In February 2021, CCHN held a peer circle discussion on negotiating with criminal groups. This mix of African and Latin-American contexts provided an opportunity for community members from both regions to exchange lessons learned and good practices in conducting negotiations with counterparts labelled as ‘criminal’.
The efficiency of humanitarian response following a disaster depends on how fast coordination structures are established, supply chains are enabled, and human and financial resources are mobilised.
Negotiating in disaster contexts becomes challenging because of the many parties involved. Often, survivors are turned into first responders until traditional humanitarian response mechanisms are set up. Then, when humanitarian actors step in, it’s necessary to negotiate and coordinate the response among the multiple actors.
In 2023, the CCHN launched its research on negotiating in the context of disasters. Since then, we have conducted a series of interviews to understand field practices, produced a report and developed a thematic session with the project to expand this topic in the future.