Humanitarian funding review: our future response to global humanitarian crises

Annex A Discourses on Localisation

Regarding the slow progress on localisation from donors - researchers point to five barriers for donors – risk aversion, administrative challenges, dual accountabilities, divergent values and power asymmetries.^[74]

List of nine principles for humanitarian funding and partnerships: predictable funding, adapting donor systems, resource implications, risk sharing, inclusive and locally-led strategies, accessibility, equitable partnerships, amplifying voices of local actors and marginalised people, and organisational development:

Principle 1 – Predictable funding Principle 2 – Adapt donor systems Principle 3 – Resource implications Principle 4 – Risk sharing Principle 5 – Strategy for inclusive and locally-led action Principle 6 – Accessibility Principle 7 – Equitable partnerships Principle 8 – Voices of LNA and affected and marginalised people Principle 9 – Organisational development

A guidance note on ‘pooled funds for humanitarian purposes’ was written by a large group of donors in November 2024.^[75] It sets out 9 principles for donors who seek to reaffirm and help operationalise the Grand Bargain commitments to support local and national responders and “make greater use of pooled funding tools which increase and improve assistance delivered by local and national responders”. It also seeks to operationalise the Grand Bargain commitments on the participation revolution, the recommendations of the Grand Bargain caucuses on funding for localisation, on the role of intermediaries and on risk sharing, and the IASC Guidance note on how to promote gender responsive localisation in humanitarian action.

In terms of Northern Headquartered INGOs and the push towards more locally led development and decolonisation, Peace Direct set out alternative roles for ‘intermediaries’ (below).

Nine roles identified for humanitarian actors: interpreter, knowledge broker and producer, trainer and co-learner, convenor, connector and ecosystem builder, advocate and amplifier, watchdog, critical friend, and sidekick:

1. Interpreter – Interpreter

2. Knowledge Broker – and Producer

3. Trainer, Coach – and Co-Learner

4. Convenor – Convenor

5. Connector – and Eco-System Builder

6. Advocate – and Amplifier

7. Watchdog – Watchdog

8. Critical – Friend

9. Sidekick – Sidekick

In 2023, OCHA launched the Flagship Initiative^[76] with a clear vision: to shift the drivers of humanitarian assistance, organizing efforts around the priorities of crisis-affected communities rather than the mandates of aid providers. The Flagship Initiative has five key elements:

1. Systematic and Participatory Community Engagement
2. Decentralized Area-Based Coordination
3. Funding Local Communities' Priorities and Capacities
4. Programming and Humanitarian Planning Based on Community Priorities
5. Empowering Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators to Drive an Integrated Response that Addresses Community Priorities

Lessons from the first two years of this initiative are showing early signs of success (Second year learning report due to be published in May 2025). Given the financing shock the humanitarian sector is experiencing – the initiative argues that ‘the key to unlocking humanitarian efficiency and effectiveness is harnessing the capacities of communities.’

Statement 40 about funders influencing local spending shows overall agreement but with differences between groups: Group A mostly agrees, Group B is more divided:

Consensus and divisive statements analysis for Statement 40: "Funders cannot be allowed to influence how money is spent locally, as they don’t share the same incentives and needs as affected populations."

Responses:

• Overall (178 respondents): 43% agree, 32% neutral, 24% disagree.
• Group A (178): 55% agree, 22% neutral, 21% disagree.
• Group B (96): 26% agree, 45% neutral, 28% disagree.

Visual shows a distribution of dots indicating consensus on the left and divisive statements on the right, with Statement 40 leaning toward consensus but some divergence between groups.

Recent research led by Lydia Poole and Ben Parker^[77] gathered views on the ‘humanitarian rethink’ from 335 people who cast over 17 000 votes. Localisation received more comments than any other theme in the consultation. 83% agreed that ‘Not everything can be localised, we need to retain some international crisis response capabilities.’

Voters broadly agreed that:

• Local actors are not always best placed - they may be subject to political influence and bias.
• Localised aid is not always synonymous with community-led aid.
• There are risks of promoting favourites and sidelining others.
• Locally adapted responses could mean trade-offs on principles and standards.

Reflecting back to HEF panel members – one member shared this interpretation of partner country-led development:

‘[Our organisation] has local country offices, staffed by local staff in the countries where it works. Our Country strategies are developed by local staff and partners and are in alignment with the country’s development priorities…We work with local partners to effectively ensure local ownership and meaningful participation for communities to recover from emergencies, build resilience and see and work towards an end to poverty. We work with our partners to develop, adapt, strengthen, and pilot innovative evidence-based intervention models to tackle root causes of poverty, inequality, injustice; and to sustainably address harmful practices and behaviours which perpetuate inequalities and poverty at all levels of our societies’ (anonymised).

There are lots of examples of local organizations developing good evidence and data around the benefits of localisation. Bangladesh Network produces a dashboard of how funds are allocated, to whom, and how quickly after every disaster. This is open data, available to the UN Resident Coordinator and the government. (Bangladesh interview). This capacity is supported through a number of pooled funding mechanisms, including the START Fund, and is a shared capacity across 120 organizations, 76 of whom are local and national (Bangladesh interview).

This evidence generation is valuable. It allows us to track what the best localisation ratio is (in the case of Bangladesh, private finance had the highest ratio of local-to-international recipients, but was also the smallest pot), and to identify where improvement in directing funds to local actors is needed.

Further reading – The Corra Foundation have written a series of insights on Voices, Relationships and Partnerships in International Development.^[78] Social Development Direct have developed briefings and a toolkit on Building Equitable Partnerships.^[79],[80]. NEAR launched Localisation Labs in 2023 to support their members in operationalising localisation. There are 2 sub-regional labs and 14 national labs to date.