This month’s update features the latest news from our work with partners on our emergency response campaigns for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and our campaigns for Sudan and the Sahel.

Israel and The Occupied Palestinian Territory and Lebanon

Responding to the escalation in Lebanon

With the escalation of the conflict into Lebanon, Crisis Action rapidly convened partners and decided to launch an emergency response campaign. The campaign sought to advance three initial objectives: increase the global call for military de-escalation and a return to political solutions by pressuring the US to use its influence on Israel; mobilise strategic voices to persuade the US and Israel to avert a full-scale occupation of southern Lebanon; and demand action to address an escalating humanitarian crisis.

In the first week and a half of the campaign, Crisis Action supported humanitarian and human rights partners (from Médecins du Monde/Doctors of the World, Save the Children, Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières, Refugees International, Amnesty International, and Action Against Hunger) to brief more than 100 journalists from outlets across the world; organised an online policymaker briefing (featuring Palestinian and Lebanese organisations as well as INGOs) attended by 80 policymakers from 25 countries on the impact of Israel’s forced evacuation orders in both Gaza and Lebanon; and coordinated a joint NGO statement demanding action by governments to end Israel’s impunity for the crimes committed in attacks on civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Lebanon.

The statement-signed by a heavyweight coalition of more than 170 NGOs, including humanitarian, human rights and conflict prevention organisations and faith groups-was launched ahead of a major donor conference on Lebanon hosted by the French government in Paris. The statement’s message was broadcast by Radio France (to 5 million listeners), picked up by the international wire service Reuters, and covered by Le Monde, Libération, and the Lebanese daily L’Orient Le Jour. In addition, Crisis Action organised a press conference for partners to brief the media, which was broadcast live by Euronews and covered by the business daily Les Echos.

Advancing arms embargo advocacy at the UN in New York

We have supported partners to make the case for the halt of arms sales to Israel as a lever to press for a ceasefire, end the humanitarian catastrophe, and lead to the release of hostages.

This included organising three roundtable briefings by partners for UN member states to make the case for an arms embargo to Israel and Palestinian armed groups, which built upon the January 2024 open call to UN Member States endorsed by 250 civil society organizations calling for a halt to arms transfers. One of the briefings, for the elected members of the UN Security Council and EU member states, included an all-women panel of representatives from the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), Oxfam, and Save the Children.

In the lead up to the historic UN General Assembly vote calling on member states to comply with the International Court of Justice advisory opinion on Israel’s occupation, Crisis Action supported partners’ successful effort (via legal briefings, social media and legacy media outreach, and briefing papers) to make the case for specific language on halting arms to Israel be included in the UNGA resolution text penned by the Palestine Mission. The resolution, which passed overwhelmingly, increases pressure on states to stop sending arms to Israel—the main point of leverage in advancing a ceasefire in Gaza and now Lebanon.

Empowering allies and sustaining pressure for a CeasefireNOW

A central aspect of the collective campaign strategy has been to ensure that policymakers receive accurate and timely information on the realities of the conflict and its impact on civilians. Briefings by the CeasefireNOW coalition on the humanitarian situation –‘humanitarian snapshots’– have been widely covered in the media and shared with policymakers across the globe. Partners have been told that the snapshot informed the recent letter sent by the US government asking the Israeli government to ease humanitarian suffering in the Gaza Strip by lifting restrictions on the entry of assistance within 30 days or face policy ”implications”, including the potential halt of US weapons transfers.

In addition, the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has acknowledged the snapshots as helpful and are believed to have contributed to the UK’s decision to suspend 30 arms export licenses to Israel. Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, cited the snapshots in his 26 July statement before the UN Security Council.

Crisis Action also supported coalition partners with ”The Obstruction Diaries”–a public-facing communications campaign to counter disinformation about access to aid in Gaza, highlighting the six ways Israel is obstructing aid. The videos can be found here, here, here, here, and here. As part of the effort, fifteen coalition partners released a statement highlighting that more than 80 percent of food aid was being blocked, which was covered by media organisations followed closely by policymakers, including The New York Times.

