77. Rock the Boat

0:59 Lars Peter Nissen

Welcome to Trumanitarian. I'm your host Lars Peter Nissen, and today I am joined in the studio by three outstanding professionals. It's a great pleasure to welcome Meg Sadler back to the show. Meg is coming in from Melbourne today. She is the CEO of Ground Thruth Solutions and for regular listeners of Trumanitarian you will be very familiar with Meg and her way of explaining complex issues in a very simple and clarifying manner. So we look forward to that Meg. Secondly, we have with us Adelina Kamal. Adelina was the first female executive director of the ASEAN AHA Centre. She is a self-described humanitarian contrarian – at least that is how she described herself last time she was on Trumanitarian. We hope you haven't lost that contrarian streak yet, Adelina, and also I should add you also very involved in the situation around Myanmar, which is actually where we first met in Cyclone Nargis in 2008 and you have been engaged in one way or the other with that situation since then. And finally, but not least, we have Ed schenkenberg, the Executive director of the think tank HERE Geneva, and he is also very well known for being able to speak clearly, and since you're Dutch Ed, I'll say bluntly around humanitarian issues in a way so that they cannot be misunderstood. So in other words, I think we're in for a very lively and interesting discussion today. We have chosen as a topic ‘independence’ – that's of course a very broad heading for a show like this. But it all started out when, Meg, we were having a conversation on WhatsApp around how difficult it actually is to describe Ground Truth Solutions and ACAPS as independent, the challenges that come along with that. So maybe, would you like to just kick it off and tell us a bit about why? Why is independence important and what does it mean for you in Ground Truth Solutions?

3:09 Meg Sattler

Sure. And thanks so much, Lars Peter, for having me. It's great to be here for another another chat. I mean, as you probably know, I came to the aid world from journalism beginnings, so I sort of came in with ideas of storytelling and telling the truth. And I guess all of my various roles in the sector have been influenced by that. And that brings with it the assumption of some sort of existence of independent voices and a degree of scrutiny which I think I've carried through to my work at GTS. When you think about accountability, which is what we are sort of known to work on in its most common sense, interpretation of the term, accountability and independence really go hand in hand. You know, they’re friends, they’re buddies. It's very hard to have accountability if you don't have some sort of independent mechanism that is promoting that. And if we step away from our aid lives for a minute and just look at what accountability looks like in a functioning society, accountability is held up or supported by institutions that have a degree of independence, like public media or some sort of ombudsperson service, or an independent body for a parliamentary inquiry. An investigation team, an Advisory Council, you know, whatever it is, and that gives it some sort of gravitas when it comes to decision making and GTS has always prided itself, I guess, on being independent. Now we're obviously not completely independent in a purist sense of the word, in the same way that I would say, you know, ACAPS isn’t or HERE Geneva isn't, because we're funded by donor humanitarian money, which sort of makes us inherently of the system and humanitarian actors. But the work we do, we do independently, and we've always been allowed to do that. And recently and what we were talking about on WhatsApp Lars Peter was that that work, for us, increasingly, I don't know. Maybe for ACAPS, it's always been this way, but for us increasingly is called into question from coordination teams who don't necessarily respect the need for that independence, it seems, and feel that all sort of work under the guise of data collection is created equal and we don't want any duplication and someone is already collecting data, so therefore you don't have to and you go and toddle off and do your little thing somewhere else. And I guess to some extent you can see where that comes from, but there is part of me that sees that as being quite controlling and in a way quite sinister because it's pushing out an element of accountability that I think is required. So that was a quite a long intro, but that was just to say that was kind of where this thought came from.

6:05 Lars Peter Nissen

Thank you, Meg. And as you were talking, I was thinking Adelina, from your perspective, you worked with the AHA Centre, which in some ways is in function very close to what, for example OCHA does, and some of the other coordination actors do, but for ASEAN, when you were in that role, what did independence mean for you? You served ASEAN on one side and worked with the ISC system on the others. How did how did you position yourself in that in that relation?

