Frontline Negotiators

Season 2 of Frontline Negotiators: Stories from the Field is coming on September 6th 2023.

Hear more personal stories told by humanitarian professionals as they negotiate to access, assist and protect people in crisis.

The new episodes feature people from a range of organisations all over the world who work in the frontline conducting humanitarian negotiations in armed conflicts and other situations.

As well as their personal stories, episodes will also include how negotiations require professional skills, a solid methodology and lots of preparation.

The series is produced by the Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation.

frontline-negotations.org

Mariana Ariestyawati, from Indonesia, tells us how she used her interpreting skills in a time of crisis and helped her team build trust with people they had to negotiate with.

In her career, she's been an interpreter and teacher. She started out in Journalism, where she realsed she was interested in humanitarian work.

The Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation conducts research to better understand the challenges and dilemmas faced by humanitarian negotiators on the frontlines. Interviews are conducted with not only humanitarians but also academics, policymakers and civil society workers. Currently, the CCHN is researching the response to the refugee crisis in Ukraine and surrounding countries. The Research team travelled to Moldova, where people are taking on new 'professions' overnight to support the displaced as best as they can. One of them is Igor Hincu, a social entrepreneur who is helping refugee children express and relieve negative emotions thanks to his toy-making business.

Working in a European country in times of peace can be just as challenging as in any other crisis around the world.

In this episode, we hear the story of medical doctor Apostolos Veizis, who returned to his native Greece after many years spent on humanitarian missions abroad. He tells us about negotiating with people escaping disasters and conflict, but also - and most importantly - with his own self.

Dariha Erketaeva is a humanitarian professional from Kyrgyzstan – a country that, she says, "very few people know about". Throughout her career and many negotiations, she's often found it challenging to be taken seriously as a young woman, as a person from a distant Asian country, or as a non-Arabic speaker.

In this episode, Dariha reflects on how the way one looks, acts, and is perceived by a counterpart can impact dramatically the outcome of a negotiation process, and how she found practical solutions to overcome the problems.

In 2016, Innocent Sauti left his home in Zimbabwe to take up a humanitarian mission in Myanmar. Originally a teacher, he had seen the positive impact of international aid on school attendance and had decided to switch careers to join the World Food Programme.

In this episode, Innocent shares what it meant for him to leave the African continent for the first time and to start anew in a very distant and unfamiliar part of the world.

Just like many of her colleagues, Nana Kharbedia – a humanitarian professional from Georgia - was often thrown into a negotiation without getting much preparation beforehand. In these situations, she had to make do by relying on her expertise and gut feeling.

From dealing with tribal leaders in South Sudan to ministers in Bosnia, Nana shares how she learned to prepare for a negotiation process in a strategic way.

How do humanitarians build their negotiation skills? Most often, it's not about reading books or going to school; you learn by doing.

Amro Tarrisi is a former English teacher from Syria who wished to support others who, like him, had to escape the conflict. In this episode, Amro shares how he built a humanitarian grassroots initiative from scratch and learned to confidently negotiate along the way.

Kiran Kothari began his humanitarian career in the early 2000s in the context of the Sri Lankan conflict and has since then worked on several humanitarian missions internationally.

In this episode, Kiran shares about relying on the "Naivasha Grid" - a strategic methodology developed by a group of humanitarians meeting in Kenya in 2014 and a useful tool to handle humanitarian negotiations.

Ana Daza, a former video-maker from Colombia, completely turned her life around when she took her first humanitarian job.

She now works in challenging, high-pressure conflict situations amidst armed groups. She takes care of her mental health by cultivating her passion for art and relying on the support of her team.