Sudan

Pushing for civilian protection measures and exposing external drivers of the conflict

In June, both the UN Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council called for a halt to the fighting in El Fasher, North Darfur, and tasked the UN Secretary General and the AU Commissioner, respectively, to develop recommendations on civilian protection in Sudan, which revealed that concerted demands from our partners had an impact. Partners closely following hostilities believe that the international action helped influence a temporary halt to the attack on El Fasher from the end of June to September. Fighting has now resumed and escalated. To seize the opportunity presented by the UN and AU decisions, Crisis Action catalysed a collective effort to generate proposals for urgent and concrete civilian protection measures, including a protection presence.

In partnership with Human Rights Watch, the International Peace Institute, and Amani Africa, we organised expert workshops in Kampala, New York, and Addis Ababa, bringing together Sudanese and international experts in peacekeeping, protection of civilians and atrocity prevention with UN, AU, and IGAD officials and diplomats. Thirty activists from all regions of Sudan participated in the Kampala workshop. We worked with partners to draw together detailed recommendations for civilian protection options considering the evolving security and political dynamics and learning lessons from previous operations. Among the recommendations was a call for an urgent, empowered protective presence to respond to credible risks of identity-based atrocity crimes, particularly but not exclusively in North Darfur.

We ensured that Sudanese expertise was heard by officials, facilitating direct meetings between Sudanese and international partners with key UN and AU policymakers, including members of the African Union High Level Panel on Sudan and officials drafting the UN Secretary General’s protection recommendations. As part of this, we supported a delegation of Sudanese civil society–including from the Darfur Advocacy Group, Fikra for Studies and Development, Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, Darfur Advocay Group, and Youth Citizens Observers Network—to travel to Addis Ababa, where they joined the expert workshop mentioned above and engaged with AU, IGAD and East Africa Standby Force experts and the Addis diplomatic community. In Kampala, the civil society leaders put their asks directly to the new African Union Special Envoy for the Prevention of Genocide, H. E. Adama Dieng.

Senior policymakers in the AU and UN also confirmed the value of the workshops to inform their thinking. We have since been told that partners’ advocacy informed and influenced the UN Secretary-General’s report on civilian protection options, which was presented to the UN Security Council on 28 October. In his presentation to the Council, the Secretary-General acknowledged the wide call for a protection presence but said that conditions ‘do not exist for the successful deployment of a United Nations force’ at this time.

To demonstrate the civil society and public demand for urgent action, Crisis Action coordinated joint letters to the UN Secretary-General and the AU Chair and launched a collective public communications push marking 500 days of war in Sudan, reaching more than 9 million people across all social media platforms. To complement this, a delegation of Sudanese partners met with a range of diplomats, ministers, and media during the UN General Assembly High-Level Week. The delegation also secured a meeting with film star and humanitarian Angelina Jolie, who used the information they shared to inform a Time magazine op-ed she penned.

Further, Crisis Action worked with Avaaz to launch a public petition that has already garnered over 300,000 signatories to push on the UN Secretary General to ensure his recommendations meet the needs of Sudanese civilians; we facilitated and supported op-eds by leading figures pushing for a civilian protection force in Sudan including a piece in The East African by Joyce Banda, the former president of Malawi, and an essay by Roméo Dallaire and Shelly Whitman in Foreign Policy; and we supported further Sudanese delegations to key capitals, facilitating direct advocacy between our partners and the UK foreign ministry ahead of the UK’s presidency of the UN Security Council in November and with the key member of the A3 African grouping on the UN Security Council.

We have also been building with partners a longer-term campaign to influence the backers of the warring parties. As part of this, we have worked with Refugees International and other partners on a targeted public campaign, which seeks to increase public exposure and criticism of the UAE’s ‘sportswashing’ and add to the reputation costs to the UAE for its support for RSF atrocities. We are continuing to experiment, test, and refine our campaign approach and build a wider network of allies, including among activists in grassroots campaign movements and Sudanese online influencers, who can help spread the message to ever greater audiences.

