5 Negotiating on Specific Issues

5.1 Overview

Humanitarian negotiations frequently involve several humanitarian issues in the same round of negotiations. For example, securing humanitarian access, ensuring respect for international law, and establishing ground rules for provision of assistance and protection may all need to be negotiated simultaneously with an armed group. The many substantive areas for negotiation (some of which were listed previously in Section 2.2) span the two inter-related dimensions of humanitarian action: assistance and protection.

This chapter identifies some of the ways in which these two dimensions of humanitarian action can influence humanitarian negotiations. Guidance is also provided for three specific areas of negotiation: (i) ground rules for humanitarian action; (ii) securing humanitarian access; and (iii) protection of civilians in accordance with international law. This more specific guidance supplements the generic guidance provided in Chapter 4.

Because humanitarian negotiations can feature several of these individual subject areas, the guidance presented here should not be viewed in isolation. For a multi-faceted negotiation, humanitarian negotiators will need to amalgamate the guidance provided for the individual issues.