Distribution by Region

Distribution by Organisation Type, Document Type, Region and Year

Negotiation occurs mostly in documents published in Europe, followed by North America, Asia, Africa and MENA with comparatively smaller contributions. Overall, the top five contributors in terms of occurrences are IGO, NGO, Found, State and RC organisations.

IGO, NGO, Found, State and RC documents provide the greatest number of occurrences, primarily from activity reports published in Europe.

Negotiation...

• is a

  • skill, activity, tactic, service, tool, process

  • form of humanitarian engagement and advocacy

  • component of in-country division of labour for humanitarian organisations

• has participants, grouped by

  • type of entity

• • named entity

• role

• demographic, including those with insufficient participation

• has two main types in the humanitarian realm

  • humanitarian negotiation, which

    • includes access negotiation

    • is distinct from negotiating for peace, human rights and other issues

    • focuses on gaining access and civilian protection

    • is codified in IHL and general international law

    • is seen as weakening over time

    • may involve compromising humanitarian principles

    • requires significant resources

    • has external challenges

• has internal challenges

• • • has strategies

• peace negotiation, which

  • • humanitarians contribute to in several ways

• • • should be inclusive, with more women especially

    • may suffer from

      • lack of long-term continuity

      • mixing peace and humanitarian priorities

• has other types, grouped by

  • objective/area

• • level/scale

• • phase

• • mode of interaction

• • named entity

• • named policy/programme

Humanitarian negotiations have been defined as negotiations undertaken by civilians engaged in managing, coordinating and providing humanitarian assistance and protection for the purposes of ensuring the provision of humanitarian assistance and protection to vulnerable populations; preserving humanitarian space; and promoting respect for international law.1 Humanitarian negotiations are thus a distinct type of humanitarian engagement, one that involves seeking a mutually acceptable way forward when humanitarians and other parties are not initially in agreement on a particular issue or set of issues. Humanitarian negotiations represent a discrete part of the broader body of practice undertaken by a range of actors on engagement for the purposes of the protection of civilians.

Humanitarian access should not be imposed through the use of force, as association of humanitarian action with armed actors can undermine the neutrality of the response and compromise the safety and access of humanitarian workers and the people they serve. Therefore, humanitarian access needs to be constantly negotiated with all relevant parties. “Humanitarian negotiations” are generally understood as negotiations conducted by humanitarian actors with relevant parties in order to achieve purely humanitarian objectives, such as access to carry out needs assessments, and to provide assistance and protection. Negotiations should not, for example, be confused with or linked to political mediation. Nor should engagement with non-State armed groups for the purposes of humanitarian negotiation be interpreted as conferring any degree of political legitimacy upon such groups.

Access negotiations and initiatives can happen at many levels, including bilaterally with governments and senior figures in armed groups, and through the UN Security Council, such as its resolution 2401 (2018) calling for a 30-day cessation of hostilities in Syria to enable deliveries of humanitarian assistance and medical evacuations of the critically sick and wounded. Security Council resolutions are not required for access, given clear obligations under international humanitarian law, but can in theory be a useful tool. However, even where there is higher-level permission, experience shows that without local compliance this will not enable access.

There is increased investment in training and professionalization for access negotiations, with organizations developing guidelines and protocols. For example, the Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiations provides training to various humanitarian actors. While training and specialized skills are useful, negotiating access is often a constant part of action at the most local level and therefore involves many more staff than there are trained experts. Similarly, while joint initiatives can be beneficial, most organizations insist on the importance of “direct bilateral contact” (Haver, 2016).

At the request of the parties to the peace negotiations, the ICRC continued to act as a neutral intermediary, facilitating safe passage for some of their representatives and providing advice on IHL related issues.

The project also aims to help all those involved in peace processes to apply international standards while achieving workable consensus in the pressured and complex reality of peace negotiations .

It is for this reason that we were able to engage in peace negotiations and successfully recover twenty-one out of twenty three guns, stolen from the slain policemen.

Unfortunately, the stalemate in peace negotiations and the aggressive posture of the Burma military indicate that there will be little or no progress toward ending the fighting in the ethnic areas during 2018.

The Women's Peace Tables initiative is a global awareness campaign started by #WomenSeriously in response to the fact that women are still chronically under-represented in peace negotiations and decision-making tables around the world.

The chart below represents the distribution of negotiation between 2005 and 2019 in terms of the number of occurrences and relative frequency of occurrences. It also allows you to view the distribution across Regions, Organisations and Document types.

