Why the 'Grand Bargain' failed to deliver its promise of local funding

When it was created in 2016, the “Grand Bargain” — a unique platform of donors, United Nations agencies, international nongovernmental organizations and local groups — pledged by 2020 to give at least 25% of its signatories’ humanitarian funding to local and national stakeholders “as directly as possible.”

They didn’t even get close. Only 3.4% of their aid that year was channeled directly to local and national stakeholders, according to independent observers. And the rate has only dropped since then.

The Grand Bargain was renewed in 2021 and with that second iteration — the Grand Bargain 2.0 — having wrapped up in June, the rate of humanitarian funding given directly to local and national stakeholders dropped to 1.8% in 2022.

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