6:35 Adelina Kamal

I see myself as always being outside the traditional humanitarian architecture, because ASEAN by default is not part of the Interagency Standing Committee. We are not part of the cluster system. ASEAN has its own coordinating mechanism, working closely with the ASEAN Member states, but in collaboration with the international humanitarian system, so again by design also, I was never in the mainstream, but I would also argue, I was also not at the periphery. We have our own. And it could be seen as a parallel system and in the beginning it was painful for us to exist together. But over a years and over decades both AHA Centre and OCHA, which is our counterpart in the humanitarian system, we're able to find ways to collaborate together, but I guess, also because while I was still with ASEAN secretariat and then the AHA Centre, I had ten countries behind my back, you see, so it was… I had the amplifier to challenge the international humanitarian system using the privilege of being part of another system with governments behind me. So that's the privilege that I had, yeah, for almost three decades.

8:17 Lars Peter Nissen

And Ed you for sure must see yourself as an independent actor in this space. You've worked both with Dara, a think tank in Madrid, and today you run HERE Geneva, which also is a think tank. And whenever I see you do a presentation, I think you always go out of your way to really point out the gap between policy and practice, which is sort of the trademark of HERE Geneva. And you formulate those things, how to put it… in a way that truly is… you get the sense that this is truly what Ed thinks. So how do you see yourself as an independent actor?

8:57 Ed Schenkenberg

I think, building on what Meg and Adelina just said, I think they really both made two very important points. It's about questioning rule. So don't take things for granted, but ask why are things the way they are? And it's about positioning, as Adelina just pointed out, in the sense of you know, positioning vis-a-vis the UN led interagency system or positioning vis-a-vis via regional bodies such as ASEAN or any other body for that matter. In a sense of, you know, questioning constantly whether formal – to use a human rights term – duty bearers, so governments and international institutions, are in fact delivering on their mandates. And that immediately brings me to our role as HERE Geneva. Because obviously one could ask, you know, are you, as HERE, are you independent? Or Ed Schenkenberg, are you independent? I think where we starting from is exactly that body of international law and international instruments as relatively if you like a neutral or objective foundation. Of course theres different explanations or different interpretations there. But humanitarian organisations, both UN agencies and even to some degree, I mean NGOs, they have made commitments and UN agencies of course have mandates. So we see our independents in terms of this questioning the UN: Are you delivering on what you promised to do? And what, in fact, is your obligation because it's enshrined in international instruments, NGOs have mission statements. Are you living up to the commitments you made? So that is largely how we translate our independence into practice, if you see what I mean, that questioning: Are you delivering what you promised to do?

11:07 Lars Peter Nissen

That's really interesting for ACAPS, whenever I talk about independence, I try to be very specific, that we mean two things by that. On one side that we don't have an operational role. So we are not naturally pulled towards one specific sector or one population group. So we don't serve refugees or children or other highly vulnerable groups – we look holistically at prices and so we are independent operationally which sort of somewhat insulates us from a systematic operational bias going left or right. And the 2nd way we're independent is that we have editorial control over our products. So we of course consult and share what we write with all of the actors, but ultimately we decide what we write, even if people disagree with us and we then, of course, are accountable for putting out documents that say whatever they say. And so that is very important for me to be specific on those two ways in which we're independent. And I think what I have found interesting throughout its 13 years now, we've been working on ACAPS, and throughout that history, there has been a tension which especially in the beginning sounded a bit like you experienced actually, Adelina, that there was some kind of discomfort or tension from the mainstream system in the beginning with this thing that could not be controlled. And I've always thought that in a sense, it's because we're obsessed with coordination: We don't want to duplicate. But the functions that we're talking about here in particular a think tank or Ground Truth Solutions, or ACAPS, is around being a second opinion almost. It's actually about redundancy. It's about having more than one point of view on the table when you discuss something that really important but operationally, of course, a different logic should apply. We don't want to duplicate each other’s efforts. And that's such a difficult point to make. I don't know if that resonates with any of your experiences. I'd actually like to start with you Adelina, you somehow come in to a coordinating role next to OCHA. How has that been? How has that acceptance grown over the years and what's the complementarity between what you did in the AHA Centre and what OCHA does?

