Humanitarian leadership in Syria: how are the capacities of local organisations built?

Over the past decade, Syria has witnessed one of the most complex humanitarian crises of the modern era, one whose reverberations have cut through the lives of millions of civilians. Against this backdrop, local leadership has ceased to be a matter of mere practicality. It has become an existential necessity, the very thread by which aid reaches those who need it most.

This article is grounded in three years of hands-on experience working with more than 50 local organisations across diverse sectors These sectors include peacebuilding, relief, service provision, and capacity-building for diverse groups such as women, youth and people with disabilities. , under the programme ‘Supporting organisations to improve humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding responses in Syria,’ implemented by the Center for Civil Society and Democracy (CCSD).

The article draws on several analyses conducted throughout the programme period. Data collected by the programme shows that 81% of local organisations were able to reach areas that large international agencies could not due to security and administrative restrictions. That figure alone exposes an undeniable truth: the geographic and social proximity of local actors is the decisive factor in saving lives.

Yet despite their growing role, local organisations continue to operate within a humanitarian system that does not always grant them the space they need to lead. In an internal programme survey, 82% of executive directors of local organisations reported that their greatest challenge is not a lack of competence, but limited access to direct funding and lack of meaningful participation in decision-making. These challenges reflect not a weakness in the capacities of local actors, but a structural gap in how the global humanitarian system is organised and how roles are distributed within it.

Why local leadership? The numbers tell the story

In recent years, debate around the localisation of humanitarian action has grown considerably. This concept refers to transferring responsibility, leadership and resources to local actors in crisis-affected countries, rather than relying on international or external organisations. Yet the gap between rhetoric and practice remains wide. While our data shows that 64% of local organisations participating in the programme have extensive community networks with local communities that far exceed the reach of international partners, they receive less than 10% of the total humanitarian funding in Syria.

This gap was not just an abstract figure in a report. It was a lived reality for Abdullah al-Yassin, director of the Golden Hands (الأيادي الذهبية) organisation operating in Idlib and a participant in the programme. Al-Yassin told us in an interview:

‘We were witnessing with our own eyes new needs emerging overnight because of bombardment or sudden displacement. We knew exactly which family needed what. But we would spend weeks writing reports for international donors just to reallocate 10% of the project budget to meet those needs. Sometimes, the family in need had already been displaced or had fled before the approval came through.’

This testimony reflects the structural challenges: inflexible funding. In our programme, we found that organisations receiving flexible financial support That is, allowing for the reallocation of 20%–30% of the budget without prior approval from the donor. . were able to respond to emergency needs three times faster than those bound by rigid budgets.

But numbers alone are insufficient to capture the transformative depth of local leadership. Take, for example, the experience of Awda for Development in rural eastern Deir ez-Zur. When we began working together three years ago, the organisation faced a common predicament: funding restricted to short-term educational projects, with no capacity to address the real barriers preventing children, girls especially, from attending school.

To get to the root of the problem, the organisation convened a series of community sessions. Team members heard what they already knew, there was a shortage of books and teaching materials. But they also uncovered something far more painful. Amina, a teacher at one of the local schools, recounts:

‘Girls were dropping out of school not because their families didn’t want them educated, but because the school had no functioning bathrooms. In our conservative community, a teenage girl cannot spend her day in a place that offers her no privacy or sanitation. Because of this, we were losing girls every single month.’

In response to this reality, and through the flexible funding we provided within the programme, Awda for Development did not stop at rehabilitating classrooms. It allocated a substantial share of the budget to rebuilding water and sanitation facilities, supplying water tanks, and installing interior doors to ensure privacy. But more important than any of that was the decision-making process itself. Rather than having the donor impose its priorities, the community became a partner in the decision.

Ahmad, a parent from the village of al-Jurd al-Sharqi, describes this shift:

‘We used to think these organisations came to implement whatever was dictated to them from the outside. But this time, they sat with us, the fathers, the female teachers, even the students themselves. They asked us: “What is keeping your children away from school?” We didn’t think anyone would listen to us. But they listened, and they built on what we told them.’

The result? Within a single year, girls’ school enrolment in that area rose by 32%, and the dropout rate fell by nearly half. These numbers are not merely an achievement; they embody a fundamental principle. When local actors are given the resources and the space to work, the response transforms from emergency interventions into pathways of sustained change.

