A key focus of this paper is the perceptions that local NGOs have of the humanitarian principles. The research workshops that informed this paper brought together humanitarian organizations based in Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Participants repeatedly made the point that they were being denied funding because of the perception that they are not ‘neutral’. Many local NGOs believe they are being held to a higher standard by donors and international NGOs seeking to justify denying them funding.
Many local NGOs believe they are being held to a higher standard by donors and international NGOs seeking to justify denying them funding.
Yet recent decisions in the context of the updated Grand Bargain 2.0 set ambitious goals for increasing funding to local NGOs. These ambitions, however, do not seem to have taken into account the historical difficulties facing donors wishing to fund local organizations; the impact on local NGOs of donor policies that may require a commitment to the principle of neutrality; and the reality of day-to-day decision-making in the field, where agency project managers may take the ‘safe option’ and allocate funding to international NGOs over local NGOs, particularly in regard to the principle of neutrality.
Impartiality and neutrality
Recent events in Myanmar and Ukraine, following developments in Syria since 2011, offer stark evidence of why the concept of neutrality may be inappropriate for assessing the humanitarian action of local community organizations in some war-torn environments. Leading humanitarian researchers Fiona Terry and Hugo Slim suggest that the core principles of humanitarian action in war are humanity and impartiality and that neutrality and independence should be considered as operational postures appropriate for the ICRC and the UN, but not necessarily for local NGOs. As first responders, local groups will act regardless of whether international aid organizations have access or are providing support. The key test, therefore, for local NGOs seeking funds from international donors should be whether local NGOs operate impartially, and do not discriminate by ethnicity or other criteria, when deciding who should receive assistance.
Slim suggests that local humanitarian organizations that are impartial but not neutral should be referred to as ‘resistance humanitarians’. While appreciating the historical origins of this term, the connotations of ‘resistance’ in this context are not helpful, and ‘solidarity’ is perhaps a more appropriate term to describe such organizations.
Considering the effectiveness of local NGOs, donor states and other funding partners would benefit greatly if they were to explicitly adopt the principles of humanity and impartiality as the main criteria for funding local humanitarian actors, and issue updated guidance on ways of assessing the fitness of individual organizations being considered for funding. It may, in these circumstances, be helpful to consider the relationship between the funding organization and the local NGO as ‘semi-detached’, similar to the relationship model between the ICRC and national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Alongside a sustained effort to promote pooled-fund mechanisms targeted at local organizations, as well as the wider adoption of JOPs and conflict-sensitivity assessments, this re-evaluation of the core humanitarian principles can substantially strengthen the role and capacities of local organizations as essential components of the humanitarian response.
Constraints on donors
Some donor states have cited the lack of capacity in local NGOs as a reason for not disbursing more grants to them. These states claim that local NGOs, with a few exceptions, have limited administrative capacity. However, in a recent article, Patrick Fine challenged this position in relation to USAID. He suggested that USAID has failed to develop its own capacity to administer the US government’s commitments to localization, and that this is unrelated to any shortage of capacity in local NGOs. An additional political constraint is that donor states may be under domestic pressure to fund the operations of international NGOs based in their countries, rather than local organizations in the affected country.
Pooled-fund mechanisms
In these circumstances, an effective way of supporting local NGOs is through so-called ‘pooled-fund’ mechanisms. These create an administrative framework that arranges the distribution and oversight of grants to local and international NGOs. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has set up several such country-based funds, including in Afghanistan, the DRC and South Sudan. Non-UN channels for pooled funding include the Start Network, some faith-based organizations, such as Christian Aid, and the international NGOs, Mercy Corps and Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), which distribute the resources they raise to local organizations rather than setting up local branches of their own organization. This is also the model used by many diaspora organizations that collect resources internationally and use the funds to support several local groups undertaking projects in their home countries, such as CanDo, a UK-based charity that supports aid work in Syria.
Currently, pooled funds receive only a small proportion of overall humanitarian funding, estimated at about 6 per cent of all assistance in 2022. As a result, there is considerable scope for expansion in the financing of pooled funds, and for policy decisions that increase the proportion of such funding that goes to local and national NGOs.
