Reviving Accountability in International Humanitarian Law: A Conversation with Jeremy Konyndyk

Speaker A: If you think back to 15, 20, 25 years ago, protection of civilians, mass atrocities, crimes against humanity, these were things that happened but were not tolerated in the same way it feels they are tolerated now. Some of these norms and expectations that states have upheld imperfectly, hypocritically, but upheld, really seem to be eroding. You know, the core premise of IHL is that it's universal. The core credibility of civilian protection is that it's universal and that it is not just an extension of politics. And when countries come to see advocacy for civilian protection as merely an extension of geopolitics, then we've really lost it. When the norms cease to constrain and the Security Council ceases to use diplomatic leverage or political leverage to constrain, then countries don't face too many obstacles to just violating international humanitarian law at their whimsical.

Speaker B: Protection leadership means ensuring that the safety, the dignity and the rights of the people affected by humanitarian crisis guide every decision we make. Humanitarian leaders in field operations need to work together to advocate and to keep attention firmly on those most at risk. Protection is everybody's business. Welcome to the Protection Leadership Podcast. One more episode where my goal is very simple, to demystify protection, to really bring it to life with as many practical examples for all of us to get inspired and to get different perspectives on the question of protection leadership. And I'd like now to turn to my very special guest, uh, today, and it's my pleasure to introduce, uh, Jeremy Kohndike, who is the president of, uh, Refugee International. I've known Jeremy for a number of years in many different capacities. A strong voice, an advocate on humanitarian and refugee issues, having really worked in some of the most complex operations in countries around the world. Natural disasters, refugees operations, resettlement. A strong advocate in Washington, but a strong advocate all over the world. Jeremy, welcome and I'm delighted to have you with us.

Speaker A: I'm delighted to be talking to you again, Panos.

Speaker B: It's great, Great. So, Jeremy, I wanted to ask about your journey and kind of, uh, where you have followed so far. And can you tell me a little bit how you got into the humanitarian work and how protection is part of what you got to be and what you do right now.

Speaker A: I began my career in the Balkans. I worked on the Kosovo refugee crisis, uh, first in Albania during, uh, the period after the refugees had come out, and then followed the refugees back in and spent several years in Kosovo. And so starting with, started there, I think, very early on in that experience, saw the importance of protection. We went back we followed the displaced Albanian population back into Kosovo and very rapidly began seeing a lot of protection concerns emerge, but different protection concerns than what had existed before the war. So the populations that had been more in control of Kosovo before the war now faced protection concerns because they were now a minority population. Other minority populations that had always been marginalized were now in even worse shape. And so you began to see very rapidly, as a very junior, uh, you know, very junior aid worker, how protection of populations was important and necessary to effective aid. That you could not provide aid to minority populations in Kosovo if you were not also factoring in protection concerns. And in fact, for those populations, it was often the protection concerns that were the greater priority than the next aid delivery.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, you mentioned the Kosovo. And of course the protection concerns. Being in the center. One of the classic dilemmas we have been facing throughout and still today is kind of this balancing out, uh, the need to have access, the need to be able to have the foot on the ground to reach the people, and being given permission by governments to deliver to the assistance, um, versus the need also to stand on principles, to feel comfortable, to raise sometimes sensitive issues with governments, whether it's picking up in public or throughout, uh, uh, closed doors diplomacy. So how do you square the circle? How do you balance this operational versus advocacy in a way that, uh, one doesn't negate the other?

Speaker A: It is hugely challenging. And I think sometimes there needs to be some differentiation of function. So in my organization, Refugees International, we are built to be an extreme version, if you will, to one end of that spectrum. So we do not maintain a permanent field presence anywhere. We do not do service delivery programs. We do not accept funding from governments or from the un. And we do that to preserve the ability to be very, very independent, very loud when we need to be. Uh, I think it is challenging for operational organizations. I spend most of my career with operational NGOs and, uh, some periods with the US government as well. For operational NGOs, it's a different calculus. I worked for mercy Corps in 2009, leading some of their advocacy work on Sudan. When the government of Sudan kicked nine or ten of the big international NGOs out of Darfur because of advocacy and because of particularly advocacy around protection issues. Uh, and of course the ICC indictment of Omar Al Bashir, which was the precipitating factor for that. And it was a moment where we saw really direct trade offs between being vocal and being able to maintain presence. And that's always the challenge. I do think the organizations that have A stronger footing or a more unique ability to advocate really need to do that. And for the UN agencies in particular, whether it's IOM or UNHCR or unicef, they are state based institutions, they have member state relationships, uh, they also have mandates that are at their core protection focused. And so I think that there are different trade offs perhaps that an INGO faces or a national NGO faces versus a UN agency. And I think it is really important in a smart way, in a diplomatic way when needed. But it's really important for UN leaders to speak out, to create space. Because when, if the UN is being silent or even publicly silent on a major protection issue in a country, then it's much harder for everyone down the line who has even less protection than the UN does to be active and to be vocal on that.