Hidden challenges: when local leadership hits the glass ceiling

Despite the successes, the journey was not without obstacles. One of the most significant lessons drawn from our experience was that the challenges facing local organisations are not solely tied to their own internal capacities. They reflect deeper, systemic imbalances embedded in the very architecture of the humanitarian system.

For instance, the programme’s internal evaluation data reveals that 78% of participating local organisations demonstrated marked improvements in their financial and administrative systems thanks to intensive support. Yet their share of strategic decision-making at the macro level remained largely unchanged, with local organisations occupying fewer than 15% of leadership seats in major coordination platforms.

Suad al-Aswad, director of Change Makers (صانعات التغيير), a women-led organisation in north-western Syria, explains this paradox:

‘We have built our internal systems to the highest standards of transparency and professionalism. We can now produce financial and administrative reports that rival any international institution. But when the time comes to make decisions about next year’s response priorities, we find ourselves in the room as spectators, not partners. The major financial decisions are still made in distant capitals and reach us as finished products.’

This testimony reveals a pivotal truth. Building the internal capacity of local organisations is not enough. It must be accompanied by a fundamental restructuring of power relations within the humanitarian system itself.

Community mobilisation and peacebuilding: the twin pillars of sustainability

A focus on administrative and financial aspects alone was not sufficient to ensure the lasting impact of local organisations. CCSD recognised that strengthening community mobilisation and integrating a peacebuilding approach were decisive factors in transforming organisations from implementing bodies into deeply rooted anchors of their communities. Rather than imposing ready-made solutions, we worked with partner organisations to harness community mobilisation mechanisms with the aim of turning affected populations into active partners in setting priorities and implementing projects to reinforce a genuine sense of local ownership.

Alongside this, we were committed to embedding peacebuilding principles as a comprehensive methodology across all phases of the programme. Organisations sought to identify vulnerabilities and latent conflicts within their communities, then channel them into opportunities for cooperation and cohesion. This dual approach had a direct bearing on organisational sustainability. Organisations that successfully applied community mobilisation and peacebuilding tools proved more capable of diversifying their local support base and building relations of trust with communities and local elites, thereby reducing their exclusive reliance on external funding and shielding them from the shock of sudden funding closures.

Experience has shown that an organisation that invests in the cohesion of its community becomes an inseparable part of its fabric, and therefore far more capable of enduring and persevering.

Voices from the field: women leaders speak

One of the programme’s central areas of focus was strengthening women’s participation in leadership positions. We began with a simple idea: a humanitarian response that is not led by women, or in which women do not participate meaningfully, will inevitably be an incomplete response. What we did not anticipate was that this idea would become one of the programme’s most powerful success stories. Diana al-Ali, who began as a volunteer in a shelter centre eight years ago, is today the director of the Suryana organisation operating in north-western Syria. She looks back on her early days:

‘No one paid us any attention at first. We were a group of women who knew, better than any foreign expert, which woman was suffering domestic violence, which family had a child facing malnutrition, which pregnant woman needed urgent medical care. But we were there to implement, not to lead.’

Through our programme, Diana and her team received diverse training over three years, aimed at developing the organisation’s performance on both the administrative and operational levels. She also took part in dialogues bringing together other women leaders from north-western and north-eastern Syria, as was the case for all 50 organisations that participated in the programme.

Diana speaks of the pivotal moment that changed the course of her organisation:

‘Before the programme, we would wait for instructions from international partners about what to do and how to do it. We were implementing plans made by others. The first real change I felt was when the programme asked us to draft our own strategic plan ourselves, then supported us with the tools to carry it out. We learned how to analyse our community’s needs not through ready-made questionnaires, but by sitting with women in the tents and truly listening to them. We started a small pyschosocial support programme for widows, which then grew into an economic empowerment project, and then into an advocacy platform. Today, Suryana doesn’t wait for anyone to tell us what we need. We go to the donors and say: these are our priorities, support us in achieving them. That is the difference between being an implementer and being a leader.’

Diana was not alone on this journey. Suad al-Aswad, director of Change-Makers (صانعات التغيير) in Idlib, had long endured the isolation that comes with working in a demanding, male-dominated environment. She recalls:

‘Male local leaders used to look at us as if we were “just a women’s organisation” that offers sewing classes. They didn’t take our input seriously in broader humanitarian response planning. But through my participation in the CCSD programme, I learned not only how to manage budgets and reports, but more importantly, I learned how to show up in local coordination platforms, how to present my community’s data, and how to assert my presence as a partner rather than a voice on the margins. Today, I serve as an advisor on women’s affairs at the Ministry of Social Development, and I see that women’s voices have become heard in the decision-making circles responsible for aid distribution.’

