Field Mission Report: Findings and Recommendations from InterAction Protection Mission to Myanmar (Feb/ Mar 2017)

InterAction staff visited Myanmar in February/March 2017, to explore NGO roles in relation to overall protection leadership, coordination, and strategies. Details about the purpose, objectives, and methodology for the mission are available in the Terms of Reference.

Key recommendations from the mission, intending to catalyze a shift in gears to accommodate longer-term thinking and ways of working to achieve protection outcomes, include:

• Build a common sense of purpose, using a whole-of-system approach to position protection within the humanitarian response, as a comprehensive reduction in risk typically requires engaging stakeholders across multiple sectors and disciplines (i.e. development, human rights, peacebuilding, and diplomatic actors, alongside the humanitarian community);
• Establish dynamic mechanisms for information flow and analysis, complementing regular incident monitoring with continuous, disaggregated threat analysis (including participatory methods to learn from the affected population), as a basis for problem-solving and adaptive programming;
• Clarify what protection information and analysis the HCT needs and expects to send a clear demand signal throughout the humanitarian community;
• Develop more strategic relationships with local/national actors to strengthen protection analysis and designation of priorities and approaches considering spheres of influence and entry points;
• Diversify ways of working in pursuit of protection outcomes, including intentional and coordinated advocacy messaging as well as leveraging resources, services, and activities of other sectors and the affected population;
• Move away from binary success/failure thinking and adopt an iterative approach, for example by using ongoing protection monitoring and analysis as a basis for regular adaptation for approach and activities;
• Approach the development of an HCT Protection Strategy by focusing on a limited number of most severe and prevalent protection concerns which exceed the capacity of the protection sector to address alone and in a way which does not duplicate work of the protection sector or cluster but maximizes strategic role, vantage point, and added value of the HCT.