We are keen to draw other partners and allies into this effort – for more information please contact our campaign lead Hayley Davidson [hayley.davidson@crisisaction.org]

The Sahel

Generating new enthusiasm and ‘reclaiming’ norms for civilian protection

We have continued to support the People’s Coalition for the Sahel in its effort to counter the many challenges to civil society in the region and influence government policies for better civilian protection.

A June workshop for the coalition in Dakar–the first in-person meeting of the Coalition steering committee since the appointment of the Coordinator of the Coalition in April–generated new commitments to revitalize private advocacy and targeted policymakers’ outreach at the national level in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, following years of predominantly regional and internationally focused activities.

In August and September, national workshops were organized despite security concerns in Bamako, Ouagadougou and Niamey, building on the momentum from Dakar and resulting in targeted advocacy action plans for 2024-25. These plans include the presentation of a new coalition report providing a civil society assessment of key threats to civilians in the region. This will be shared privately with high-level policymakers to create the grounds for a constructive debate with the authorities and, partners hope, inspire government action in line with civil society recommendations.

Alongside this, the People’s Coalition is focused on the development of a new initiative, the Human Dignity Project. The plan is to craft culturally relevant narratives to promote human rights and emphasize security and human dignity. The aim is to ‘reclaim’ norms for Sahelian-led civilian protection and human rights dismissed as international or external impositions, instead connecting them to local social, cultural and religious norms and references. The project will be in collaboration with traditional communicators and communication platforms with deep roots in Sahelian society and culture such as community radio stations.

The project is currently piloting in Mali, with the aim to create a sharable and practical guide on human rights and civilian protection tailored to the Malian context and set up workshops with traditional communicators (griots) to disseminate the toolkit among local communities, authorities, and civil society members. Lessons will be drawn from the Mali pilot to expand the initiative to Burkina Faso and Niger in early 2025.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo

Pushing DRC and Rwanda’s Presidents to Engage in Peace Negotiations  

The DRC emergency response campaign launched in May was designed as a short-term intervention to support Congolese and Pan-African and international partners to urge regional leaders in advance of the summits of the African Union in July and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in August, to use their influence and push DRC’s President Tshisekedi and Rwanda’s President Kagame to engage meaningfully in peace negotiations that had stalled. We worked with a range of allies and partners including Congo Peace Network, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Atrocities Watch Africa, Congolese Women for Joy, Norwegian Refugee Council, and Human Rights Watch.

Crisis Action worked with partners to:  

• Produce a policy briefing for the AU’s Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security Ambassador Bankole and key AU Member States ahead of the AU Summit.
• Craft a private letter from 23 DRC and pan-African CSOs to southern Africa’s Heads of State calling for their leadership to take immediate and decisive action and push for meaningful dialogue to resolve the crisis. We heard directly from high-level stakeholders involved in discussions that this letter set the right tone and was particularly timely and very well received.
• Host a global media briefing enabling international reporters to hear from those directly affected by the conflict and from partners in the DRC, the region and international humanitarian and human rights organisations on the worsening humanitarian and human rights situation including sexual and gender-based violence.
• Organise an online panel event with one of Time magazine’s ‘100 most influential people’, human rights activist Julienne Lusenge, and the acting Head of MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping force operating in the region to amplify the campaign’s messages with policymakers.

In a sign of progress, Angola’s President Lourenço and Tanzania’s President Hassan are now working together to put in motion a proposal for Presidents Kagame and Tshisekedi to engage with each other. A team of officials from SADC have been dispatched to work with President Lourenco to draw up a roadmap for the ongoing negotiations.

We were delighted to hear from partners in this campaign that the campaign shone a spotlight on the conflict and helped build the crucial momentum needed. We have also been pleased to hear that this collaboration has supported partners to strengthen their connections for ongoing collaboration across local, regional and international organisations and allies.