Localisation Re-imagined: Fertilising the soil of state-led solutions

At the regional consultations for the World Humanitarian Summit, national and local representatives spoke in no uncertain terms about the role of their own governments. In the Middle East and North Africa meeting, participants and stakeholders said, ‘governments were acknowledged to have the primary responsibility in humanitarian action.[1] Those in the North and Southeast Asia consultation emphasised that ‘host governments [are] in the driving seat.[2] In Latin America and the Caribbean, they called to ‘promote the main role of governments in humanitarian assistance.[3] In the West and Central Africa meeting, they recognised that the ‘government’s role is pivotal.[4]

One thing is clear from what Global South actors themselves have said: in any discussion on humanitarian action, the starting point must be, as Obrecht argues, that it is ‘the province of local actors’ – such as the government – ‘encroached upon by international agents’.[5]

In this series, I am proposing a subtle shift in the way we conceptualise localisation – moving away from localising the sector towards supporting local solutions. This shift could lead to stronger research on locally-led humanitarian action, as well as improved policy and practice that is more effective in achieving humanitarian goals. In the first article, I tried to show how our understanding of localisation appears to have been watered down from its more radical conceptions. If we think of localisation as supporting local solutions instead, what would its outcome look like?

The key to answering this is by looking at the role of the state.

Governments, as we shall see, can be effective in achieving humanitarian goals. In some contexts, they already have the solutions that would benefit from additional investment; in other contexts, while they might not have the immediate capability, their potential can be realised with longer-term support. However, their capacities are often unrecognised, and they do not always get the support they require.

Using cases where governments demonstrate the potential to provide humanitarian assistance effectively – in Ethiopia,[6] the Philippines and Nigeria – I ask: How does the state’s role fit in with the localisation agenda? How must we reconceive of localisation in light of the state’s role in providing solutions and achieving humanitarian goals? What are the implications for future localisation research?

Recognising state capacity and building state capability

Despite their key role in searching for solutions to achieve humanitarian goals, governments’ capacities are not always recognised. Or if they do require support in building their capabilities, the humanitarian sector is reluctant to provide it.

In localisation, local actors’ capacity ‘is not always understood as including local and national governments’.[18] It also tends to ‘undervalue’ local actors’ – including states’ – operational capacity (i.e., local actors’ capacity to deliver assistance) compared to international actors’ organisational capacity (i.e., international actors’ capacity around management and organisational governance).[19] Drawing from literature in development, international aid actors’ valuation of state capacity is often underpinned by western/Weberian assumptions, which may be characterised as neo-colonial and may view national or local ways of working as inferior.[20]

Localisation is meant to foster a humanitarian response that is ‘as local as possible, as international as necessary’.[21] This is understood as complementarity, in which ‘all capacities at all levels – local, national, regional, international – are harnessed and combined in a way that supports the best humanitarian outcomes for affected populations’.[22] But because local government is seen as lacking in capacity, and because international humanitarian response is ‘based on the premise that local capacity is overwhelmed’,[23] the international humanitarian system defaults to intervention – especially through parallel service delivery – instead of building on what already exists.

In the Philippines, for example, Oxfam has set up their own version of the QRF, and INGOs including a UN agency delivered cash transfers in parallel to the government-run SAP.[24] In Nigeria, despite the government being well-placed to reach affected populations, assistance in response to the conflict and displacement in the northeast of the country is dominated by INGOs.

It would be wrong to claim that national/local governments do not need support from international actors because they are already perfectly capable. States often welcome support and investment from international partners: the PSNP is largely financed by 10 donors (the Ethiopian government mostly contributes civil servant staff time);[25] and Philippine LGUs also receive financial and technical assistance from international (mostly development) agencies.[26]

This highlights another issue: the international humanitarian system does not see itself as being responsible for helping to build state capability towards achieving humanitarian goals. Humanitarians see it as the development sector’s job, not theirs. This is, in fact, a long-standing issue, dating back to debates around ‘linking relief, recovery and development’[27] to what is now known as the ‘humanitarian–development nexus’.[28] But despite a commitment from the UN Secretary General during the World Humanitarian Summit to ‘transcend the humanitarian-development divide’, the outgoing UN relief chief Mark Lowcock said as recently as May 2021 that humanitarian agencies ‘can only ever respond to the symptoms of global crises’.

