Localisation in words, centralisation in practice: why local leaders still don’t lead

Local actors are unable to take the lead in humanitarian responses primarily because the humanitarian system was not originally designed for them. The development of this system began in the early nineteenth century and accelerated after the First and Second World Wars, leading to the establishment of several international organisations focused on humanitarian and development contexts. This development centred on an aid-centric model that essentially ensured resource or fund flow in a linear pattern from top to bottom. This has historically prioritised upward accountability to donors and governments rather than downward accountability to affected communities. Yet, localisation continued to unfold. The World Humanitarian Summit led to the launch of the Grand Bargain. Since then, localisation has been examined, debated and reimagined. The language has evolved − from ‘direct funding’ to ‘equitable partnership’, from ‘targets’ to ‘systems’, and from ‘participation’ to ‘power’. Yet, the distance between aspiration and reality remains. This article explores why that distance persists.

Business architecture, procedural hurdles and funding flows

The business architecture of the humanitarian system is largely structured around multilateral agencies and international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), which continue to dominate funding flows and programme governance. Despite years of efforts through the Grand Bargain to increase the proportion of funding to local and national actors, humanitarian funding continues to be distributed largely to multilateral actors and INGOs. Alliance for Empowering Partnerships (A4EP) has members across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Those consulted for this article indicated that only a small number have received direct funding from donors or multilateral agencies. This is because local and national organisations, who frequently undertake frontline implementation, often face significant procedural hurdles when attempting to access funding directly. These hurdles include navigating competitive funding calls, complying with extensive due diligence requirements, meeting stringent procurement and financial management standards, and adhering to complex reporting obligations. For instance, the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office due diligence guidelines demand quantifiable key performance indicators for all partners. However, local actors often struggle to meet these standards due to limited capacity in monitoring and evaluation, a lack of dedicated staff for data collection, and challenges in conducting baseline surveys, tracking indicators and reporting. Marie-Rose Romain Murphy, Co-Founder of the Haiti Community Foundation, offered a candid assessment: ‘adherence to the guidelines continues to be a challenge for many local actors’.

Funding often flows through multiple intermediary layers including through United Nations (UN) agencies and INGOs, before reaching local and community-based organisations.

Figure 1. Illustrative pathway of humanitarian funding

At each stage of this process, a portion of the funding is withheld to cover administrative and overhead costs, which reduces the amount that ultimately reaches local actors.

Cluster system − coordination or exclusion

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs (UNOCHA) serves as the primary focal point for coordinating international humanitarian responses. The ongoing humanitarian reset has reduced the number of thematic clusters from 11 to 8. While this change may enhance operational efficiency, it is uncertain whether it will advance the localisation agenda. The coordination mechanism also reflects underlying inequalities in participation and influence within the humanitarian system. Evidence suggests that national NGOs are not always adequately included in coordination processes and that decision-making and strategy development are sometimes driven by smaller groups of actors shaping which priorities are advanced and how resources are allocated.

At the national level, Humanitarian Country Teams are primarily led and dominated by UN agencies, often setting the agenda and deciding who will speak and be heard. This exclusion is frequently confirmed in invite-only meetings, which typically involve only the heads of international organisations. Additionally, barriers such as the requirement for English proficiency, extensive documentation and standardised proposal templates can marginalise some local actors from the coordination structure.

Despite these challenges, there are instances of more inclusive coordination practices that deserve recognition and exploration. For example, at the time of the Global Camp Coordination and Camp Management cluster endorsement by the government of Ethiopia in 2021, a local organisation, Action for the Needy, was nominated as a Cluster Co-Coordination Partner alongside the International Organization for Migration and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) as co-lead agencies. As reported by Humanitarian Action, there is a modest increase in leadership roles being taken by national NGOs in cluster coordination between 2021 and 2023, at around 3% to 5%. Although such examples are few and far between, they demonstrate that genuine co-leadership between local and international actors in cluster coordination is feasible. The primary barriers to achieving this co-leadership, as expressed by Meschac Nakanywenge, Executive Director of the Union for Promotion Protection, Human Rights Defense and the Environment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are ‘not technical but political and structural-resistance to change by international actors and their desire to retain control of resources and power’.