13:30 Adelina Kamal

Yeah. So cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, 2008, the place where we met for the first time, Lars, was really the event that brought us together because that was the time when ASEAN and the UN, including UN OCHA and other UN agencies, as well as the international agencies Red Cross and Red Crescent movement included, the Ingos, the local NGOs, academic institution, the media, came together. So the friction was there because after a lot of negotiation, it was agreed that ASEAN would take the lead. And of course, for many who have not seen ASEAN in the lead before, they don't feel comfortable. They see us as the new kid on the block, right, and they get irritated. And you know, looking back, I remember that there were some colonial gestures and colonial remarks. Even to the Secretary General of ASEAN, not only me. That: Oh, you don't know anything. You don't have experience leading the humanitarian operation on the ground. Even when supporting us, you never let us do that before, leading the humanitarian operations on the ground in support of the Secretary General, Doctor Surin Pitsuwan. May he rest in peace. So there was a lot of friction, but we learned through that painful experience. And when the AHA Centre was established few years later in 2011, the first executive director of the AHA Centre introduced this principle of dynamic simplicity. Meaning that we collaborate, we grow together, but we will not do it through strict description, but we'll learn through experience and step by step we built our collaboration. Why did we do that? Yeah, why did we do that? Because in the beginning the US actually wanted to enter an agreement with us, with the AHA Centre, while AHA Centre was still actually in the making. So the Member States, not yet leading the AHA Centre, and the first executive director of AHA Centre said to two colleagues at the UN OCHA: ‘Oh, no, no, no, no. We're not ready yet. Wait until we're ready.’ So I think it's important that whoever are set the system get ready first right? Otherwise we would not be at the high level talking with them. And only a decade later I think we both, you know, felt very comfortable and came up with an interoperability playbook, and actually exercised it during a tsunami and other large scale disasters.

16:51 Lars Peter Nissen

Thank you. Now Ed, your learning curve or the system getting used to you and the role you play in terms of highlighting some of the shortcomings of the system, how would you describe that that process?

17:10 Ed Schenkenberg

That's an interesting question in the sense of… I've had a few episodes where, let's say, ruffling feathers, you know is not appreciated. But there is a part of the system, fortunately, I think that does you know. When you ruffle feathers, so to speak, to use that expression, I think in much of my experience it means one is asking the right questions. You know you're hitting a string as such. I mean, it's starting, you know, what is so interesting well… I was talking, I was also thinking, you know, independence is one of the four classic sort of core principles of humanitarian action, and of course, there immediately tensions there in terms of, you know, to what degree are humanitarian organisations independent from donors? To what degree are they independent from their members, which particularly, of course, is an issue for Member bodies as such, membership bodies… and to what degree? Even if you're, let's say, you know, are relatively independent or autonomous from donors and don't necessarily have a membership, then exactly as it was just mentioned, there is this tension with expectations in terms of following what I think was already referred to as the mainstream or you know, being part of a collective endeavor, so to speak, and to what degree can you be the outlier if you see what I mean? So, to come back to your question, I've always felt quite comfortable in that role, if you like, of being an outlier, or at least asking the right questions. It fits with, you know, the way I started at MSF, which is, I mean… MSF to some degree, one could say, even confused independence with isolationism. Then indeed, as you mentioned, I worked with Dara, which sort of had this independent effort to establish a degree of accountability for the donors through this index it developed. And also again, in my current role. Yeah, there is exactly that questioning we do. And for instance, coming back on the notion or the content of the principle of independence, to exactly find out what the balance is between on the one participating in the in the coordination effort. And at the same time, maintaining your independence of action based on your own analysis, your own assessment, and so on. That's a balancing act. I mean, you need to be part of that coordinated effort in the sense of no single organisation can do the work on its own, right? There is an interdependence.But at the same time, you still have your own responsibility in deciding what your course of action is, rather than being told what to do.

00:20:16 Lars Peter Nissen

Meg I saw you nodding throughout Ed’s description of this balance. How do you, in Ground Truth Solutions, strike the balance between on one side being part of quite a large and vibrant AAP – Accountability to Affected Populations community, where some actors are operational and others are specialised independent agencies, such as Ground Truth Solutions. How do you play nice in that whole setting?

