An Agenda for a Dignified and Sustainable Rohingya Refugee Response in Bangladesh
➢
Providing clear, written guidelines for humanitarian operations, streamlining, clarifying and
expediting project approval procedures, reducing paperwork, and ensuring transparency and
consistency in processes.
➢ Extending FD-7 approvals for at least 1-year consistent with the JRP timeframe, and in some cases
multi-year implementation should be possible where appropriate.
➢ Expediting issuance of visas and work permits for international humanitarian staff in line with
approved projects in order to ensure timely and high-quality service delivery to affected
communities.
➢ Ensuring regular dialogue between the government and all relevant actors to build mutual trust
and understanding.
d. Donors and the humanitarian community (including all international, national, and local
stakeholders) alongside affected communities, should prioritise consensus-building,
taking a differentiated but harmonised approach to advocacy aimed at strengthening
refugee protection.
Such an approach should build upon unified advocacy positions292 on key areas of common
interest and concern and utilise the complementary roles and capacities of each stakeholder
(connections, access, experience navigating existing bureaucracies, languages, technical
capacities, resources, etc.) to achieve greater advocacy impact. The humanitarian community
should also strengthen its engagement with human rights actors and human rights
mechanisms and Bangladeshi civil society (academics, researchers, think tanks, media etc).
e. The humanitarian community (including all international, national, and local
stakeholders) alongside affected communities, should consider establishing a
Humanitarian Access Working Group.
The working group could be established under ISCG leadership and provide a safe platform to
discuss and analyse access constraints and propose strategic solutions. Simple and userfriendly tracking tools in English, Bangla, and Rohingya languages should be developed to
ensure secure and confidential data sharing, reporting, analysis and tracking of access
challenges.
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International and Bangladesh NGOs can play a leading role in establishing strong collective evidence-based advocacy
positions on specific issues based on their expertise and areas of influence and building on their field presence, contextual
understanding and access to data and information. For example, international protection agencies can guide joint advocacy
on key refugee protection issues while local agencies with strong understanding and networks with camp-based authorities,
police, security agencies and district officials may help shape the humanitarian access advocacy agenda to address aid
restrictions and bureaucratic barriers for all NGOs working in the response.
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Act for Peace / May 2021