Domestic barriers, social and cultural norms

Structural barriers also operate domestically at the level of national and subnational organisations, many of which are based in Global South countries and are subject to national laws on registration, regulations, audits and other compliance requirements. Most of the localisation debates occur at the global level, but local actors’ functioning is shaped by the rules, regulations and domestic laws of the region or country in which they are based. For example, the government of Ethiopia’s 2009 Proclamation to Provide for the Registration and Regulation of Charities and Societies (CSP), introduced certain restrictions on the governance and operation of civil society organisations (CSOs). ‘Article 57 authorises the government to refuse registration to CSOs whose aims or activities are contrary to public morals.’ Furthermore, ‘Article 75(1) of the CSO Proclamation requires organisations to obtain written approval from the CSO Agency to open a bank account’.

The reformed law, Civil Society Organizations Proclamation No. 1113/2019, was passed in January 2019, and was an improvement on the previous legislation. However, the transition to the new law required hundreds of CSOs to re-register under the revised framework, placing considerable administrative burdens on organisations already operating with limited resources and capacity. For smaller local organisations with lean administrative structures, navigating complex registration and compliance processes can prove as debilitating as any funding shortfall. Often, local organisations are not able to operate independently, as they remain reliant on international organisations for funding support − an intermediary layer that localisation seeks to reduce or bypass. This dependency is not merely financial; it is structural and systemic, reinforced by both the international humanitarian architecture and the domestic legal environments in which local actors must operate.

Social and cultural barriers operating across national and sub-national levels significantly constrain meaningful localisation, particularly in coordination spaces and for the ability of local actors to raise their institutional profile. In practice, fluency in English, familiarity with humanitarian jargon, and proximity to capital-city coordination hubs have become informal markers of credibility and professionalism. This has contributed to the emergence of a new ‘local elite’ within the humanitarian system − urban, English-speaking NGOs that are better positioned to access coordination forums, funding opportunities and partnerships. Meanwhile, rural, grassroots and community-embedded organisations, despite their proximity to affected populations, remain largely excluded from these platforms and from direct access to resources.

Recommendations

Grand Bargain signatories and major institutional donors should adopt enforceable policies requiring time-bound road maps as a credible pathway toward meeting long-overdue commitments to local and national NGOs.

UNOCHA’s Country-Based Pooled Funds (CBPFs), which increased direct funding to local actors to 31% in 2023, offer a transparent model for funding allocation that should be more broadly adopted. At another level, there is a need to establish regional pooled funding, such as South Asian pooled funds, Association of Southeast Asian Nations disaster funds and the African Union Humanitarian Fund. However, CBPFs are not without contradictions, depending as they do primarily upon a single source of funding. The United States’ $2 billion funding to UNOCHA raises serious questions about the sustainability of the model.

Conclusion

Structural reform may be well designed, but it cannot achieve the desired outcomes without a corresponding transformation in the organisational culture, norms and social dynamics that have persisted since the colonial origins of the humanitarian system. Funding continues to flow through layered intermediary structures, and coordination spaces often serve as a gatekeeping mechanism, allowing only select organisations to participate by invitation.

Additionally, limitations of localisation are not confined to a single barrier, but are embedded across the system. Domestic regulatory environments influence the extent to which local organisations can operate independently, and social and cultural norms influence who is recognised, heard and resourced within the system.

Taken together, these constraints reveal that localisation remains limited not due to lack of commitment or capacity among local actors, but because of how the humanitarian system is structured and operates in practice. With the launch of the humanitarian reset, efforts to advance localisation will need to go beyond formal commitments and technical adjustments and instead address the structural issues across the humanitarian architecture.

This represents a thoughtful evaluation of systems with their own institutional interests, including the incentives that prompt international actors to maintain control, even as they publicly advocate for local leadership.

Rajeev Jha is a development professional with over 19 years of experience in South Asia, specialising in disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, resilient livelihoods and community-based resilience-building. With a strong commitment to localisation and community leadership, Rajeev collaborates closely with grassroots organisations, local governments and civil society networks to promote sustainable and long-term resilience strategies.