Why ‘localisation’ shines a spotlight on ignorance – and what NGOs can do to counter it

09 April 2018

Much focus has been given to localising the aid response. The Grand Bargain, for example, seeks to empower localised action with new targets of direct funding to local responders. Without realising it, such efforts highlight a significant level of ignorance on the part of many of those supporting such initiatives. This is epitomised by the lack of understanding about the vital role that trust plays in true localisation.

A high level of trust should be at the very core of a localised approach. A regional director in the Middle East context explained that,

I see most NGOs, and their main approach seems to be to come in with a programme in mind, and then find local partners to help implement it. The Arab approach is different – we look for people on the ground that we trust, and get behind their activities.

The point is worth considering – without trust, how can true partnership exist? This trust-based approach proved highly effective in the response to Da’esh in Iraq – the most effective programmes I observed were agile and responsive and had, as their basis, a high degree of local initiative, with donors generally willing to trust the judgement of local implementers. Yet overall the pattern of interaction between donors, international NGOs and local implementers shows little evidence of such deep trust. Western donors and aid organisations support local initiatives, but then draw borders around that support with a western understanding of trustworthiness, favouring recipients who match their own cultural definition of trust.

The power dynamic inherent in aid work still favours the donor, and the grant implementer who has the donor’s trust. In many of these cases, the local implementer is in no place to challenge this dynamic. As a result, rather than undertake programming in the manner that is best suited to the context, a local recipient of a grant is forced to conduct its activities in a manner which appears trustworthy to the grant provider. Yet which is more trustworthy – a person who follows the rules, or a person who considers the individual situation? Organisationally, which is more trustworthy – an organisation which brings back receipts for each purchase, in line with pre-arranged criteria? Or one that reacts instinctively to the needs that develop in front of them?

In each example, the second definition is more applicable as a measure of trustworthiness in many of the settings where disasters occur. Yet too often trustworthiness continues to be judged on a set of values more in line with the former. Intermediary international NGOs can play a significant role here, particularly those who have a good record of trust with large institutional donors. In essence, these NGOs are ‘bilingual’ – they speak the donor’s language of trust, but they also speak the language of trust in a local context. Such intermediary NGOs can help by positioning themselves to ‘translate’ the requirements of a donor into a very different set of requirements – much lighter on proposal writing and depth of financial reporting, with more emphasis placed on stories, on meeting recipients, and on the intermediary NGO experiencing projects first-hand and vouching for them.

Such an approach is not for NGOs with a weak track record with donors, or whose staff lack the cross-cultural maturity to see below the surface of a locally-led response. In fact, it calls for intermediary NGOs to put a much greater emphasis on recruiting staff members who actually understand what trust looks like in a specific context. This is no small thing; in my experience, it takes a minimum of two years of exposure to a culture to really understand it. But with so many of the world’s relief situations turning into protracted crises, the pool of relief workers with such cross-cultural understanding increases.

Of course, such a suggestion is open to warnings of fraud, and abuse of the system. However, if even one project in five took advantage of such an extension of trust, the end result would be no worse than the current system, where reporting has superseded responding, and where grant administrators have lost sight of the unconscionable amount of time their reporting requirements demand of people who could be much more gainfully employed actually doing relief work.

The ignorance highlighted by calls for localisation is a belief that we can change the landscape of aid work while ignoring the power dynamics that underpin the global aid structure. Changing the landscape means moving beyond this ignorance, and nowhere is this need for change more evident than in the re-evaluation of what trust looks like in a localised context. Experienced international NGOs have a key role to play here, in advocating for a more highly nuanced understanding of trust.