20:41 Meg Sattler

Yeah, it's a great question. And I was nodding, I think, because so much of what Ed was saying really resonates with me in the sense that we really pride ourselves on this independence idea. And you know, sometimes we're a bit too purist about it. But at the same time, we have a whole strategy around influence and you can't influence people by just barking at them and telling them what to do. So to some extent you do need to balance this, it's I mean it's quite a shaky tight rope sometimes, of to what extent are we all playing ball together in a way that will lead to the best outcome. And to what extent are we maintaining integrity? And working in service of the people who are our primary stakeholders at GTS, who are people affected by crisis. And, when we talk to those people, the reason we get honest feedback is that we managed to convince them of our independence, and we have evidence that, you know, we might take some sort of research instrument that we have used and then handed it over to a UN agency and then they have used it in a really well-intentioned way. But the feedback that they get comes back absolutely glowing. And the feedback that GTS got was so much more honest and so much more sort of sometimes quite scathing of the system because people are, you know, they're very vulnerable and there's social desirability bias. But there's also just the fact that people are worried, you know: ‘If I share my honest feedback, am I going to be cut off from aid that I need whether or not I feel that it's working for me. I'm in a position of extreme vulnerability’. So we sort of try and maintain a situation where we keep in our minds all the time, you know – this is who we are working with and to some extent for – while at the same time wondering what the different strategies are, we have for influenced. I will admit… and this is something that we've spoken a lot about internally recently. I think there was a phase in GTS where we played a bit too nicely and we sort of came in with the hypothesis that if we sort of became part of the humanitarian programme cycle, and perceptions would influence the programme cycle, and that would be demanded of different coordination teams, that everything would be good. And what really happened then was we started collecting a lot of information that filled a lot of bits of paper for various people in UN agencies, but we didn't really see any action off the back of that and it started to feel a little bit compromising. It felt like we're sort of losing our independence a little bit because we're a bit more of the system, but we haven't seen the benefit of that compromise. So GTS strategy of late has been to sort of go back to more of this, I guess feather ruffling that Ed was talking about, which definitely has pros and cons. But you don't want it to have so many cons that you get pushed out of the conversation altogether. So it's definitely a tricky thing to manage.

00:23:48 Lars Peter Nissen

It is very tricky and the way I think about it in relation to ACAPS is on one side our system link, or the connectedness or the interdependency that we've spoken about… Is really whether people use our products. So we actually don't have to sit at the coordination meeting, we just have to make fairly sure that the key decision makers think that what we write is relevant and that they take that into account as they shape their take on the humanitarian narrative. And I think that’s important to remember, when you're a small agency, because these BIG4, which are so process heavy, can just kill you in no time flat, right. And then you don't have time to actually do what you're supposed to do. So taking a step away, and not defining the system link or the connectedness as ‘are we present at the meetings’, but rather ‘are they using our products’ has been liberating in terms of how we prioritise. And I would say, the other thing is, there has been situations where we have chosen not to publish things we have written or had sort of limited circulation on some of our products because it's very sensitive. But as long as that is our decision, our editorial choice, and ACAPS is uncomfortable with that… I don't think that we pretend to be journalists or watchdogs in that sense. And we're very sensitive to not doing harm to any operation. So we actually are careful in that sense. But it's a choice to make based on what we think the risk is, it's not something we're told by somebody else. So that's just how we think about it. Now the role of the donors and the vulnerability it actually makes when you spoke about hey, when OCHA or somebody else asked the crisis affected populations how they like the aid, they get much more positive answers because you know, people are afraid that they'll be negatively impacted. I think that's true for us as well. We are dependent on donor funding right now. How do you strike that balance? How do you engage with the donors and try to convince them that you should be independent, even though, you know, may ruffle a donor feather or two as well, and then you might be in trouble… that fear… How do you deal with that? And I'd like to start with you Ed, because you used to actually give notes to the donors through that Dara index on how donors were performing. How did that play out?

