Is humanitarian aid going local?

Challenges encountered by the international humanitarian system in helping populations caught in the middle of a conflict or disaster have made partnerships a cornerstone of any emergency response. With their presence, knowledge and access, national and local aid groups often manage to meet urgent, life-or-death needs where international aid agencies cannot. But for all the talk within the global development community about the need to foster and sustain local ownership, national and local nongovernmental organizations continue to be sidelined by the humanitarian funding system as a whole. In Haiti, homegrown organizations played a crucial role in meeting the most immediate needs of populations affected by the powerful earthquake that struck the island nation in 2005. Yet, their input and experience were largely ignored by foreign aid implementers, and five years into the reconstruction, donors continue to relegate them to the passenger seat. Meanwhile in Syria, diaspora and local NGOs are on the front lines of the humanitarian response, but do not receive sufficient support from international organizations. Mistrusted Despite a growing recognition among humanitarian donors of the importance of working with local NGOs, the latter have access to very little international humanitarian funding in practice. Estimates published in the 2014 Global Humanitarian Assistance report are striking: Between 2009 and 2013, local and national NGOs received a meager $212 million, or only 0.2 percent of total humanitarian funding. Many large donors continue to impose legal restrictions and stringent procedures for the direct funding of local partners. This is notably the case of the European Union’s humanitarian arm ECHO, which can only support NGOs if a framework partnership agreement has been signed — a highly formalized process that many smaller and newer NGOs find near impossible to follow. As for the handful of donors that do work with national NGOs directly — such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, engaged in an effort to channel 30 percent of its funding locally, or the U.K. Department for International Development, which provides humanitarian money through partners and pooled funds — the presence of field staff in crisis-affected countries to verify prospective local partners is not always guaranteed, thus limiting funding possibilities for local partners. But analysts Devex spoke to shared their sentiment that donors’ general reluctance to provide direct humanitarian funding to indigenous partners seems to stem from fear and prejudice — not actual due diligence. “[There is] an assumption that local organizations cannot be accountable for funds in the same way that international ones can, both because they are not used to handling such large amounts of money and because they do not have the specific administration in place to create the necessary finance reports,” Peter Walker, humanitarian expert and dean at the Falk School of Sustainability, explained. “Local organizations can spend wisely but are not going to create the spreadsheets and audit reports USAID and DfID want.” Adding to widespread concerns about the quality, capacity and accountability of local NGOs — which analysts say are not backed by evidence — other, more practical considerations also come to the fore. “Some of the reasons are quite simple, for example language, where organizations prefer to work with partners who do not require extensive translation and who can speak and understand aid jargon and acronyms,” highlighted Christina Bennett, international aid policy analyst at the Overseas Development Institute. International humanitarian agencies further pointed out that emergencies require the rapid mobilization of large quantities of aid — something that many national and local actors are not always able to do at scale or in a coordinated manner. “Increased funding to national NGOs when a crisis hits will not automatically result in increased effectiveness of response,” a World Food Program representative underlined. “The capacity and size of national NGOs is subject to great variation both within and between countries … if a large-scale response is required, channeling resources to a variety of local organizations may result in fragmentation of the aid response. In addition, while local organizations generally have a sharp understanding of the local context and its complexities, they are also more prone to political and social pressures — thus flouting the key principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence that lie at the heart of humanitarian action. “While the cultural advantages of local organizations lie in their far greater ability to mobilize communities and networks, this is also more likely to be captured and instrumentalized by specific interests and power,” Bennett emphasized. Limited and opaque sources of funding Owing to general risk aversion, donors often choose to channel their humanitarian assistance through entities that are able to take the legal risks for implementation, and have the field presence, procedures and institutional capacity to assess and oversee local aid groups — primarily U.N. agencies, U.N. administered funds and international NGOs. Some U.N. agencies are especially keen on partnering with local partners in the delivery of humanitarian assistance. This is for instance the case of WFP, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees and UNICEF — all of which were identified in a survey conducted by CAFOD as the U.N. organizations most likely to pass on a higher share of their total humanitarian expenditure to national NGOs. However, little is known about the volume of funds channeled across the U.N. family to third-party implementing partners. Aside from UNHCR, U.N. agencies do not collate this information centrally, making it impossible to systematically assess the timeliness, appropriateness and impact of humanitarian funding provided to national and local groups. Pooled funding mechanisms managed by the U.N. system — such as the Emergency Response Funds and the Common Humanitarian Funds — were designed as a way to ensure that humanitarian assistance would be allocated more quickly and more responsively at the onset of an emergency. But while the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has noted that the proportion of pooled funding disbursed to national NGOs has increased over time, the bulk of it — or more than 80 percent in the past five years, according to one estimate — is allocated to well-established international NGOs. As for NGO-led funds, they offer great potential to help fill gaps in emergency funding. But due to their small number and volume, impact at scale is difficult to achieve. The way forward Beyond the limited amount of money that is poured directly into national and local NGOs, a variety of practical obstacles hinder their access to international financing for humanitarian action. For one, a lack of information and even misunderstanding surrounds current financing instruments, with many local and national organizations often unaware of available funding and how to access it. This points to the urgent need for the international humanitarian system as a whole to provide technical support and capacity building to their southern partners. Another related difficulty stems from the heavy focus on procedural matters, Bennett said, which places local and national NGOs at a significant disadvantage compared with their more prominent counterparts. “Humanitarian donors and international NGOs should invest funds and time in mentoring promising local organizations to be able to overcome a lack of knowledge of jargon, procedures, accountability requirements,” she told Devex. But efforts to include local partners in the humanitarian funding cycle should go even further, Walker stressed. “The application and reporting rules [should be] adapted to suit local context, and aid needs to work in the language of the crisis-affected communities, not in English,” he said. Ultimately though, much still needs to be learned about the impact, opportunities and limits of international humanitarian funding for national and local aid groups. “[More analysis of] the comparative advantages of local response in terms of effectiveness and efficiency and across different types of crisis situations would help to clarify where local responses are appropriate and more effective and where they are not, and [allow] humanitarian donors and aid organizations to agree on a division of labor based on these comparative advantages,” Bennett concluded. What are your thoughts on giving local and national NGOs more access to humanitarian funds? Let us know by leaving a comment below. 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