The Bridge: Learning Clinics on Humanitarian Diplomacy for Children in Crisis
How can humanitarian diplomacy contribute to concrete and measurable child protection outcomes?
Join the Alliance for a series of three interactive Learning Clinics exploring how child protection practitioners can use humanitarian diplomacy to influence the decisions, behaviours, and systems that shape children’s exposure to harm.
Designed as practical spaces for learning and exchange, each clinic will bring together practitioners with diverse experiences to explore real cases, operational challenges, and lessons from different humanitarian contexts. Through facilitated discussions and participant exchange, the series will examine the choices, adaptations, and relationships that can help translate humanitarian diplomacy into meaningful outcomes for children.
Clinic 2: Local Actors as Humanitarian Diplomacy for Child Protection Actors
🗓 21 October | ⏰ 14:00-15:30 CEST |📍 Zoom | 🔗 REGISTER HERE
🌐 Simultaneous Interpretation available in French, Spanish, and Arabic.
🔹 Explore the critical role of local and national actors in humanitarian diplomacy, including the unique access, relationships, legitimacy, and influence they bring. The clinic will consider how the humanitarian system can better recognise and support locally led diplomacy, share decision-making and access to influential spaces, and ensure that greater local leadership does not result in disproportionate risk transfer.
🗣️ Speakers:
- Jonas Habimana, Head of Office, BIFERD, Democratic Republic of the Congo: Direct experience of humanitarian diplomacy and advocacy for child protection in DRC.
- Nataliia Kirkach, Chairwoman/Director, Slavic Heart, Ukraine: A concrete experience of humanitarian diplomacy or advocacy for child protection in Ukraine.
Clinic 3: Humanitarian Diplomacy for Child Protection in Action
🗓 4 November | ⏰ 14:00-15:30 CET |📍 Zoom | 🔗 REGISTER HERE
🌐 Simultaneous Interpretation available in French, Spanish, and Arabic.
🔹 Learn directly from concrete field experiences where humanitarian actors have sought to influence decisions, behaviours, or practices affecting children. Through real cases, practitioners will unpack what happened behind the scenes—from selecting interlocutors and diplomatic channels to navigating resistance, adapting strategies, and identifying what ultimately contributed to progress.
Previous Clinic: Humanitarian Diplomacy for Child Protection in Politically Sensitive Environments
🗓 7 October | ⏰ 14:00-15:30 CEST |📍 Zoom
📺 Watch the Recording
🔹 Explore how humanitarian actors can maintain meaningful engagement on sensitive child protection concerns when harms are denied, contested, or politically difficult to acknowledge. The discussion will consider how practitioners navigate language and framing, confidential and public engagement, operational access, organisational risk, and the safety of affected people and partners.
🗣️ Speakers:
- Kristen Hope, University of Bath: Research and conceptual perspectives on child protection and humanitarian diplomacy.
- Jennifer Dabis, Director of Development, Juzoor for Health and Social Development: The perspective of a Palestinian organization working in Gaza and the wider occupied Palestinian territory.
- Alexandre Munafò, Head of Humanitarian Diplomacy and Communications, Geneva Call: Experience of humanitarian dialogue, with a particular focus on Ukraine.
Each clinic will feature facilitated discussion with practitioners, interactive exercises and opportunities for participants to share experiences, ask questions and reflect on how lessons can be applied in their own contexts.
We look forward to seeing you there!