Speaker B: Yeah, um, so the voice of the UN is something you think is very important, but how about the NGOs? Can they also contribute in a way to other, ah, voice through networks of advocacy, influencing, uh, or is it just a UN role?

Speaker A: No, it's absolutely an NGO role as well. The NGOs are somewhat more vulnerable to retaliation from a member state, rather from a country, because they're not a, um, they're not, the states are not members of the NGOs. Sometimes I think what the NGOs do is keep the UN's feet to the fire as well on this. Certainly an organization like ours, that's what we do a lot. But for operational NGOs as well, they can speak out, but in so doing they really need to also they need to have some backup from UN leadership in the country. And uh, some of the more vocal, louder NGOs like MSF, who I think do phenomenal work, they are really premised on going back to the founding of msf, uh, coming out of the war on Biafra. They are premised on this idea that you have to balance being vocal and witnessing and providing assistance. So I do think the NGOs have a major and important role in that too, but they have a somewhat different calculus than the UN does.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So Jeremy, many critics look at us today and when we look at what's happening in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Darfur, and so many different parts of the world. And uh, many critics look at us and say we're not putting enough today, protection of civilians in the center of what we do, we. Why do you see this happening? Is it really kind of a decline? Have we become far too risk averse?

Speaker A: I think it really starts with states. If you think back to 15, 20, 25 years ago, protection of civilians, mass atrocities, crimes against humanity. These were things that happened but were not tolerated in the same way it feels they are tolerated now. I remember early in my career when conflict arose in East Timor, and there was one moment when Kofi Annan, who was Secretary General at that time, said in public that crimes against humanity were underway in East Timor. And that was a major global news story. It would not be a major global news story if the Secretary General were to say something like that about a conflict today. And I think that is because some of these norms and expectations that states have upheld imperfectly, hypocritically, but upheld really seem to be eroding. And I think the contrast between how, uh, many Western states in particular have handled Gaza versus how they have handled Ukraine, it really erodes, even shreds, the credibility of international humanitarian law and civilian protection. Because, you know, the core premise of IHL is that it universal. The core credibility of civilian protection is that it's universal and that it is not just an extension of politics. And when countries come to see advocacy for civilian protection as merely an extension of geopolitics by other means, then we've really lost it. And that's where I fear it feels like we are at this point in history. It's not to say we can't get it back, but we need states to begin acting with more consistency. We need states to realize the stakes of what we lose if this legacy handed down to us from the post World War II era is lost. I've been thinking a lot over the past year, especially I'm an American watching what's happening in my country. We came out of World War II as a World with historic levels of global displacement, as we have today, with an awful, terrible war that had shredded all norms of decency. And the winners of that war did not say, that was great, let's do everything that way again. They said, that was terrible. We should never fight this way again even though we won. We should never fight this way again even though we face historic levels of displacement. We're not going to build new walls all around Europe. We're going to build a refugee convention to provide for orderly protection and return a resettlement of displaced people. And, you know, I don't know if it's going to take something getting much, much worse before we return to that sort of a political moment, but I fear that's. That's what we're on the verge of losing right now.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is actually, um, a changing world A world where we see multilateralism is in decline, where in a way, we see kind of some of the values that you described going back to post Second World War, and some of these values are in decline. Funding has been a dramatic decline in 2025, with programs really being cut throughout. And in some of the poorest countries in the world, that is really happening. The question is, as humanitarian leaders, how do we navigate this kind of new environment where everything we do is question, from the values, from the principles to the funding, and still to be able to deliver kind of assistance and stand on these principles, how to do it?