Beyond traditional training: investing in interconnected local systems

Perhaps the most important lesson we drew was that supporting local organisations cannot be reduced to organising workshops and conventional training sessions. Time and again, we would see organisations send their staff to intensive training courses, only for the impact to dissipate the moment they returned to a work environment that offered no support for change.

For this reason, we adopted an approach centred on applied learning and network-building. Rather than holding a series of disconnected workshops, we established platforms that brought together local organisation directors on a regular basis to exchange experience and work through shared challenges together.

Ahmed Kallo, director of the Green Heart (منظّمة القلب الأخضر) organisation in Aleppo, describes this experience:

‘We used to see each other as competitors for limited funding. Today, we have a WhatsApp group where we exchange news, opportunities and advice on topics that help us develop our work as local organisations.’

These informal networks proved their worth in times of crisis. During the recent period of military escalation in north-western Syria, organisations participating in these networks were able to redirect 45% of their resources toward emergency response within just 48 hours. This was made possible by the speed of communication and information-sharing, a rate that far surpassed what was achieved through formal traditional channels.

Persistent structural constraints: why does the gap remain?

Despite the progress made, we cannot claim to have solved all the challenges. Our programme data indicates that local organisations continue to face structural obstacles that exceed their individual capacity to overcome. The most prominent of these include:

1. Limited autonomy over finances and funds: Despite improvements, more than 85% of the funding received by participating organisations came through international intermediaries, limiting their autonomy and adding layers of bureaucratic burdens that drain both energy and time.
2. Short funding horizons: 72% of implemented projects had a duration of less than 12 months, rendering long-term strategic planning virtually impossible.
3. Operating in complex environments: 83% of organisations reported direct security and administrative challenges that affected their ability to implement projects. This includes difficulties obtaining necessary permits, movement restrictions, and at times even direct targeting.

Lessons learned beyond the Syrian context

This experience offers valuable lessons for the global humanitarian sector, among them:

1. Flexible funding is not a luxury, it is a necessity: When local organisations are given room to reallocate within their budgets, effectiveness rises by up to 40%.
2. Institutional capacity-building requires a minimum of 3–5 years: Short-term training programmes alone are simply not sufficient.
3. Women’s leadership is not only a matter of representation: Organisations with gender-diverse leadership demonstrate greater capacity to reach the most marginalised groups.
4. The programme’s focus on the sustainability of local organisations contributed to cementing civic spaces and strengthening their presence within communities.

The future of local humanitarian leadership

Ultimately, this experience points to the fact that strengthening local leadership is more than an operational priority. It is a fundamental shift in how we understand humanitarian work itself. The question is no longer whether local organisations are capable of leading, but whether the humanitarian system is truly ready to make space for that leadership.

One member of the affected populations of the small projects delivered by the Sada (صدى) organisation in the Nour camp in north-western Syria, a mother of five, puts it this way:

‘I don’t know what “capacity-building” means. But I do know that the organisation that helped me had members who were from my own town. They knew my name. They knew my son needed chronic medication. They knew I couldn’t leave the camp on my own. If the organisation’s team hadn’t known me, they would have chosen someone else to benefit from a project I needed most.’

These words capture the very essence of local leadership: it is not simply about efficiency in implementation, but about the capacity to build human relationships in the harshest of circumstances. Investing in this ability not only enhances the effectiveness of humanitarian response, but it also contributes to preserving the social fabric and the resilience of communities in one of the most fragile environments in the world.

Moriab Gerges Haddo is a project manager at the Demos organisation based in Qamishli city in northeastern Syria. He is also a peacebuilding practitioner with extensive experience in community resilience, social cohesion and preventing violent extremism in Syria.

Narges Ardwan, from the city of Derik in northeastern Syria, is a civil society activist and project manager working in the fields of humanitarian response, development and peacebuilding at the Demos organisation. She is experienced in designing and managing community initiatives and promoting the participation of women and youth in dialogue and decision-making processes at the local level.

Muhammad Al-Kajak is a Syrian civil activist, writer and language editor. He holds a postgraduate diploma in Arabic language from the University of Aleppo and has worked with numerous international and local organisations in northwestern Syria.