Trumanitarian

Raphael Gorgeu, Senior Research Associate at the Geneva based think tank HERE-Geneva, has spent the past couple of years looking at how change unfolds in the humanitarian sector.In this episode Raphael presents his approach and discuss his findings with Lars Peter Nissen.You can find Raphael’s report here.

Stephen Webster is one of the architects behind first response mechanisms such as the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team and the IFRCs Field Assessment and Coordination Team (FACT).In this conversation with Lars Peter Nissen he shares his experience from close to 40 years of disaster management and comes to the conclusion that in the end mercy triumphs!

This weeks episode is the recording of a panel discussion on Ukrainian organiations access to international funding. The discussion was held on 14 March 2023 with the title: Small fish in a big pond: Ukrainian organisations’ (lack of) access to international funding. The panel is a co-production by HERE Geneva and Trumanitairan.Val Hambye-Verbrugghen from HERE-Geneva moderated the discussion between the three panellists:Yuliia Chykolba the co-host of the Trumanitarian podcast series on Ukraine. Yuliia was born in Dnipro, Ukraine and first became involved with humanitarian action when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. And has since then worked with humanitarian mine action in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Yulia is a Chevening scholar and an alumna of the Department of War studies from King's College London. Marco Rotelli, who is the former UN deputy Humanitarian Coordinator for Ukraine, although Marco is speaking in his personal capacity at today's event. Prior to this role in Ukraine, Marco served as representative for Africa of the global NGO network ICVA, and in operations with NGOs and the UN in most of the major humanitarian crises since the early 2000s. Robert Serry, who is the former first ambassador of the Netherlands to Ukraine, and chairman of the foundation opendoorukraine.nl, who are currently actively involved in humanitarian early reconstruction activities in Ukraine. He has past experience in international crisis management, and sorry, is an international crisis management expert who has served in senior positions both with with NATO and the UN.The panel explored the following questions:1. What has been your experience of Ukrainian NGOs benefiting from the promptness and generosity of the international funding response? What have been enablers or obstacles to their access to funding? To what extent are the rules and bureaucracy in place at the international level suited to fund informal/volunteer initiatives?2. What needs to be done to ensure a better connection between traditional agencies’ efforts and those of local volunteer groups in this crisis?3. How has the funding volume impacted the relationship between national and local NGOs and international actors? How complementary are they?4. An additional cut of the funding has gone to support States that neighbour Ukraine: what are the perceptions around this by different actors (local and national NGOs on either side of the border, coordination mechanisms, contributors to appeals such as those mentioned above)?5. Is there a moral obligation to stop collecting funds in scenarios such as these, where the amount raised is enormous?

Accountability to crisis affected populations is high on the humanitarian policy agenda. Alex Ross, Avianto Amri and Robert Wambu work with a new accountability project called Talk to Loop. In this conversation with Lars Peter Nissen they explain how their tech platform improves the way the humanitarian sector works with feed back mechanisms and accountability, the disruptive potential of the project and how to position it vis-à-vis the existing humanitarian architecture.

Can the humanitarian sector be fit for todays challenges without revisiting its purpose? And are the humanitarian principles an obstacle for this important conversation to take place? These are two of the central issues that Paul Skinner and Lars Peter Nissen discuss in this episode.Paul is the founder of the Agency of the Future, which helps clients drive purpose-led change and better mobilise stakeholders for lasting success. He advises global businesses and pioneering charities and social enterprises as well as institutions of international and global governance. He is also the founder of MarketingKind, a membership community which brings together business leaders, marketers and change-makers to tackle social and environmental problems through their businesses, volunteering and advocacy.Paul's recent book The Purpose Upgrade is the point of departure of this essential and complex .conversation.

In the fourth episode of the Ukraine series Yuliia and Lars Peter take stock of the discussions so far and agree that the two main themes emerging from the conversations are around purpose - the role that humanitarian action plays in Ukraine - and Power - the relationship between and relative power of the national and international actors. To explore these issues, and to round off the series they speak to Frederic Larsson from the NGOResource Center in Ukraine and Ewa Wieliczko the ACAPS team lead in Ukraine.

In episode three Yuliia and Lars Peter explore the relationship between civil society and government in Ukraine and asks the question: How does a vibrant civil society, which in normal time advocate and challenge the government, pivot to adapt its role when war breaks out? The hosts speak to Yuliya Sporych, CEO of the national Ukrainian NGO Divchata and with Oleksandr Riabtsev, Head of Demining in the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporary Occupied Territories. 

The first Russian invasion in 2014 led to a nation-wide grassroots mobilization of Ukrainians to support military effort and provide humanitarian aid. The 2022 invasion propelled these efforts to new heights and mobilized overwelming levels of international support for humanitarian action.In the second episode on Ukraine Yuliia Chykolba and Lars Peter Nissen explore how the organic, agile and evolving Ukrainian civil society response and how it interacts with the international humanitarian sector. They talk to actors from very different ends of the humanitarian sphere: Anastacia Teplyakova, a Ukrainian teacher who has risked everything to support her fellow Ukrainians since 2014, and to Rasmus Sturh Jakobsen, the CEO of CARE Denmark who shares his thinking on Cares work in Ukraine. The gap between the work of Anastacia and Rasmus i the main theme of the episode.

In this first episode out of four on humanitarian action in Ukraine the hosts Yuliia Chykolba and Lars Peter Nissen explore what the humanitarian principles mean in Ukraine today. They agree that the principles of humanity and impartiality are the foundations of humanitarian action but have different position on neutrality. Yuliia argues that the principle is outdated and does not work in Ukraine. Lars Peter worry that letting go of the neutrality will erode the core of humanitarian action.They speak to Marc Dubois an independent consultant and Fiona Terry from ICRC about the principles for humanitarian action.This episode was produced with support from Care Denmark.

Paula Gil Baizan, Meg Sattler and Lars Peter Nissen struggle to make sense out of the humanitarian chaos of 2022 and try to figure out how 2023 might be different.