Working closely with local stakeholders is a key driver for quality humanitarian action

To respond more effectively to the needs of affected populations and prepare national stakeholders for future humanitarian responses, the first step is to engage a process that recognises, respects and reinforces the leadership of local authorities and the role of civil society organisations in humanitarian action¹.

Local stakeholders are the first responders to a humanitarian crisis. To take account of this fact, the Grand Bargain was signed in 2016, marking the commitment of institutional donors and UN agencies to “make humanitarian action as local as possible and as international as necessary.”

Progressing towards a more localised approach

Over its history, SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL has formed many partnerships with national and local stakeholders in the field. All these partnerships are founded on two imperatives: the quality and impact of humanitarian assistance.

In 2023, SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL formalised its commitments regarding “aid localisation”:

To promote a more localised approach to humanitarian assistance and to systematically include national and local humanitarian actors in the sector’s decision-making processes.
To systematically seek partnerships with local and national stakeholders in the areas where the NGO operates.
To adapt approaches to partnership and humanitarian assistance to the specific characteristics of each context.
To foster an equal relationship of coconstruction, discussion and joint decision-making that focuses on quality and follow-up.

These four commitments are illustrated by several key projects that have been implemented this year. In Burkina Faso, our teams worked in partnership with the technical departments that are responsible for supplying the population with water. Together, they sought solutions to maintain and increase the capacity of public services in towns where there had been an influx of displaced people, as a result of the country’s security crisis. In Yemen, our teams supported efforts to promote a better understanding of water resources and thus improve their management. In the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Iraq, our partnerships with civil society organisations are part of a genuine approach to build their capacity so that they can make a lasting contribution to local development efforts and future humanitarian programs to assist the most vulnerable populations. In Ukraine, these same partnership approaches have secured access to highly vulnerable populations in remote areas of the country who are directly affected by the conflict.

SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL is aware that this operational transition requires many conditions to be met within the sector and remains dependent on national contexts and global dynamics. We therefore continue to view localisation as a process, to which our NGO will adapt according to successful and unsuccessful experiences, with one single guiding principle: the impact of humanitarian action to support affected populations.

Sources :
¹ OCDE, “Localising the response”, The Commitments into Action series, Paris, 2017