Attachments
Executive summary
At the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), one message made itself heard more loudly than others: national and local actors should be at the forefront of humanitarian responses in their home countries. On the face of it, this most recent call for localised humanitarian action seems entirely valid. However, upon closer inspection, the current thinking driving the localisation agenda fails to make an essential distinction between the different humanitarian contexts, and ignores the challenges faced by local actors in conflict settings. As part of the Emergency Gap series, this paper outlines MSF’s reservations about the blanket endorsement of the localisation agenda, from both a conceptual and practical point of view.
At the conceptual level, the ideological conviction resting at heart of the localisation discourse particularly stands out. The primary objective is to instigate a different way of working in delivering humanitarian aid: one where international actors should make themselves redundant by building local capacity and enabling local actors to run their own response.
According to this vision, the objective of humanitarian action must be to achieve sustainability and lay down the foundation for long-term development. Thus, the localisation agenda becomes a perfect fit with the ambition of ending needs, put forward as a core humanitarian responsibility by the WHS.
Those who are trying to push back on the localisation agenda risk being perceived as opposing the idea of sustainable development, a position largely deemed politically incorrect.
In MSF’s view, making sustainable development the goal of humanitarian assistance would not only diminish its essence, but would work in direct contradiction to the specific role it plays in conflict settings where a distinct and principled approach is required. In that sense, the localisation debate also suffers from a deliberate ambiguity when it comes to defining localised aid, which hampers any context-specific and operationally-oriented discussions that could highlight the conceptual and practical limitations of the agenda.
At the practical level, national and local humanitarian actors face several critical challenges in adhering to the core humanitarian principles when armed conflict is taking place in their country. These may be unintentional, because of the actors’ various ties or affiliations with institutions, groups and communities, or because of their deliberate choice to favour a particular geographic area or population group. Striving to assess needs and provide assistance in an impartial manner may simply not be feasible for someone who is part of the local dynamics. Further complications may exist with regards to the principles of neutrality and independence.
Moreover, the space for local actors to build and scale up capacities to respond to conflicts on the ground is limited, often as a result of the political and security situation. Many governments, especially those in conflict-affected states, are keen to assert their sovereignty and retain full control over the provision of aid when their political and social position is at risk. This may result in a restrictive legal and institutional framework for local nongovernmental and civil society organisations to operate within, and would ultimately have a negative impact on the scale, type and quality of assistance that people in need receive. 4 MSF The challenges of localised humanitarian aid in armed conflict Clearly, the question is not about which approach is better. There should be complementarity amongst actors and operational approaches, and between locally-led and internationally delivered assistance. Impartial, independent and neutral humanitarian action will continue to be critical in conflict and fragile settings, where local capacities are insufficient or where principled action cannot be reasonably pursued through locally-led approaches. Local capacity-building, remote programming and nationally-led responses will be paramount for building resilience, strengthening institutions and pursuing sustainable solutions in more stable contexts.
However, before moving forward with the localisation agenda, one issue must be reversed as a matter of priority: the political correctness with which a range of NGOs and others have promoted this agenda. For good and bad reasons, governments want to maintain control over what is happening in their countries, and to impose their sovereignty, especially when they are embroiled in conflict. While the localisation agenda is likely to add value and enhance the effectiveness of aid efforts in some contexts, imposing it irrespective of context dynamics is likely to produce suboptimal results for the effective delivery of aid to people in need of immediate relief.