Speaker A: I think it starts with, on some level, just being frank and candid about what we're seeing and letting. Letting the consequences of that roll out. I think if. If humanitarians and human rights activists are not speaking truth, it's much easier for everyone else to get away with not speaking truth. That's part of our function. It's part of our job. It's why there is so much effort invested in controlling the narrative around how the war in Ukraine is understood or, uh, how the war, you know, the, The. The mass atrocities in Gaza are understood. The very instructive moment, I think, earlier this year, around the famine declaration in Gaza, the Israeli government mobilized a huge public narrative pushback against that because they knew the reputational damage. They knew that that would change their perceptions in ways that would constrict their diplomatic and political space. So sometimes it can feel like speaking truth is not that relevant. It's just wor. It's just talk. But actually, that narrative and the norms and the principles, the values of that narrative really do ultimately filter their way back into politics and filter their way back into how conflicts are conducted. And so it is important to be loud sometimes, even if it doesn't feel immediately like it's having an impact.

Speaker B: Um, uh, but about being loud, can. Can I ask you to think of a moment and look back either in your current position or in the past, where you had to make this difficult choice? Do I say something and m. It comes with some risk, or should I just keep a low profile and kind of continue doing. Can. Can you give me an example? Just to bring it to life?

Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, in my. In my current job, we're built to be loud. We're.

Speaker B: We're.

Speaker A: You know, we. We've really built ourselves as an organization to be able to be independent.

Speaker B: This is with Refugees International.

Speaker A: Refugees International, yes. But when I think my NGO career or even my US Government career, so I, uh, was overseeing disaster relief at USAID when the war in Yemen began in 2015 and we had fierce debates within the US government over how vocally to call out some of the behavior by the Saudi Emirati coalition. And you had one part in the government that felt strongly know, like they're they. And uh, because these, you know, these are partner countries of the United States, in some cases allies of the United States. So it would be impolite we would not be good partners if we called them out. So instead we tried to work with them as partners and we made progress on some fronts and not much progress on others. They, they did open up more aid corridors that helped to alleviate what would have I think been a full blown famine if not for some of the concessions that they made to the blockade. But on civilian protection, very little progress. And I think this is a lesson you can see in Yemen, it's a lesson we can see in Syria, uh, it's a lesson we can see in Gaza. Countries that are willing to accept the reputational hit of attacking civilians are not going to be dissuaded just by words. There needs to be leverage, there needs to be diplomatic leverage. Ultimately for the U.S. the move that we had in the U.S. government and the Obama administration that we had resisted for a long time, which was cutting off weapons supplies to that fight, ultimately towards the very end of the administration, President Obama made the decision to do that. And I think that as activists, as advocates for protection, we need to think in terms of leverage too. We need to think who has leverage, who has the leverage to change something. Ultimately, if a warring party in a conflict is willing to violate these norms, uh, if the norms have not constrained them, then you do move into the territory of leverage. And that, you know, that is in part why the Security Council exists. Right. Is to take those situations to focus global diplomatic attention, um, and if needed leverage, and try to change the calculus for warring parties. But the Security Council has been pretty dysfunctional for years now. And so I think we're trapped in a kind of bad place where when the norms cease to constrain and the Security Council ceases to use really diplomatic leverage or political leverage to constrain, then countries don't face too many obstacles to just violating international humanitarian law at their whim.

Speaker B: Yeah, ah, but it's finding this leverage that is important. And as humanitarians, we, even on the political side, we tend to be shy of being able to cross that path so much. Even today, where it's not just the political, is the trade, is many other kind of dimensions that come into it to be able to exercise that leverage to bring a change or an end to this, uh, kind of uh, acts that harm uh, civilians in the middle of conflict situations.

Speaker A: There are different roles that different actors play and there are different trade offs that actors make. And so if there is a humanitarian organization that is seeing a lot of protection challenges, but ultimately they are still able to deliver life saving aid in that environment, then they may be better off preserving their access. But it's important that there are some voices out there that are also telling the truth and calling things out. And one of the. Back to Yemen for a moment. One of the important points for us as humanitarians within the US government at that time was this recognition that if the naval blockade around Yemen was maintained, no amount of aid that we sent in would matter. And so part of our advocacy within the US government to other parts of the Obama administration was to say there is not an aid solution to this. We cannot prevent famine with aid alone. We have to have protection. And I think that is an important element of any crisis is, are the protection concerns of such a magnitude that they make other forms of humanitarian response impossible. And I think that's been the case in Gaza for the last two years as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's that kind of ability to raise our protection and the courage to do it, particularly now more than ever before. And I mean we always said in humanitarian operation that protection is everybody's responsibility. So the question is, in today's climate it takes extra courage to be able to kind of to stand both on the political, international, uh, um, environment and what happens in the broader environment has impact in countries. The smallest country, the world goes out and they often tell us is these big countries don't do it, why should we? So how do you balance that as a relief worker to bring that courage and ability to stand up for values and principles?

