Conducting the meeting and making the agreement hold

1Conducting the meeting

A negotiation meeting generally has five stages:

1. Greeting and introduction: introduce yourself and the organisation and its mandate in a few simple sentences; thank the counterpart.
2. Island of agreement: start from shared facts and values.
3. Listening: let the counterpart set out their position and concerns; ask open questions ("What worries you?").
4. Options: propose several solutions that meet their concerns and your objectives.
5. Conclusion: restate what has been agreed, who does what and when.

Respect local codes (greetings, time spent, tea, hierarchy), dress appropriately and preferably go in pairs: one person speaks, the other observes and takes notes after the meeting.

2Active listening and working with an interpreter

Active listening means showing that you have understood before replying: rephrasing ("If I understand correctly, you are worried that…"), naming emotions without judging them, summarising. A counterpart who feels understood is more open to proposals.

With an interpreter: brief them beforehand (objective, vocabulary, neutrality, confidentiality); speak in short sentences; look at your counterpart, not the interpreter; ask for a faithful translation, without summaries or additions. Choose an interpreter who will not be put in danger or seen as partisan by the counterpart.

3Tension, refusals and unacceptable demands

Faced with anger or threats, stay calm, lower your voice, listen and suggest a break if necessary. Never respond to provocation and never put your safety at risk for an agreement.

• A refusal is not the end: ask what would allow the matter to be reconsidered, or offer to come back with more information.
• Faced with an unacceptable demand (payment, a share of the aid, the beneficiary list, imposed recruitment), calmly explain why it is impossible, based on the principles and the organisation's policy, and propose an acceptable alternative (for example, informing the authorities of the selection criteria rather than giving names).
• Do not promise anything beyond your mandate: "I will pass your request on to my management and come back to you."

4Concluding, documenting and following up

An oral agreement is restated at the end of the meeting, then documented as soon as you return: date, participants, requests, each party's commitments, open points, next step. The report goes to the mandator and, according to confidentiality rules, to the security focal point and the access working group.

An agreement is tested and followed up: a first small convoy, checking that commitments are kept, informing field teams and the guards at the checkpoint. Thank the counterpart when the agreement is applied: the relationship is built on commitments kept, on both sides.

5Detailed flow of a negotiation meeting: timing, roles and wording

The basic course presented the five stages of the meeting. In practice, an intermediate-level negotiation meeting lasts from 45 minutes to 2 hours, and experienced negotiators manage time consciously: most failures stem from moving too quickly to the request or from a vague conclusion. The flow below is a reference for a meeting of about 75 minutes; it adapts to local customs, which always take precedence.

Division of roles within the team

The timed flow

Questioning techniques

• Open questions to explore ("How do you see…?", "What is it that…?"); avoid "why", which is often perceived as an accusation.
• Clarifying questions to turn a general position into a specific concern ("When you say our vehicles are not safe, are you thinking of the passengers, the cargo, the timings?").
• Hypothetical questions to test an option without committing the organisation ("Suppose the list of vehicles were sent to you the day before: would that change anything for you?").
• Calibrated questions to get the counterpart thinking about implementation ("How will your men at the checkpoint know that you have given your agreement?").
• Silence: after an important question, let the counterpart answer without filling the silence. Much decisive information comes in the seconds following a silence.

A useful rule of proportion: over the whole meeting, the humanitarian negotiator should speak less than half of the time. If they speak more, they are explaining instead of listening, and they risk revealing their margins.

6Recognising and responding to pressure tactics

Humanitarian negotiators encounter tactics aimed at extracting concessions through pressure rather than exchange. Recognising them makes it possible not to respond emotionally. The response always aims to bring the exchange back to interests and options, without humiliating the counterpart and without crossing red lines.

Managing emotion, your own and the other party's

• Name it without judging: "I can see this situation makes you angry, and I understand that after what happened to your men." Acknowledged emotion subsides; ignored emotion escalates.
• Separate the person from the problem: criticise a measure, never a person.
• Use breaks: offer tea, a prayer break, an adjournment; a ten-minute break defuses most tensions.
• Watch your own triggers: fatigue, heat, hunger, a sense of injustice. An exhausted negotiator concedes or loses their temper; it is better to postpone.
• After a confrontation, debrief with the second and the mandator, and do not send the same negotiator back without reassessing the relationship and the risk.

