GPC Roundtable: Civil-Military Coordination for Protection Outcomes

In October 2017, the Global Protection Cluster convened a round-table of humanitarian agencies, military officials and civil-military coordination experts in Geneva as part of its series of discussions on international humanitarian law to examine why humanitarian civil-military coordination deserves attention in trying to achieve protection outcomes. Rather than focusing on theory the roundtable examined at length the relationship between humanitarians and militaries in practice.

Some issues and questions discussed at the round-table included:

• How to best engage with military actors on protection and how civil-military coordination impacts protection outcomes? What is the practice in the field?
• Do humanitarian actors know how to use protection data (incl. from other sources such as civilian casualty recording or on the impact of the use of certain weapons) to humanise a conflict and engage with armed forces?
• Are humanitarian actors able to read, understand and analyse a conflict context and are we in a position to obtain relevant information from armed actors or other relevant actors?