Members of Alliance for Empowering Partnership are inviting you to a dialogue series, supported by Community World Services Asia and, KUNO (Platform for Humanitarian Knowledge Exchange) and in collaboration with other international and local platforms to contribute to the body of alternative knowledge.
This report contributes to the broader set of efforts by women’s rights stakeholders to identify and share ways that the transformative potential of the Grand Bargain might also be realized for women and girls.
The COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare and immediate opportunity for a norm shift towards localisation in the humanitarian architecture. Whilst international humanitarian actors are facing constraints in funding and restrictions on movement and travel, national and local level humanitarian actors are on the ground to respond. A timely investment in local capacities and capabilities creates a strong platform for effective, efficient and sustained response and recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the days, months and years ahead.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the Charter4Change coalition and Accelerating Localisation Through Partnership consortium collaborated on an analysis of reports against the Localisation Workstream provided by the wider range of Grand Bargain signatories. They highlight 5 examples of good or promising practice that might be built upon; they then note 5 continuing challenges. Finally, they suggest 6 recommendations on ways forward.
Building on existing and bespoke research, the findings from three “demonstrator country” missions, and discussions with Grand Bargain signatories and local actors in a series of regional and global conferences in 2018-19, the Grand Bargain Localisation Workstream issued a series of guidance notes on localisation in May 2020. These very brief notes set out priority findings, recommendations and considerations that signatories are encouraged to consider as they implement their commitments.
On 14 January 2020, the Accelerating Localisation through Partnerships programme (led by Christian Aid) and the Humanitarian Policy Group of ODI hosted a closed-door roundtable under Chatham House Rule to discuss the challenges for large INGOs without a traditional partnership approach to move towards partnerships in humanitarian contexts. This discussion took place within the framework of on-going efforts by the humanitarian system to support more local and locally-led humanitarian action.
The Global Education Cluster (GEC) held a workshop on localisation in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 – 21 February, 2020, with participation from the new members of its Strategic Advisory Group (SAG). The new members of SAG represent local and national NGOs (L/NNGO) from 7 countries with an existing education cluster.
Please see the summary report of the workshop below.
Building on the extensive work of ActionAid and others, this research evidences, and advocates for, an approach to localisation which prioritises the leadership of local women and women-led organisations who have been overlooked, undervalued and under resourced in humanitarian response to date.
The Charter for Change held its annual meeting in Copenhagen on 10-11 December 2019 that gathered 31 local/national NGOs from crisis-affected contexts and 25 international NGOs. The meeting produced a communiqué calling on the Grand Bargain Facilitation Group to put localisation as one of the key themes on the agenda for the GB annual meeting in June 2020. The Charter for Change sets out in the communiqué key ideas for moving the GB localisation agenda forward, including:
● A focus on localisation and participation at the 2020 Grand Bargain annual meeting