Speaker A: And I think the idea that protection is everyone's responsibility, um, that also reflects that there are different ways and different levels at which we think about protection. So if we're talking about civilian protection and conflict that is almost inherently tied to the conduct of the war by the belligerent parties. So immediately there you're into big macro politics, big macro security issues. When I was an NGO field worker and I would talk about protection being everyone's responsibility, that was much more micro. Often that was how do we design latrines, how do we design camps, how do we help and uh, support displaced people, crisis affected people to access and exercise their rights within their own daily life. And that Is, you know, that can be somewhat political at a community level, but it's not a big geopolitics issue. And so I think there is space to do that even when there's not space to do the big geopolitics. And I think that's also very, very important because, you know, in someone's day to day life, if you are designing a, if you're designing a settlement and not gender segregating latrines, not lighting latrines, if you are, you know, there are a lot of ways that we deliver aid that need to factor protection considerations into the design and the execution of an aid program. One of the really interesting frontiers right now in humanitarian protection is also thinking about what that means in an urban environment. When you get so many of the protection tools that we have are really premised on a camp. I mean, when I'm just talking about a moment ago, camp design, latrine design, these are all things if you're built, if you have a refugee settlement or an IDP settlement, that's the context in which that's a useful protection tool. What does that mean as we extend it to an urban environment? I think the future that we are heading into should be one in which refugees have greater right to work, greater freedom of movement. They're less concentrated in specific refugee settlements or IDP settlements. And I think that does change the protection landscape in ways that we need to think about more. One really fundamental part of that, for example, is digital identification. Refugees International has been working quite a lot with partners in Kenya as Kenya tries to implement this Sharika plan, which is moving past a camp centric approach to refugee protection and support. What has come through really clearly as central in that is identification. The refugee ID system, um, and the national ID system don't interface in a clean way. And so for refugees to begin accessing the rights that they have under the new Kenyan refugee law, the access to services that all centers on identification and registration. And so, you know, there are things that become very, very important, I think, as we shift to uh, as we hopefully shift away from camps as the center of how refugee assistance is provided. And in one way, camps provide good protection on one level because they enable a kind of, uh, safety, ideally if it's a well designed camp. But they also, they're an impediment to protection in the sense that one of the fundamental rights that refugees almost always seek in any environment is the right to work. And so they are often blocked by the camp construct from being able to exercise that right, which is A protection failing that is sort of baked into the very core of a camp model.

Speaker B: And this is very important in particular with the protractedness of most Christ around the world and reduction of funds, which mean one necessitates a different way to go about it. So Jeremy, you describe kind of this almost new world order or new reality that we're all facing today. So what will your advice be to humanitarian coordinators, to members of humanitarian country teams or even donor partners in terms of kind of protection and how to bring this protection advocacy to life? How to make it more kind of a genuine exercise that has an impact rather than just ticking the box to make it further. So what's your reflections and advice to them?

