1. Speakers Facilitator Lucia Goldsmith Kevin Kennedy Sophie Solomon
NGO Forum Coordinator, South Sudan
Kevin Kennedy
Regional Humanitarian Coordinator, Whole of Syria
Sophie Solomon
OCHA Humanitarian Affairs Officer, Civil-Military Coordination, Mali
Facilitator
Panos Moumtzis Director, IASC Senior Transformative Agenda Implementation Team (STAIT)

2. Background information
70 access constraints
insecurity and violence against humanitarian personnel (3 humanitarian workers have been killed) since the start of the crisis
criminality
conduct of hostilities;
Logistics
meteorological (roads cut off)
Humanitarian actors are regularly victim of carjacking, robberies and intimidations.
Map 1: Access Constraints Severity Map (source: HNO Mali, 2015)

3. HCT Working Group and Strategy on Access
June 2015: Established HCT Access Working Group, HCT Access Strategy endorsed.
Access Working Group is representative and includes NGOs, UN agencies and donors.
Access Working Group supports the HC and the HCT in the implementing and monitoring the HCT strategy.
HCT Guidance Note on Engagement with Armed Groups

4. HCT Working Group and Strategy on Access
Key elements of the HCT Access Strategy:
improve the data collection and analysis of access constraints;
develop an advocacy strategy;
identify appropriate operational measures to favor humanitarian access in Mali.

5. Operationalization of the HCT access strategy
Access: humanitarian air services.
Access: UN agencies and armed escorts
Access: acceptance and engagement with the community.
Access: working with local partners, key assets to access population in needs.

6. Challenges and lessons learned
Limitations of humanitarian access strategies in a context of banditry and terrorism
Multiplicity of armed groups and loose chain of command.
Humanitarian negotiations in an integrated mission environment
Lack of dedicated resources
Lessons Learned
Early engagement is essential
A coherent and consistent approach from the HCT is necessary to ensure an effective response to access constraints
Necessity to establish a long-term strategy

7. Context overview
Violent conflict broke out in South Sudan December 2013
1.6 million IDPs, 195,000 civilians in UNMISS bases
650,000 refugees
8.2 million in need of humanitarian assistance

8. access constraints
Highly insecure environment: 41 humanitarian staff killed
Criminality: harassment, beating, looting, forcible seizure of assets
Limited movement: restrictions for travel (road especially)
Program interference and extortion
Bureaucratic impediments
IMPACT ON PROGRAMMES
Access constraints impact the cost, responsiveness and effectiveness of assistance. Suspensions of activities, withdrawal or relocation of staff, and asset losses have all taken place in South Sudan since the start of 2015.
Lack of independent logistics capacity
Staff profile/capacity
Lack of internal mechanisms to track and report incidents – limited reporting

9. Access and negotiations
Individual approaches: NGOs/NGO coalitions
Engaging with OCHA’s Access Unit
South Sudan NGO Forum

10. Recommendations
The HC and the OCHA Head of Office need to support access negotiations at the national level to ensure principled humanitarian action, with emphasis on common approaches whenever possible.
NGOs need to put more effort in collectively accessing air assets outside of UNHAS’ procedures, potentially through the re-allocation of air assets to a collective NGO structure.
NGOs should develop internal access reporting mechanisms to promote reporting between the field and Juba HQs.
NGOs should design tools to help field-staff understand humanitarian access and, especially, humanitarian principles.

11. Humanitarian Access in Syria
Lack of access due to the insecure environment and a lack of commitment from all parties to the conflict to respect humanitarian principles is the main constraint for the humanitarian response in Syria.
While the level of identifying needs improved substantially in 2015, humanitarian access is becoming more challenging, and it is expected to continue facing challenges as the conflict in Syria is progressing. Humanitarian needs are often most severe in hard to reach and besieged areas. There are, however, modalities and approaches being used to improve access.

12. Humanitarian Access in Syria
In the context of Syria access constraints can be understood by:
1. Humanitarian actors’ ability to reach populations in need. And,
2. Affected populations’ access to assistance and services.
1.Humanitarian actors’ ability to reach populations in need. Violence, insecurity, and shifting conflict lines continue to obstruct timely deliveries of humanitarian action to affected populations. Moreover, in clear non-compliance of UNSC demands and resolutions, parties to the conflict continue to deliberately interfere and impose restrictions to access and humanitarian assistance including preventing specific kinds of humanitarian assistance to reach affected population. Moreover, the administrative hurdles continue to hamper effective and timely humanitarian response in Syria.
Examples:  
(i) Difficulties in crossing conflict/area of control lines and governmental policy and administrative issues.
The approval process for cross-line humanitarian access from Damascus is a convoluted one, both for agency-specific and inter-agency convoys. Multiple approvals are required within the GoS, both among relevant line ministries, but also importantly from security services. Five inter-agency convoys in hard-to-reach areas of Hama, for instance, were approved in principle by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in June, but six months later the lack of final approval from the local security committee continues to impede their movement.
Cross-line physical support between AOGs is also heavily impeded. This leads to a division of areas, where physical access is only possible from certain locations, known as catchment areas. The constantly evolving situation on the ground and plethora of local armed actors means accessibility to areas can change by the day.
- In Turkey many of the available border crossings are either closed or sporadically open due to government policy, leaving the western crossings of Bab El Hawa and Bab Al Salam as the main official crossings for many humanitarian agencies serving areas as far east as Deir-ez-Zor.
In Lebanon and Turkey, obtaining visas for staff is sometimes not possible due to national regulations on such a scale that this can create a real impediment to creating effective operations in these hubs.
The provision of visas in Syria has improved markedly in recent months, but an insufficient number of visas for security personnel poses an immediate operational bottleneck for any operational modality that aims to service needs on a national scale, particularly in the event a sudden increase in humanitarian access (e.g., in the event of a national ceasefire agreement).

13. Catchment Areas of UN Cross-Border Modality
Response modalities for catchment areas and governmental policy and administrative issues
To ensure access to all areas is maintained despite these constraints, 5 different humanitarian hubs are used as bases for humanitarian access in Syria. Within the Whole of Syria (WoS) system, there are generally four modalities of direct aid delivery:
Regular programming from within Syria, conducted by organisations officially approved by the Syrian Government. These are on-going operations serving large groups of IDPs and other people in need on a fairly regular basis.
Cross-line access is regulated by the GoS under specific and stricter procedures than those used in regular programming, with the Syrian Government’s Joint Committee on the implementation of UNSCR 2139, emphasising that access across conflict lines can only be negotiated on an ad hoc basis.
When comparing the hubs and cross border points authorized by UNSCR 2165 and 2139 that are functioning, namely Damascus hub, Bab Al Salam crossing, Bab Al Hawa crossing and Ar Ramtha crossing, 68% of the physical deliveries reported through the clusters was conducted from Damascus in However this figure does not include many non traditional actors delivering assistance from neighbouring countries, nor those delivering assistance through other cross border points or through different access modalities.
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14. Total Reach Across Sectors
Despite these access constraints, through the various modalities, humanitarian intervention is still possible across all governorates as shown in the 4Ws of October 2015.

15. Trends, Risks and Future Trajectory
Sustained access constraints due to a recent increase in fighting and possible intensification throughout the first half of 2016 despite the political dynamic and local agreement for ceasefires witnessed in the last month.
The operating environment for humanitarian workers is becoming increasingly dangerous due to increase in the violence in the populated areas.
General access modalities are unlikely to change dramatically during due to the on-going dialogue and support to humanitarian actors practicing cash assistance and remote management modalities.
The use of besiegement as a tactic of war will continue but local agreements will expand which may lead to a widening of humanitarian space.