26:15 Ed Schenkenberg

Yeah. This question raises a point, you know, that we discussed then, when being there at the time, but also more recently in my role as the Director of HERE… Who wants to hear an inconvenient truth? To use that expression in the sense of, you know you're going to find in your investigation, of course, the work we do, examining, you know at the time Dara, to what degree donors were busy in terms of, you know, upholding the principles of good humanitarian donorship. And now in this role even more broadly, not just donors, but also particularly UN agencies and so on. As I said, to what degree are they living up to their commitments? And yeah, of course we know that we are going to find things there that are not necessarily matching what agencies or donors for that matter, pledged or committed to a search. You know, it's not our intention to dig up dirt, if you see what I mean. And in fact, on the contrary, we're often are saying please share good practice with us. Tell us what is working rather than what is not working. But I must say there is also an element there that, you know… I think for me is part of humanitarian ethics. It's not so much for me to question what do we do well, but where are the gaps in the response? You know, who are the people that do not receive assistance and protection? That for me is part of humanitarian ethics. So clearly that is a message that we want to mention to the donors and that we want to mention to the agencies. So yeah, there's precisely that element. Unfortunately, I should say… I said something earlier around, you know, we ruffled some feathers, but there are also people both within donors – and that was certainly the case at the time in Dara – something donors publicly did not want to admit. You know, when the humidity Response index ranking the donors for their practices came out it was one of the first things that was picked up in the ministries. You know… they wanted to know where they were in the ranking, and saying I hear now in terms of, you know, organisations or agencies that Commission work to us. They ask us because they know we will speak truth to power. So there are people inside these organisations, and to some degree I would even label them as change agents, you know, that particularly want us to do our work and speak truth to power.

29:13 Lars Peter Nissen

I was wondering Adelina, did you ever feel this tension when…I mean, you had the backing of ASEAN and the Member States there… Did you also have to think around the: ‘Am I ruffling feathers now in the wrong places and can that put me out of business’?

29:28 Adelina Kamal

I think we rocked the boat quite a lot. Because we actually created a parallel system, right, using our own principles, and standards. And interestingly, there were some within the UN that encourage us to do so. So there were Mavericks within the system who encouraged us to do so because they said that we will not be there in every crisis and you need to be resilient and reliant on yourself. But there also people, you know, who basically challenge us a lot. And I experience that a lot during this respond in Myanmar… and it was so painful that I met a pledge, Lars, to my good friend, that if I ever joined the UN system, he has my permission to slap me on my forehead. I met that pledge because it was such a headache. It was such a headache. But that was like 20 years ago, right? And through that painful experience... and I think the UN came to terms that… No, no, no, this is not competition. So we moved from competition to collaboration and co-existence. But it was painful in the beginning. It was painful and I think again, because they were not used to diversity. Right, they were not used to seeing ASEAN in the lead, and they had no choice at the time but to work together. And even during the World Humanitarian Summit, ASEAN together with some other regional organisation, formed a network with the support of ODI, a network of regional organisation. I wish that network would still exist, because I think that's also a way of liberating ourselves right, making ourselves resilient, and adding more diversity to the system. If you ask me what it is now, well, I think I will rock the boat even harder, because it's my first time being independent from any of the formal system.

31:55 Lars Peter Nissen

So I think the millions dollar question then is, are you being slapped though? Do people come by and slap you on the forehead now that you're independent?

32:03 Adelina Kamal

Well, I'm glad that my good friend didn't slap me on my forehead, right, because I never worked for the UN. It's not that you know I'm against the UN, I have good friends with the UN, but it was, you know, coming out of my experience that I made that pledge. Now it's not like, you know, literally being slapped on my forehead. But I have been accused of not cooperating or basically making them irrelevant. They were... I have been invited to consultation. It's quite interesting. They have, you know, those within the system have invited me for consultation. They asked my views on the Myanmar crisis on how ASEAN should respond, and how international community should respond differently. But then later they said that I believe now your approach is a zero sum game. It's a black or white approach, it actually threatens our coexistence. And I find it interesting because that's actually the reaction that I was expecting for them actually to get busy.. otherwise then they will not listen, they will not start thinking, and the fact that they invited me, right, for a conversation actually indicated that they are having that conversation. But, of course, you know, there's still people who resist the change. We are bruising their ego. I mean, we're not only dealing with the system, we're dealing with the people.

33:35 Lars Peter Nissen

Yeah, I think that's very true that we sometimes tend to just look at the institutions, but both in terms of finding allies and champions inside the system who can do really good, or people who can be spoilers and block things out of very, very egoistical or very small petty issues… I think, I think we sometimes forget just how big of a role that those individuals play. Meg, you and the donors… is that a zero sum game as well? Are you being seen as if you're successful, it's detracting from the system, are you adding value? How do you position yourself? And do you ever worry that the donors won't fund you if there's too much boat rocking or feather ruffling going on?

