On 20th April, GISF held The Challenges of Humanitarian Acceptance webinar which explored how Acceptance is one of the founding pillars of NGOs’ security risk management (SRM) strategies to ensure both humanitarian access and the safety of their staff and operations.

As many organisations know all too well, however, acceptance is not the answer to all problems. The targeting of aid workers, enduring obstacles to humanitarian access, and debates around the legitimacy, independence, and effectiveness of aid actors, continue to question NGOs’ acceptance.

The webinar explored the ongoing challenges faced by NGOs and discuss ways to improve the way they cultivate acceptance. The event brought together a few authors of GISF recent publication ‘Achieving Safe Operations through Acceptance’ and other humanitarian experts, who shared their insights on different aspects of acceptance, including its relation to humanitarian negotiations but also to staff diversity.

Chaired by: Professor Larissa Fast (Executive Director of the Humanitarian and Conflict Research Institute at the University of Manchester)

Speakers:
Rob Grace, Affiliated Fellow and Researcher, Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies, at Brown University
Pegah Rajabi, Crisis Management Adviser at the ICRC
Pascal Daudin, Co-founder of Anthropos Deep Security
Araddhya Mehtta, Myanmar Country Director at ActionAid

This event was open to members and non-members.