The Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies (CHS) is convening a workshop of two expert roundtables in November 2025. The first, on November 3, will launch the Beyond Borders, Beyond Crisis Initiative, focusing on barriers to humanitarian responses to displacement across the WANA region. The second, on November 4, will address Protection under Siege, using Gaza as a central case study of the collapse of humanitarian protection frameworks.
Roundtable 1: Beyond Borders, Beyond Crisis Initiative
November 3, 2025
Placing specific emphasis on the people most affected by intersecting crises, the Initiative focuses on situations characterised by displacement under siege, cross-border displacement, and mobility restrictions imposed simultaneously upon IDPs, refugees, and humanitarian responders (including those with lived experiences of displacement). Building on extensive scholarships on forced migration, Southern-led humanitarianism, and regional approaches to displacement, the Initiative seeks to reimagine humanitarian responses by prioritising regional knowledge production, cross-sector collaboration, and the development of cutting-edge action-oriented and policy-relevant research, dialogues, and knowledge exchange, including through the publication of multilingual Policy Notes and Policy Briefs.
As the first in a series of events at the core of the Initiative, the opening Expert Roundtable (held under Chatham House Rules) centralises participants' expert contributions to document and analyse barriers to responses to displacement across the WANA region, with a particular focus on Gaza, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. This Roundtable will map and interrogate three intersecting barriers: first, obstacles preventing humanitarian access; second, barriers to addressing the needs and rights of displaced people living under siege; and third, the structural impacts of governance failures at multiple levels, from the global to the local.
The Initiative's broader aim is to contribute to a deeper and more contextual understanding of displacement under siege, while fostering regional knowledge production and cross sector collaboration. The initiative aspires to support more responsive, equitable, and sustainable forms of humanitarian action in the WANA region.
Roundtable 2: Protection under Siege
November 4, 2025
The roundtable forms part of the Failure of the International Humanitarian System Project under the Humanitarian Action and Refugee Studies Programme at CHS. It aspires to contribute to a deeper understanding of protection under siege, while stimulating evidence-based discussions that can inform future reforms of humanitarian governance.
By centering the case of Gaza, this first roundtable highlights the urgent need to re-examine the very foundations of humanitarian protection. It seeks to foster a space for critical dialogue that transcends descriptive accounts of violations, instead interrogating why existing legal, institutional, and operational safeguards failed so profoundly. This process of collective analysis is the first step toward documenting the systemic collapse of humanitarian protection under siege conditions, identifying cross-context vulnerabilities that jeopardize aid workers and civilians alike, and setting the groundwork for subsequent research and workshops that will explore possible pathways to strengthen or reimagine humanitarian protection in asymmetric wars.
The roundtable aims to map and critically assess the paralysis of global and regional protection mechanisms in the face of deliberate attacks on civilians and aid workers in Gaza, while also examining how political obstruction, asymmetric warfare, and structural governance failures undermine protection frameworks at multiple levels. It will document the humanitarian implications of aid denial under siege, including the targeting of local communities and responders, and will draw out the wider lessons for other protracted crises in the region, where similar vulnerabilities continue to threaten humanitarian protection and access.