34:19 Meg Sattler

I think it's a great question because Ground Truth has a small group of very committed funders, and they are loyal to us, and they let us do our work, and they don't get in the way of how we do it. But I am at the same time, quite often in incredibly frustrating conversations with donors who sort of don't seem to inherently value that idea of independence, and I think it's because 1) that you know, the sector that we exist in is so immune to accountability, and it is this system that somehow manages to get away with deciding itself what accountability means, and how it will hold itself to that accountability. And even organisations like us, or you know, to some extent like HERE Geneva, like, we're sort of a soft version of accountability. We're not like a big media outlet who is taking them to task, and going to bring down the whole system. We're sort of friendly and it's still seen as quite threatening. And I've spoken about this before, but I think part of that is down to this narratives question. You know, if you look at when we say donors, if we think about those government donors – sometimes we talk about them as though they only exist as a humanitarian donor, but they're part of a government that has a role in a society and is accountable to its constituents. And generally globally in the, you know, so-called Western world – the understanding of how aid work is very minimal and there's this whole hero narrative, and there's really no room to get anything wrong… And what we forget sometimes is that people within those governments and within those donors are already sort of fighting for dear life to make sure that the right percentage of funding is going to stay in the humanitarian aid budget, that it's true that they may be quite scared of anything that is going to upset the apple card of public opinion. So you can sort of see where some of that anxiety comes from. But at the same time I think, the bigger issue is how much they listen, particularly in this age of streamlining and scaling down and everyone saying they have no money. I'm listening to the UN who says everything needs to be coordinated and you know ‘we will manage that and we will make sure that it's all managed centrally’ and you know, to some extent, fine, if that results in more efficient delivery of food or whatever it is that makes sense. But when it comes to thought and critique, and engagement with communities... That is a very dangerous game to say ‘it will all now be controlled centrally. We will decide how that works per country and you can play a role in that if we invite you in’. And so we're sort of in the process at the moment of working with our, you know, friendly donors to make sure that the need for that level of independence is clear, as all of these discussions about prioritisation continue, because otherwise I think we're sort of set for quite a dangerous like self homework marking situation.

37:35 Lars Peter Nissen

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I always think of it as, you know, redundancy in situations of high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity, is not wasteful. It's a very, very smart strategy to make sure that you don't get it wrong. And where both HERE and Ground Truth Solutions and ACAPS work, is at the front and the end of the system, shaping the narrative upfront on what is the problem and looking at performance downstream: What did we get right? What did we get wrong? And that needs to be independent and we do not have that, as an integral part of our thinking around humanitarian architecture. It is all around coordination and clusters and sectors and… I think we have to be really careful, as you say Meg, that if we don't start leveraging independence more systematically as a strategy to ensure performance of the system, we're not going to improve.

38:40 Meg Sattler

No, I just wanted to add to that because you've just made me think of something else, which is the fact that there are so many discussions in which collaboration is treated like an end goal. Like all we want to do is to collaborate and everything is so nice and we're all so lovely, and we love taking a group photo and showing how great we're at collaborating. And we should be collaborating for something. We should be collaborating when it makes sense for better humanitarian action, and I think sometimes, and I mean, this is another discussion that we've probably had at some point Lars Peter, but sometimes I feel like we're all so focused on being nice and collaborating that we kind of forget why we exist and it becomes a little bit… I mean it's a bit off in a way… when you think about it, when you think about the responsibility that we all have, even those of us with relatively small pots of humanitarian funding.

39:37 Lars Peter Nissen

But can I just say to you, Adelina, Meg, and Ed: I don't think you're nice.