Local actors emphatically reject this arbitrary division of labour between the humanitarian and development sectors, which is largely imposed on them by international actors. In a paper on localisation, Robillard et al. say: ‘Every single local and national actor we spoke to [in one country] asserted that the barrier between humanitarian work, on the one hand, and development and human rights work, on the other, was artificial.’. In correspondence with a staff member of a local organisation, I was told: ‘As a practitioner, one does not find it really useful to completely distinguish humanitarian actions from development ones.[29] Robillard et al. also add that there is ‘a strong consensus among the local actors we spoke to for this study that the most important opportunity for local humanitarian leadership lies in dismantling the humanitarian intervention framework’.

Despite these perspectives, building state capability, which is crucial to achieving humanitarian goals, does not always feature prominently in the current conceptualisation of localisation. For example, contributions to Ethiopia’s PSNP (which over 2015–2020 had a budget of $2.3 billion, largely funded by donors such as the World Bank, the World Food Programme, the US and the UK), to finance state capability are not counted towards the Grand Bargain target of funding channelled directly to national/local actors. (Based on the data from Global Humanitarian Assistance report estimates, the average funds directly channelled to national/local actors between 2016 and 2020 were $650 million.).[30] In the Philippines, it was the development agency UNDP that played a key role in providing financial and technical assistance to a local government unit.

At the same time, if Ethiopia’s PSNP example is anything to go by, building state capability goes beyond short-term project-based capacity-building activities typical in humanitarian programming. It means channelling the bulk of effort and resources not towards intervention but towards an intentional longer-term, multi-year investment in national and local public systems.

There are arguments showing that international humanitarian actors are ‘not particularly well placed either to assess capacities or support capacity strengthening’ – because they do not have the skills, knowledge or evaluation techniques to do so.[31] But if this is what is demanded of the international humanitarian system, and the aim of localisation is to truly meet what is being demanded (instead of to deliver what is readily supplied), then this is something that international humanitarian actors must seriously address. If humanitarian aid is provided on the basis of what international actors can supply, instead of what local actors actually demand, then that is a sign of a broken system.

This challenges the prevailing conception of complementarity. Does it mean harnessing all actors’ capacities? Or could it be understood as international actors matching their supply with what local actors demand? This adds to the numerous reflections about INGOs’ role in the future: should they be ‘leveraging [their] comparative advantage'[32] and keep doing what they are already good at; or must they aim to meet what is being asked of them – even if it means changing what they do and how they work?

Conclusion and further questions

States and governments are seen as having the primary responsibility for achieving humanitarian goals. Indeed, as Harvey wrote more than a decade ago, ‘one of the goals of international humanitarian actors should always be to encourage and support states to fulfill their responsibilities to assist and protect their own citizens in times of disaster’.

This requires localisation not just to focus on localising the sector but to support state-led solutions, too. This, in turn, necessitates a framing of the role of the international humanitarian system – not as intervenors when there is a lack of capacity, but as fertilisers that could enable such state-led solutions.

What further questions does all this raise for the future of localisation research and practice?

Firstly, it suggests that governments’ centrality in humanitarian response be put back on the localisation agenda. Thus far, localisation efforts are largely being channelled towards localising the sector: improving partnerships between INGOs and national/local NGOs (N/LNGOs) and channelling funding directly towards N/LNGOs. In Nigeria, for instance, a consortium of NGOs developed a national localisation framework where, according to a report, ‘the role of government was barely mentioned’. How might, for example, the Grand Bargain 2.0 better account for government’s role in localisation? How will the national/local state role in humanitarian response factor in donor decision-making?

Secondly, it opens interesting questions on INGO performance against ‘localisation to government’. How might INGOs engage with governments in delivering principled humanitarian assistance, and what evidence is required to demonstrate this? How might we analyse complementarity against the humanitarian framework of intervention when state capacity is overwhelmed? How can we meaningfully evidence a state’s humanitarian capacity?

Finally, further research is needed on the role of INGOs, particularly in ‘fertilising the soil of state-led solutions’. In particular, analysis is needed on the concept of comparative advantage (what INGOs are good at) against the demand for support to build state capability (what is needed). Evidence is also needed on how humanitarian actors can effectively meet this demand.