• external challenges

• • insecurity

  • criminalisation of engaging with certain groups

  • dynamics of working with non-state actors

  • political, development and humanitarian activities being mixed

  • relying on intermediaries to negotiate

• internal challenges

  • lack of policy, organisational capacity

• strategies

  • strictly follow humanitarian principles

  • avoid negotiations with mixed objectives

  • refine internal policies, build capacity

  • cooperate with other humanitarian actors (from local to international)

  • work with non-state actors

    • build trusting relationships early

    • communicate the limitations and scope of humanitarian efforts

    • dilemma: engaging with an actor’s interests may achieve more results than reiterating the importance of IHL

Aid agencies consistently reported relying on elders or other community members to negotiate access. In certain circumstances, pressure from communities and elders did appear to influence Taliban commanders, but this only appeared to work where elders where either trusted by the Taliban, or local commanders were not predisposed to limit access. Even Taliban who acknowledged that such negotiations occur were suspicious of aid agencies, fearing that elders might be ‘corruptible’ by NGOs.

While existing IASC guidance and the ERC have stated that humanitarian negotiations do not confer legitimacy on armed non-state actors, it is hard to avoid this impression by armed groups and members of the international community, particularly in contexts with an integrated UN mission where those leading humanitarian negotiations might be linked to peacekeeping forces that might be seen by some as a party to the conflict.

For the majority of agencies, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) negotiated ‘ground rules’ setting out the procedures governing humanitarian access. The main point of contention during the negotiation of the ‘ground rules’ was the rebels’ demand to vet all national staff entering their territory because the rebels believed that many national staff were government spies.

In order to negotiate access to populations in need of assistance and protection, and to maintain the acceptance of local actors and the population, contact with non-state armed actors is crucial in facilitating safe and effective humanitarian responses.

Despite the growing insecurity, cross-line operations continued, and aid agencies were able to maintain access to vulnerable populations outside of government- controlled territory by revising their security protocols, establishing contacts with janjaweed groups and newly formed rebel factions and renegotiating access. Maintaining access came at a cost: renegotiation often involved compromising humanitarian principles, such as providing ‘aid for peace’ to certain groups, and more stringent security protocols, such as travelling only by air, distanced aid agencies from the communities they were assisting, and the armed groups with which they needed to work.

Organizations present in hard-to-reach areas are painfully aware of the compromises needed to stay and deliver assistance and will make deliberate choices that may compromise certain principles in support of the overarching principle of humanity (although they may not always do this well or based on a sound analysis of the implications and trade- offs) (Niland, 2014).

• the inherent strain that negotiating for access puts on neutrality and other principles

• negotiating security does not prevent indiscriminate violence

• armed actors may not have a cohesive organisational structure: negotiating with one representative does not guarantee acceptance by others

• negotiating is resource-intensive and requires significant portions of budgets and human expertise

• humanitarian organisations may choose not to coordinate with one another because it puts their position in risk if problems occur and blame is shared

• gaining access can be time-sensitive and change with unfolding events

Nonetheless, this is a key moment to reconsider a coordinated humanitarian strategy regarding access negotiations. Structural transformations in the operating environment in Afghanistan, in the wake of the recent national election and international drawdown, present unprecedented opportunities for effective engagement with interlocutors at local, regional and national levels in order to secure safe access for humanitarian operations. Such coordination has high risks, but also potentially very high rewards for humanitarian access. Unfortunately, such an endeavour requires resourcing, leadership and consensus, and the moment of opportunity will pass quickly.

A great deal of effort is put into the preparation for and implementation of peace negotiations , but little attention is given to the long-term (10 to 15 years) stabilization efforts between the signatories and the many other political actors in the society who were left out of the negotiations. Because of the first and second points combined, when peace agreements are implemented they often generate new (unforeseen) conflicts that can derail the overall agreement.

The peace negotiations have combined both humanitarian and political issues, and have presented challenges for the humanitarian community in both practice and principle. On the one hand, it has been argued that humanitarian access and an end to violence against civilians have been at the forefront of many of the internationally supported peace negotiations. Some humanitarian workers report that they have benefited from being able to refer to humanitarian to achieve more lasting protection, warring parties must be brought to adhere to their obligations under international humanitarian law protocols in negotiations with rebel groups (though not with Janjaweed leaders, who have not been effectively involved in the peace talks). It has also been suggested that discussion of humanitarian issues has played a 'vanguard role', getting warring parties to the table, and providing a fallback position should talks on political issues falter – as happened at critical times in both the N'Djamena and Abuja processes. On the other hand, the ICRC and others are concerned that combining humanitarian issues and peace negotiations allows warring parties to view their humanitarian obligations as subject to political agreement, rather than as a non-negotiable requirement of IHL.

For the peace negotiations to resolve Colombia's long internal conflict, UN Women has rallied women to claim their right to participate; we've also provided evidence on gender considerations under each item on the agenda. These moves contributed to the inclusion of gender issues across the talks. The Government appointed two women to its five-member delegation– none sat on it before–and designated a woman negotiator with specific responsibilities to raise gender concerns and consult with women's groups.

Another example is the case of Burundi – it's only after women entered into the negotiation that a lasting peace for development was reached. In Rwanda, women were also instrumental in promoting development. Women's added value in peace negotiations is their determination and reliability – to stick to their word to protect and build their community and their Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue International Expertise country. That is also why they are key actors in the post-conflict phase.