39:44 Adelina Kamal

OK, I want to add on what Meg said. So I mentioned earlier that I was inside the ASEAN system for almost three decades and ASEAN was really like tested, it's being tested now with the Myanmar crisis, and many actually criticised because of our consensus principle. Which I think still needs to be put on the spotlight. And I'm actually quite struck by what Meg mentioned about, you know, the pursuit of collaboration, because that's exactly what happened inside the ASEAN system. And that also you know… towards the end of my tenure right, it would have been very difficult for me to challenge the UN if I were still inside the ASEAN system. Even though ASEAN is by default outside the UN Interagency Standing Committee. But me, as the executive director, it would have been very difficult for me to challenge the UN system, not let alone ASEAN, right? Because I think even within ASEAN, there is this tendency to minimise differences, minimise conflict, and work towards prioritising consensus and harmony over, you know, critical thinking. I red in one article that it’s about illusion of unanimity, right. And I think that also happens to some extent, when we built that collaboration. Because we started which such a painful experience, in our case, right. And then a decade later, we were able to collaborate and came up with the interoperability playbook. Nobody wanted to ruin that, right? Collaboration efforts that we have built for decades. So then, how would you actually question that? And I think that also goes with the UN, how would the UN also question ASEAN? And so now, I'm happy that I'm independent. Yeah, totally! You know, from both the international system as well as ASEAN, and I'm a little bit different from what actually you guys are doing because, I think, Meg, I'm within the group that would that would say things that are quite blunt, because when it comes to my work on Myanmar, I decided that that will not get paid by the traditional Humanitarian sector. That allowed me to speak up. But recently, in the past eight months, I also joined a group, a group of women called Southeast Asian Women, Peace Mediators. And some of our work is funded by the traditional actors from the development and the peace sector. I think I find the balancing act there, but then because I also have my background right, the credibility that I developed over the past three years working in ASEAN, then I could still I think I mean… I'm still trying to figure things out, obviously… I think I am still able to like assert some influence but retain my independence. But yeah, but it's so difficult to juggle. Sorry to bug in.

43:41 Lars Peter Nissen

No, that's an excellent point, Adelina, and what it made me think was… we spoke earlier about the relationship between the institutional and the personal, and how individuals can both block and drive things forward. And when I look at the three of you, I can see how your personality, or your individual approach to things, really shape the output of HERE, Ground Truth, and what you're doing, Adelina. And so my question is: Do we just have to accept that you need to have a very strong sort of personal element in this sort of independent change making issue, or what Ed? Can we institutionalise it?

44:29 Ed Schenkenberg

Well…You know what Adelina said, you know, she used the word blunt, and I think that's exactly needed. And for a Dutch person, that's not so difficult. And so, you know precisely where this comes in, I'm finishing completing the evaluation of the Interagency response to northern Ethiopia. And there… our independence as HERE, and perhaps my bluntness, are really important in questioning the independence of the operation that took place in northern Tigray, in the sense that what is expected from me, when evaluating, and assessing that operation is, yeah, we know there was this blockade, quite similar to the one that is now imposed in Gaza. We know there was this blockade imposed by the Government of Ethiopia, by the federal government. But in the end, we did deliver things. Please tell us what we delivered. And that's sort of maybe a humanitarian operational question… but before that, is the question: “So what did you do as UN, international agencies, and NGOs, to actually say: you Ethiopian government, you're practicing starvation. Starvation is a war crime. This this is not permissible under international law, and you should be held accountable for it”. That would be the independent course, that some in the UN were in favour of, and some in NGOs, but overall, that the leadership did not want to pursue a search because they've continued – the UN at the country level – continued to be the closest partner to the government. So even though there was dramatic change of circumstances with the non-international armed conflict, in which the government was one of the parties to the conflict… That the government remained, as I said, the closest partner for the UN, and there was no space whatsoever, at the country level, for the UN to raise its voice. Fortunately, some statements were made at the global level. But now I'm hearing that: ‘Yeah, we have on the ground, we have to mend the relationship with the government because of the statements that were made at the global level’. I mean, this is the opposite of being independent. This is being entirely compromised, and so that is, you know, the message we're going to carry in the report, which will come out in the next couple of weeks. It's certainly not a message that will be liked. But it's certainly what we have seen because the space to operate – and yes, it was a very, very difficult situation on the ground, I mean, you know, extreme difficulties, extreme challenging – but the problem in which in fact the operation was compromised didn't make it any better. It made it, if anything, it almost made it worse. If you see what I mean. So that is sort of, you know, the reality of what we see on the ground. In relation to what Meg said, just one more thing because, I think the title of this session is Rock the Boat. Well, it's interesting to compare this, or to relate this to what's being called now by OCHA, or by the Emergency relief coordinator, as a flagship. Is that rocking the boat or not? The flagship… what they say is that the flagship is turning the system on its head. So you know, you start bottom up instead of top down… But it almost suggests that way, that what is happening at the international level is much more a blockade and hindrance, than actually an enabler for what's happening on the ground, if you see what I mean. So all that we created at the global level now, is seen as unhelpful apparently, and we need to turn the system for that reason, outside its head. It's extremely weird. That's also why we need to question a little bit the Flagship Project in terms of what it’s going to deliver in that sense. Because, you know, delegating authority to the country level is fine. But as we've seen in Ethiopia, when that authority is compromised because of its relationship with the government, which is part of the problem, we're not going to, you know, create any solution there. It's only perpetuating problems.

