Localisation is not a “trend” or an “outcome” that can be achieved by outside-in actors. Firelight responds to Janez Lenarčič of the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office.
It might come as a surprise but it was with extraordinary shock and sadness that many of us read “A Q&A with the world’s biggest aid donor” in the March 11, 2021 edition of the New Humanitarian.
Yes – it is welcome that Janez Lenarčič, who runs emergency response for the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office called on other donors – “This is not the time to cut the aid budgets, this is a time to increase them”. And there is no question that we should welcome the European Commission’s commitment to the Grand Bargain and to increasing the European Union’s humanitarian aid budget.
What shocked us were the deeply offensive – and dare we say – neo-colonial – declarations that (1) “there is no issue with localisation…” because “a large number of our humanitarian partners – especially the NGOs, international NGOs – do have local branches…” and (2) “What is actually the biggest barrier to localisation is the capacity of local actors. Most often, the local organisations lack the capacity to fulfill all the criteria with regard to accountability, transparency, sound financial management…”
We appreciate that the European Commission – and indeed all of the INGOs that they work through – have good intentions, but we can no longer define “capacity” – or success, trustworthiness, or effectiveness – through only Global North eyes.
Despite substantial investments over many years in development efforts, it is an open question as to whether large development projects initiated by Global North donors and international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) have resulted in meaningful and lasting change at the community level. In many cases, there has even been unintentional harm incurred to communities and local civil society by the disruption of local economic and social systems. Often, this has been directly a result of top-down and externally defined agendas and priorities being imposed on local communities. To make matters worse, very little development or humanitarian funding actually reaches local organisations and even less reaches community-based organisations (CBOs). Moreover, those funds or projects that do reach the community level have been critiqued for treating CBOs as vehicles to carry out predetermined donor agendas or INGO programs – the effects of which often fade away soon after external funding is withdrawn.
There is increasing recognition that in order for change in the Global South to be relevant, impactful, and sustained in the long term, it must be led by those who are affected by the issues at hand – people, families, communities, local leaders, practitioners, activists, and grassroots community organisations – in the Global South.
In order to support long-term change at the community level, the philanthropy and global development sectors must learn from and support Global South community leaders’ analyses of the issues, their determined strategies, their visions of success, their indicators of effectiveness, and what they need in terms of help and support.
The global development sector has tended to see local organisations as lacking in capacity and risky because it frames success and effectiveness according to Global North funders’ and INGOs' values and perspectives. For example, most global development and humanitarian responses focus on number of beneficiaries reached, cost per beneficiary, low overheads, and evidence of certain inputs predictably and linearly resulting in certain outputs/outcomes. Our definitions of success & effectiveness are shaped by our positioning, our worldview, our training, and our experience. Global North funders' definitions of success & effectiveness are not inherently right or correct – and can actually be quite limiting & harmful.
Communities, activists, practitioners, and leaders in the Global South define impact and success in different ways – such as lasting, transformative change at the community level that is owned and driven by communities themselves. If funders and INGOs continue to use only their own lenses, important dimensions and understandings of success, impact, sustainability, and effectiveness are missed. Moreover, this has critical implications for whether and to what extent CBOs are viewed by funders and INGOs as effective, strategic, impactful, and worthy and respected partners.
For sustained, systemic change to be a reality, the global development community must recognise and value the role and potential of organisations that are supported from within communities. Based most often at the intersection of family, society, government and community leadership at all levels, entities like local non-profit organisations and community-based organisations (CBOs) are uniquely positioned to support lasting social change. Borne out of a desire to help and born from community themselves, CBOs are deeply attuned to their communities and so have the capacity to look at the root causes of major challenges and to facilitate changes from within, to lasting, multi-generational effect. CBOs are also well positioned to build and maintain strong linkages between formal and informal systems of change – engaging children, youth, families, communities, traditional leaders, informal systems, and formal systems such as governments in a process of long-term social development.
It is unconscionable that, in this 21st century, entities such as the European Commission… continue to devalue the management [of local organisations] as untrustworthy, their operations as too risky. There is no “risk” with funding local organisations – it is only our white supremacist perspective that leads us in the Global North to perceive that a locally-led (likely Black or brown-led) organisation is a “risk”.
The idea that Global North-led organisations can be the primary protagonists in “localising” is deeply flawed and another indicator of a lack of awareness around how deeply white supremacist global development and humanitarian aid is.
Localisation is not a “trend” or an “outcome” that can be achieved by outside-in actors – it is an ethical and moral perspective, that local agency is critical in human development. Localisation is not something that can or should be achieved by Global North-led organisations. An organisation run from the Global North will fundamentally never be local (this is true for our own organisation – Firelight – as well).
The goal should be for Global North-led organisations to move out of the way or to at least take an allyship role in favour of the primacy of locally born, raised, and led organisations, technical approaches, research techniques, paedagogical frameworks, practices, knowledge, and agency. (Indeed there are many good examples of when INGOs have done this.) The goal should NOT be for Global North organisations to decide they need local teams in order to achieve their Global North-designed programmes, based on Global North development research and paradigms.
Global North development actors and those who fund them are coming to realise that neo-colonial and white supremacist perspectives and behaviours have never been appropriate and are no longer going to be accepted in the 21st century. We hope that the European Commission joins them in changing its perspective too.
- *The Firelight Foundation Team is: Tomaida Banda, Adelia Barros Parker, Nina Blackwell, Dua Kazimoto, Ruth Kenyah, Ronald Kimambo, Jim Laske, Debbie Murchison, Carolyne Ng’eny, Sadaf Shallwani, and Jane Stokes
You can read Firelight’s response along with the responses of many others in the March 18th Edition of the New Humanitarian “Readers react | EU commissioner’s views on localisation create a stir”