Responding to an unacceptable demand: the four-step sequence

1. Acknowledge the underlying concern: "I understand that you want to be sure the families of your fighters are not forgotten."
2. Explain the rule and its basis, without moralising: "Our rule, everywhere, is that aid goes to families according to needs-based criteria, and we cannot set anything aside for anyone. That is what allows us to work in all areas."
3. Propose an option that addresses the concern: "Your fighters' families who meet the criteria are included like everyone else. We can present the criteria to your representatives and to the village committee, and the complaints mechanism is open to all."
4. Refer to the mandator if necessary, without making promises: "I will pass your request on to my management, but I do not want to leave you thinking the answer will be different on this point."

7Working with an interpreter: recruitment, briefing and risks

In a large share of frontline negotiations, the interpreter is the only person who understands both the words and the codes of both parties. They can be the negotiation's greatest asset or its breaking point. They are also one of the most exposed members of the team, as they often come from the local population and are identifiable.

Choosing the interpreter

The ten-point briefing (20 to 30 minutes before the meeting)

1. Objective of the meeting and expected outcome.
2. Who the counterpart is, what is known about them, sensitivities to respect.
3. Technical vocabulary and key humanitarian terms, with their agreed translation (impartiality, neutrality, selection criteria, severe acute malnutrition).
4. Terms to avoid (politically loaded words for the parties or the territory).
5. Mode of interpretation: consecutive, sentence by sentence, in the first person ("I" and not "he says that").
6. Faithfulness: translate everything, including aggressive remarks, without softening or hardening; flag an innuendo after the meeting or through an agreed signal.
7. Neutrality: do not give their own opinion, do not answer a personal question from the counterpart on substance without telling the negotiator.
8. Agreed break signal if the interpreter feels threatened or is unable to translate.
9. Confidentiality of the meeting and of the debriefing.
10. Security plan, including for their journey home after the meeting.

Debriefing with the interpreter

Right after the meeting, the interpreter is debriefed separately: expressions used that had no exact equivalent, tone, cultural references, reactions from the entourage, remarks exchanged on the side. These elements are often the richest part of the report. They are also asked whether they were personally challenged or whether they feel exposed.

Serious incidents against interpreters and intermediaries often occur after the meeting, not during it. Protecting the interpreter includes their journey home, their visibility in reports (do not name them unless necessary) and following up on their situation in the weeks that follow.

8Documenting, monitoring and measuring agreements

An undocumented verbal agreement exists only in the memory of those who were present. It disappears with staff turnover, becomes distorted in the retelling and cannot be defended in front of the counterpart's successor. Documentation serves four purposes: informing the mandator, ensuring continuity, feeding the collective analysis of access, and accounting to donors and auditors.

The negotiation report (template)

Deadline: the same day for a significant frontline negotiation; 24 hours at most for an intermediate-level negotiation. Storage: secure folder, restricted access, no copies on personal devices.

The agreements register

Each base keeps a consolidated register of agreements in force. It allows a new head of base to know within an hour what has been agreed, with whom, and what is being respected.

Access monitoring indicators

Tracking a few simple indicators makes it possible to check that an agreement is holding, to detect deterioration before it turns into a blockage, and to document advocacy.

• Percentage of planned movements actually carried out (typical target above 90% in a stabilised context).
• Average waiting time at the main checkpoints.
• Number of access incidents by category (according to OCHA's nine categories) and by area.
• Number of service days lost per site and estimated number of people deprived of services.
• Rate of commitments respected in the agreements register.
• Time taken to resolve blockages (between the report and the resumption).

Sharing information without exposing anyone

Reporting access incidents to the access working group is an expected practice: it enables collective analysis and advocacy by the Humanitarian Country Team. It is done in anonymised and aggregated form when publication could expose staff or counterparts. Negotiation reports themselves are not shared: what is shared are the facts, the trends and the necessary common positions.

An agreement that is not tracked by any indicator deteriorates without anyone noticing, until the day a vehicle is blocked and the team discovers that conditions had changed weeks earlier.

9Worked example: from the meeting to six weeks of follow-up

The context is fictional. In the city of Port-Elm (about 400,000 inhabitants), the NGO "Eau et hygiène sans frontières de la côte" (EHFC) provides water trucking to twelve urban displacement sites (31,000 people) following the destruction of the pumping station. The Sphere standard sets a minimum of 15 litres per person per day for drinking, cooking and personal hygiene; the sites were receiving an average of 12 litres. For ten days, the municipal police of the Grandport neighbourhood have been requiring water tankers to obtain a daily paid authorisation of 50 units per truck, which has led EHFC to suspend deliveries to four sites (9,800 people) located in that neighbourhood.

