, humanitarian organizations have faced situations reminding us that how we carry out our work is as important as what we do – including how agencies approach the mental and physical well-being of staff members to avoid long-term exhaustion, burnout, injury, or illness. Apart from the direct impact to individual staff members when the duty of care is compromised, organizations also face potential risks of an operational, reputational, safety and security, fiduciary, or legal and ethical nature.
The top management of an organization plays a critical role in managing risks and ensuring that staff and those we assist in our day-to-day work are cared for. This has been the focus of a joint ICVA-CHS Alliance project on the CEO role in driving culture change to enable a positive workplace culture, safeguard staff well-being, and live our humanitarian values.
On 3 December, ICVA, the CHS Alliance, and PHAP organized a webinar building on this project and discussed practical challenges faced by staff and management as well as insights into solutions to improve the ability of senior executives to promote the necessary change.
Liza Jachens, Organisational Psychologist at Webster University, shared the results from her research of burnout and mental illness among humanitarian workers. Ann Muraya, Director of Organisation Health for Thrive Worldwide, discussed what it means to have a healthy organizational culture. Melissa Pitotti, consultant for the ICVA-CHS Alliance joint project looking at the CEO role in driving organisational culture change and co-Initiator of the CHS Alliance Initiative to Cultivate Caring, Compassionate Aid Organisations, provided a summary of the findings generated from recent interviews and focus group discussions with CEOs. Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, CEO of Christian Aid, and Dhananjayan (Danny) Sriskandarajah, CEO of Oxfam GB, reflected on their own experiences leading culture change within their organisations.
This was the fourth webinar of the Learning Stream on Risk Management in Practice.
Read more about the event at https://phap.org/3dec2020

The State of Protection in the COVID-19 Era Dec 01, 2020

Show notes

In the margins of the public health and economic crises with which the world has contended through 2020, COVID-19 ultimately looms as a long-term, far-reaching global protection emergency. Where some of the world’s best-resourced countries have tracked a staggering increase in demand for protection services, people in nations with pre-existing humanitarian crises are grappling with unprecedented compound protection threats and even fewer resources to help mitigate them.
Protection Clusters are reporting heightened risks of forced displacement, a rise in xenophobia and stigmatization, a dramatic increase in gender-based violence, and discrimination in access to health, food, water, education, and legal services for vulnerable and marginalized groups. The largest economic shock the world has experienced in decades is not and will not be felt equally; countries, communities, and individuals at greatest risk must have enhanced access to protection services.
Together with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Global Protection Cluster, and with support from PHAP, the Norwegian Refugee Council brought together a High-Level Panel that reflected on the state of protection in the COVID-19 era. The event drew on findings from a new NRC-Global Protection Cluster report on the current state of play in protection financing, and brought to a close the Global Protection Forum.
This event presented a critical discussion on the place of protection within humanitarian response and the commitments needed across the humanitarian community to address major needs and challenges in 2021 and beyond.
Read more about the event at https://phap.org/30nov2020

Creating inclusive cities in South Africa amidst COVID-19 Nov 20, 2020

Show notes

The UN Secretary General’s Policy Brief on COVID-19 in an Urban World reckons that urban areas are at the epicentre of the pandemic, accounting for an estimated 90 per cent of cases. Overcrowding and urban areas with poor infrastructure and housing or weak local governance leads to higher virus transmission.
Solutions start at the local level which is why cities and local communities are uniquely placed to protect and support displaced people. The Global Compact on Refugees recognizes the crucial role mayors and local authorities play as first responders, a role even more critical now when we are all faced with the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing shelter, health care, food and assistance are how a number of cities in South Africa are helping those forcibly displaced to cope through the pandemic.
On 20 November 2020, we organized a conversation between UCLG Africa, UNHCR, a refugee representative, and city authorities to discuss the commitment to create inclusive cities despite the challenges that COVID-19 presents
For more information, go to https://phap.org/20nov2020

The State of Humanitarian Professions 2020 Nov 19, 2020

Show notes

The capacities of those delivering response to humanitarian crises determine the quality of aid, its relevance, effectiveness, and sustainability, and is key to the effective application of humanitarian principles. But in a rapidly changing aid ecosystem, how can humanitarian organisations better recruit, retain, and develop competent staff? How can individual practitioners have greater clarity on how to enter the aid sector and be effective for people in need? How can learning providers better target the most acute learning needs?
These are some of the questions that the first international study on humanitarian professions attempts to answer – the State of Humanitarian Professions 2020. Over the past year, Bioforce has been carrying out interviews and workshops, as well as a large-scale survey, with humanitarian actors, individual practitioners, and learning and development providers worldwide. The results include insights into the current state of 24 humanitarian professions and what their future will be. In addition, the study has looked at the core competencies across all humanitarian professions, how they are changing and what they will look like in the future.
On 17 November, we organized an online conference launching the State of the Humanitarian Professions 2020 study. This was an opportunity to learn more about the results of this study, as well as to discuss their wider implications for humanitarian work. We also encouraged all registrants to respond to a brief survey about the impact of COVID-19 on humanitarian professions, the results of which were presented during the conference.
Read more at https://phap.org/sohp2020

The impact of bank de-risking on humanitarian action Oct 23, 2020

Show notes

Over the last few years the issue of “bank de-risking” has increasingly impacted the ability of humanitarian NGOs to safely and effectively transfer funds to programmes where people are most in need. While bank de-risking can affect the operations of any type of organization, humanitarian organizations are particularly affected due to the nature of their work and the contexts in which they operate.
Often related to compliance with counter-terrorism measures, bank de-risking measures by financial institutions manifest themselves to humanitarian organizations in the form of refused transactions, closed accounts, or other restrictions. While bank de-risking issues for humanitarian organizations have to a large degree concerned money transfers to operations in fragile countries, there are more and more examples of humanitarian organisations facing difficulties transferring funds even at the headquarters level. Humanitarian organisations have to resort to transferring money in risky ways in order to preserve programme continuity, thus bank de-risking practices can increase the risks of fraud, security, compliance and lack of transparency.
An opaque banking system which has limited accountability to humanitarian organisations and their principles leave little to be done for individual organisations in term of appealing or objecting to what sometimes seem like arbitrary decisions. Bank de-risking is lacking research and advocacy since most organisations avoid discussing how it affects them. This is why humanitarian organisations need to step up both the management of this risk and common advocacy towards both donors and financial regulators.
On 22 October, ICVA and PHAP organized a webinar focusing on bank de-risking and its impact on humanitarian action. Following an introductory briefing, we discussed with a panel of experts the practical challenges faced by humanitarian NGOs and how to approach this issue from a risk management perspective.
Read more about the event at https://phap.org/22oct2020

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