Speaker A: It's a tough environment. As we hopefully are moving away now from an assistance model that is premised on parallel humanitarian systems, to focus on expanding refugee rights at the center of that, uh, right to education, right to labor, and to look at the interface between national systems and humanitarian systems in environments where that's not possible. I think it is important to speak up. I think it's always important to speak up. And if the humanitarians are not speaking up, it's easier for everyone else to ignore a protection problem. So I think it has to start with the humanitarian speaking up and being willing to take some risks. Frankly, I do feel like we have become as a sector much more risk averse around being outspoken on protection. And I see a tie between the growth in humanitarian budgets and humanitarian service delivery over the last 15 years and a greater wariness, a greater, a more conservative, more cautious attitude about being outspoken. Because there is a lot more at stake if, you know, if you are an organization that has a protection focus and a massive assistance program, and by speaking out in protection, you fear you could jeopardize the entire assistance program. That's a hard trade off to make. I do think that for organizations that really have protection at the core of their mandates, organizations like unhcr, IOM and UNICEF in particular, it is an important moment to now think about what kind of transformation should this current budget crisis create If UNHCR goes into next year with half or two thirds of the budget that it had a couple of years ago, what should it preserve? What is the most critical thing for UNHCR to preserve? Is it the assistance program? Is it the, is it the protection function? You know, I would argue that in that kind of, in the, in this scenario, there are still a lot of organizations that can do refugee assistance. The role of UNHCR on refugee protection is very Unique. And there may be a way in which UNHCR can be liberated to be more outspoken when they have less of a, less of a huge assistance budget to worry about preserving. Um, it's a bit of an oversimplification, I'm sure, like, for you and HCR folks listening to this, they will have lots of reactions to that statement. But I think you see it, and I've felt this in my own NGO career, there's always this tension between advocacy and delivery. And there are some governments that are receptive to pushback on protection messaging, and there are others that are really, really are not. And I think you have to calibrate to that environment as well. And, you know, in an extreme case, and this is partly why organizations like Refugees International exist. You know, there are sometimes others who can put the word out on a situation. Uh, and we, you know, we often, when we do field visits, we'll be getting a lot of information from people who want it to see the light of day, even if they themselves can't be the one to put it out in the world.

Speaker B: Um, I think at times of rethinking, basically going back to the core in a way, is what you're saying in terms of the work, what needs to be done. So, Jeremy, I wanted to ask you of sc, in many situations, across multiple decades of your work, can you pick up one or two good examples, uh, across different operations where you saw the protection approach kind uh, of bringing good results, positive results, as a kind of a good example to carry forward?

Speaker A: On the positive side, I think that the emergence of gender based violence as a sector of intervention, as a sector of activity, I don't know. It feels wrong to call it a success story because it's always a struggle. Right? But the really seminal report by Save the Children, uh, and UNHCR about West Africa in the early 2000s, that was hugely influential. And it came from speaking out about hidden problems. And I was working for the US State Department Refugee Bureau at that time, and that report hit us like a bomb. And it was all we could talk about for weeks. And it really reoriented how we invested resources, the sort of questions we asked our partners, the kind of expectations that we had of our interventions and our programs. And coming out of that, of that very difficult, very painful moment, a new sector of intervention was born and grew. And it is now a core part of what we do as humanitarian, as, uh, humanitarian operations. It is always a struggle. That's kind of the point. Protection problems don't go away. You never solve them, but you need to be aware of them and manage them and address them. And so I think then over the ensuing almost 25 years now, since that report came out, there has been a, uh, progressive iteration of learning additional lessons, refining our approaches and understanding that, for example, gender based violence has to be thought one, not an afterthought in how we engage in a crisis. So there have been lessons along the way, but compared to where it was before, it is a very different world. In humanitarian operations now, this is much m more on the, more at the center of the agenda. It's much more central to the, of programs and interventions. So I think that it's a qualified success story. It's a partial and imperfect success story. But in humanitarian operations that's about as good as you do. Right? So I think that's a really important one. On the more macro level of civilian protection, I think it's much more challenging. I think there was a m moment coming out of a lot of the failings of the 1990s. There was this growing momentum around the responsibility to protect. And there was political will behind that. And that I think was exploded after the Arab Spring and after Libya, particularly that the political consensus around responsibility to protect among member states and particularly among Security Council members really collapsed after the Libya intervention because it was sold in the Security Council as a protection of civilians intervention. And I think it sincerely was. But then it came to mean a regime change intervention. And I think that we need to find a way back to a place where it's possible to disentangle regime change from civilian protection. There are not, sadly, in recent years, there are not a lot of great

Speaker B: examples of that in terms of the impact that has taken place. So Jeremy, if you could change one thing in the humanitarian system in order to bring the presidentiality protection, the leadership of protection, much more on the center. What would you do? What would you recommend?

Speaker A: If I had the magic wand, it might not be inside the humanitarian system, it would probably be outside it, which is, I think it's crucial that member states reinforce and uphold the norms of IHL and civilian protection. If we lose those, we lose something really fundamental. And it does feel like we're on the brink of, of a very, very different world in terms of war without norms, war without limits. So I would want to see first member states doing much more to put certain behavior beyond the pale. And I think that is much harder now after Gaza. It is much harder now after, uh, the way we see member states backing the warring parties in Sudan. And there is almost Like a sense of shame has left the international system. We need to bring back shame.

Speaker B: That's quite a word. We do.