Preparation in brief

• Facts: the municipal order invoked does not exist in the register of municipal acts (checked by the legal adviser); the measure also applies to private transporters, who pass it on in the price of the water they sell (up from 3 to 5 units per 20-litre jerrycan).
• Iceberg of the municipal police commander: position "paid authorisation mandatory"; reasoning "the trucks damage the roads and cause traffic jams"; probable motives: paying his officers, who have not been paid for two months, and asserting his authority vis-à-vis the central town hall.
• Network: the deputy mayor in charge of urban services (influence 4, favourable), the committee of displaced people (influence 2, favourable), the transporters' association (influence 3, opposed to the tax).
• Mandate: ideal objective: exemption for humanitarian trucks; minimum acceptable: free authorisation issued for one month; red line: no payment without a regulatory basis and an official receipt; fallback option: supply through a distribution point on the edge of the neighbourhood (estimated access for 60% of families at the four sites).

The meeting (extracts from the report)

Six weeks of follow-up

In week 3, the meeting with the deputy mayor resulted in a municipal service memo exempting identified humanitarian trucks and recalling the prohibition of any unauthorised levy. EHFC sent an anonymised report to the access working group, which enabled two other organisations to benefit from the same procedure. The problem of the officers' salaries, the commander's real motive, was raised confidentially by the local OCHA office with the central town hall, without any public link to the organisation.

This case illustrates three reflexes: check the regulatory basis of a tax before negotiating its amount, turn a demand for control into an unpaid institutional role, and monitor the agreement with indicators that link access to outcomes for the population (here, litres per person per day).

10Common mistakes, contextual variations, interview questions and references

Common mistakes during the meeting and afterwards

Variations by context

• Sudden-onset crisis: short meetings, often standing, at the checkpoint; focus on a single objective, systematically restate, document with a brief message to the base within the hour.
• Protracted crisis: meetings are regular appointments; the relationship comes first; plan contacts with no request, and formal reviews of agreements.
• Camp: negotiations are often public (committee meetings); prepare to manage turns to speak, public accusations and the representation of women, young people and minorities.
• Urban: many counterparts for a single route; need for written procedures recognised by several authorities; heavy presence of phones and social media.
• Remote management and telephone: a telephone negotiation loses non-verbal cues; reserve it for technical subjects and follow-up; never conclude an important commitment by messaging without confirmation.
• Local partner: the partner may be subject to social or family pressure that is impossible to refuse alone; provide for the possibility of saying "it is a rule of our international partner" and for rapid escalation.

Interview questions and elements of a strong answer

• "Describe a difficult negotiation you have led." Expected: brief context, preparation, critical moment, technique used (listening, option, break, escalation), outcome, what would be done differently; respect for confidentiality (no names).
• "A checkpoint commander asks for money to let your convoy through. What do you do?" Expected: calm refusal, explanation of the rule, alternative, escalation to the mandator and to the counterpart's superior, report to the access working group, team safety above all, distinction from a regulatory tax.
• "How do you work with an interpreter?" Expected: selection, briefing, faithful first-person interpretation, eye contact with the counterpart, separate debriefing, protection.
• "How do you make sure an agreement is respected?" Expected: restatement, report, register, transmission to the checkpoints, first limited test, indicators, dated review, thanks.
• "What do you do if you are threatened during a meeting?" Expected: calm, no counter-threat, polite end to the meeting, departure according to the security plan, immediate report, reassessment before any new contact.

Key references

• CCHN, Field Manual on Frontline Humanitarian Negotiation, 2019, chapters on conducting the negotiation and the agreement.
• Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, Humanitarian Negotiation: A Handbook, 2004, sections on conducting the meeting and implementing agreements.
• OCHA, Access Monitoring and Reporting Framework.
• Sphere Association, The Sphere Handbook, 2018, water supply standards.
• ICRC, Professional Standards for Protection Work, 2018, on the management of sensitive information.
• Fisher, Ury and Patton, Getting to Yes; Ury, Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People.
• Global Interagency Security Forum, publications on the security of movements and meetings.