49:02 Adelina Kamal

Wow, that is something like what's happening in Myanmar at… I think it will be very difficult, if I may Lars, for someone inside the system to say: ‘You guys, you have been complicit in war crimes against humanity in, you know, genocide. I think it would have been very difficult for them, for someone inside the system. So it requires someone outside the system – like with the report that I really look forward to reading – to say it. To say it. And with regard to the Flagship Project – in Myanmar, they call it the Area Humanitarian Country Team. But basically, they're just bringing down the exact structure to the local level and the local actors, to sit in the meeting. They're already busy delivering assistance to their communities, and when we interviewed the local actors, they said that: ‘we are just being used as human shields by these international actors to maintain their presence, to stay engaged. But we have to deal with the SaKaSa, the military’. How is that localization? That is aid colonisation. Who can say all that, no? It's coming up in my paper. I'm kind of like advertising it, but my paper with the Humanitarian Practice Network is also going to talk about it, and why it is important for the international system to pivot? I think what has happened so far... I'm quite emotional right now… Is Ramadan fasting, so I'm entitled to be emotional… and it's close to the time when I will break my fast. But I think what we have been doing so far is just tweaking the system. Tweaking the system. And it's not enough. The system has to be dismantled. If it is up to the point that the system is already complicit, then I think we really need to question that, very hard.

51:26 Meg Sattler

If I could reflect a bit on both what Adelina and Ed have said, because I think they're both really good reminders. One is, when you're an organisation like ours who, despite all of your feather ruffling, still manages to have allies, and still manages to get funding to do exactly what Ed said, which is to tell the truth… I think to some extent we have to stop worrying about how much we're making people uncomfortable, or who may stop funding us at the end of the day, because we're in a situation of immense privilege. Like for us to be in that position, to have been given that microphone, pretty much to say, tell us what is going wrong. If we – and we do this at GTS, I will freely admit… we hesitate a lot, like: ‘Ohh, people said that, but should we share that’? We had a lot of that around our work in Gaza, where we were getting questioned a lot about, you know: ‘What are you gonna say on that? And is that getting too political?’ And what about the fact that all the donors are currently cutting funding to Gaza and you're going to come out with this report?’…and we did, I will admit, and I'm ashamed of it, but we paused for a minute… And I think sometimes we do that too much, not just us, but I mean any of us who have been given some sort of platform. The worst thing that's gonna happen to GTS is that we will lose our funding. And you know, I will… we will get other jobs, you know, we're not putting ourselves on the line in the same way that so many activists are, or people who are really sort of personally putting themselves on the line to speak truth to power. And I think this conversation, at least for me, has been a really good reminder to work out, you know, what is a little bit annoying, and what is our responsibility in terms of upholding the promises that we have made to sort of try and work in the pursuit of this truth telling and bettering a system that is deeply, deeply flawed. So yeah, thanks, Ed and Adelina for the timely reminder.

53:34 Lars Peter Nissen

I think that's a great way to end our conversation. I just want to extend a big thank you to the three of you for very clearly demonstrating how powerful a role you play each in your corner of the of the humanitarian sector. Thank you for speaking truth the way you do. And I hope that this reflection we have had can be helpful in terms of making it easier for the system to accept and treasure independent positions. We’ve come to a conclusion where – yes, we must coordinate, we must create this system that's cohesive – but at the same time, if we don't allow for voices like the ones we've heard today in this discussion, to be seen not just as a nuisance, or rocking the flagship, or ruffling the feather, whatever. But actually as a critically needed component. That diversity of thought when we deal with these situations that are incredibly difficult to navigate. That that is a must, not a nice tool or a nuisance, but really something we must have. I hope we can begin to establish that as a much stronger principle than what it is today. So thank you very much.

54:57 All

Thank you.