Speaker A: We've lost a sense of shame. You know, the Israeli government will bomb civilian apartment buildings in Gaza. The Russian government will bomb civilian apartment buildings in Ukraine. The Syrian government bombed civilians left, right, and center in the civil war there was. And so I think we need a return of that shame within the humanitarian system. I think we need to be a little more willing to speak out and take risks and to call out these behaviors, even if it sometimes may mean jeopardizing relationships, jeopardizing access. There are times, I think, when that's merited and even when that's necessary. And at the end of the day, particularly for the large UN Agencies, they are mandated to be the custodians and the upholders of these norms. One other element of this, and I love the ICRC very much, but I think that we're now in a world where member states have almost inverted the role of ihl, so that rather than being a, uh, constraint, it has become a how to manual. So if you want to bomb civilians, as long as you can concoct a legal justification that avoids these constraints with nihl, you can go ahead and do that. And so far, I think the ICRC has really struggled. I mean, the, uh, ICRC is always very reticent publicly, but I think they've really struggled to, on something like protection, medical facilities, to just say, no, certain things are wrong, certain things cannot be done. So I think we need to stop speaking in conditionals, stop saying, well, if this, and if that, and if this, then it was wrong, but if this, and if that, then it's acceptable, and start saying, no, this was not a valid thing. This was not a legitimate attack. And, um, the attacks on health facilities, I think, are one of the. One of the absolute worst dimensions that we've seen, one of the worst directions and changes that we've seen in war over the last 15 years. It's become almost totally normalized now, and I think we need to get back to a place where humanitarian leaders, even at risk to their institutions, are willing to say no, that's wrong.

Speaker B: Attacks on health facilities, also attacks on humanitarian workers.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: We had this year the highest number of casualties of humanitarian workers, injured, killed in their line of duty, uh, while trying to provide humanitarian assistance.

Speaker A: It's really become almost totally normalized now. And as a humanitarian, it's a very scary thing.

Speaker B: So, Jeremy, my final question. What advice would you give leaders in operations today, given the complexity and all the sensitivities in terms of taking forward protection leadership, taking forward the principal approach to leaders, and also to the staff, because there's a lot of younger generation staff who haven't seen, in a way, this. Some of the situations you described further back. So what's your one advice you would give them?

Speaker A: Maybe two. I think, uh, again, I'd separate or somewhat distinguish the macro and the micro. I think on a micro level, it's really important that we maintain some of the lessons and some of the expertise. I'm nervous now with this contraction of the humanitarian sector, we risk losing that expertise in some of those lessons. I teach a course once a year at Georgetown University on humanitarian field operations, and we dedicate a lot of time to protection because I think it is important to instill that mindset in the next generation of humanitarian workers. And I think we need to continue investing in that. A lot of that, over the years, a lot of that learning capacity has been financed by the U.S. government, um, by my former team at USAID, which now no longer exists. So I think we have an important imperative now to preserve that learning and to continue to pass that sort of mentoring on to the next generation of humanitarians. At a macro level, again, I think the advice would be speak up, speak out, do so judiciously, don't do so recklessly. That's my job. In my organization. We can be reckless because we don't have the same risk calculus as operational humanitarian organizations. But at the same time, there are moments when the protection violation, I think, is the greater humanitarian priority than maintaining service delivery. And I think we need to be willing to put a little more at risk and put our access and our presence at risk at times in a way that I think is a struggle for humanitarians. But there are moments when we need to do that.

Speaker B: And organizations can come to. You can come to Refugees International if they feel they cannot do it themselves or other partners.

Speaker A: There's not a commercial for Refugees International.

Speaker B: But.

Speaker A: No, but, uh, but I think, look, we. We have a different role. And so when an organization that is delivering health services to 20 different clinics in a country says there is a mass, there is a major protection problem here that needs to be addressed, that also has a different weight than when an advocacy organization says that.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Um, yeah.

Speaker B: Jeremy, what a delight to have you. Thank you so much for, uh, joining this podcast and really sharing your analytical thoughts on such a sensitive and difficult issue. Thank you.

Speaker A: My pleasure.

Speaker B: And I want to say a big thank you to all of you viewers, listeners, uh, thank you for joining me in this, uh, Protection leadership podcast. Please spread the word around to your colleagues, other organizations about, uh, this thoughtful, uh, leadership exchange. And, uh, join me in the next episode. Thank you and goodbye.

Speaker A: Sam.