Paper details
| Paper authors | Arquimides Farías, Anastasiya Marchuk |
| In panel on | Communities of Practice as Sites of Solidarity, Resistance and Shifting Power in Humanitarianism |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
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Abstract
The Centre of Competence on Humanitarian Negotiation (CCHN) convenes a global community of practice of over 8,500 humanitarian professionals engaged in frontline negotiation. Originally created to strengthen skills-building at both the individual and sector-wide levels through peer learning, over the past nine years the CCHN community has grown into a vibrant, peer-led platform that fosters professional solidarity, builds collective knowledge and resilience, and supports the emergence of more inclusive and context-driven approaches to humanitarian negotiation.
Through the voices of members of the CCHN community, this contribution will explore how peer engagement and collective sense-making have helped humanitarian staff respond to complex operational challenges. Their experiences will highlight the importance of practitioner-led spaces in building confidence, validating local expertise, and ensuring that negotiation strategies are grounded in realities on the ground.
The discussion will also explore how the community is becoming more structured and intentional in its role – formalizing negotiation practices and contributing to the establishment of humanitarian negotiation as a distinct and evolving professional domain. As the community consolidates, it also plays a role in rebalancing the humanitarian knowledge ecosystem, elevating the perspectives and leadership of national and local staff in shaping negotiation practice and discourse.
The CCHN’s participation will help explore how communities of practice can act as enablers of more equitable humanitarian spaces, while offering pathways for shared ownership and inclusive change in the way humanitarians operate.
