It has been more than four years since the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, where the international humanitarian community made a commitment to “localizing” aid. The localization workstream in the Grand Bargain agreement sought to change funding, coordination, and partnership structures for greater inclusion of ‘local’ actors. These commitments were built upon a seemingly genuine acknowledgement of the power inequities that pervade the aid architecture; and this ‘localization agenda’ appeared to be a sober admission of the obligation to better include local humanitarian actors in global systems.
However, calls for greater local leadership have been tempered by the recognition that we, as a sector, need to change a system built to resist such change. Herein lies the juncture between aspirations and tangible progress, which has left the ‘localization’ debate full of contradictions. While there has been progress towards meeting the goals outlined in the Grand Bargain, overall, the sector is falling short of honoring its commitments to change, let alone moving towards the more fundamental reforms that many are calling for.
All of these contradictions show that the path towards greater local leadership is anything but clear and direct, and leads to the question: what are we really working towards and are we truly willing to go there?
This blog is part of CDA’s From Where I Stand series, designed to listen to people most affected by aid as they explore and amplify their leadership experiences, stories, and lessons for the aid sector.
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