Humanitarian action has to deal with a humanitarian space which is more and more shrinking resulting from intensified anti-terrorism legislation, regulations and policies. This undermines the effectiveness of humanitarian action and violates the humanitarian principles of independence, impartiality and neutrality.
As a follow up to an expert meeting on this topic in April 2020, The Dutch Relief Alliance (DRA), Human Security Collective (HSC) and KUNO (Platform for Humanitarian Knowledge Exchange) presented a working session on Thursday 17 September.
The working sessions will gave an update on new anti-terrorism policies (in the Netherlands, as well as on the EU and global level) and explored possible activities and strategies to gain back humanitarian space.
The video conference was moderated by Peter Heintze, KUNO.
Introductions were given by by:
- Jan Jaap van Oosterzee (PAX) and Klaartje Docters van Leeuwen (Netherlands Red Cross) about new terror-related conditions of donors in financial contracts of NGOs;
- Paul van den Berg (Dutch Relief Alliance, Cordaid) and Karel Hendriks (MSF Netherlands), with an update on recent political developments in The Netherlands;
- Lia van Broekhoven (Human Security Collective) with an update on the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) Netherlands country evaluation in 2021 and developments on the EU Anti-Money Laundering Action Plan and impact on civil society in the Netherlands;
- Emma O’Leary (Norwegian Refugee Council) on Counter Terrorism Measures at UN-level and the impact on humanitarian sector.
Afterwards there was an open exchange of activities initiated by humanitarian and peace building organizations to preserve humanitarian pace.
Read the report on the meeting here.
