Localization in Humanitarian Aid, in Practice

When It Matters

Localization means local populations (responders, program participants and affected communities) lead and deliver humanitarian aid, with more decision-making, funding, leadership and power in their hands throughout a response. The commitment is usually put as humanitarian action that is as local as possible and as international as necessary.

You will run into the word in three places. You may be about to partner with a local NGO. You may be reading localization commitments and wondering what they ask of you. Or you may be designing a consortium and need to decide who sits at the table and who decides.

Be aware that no universally accepted definition exists. Two organizations can both say they are "localizing" and mean very different things, so ask what someone means before you agree with them. Strategies also differ by country, service and program, and nothing here is one size fits all.

The most useful thing to hold onto is that localization is a continuous process. It is not a project, a goal you finish, or a type of funding arrangement. So when you design a program, the honest question is whether you are filling a service gap or shifting control toward the people closest to the crisis.

How It Works

Commitment turns into practice in a few steps, and each one changes something you can see in a budget or an org chart.

Start from the commitments. A global humanitarian reform agreement was launched at a summit in Istanbul in May 2016. Its localization commitments are summarized in four inter-related components: partnership, capacity strengthening, financing and coordination. The Charter for Change sits alongside it. It sets 8 commitments for international NGOs to address imbalance and inequality in the humanitarian system, has been signed by 52 international NGOs, and has been endorsed by over 1,300 national and local organizations from 57 countries, according to the Charter's own site. Check the site for current figures.
Move money as directly as possible. That agreement set a global target for 2020: a minimum of 25% of humanitarian money should reach local and national responders, going to them as directly as it can. The Charter has its own 25% commitment for funding passed to national NGOs. If your organization is an intermediary, this is where your budget shows whether you mean it.
Write partner budgets that work. Include local partners' reasonable overheads and indirect costs, such as taxes, insurance and security procedures. The funding should cover risk management and compliance costs for both international and local partners.
Plan capacity together and for the long term. Plans should be contextualized, mutually agreed, long-term, and based on both project and institutional needs. Learning runs both ways, with international staff also learning from local partners.
Open up coordination and leadership. That agreement calls for supporting national coordination mechanisms and for including local and national responders in international ones. Leadership groups in the formal coordination system should include national and local organizations.
Deal with the side effects. The Charter also asks international NGOs to address the damage done by recruiting national NGO staff during emergencies, and to address subcontracting and equality in decision-making.

Key Components

Partnership, financing, capacity strengthening and coordination are treated as inter-related components, so it helps to look at them together rather than one at a time.

A quick test separates partnership from localization.

Partnership without localization: a local NGO gets a sub-award to fill a specific service gap, which is partnership, not localization, without further commitments.
Localization: working with local partners is a building block, but localization needs further commitments beyond it.

The components themselves:

Partnership: local partners are equals in joint needs assessment, design and budgeting, not recipients of finished project documents. In one consortium's research, only around one-quarter of participants believed their partnerships were genuine in this sense.
Financing: more money going straight to local and national responders, with budgets that cover overheads, indirect costs, and risk management and compliance.
Capacity strengthening: local partners say they prefer longer-term institutional strengthening in governance, policy and security management. Short-term project training is what they mostly get.
Coordination: local actors take part in coordination and support national mechanisms. Many barriers to their participation are practical.
Leadership and decision-making power: the original framing gave local and national actors more agency at every stage of a response.

Best Practices

Budget overhead and risk-management costs. Do not limit a local partner to direct program costs. Budget reasonable overheads and indirect costs, including taxes, insurance and security procedures, and make sure they cover compliance and risk management.

Pass on multi-year funding. If you hold a multi-year award, try to pass multi-year arrangements to your partners.

Treat partners as equals in assessment, design and budget. Bring local partners into joint needs assessment, design and budgeting from the beginning. Writing a proposal alone and handing over finished documents is subcontracting, however friendly the tone.

Make capacity strengthening long-term and two-way. Agree plans with the partner, shape them around what the partner says it needs, and look at institutional needs as well as project ones. Ask what your own staff should learn from them.

Remove practical barriers to coordination. Since many barriers are practical, look for the practical obstacles that keep local organizations from taking part. Then change those things, and make sure leadership groups include national and local organizations.

Recruit ethically. Do not poach high-capacity staff from local NGOs, especially in an emergency. Hiring the best local people can undermine the partner's ability to respond.

Common Mistakes

Calling a sub-award localization. A sub-award for a specific service gap is partnership, and a useful one, but without further commitments it is not localization. Say what it is, and if you want more, add commitments on decision-making and institutional support.

Presenting a program as locally led while decisions stay international. A common form is a national head of organization who is advised by international experts holding the real power. Look at who decides on design, budget and management, not at the title on the door.

Forming consortia to meet requirements. Sometimes an international organization brings a local NGO into a consortium because of donor requirements. The local organization becomes a way to tick a box rather than a decision-maker.

Relying on short-term project subcontracting. A scoping review of localized health response found that partnerships often stayed tied to short-term, project-based subcontracting, which reduced local leadership opportunities and financial security.

Leaving local staff to carry the risk. Local NGOs are often the first to respond and the last to leave, and they carry the burden of risk in fragile settings. The scoping review of localized health response also found international actors using local actors' operational advantages while keeping control of funding and decisions, and local staff frequently carrying increased security risk without adequate support or control over resources. A study of Irish humanitarian NGOs concluded that localization is not without risk and that all stakeholders must share it.

Example

This is a plain illustration of one published case, not a description of any one organization.

A cyclone hits a Pacific island country. A case study of that response found that earlier investment in disaster preparedness and long-running capacity development programs supported a more locally led approach.

In this one case, the groundwork was laid before the emergency, not improvised during it.

Localization in humanitarian aid