With a view to publishing its 34th issue in March 2027, the review Humanitarian Alternatives is issuing a call for papers for the focus of this edition, whose provisional title is “Localisation in an age of funding cuts: First principle or first casualty?”. If you are a researcher, a player or an observer in the field of humanitarian action and international solidarity and you would like to submit a draft article on this theme, then please send us a summary of your chosen issue, a provisional structure for it and a short biography of the author or authors (two pages maximum) by 12 October to the following e-mail address: contact@alternatives-humanitaires.org. You will get a reply within 15 days of sending your e-mail.
The final article, written in French or English, should be delivered by 26 January at the latest. The average volume for an article is 15,000 characters, including spaces (which is around 2,400 words in French and 2,200 words in English). Seven to nine articles will be selected for the focus of this issue.
For each edition, we also take an interest in draft articles on themes in humanitarian action and solidarity beyond the edition’s main focus. Such articles are published in our sections Perspectives, Transitions, Innovations, Ethics, Reportage or Opinion. So we are inviting you to put forward draft articles for these sections too.
Localisation in an age of funding cuts: First principle or first casualty?
The focus of this edition is coordinated by Amy Croome, Humanitarian Policy Advisor on Aid Reform and Local Humanitarian Leadership, and Pauline Chetcuti, Head of Humanitarian Advocacy and Campaigns, both at Oxfam International, alongside Boris Martin, the review’s Editor-in-Chief.
Localisation is now accepted as a core principle of effective humanitarian action, and as a reform priority – central to the Grand Bargain and what is called the Humanitarian Reset – and it is becoming increasingly institutionalised within organisations’ strategies, guidance and policies. Yet as the discussions and number of policy products on localisation grow, so too do the questions about the end goal and purpose of localisation.
One key strand has always been about efficiency and cost effectiveness, with a focus on achieving 25% of humanitarian funding flowing directly or via one intermediary (for example a UN agency or INGO) to local actors. While this is a key indicator of systemic change in the humanitarian system – and one that has received a lot of attention amid the drastic funding cuts to the sector – it does not represent the end goal, nor does it tell us much about other changes, for example in equitable partnership practices, sustainability models, or equality between different actors.
If we are to follow aid principles – both humanitarian principles and the principles of aid effectiveness – the end goal of localisation must be to support:
- the existence of state actors who respond inclusively and in a needs-based way to populations in their territories;
- civil society actors who are diverse, connected and able to represent various marginalised groups within society, as well as hold their government and international actors to account on their practices towards people in humanitarian need; and, finally,
- an international humanitarian system that adds value through its expertise and experience in humanitarian response work across the world, in ways that improve outcomes for affected people and do not undermine but rather contribute to the role of local civil society and local government actors.
So, to speak to these three ambitions, we are seeking papers that explore the complexities of realising this, expose the gap between theory and practice, and highlight examples of both successes and failures. Rather than more commentary on the direction localisation should take, we are prioritising contributions grounded in practice and evidence: examples of change that has actually happened, and an honest account of what difference it has made. We are therefore issuing a call for papers on three underlying areas of investigation.
A diverse civil society: value added and the power of accountability
The first ambition depends on a humanitarian ecosystem in which women’s rights organisations (WROs), refugee-led organisations (RLOs), large national NGOs, faith-based and community-based structures each play a distinct role. Policy language on localisation has multiplied faster than the evidence base behind it, and the sector still has surprisingly little rigorously documented proof of what different types of local civil society actors actually add to the quality of response for affected populations – as opposed to what they add to funding flow statistics or institutional diversity on paper.
The Focus of this new edition wants to move past assertion and into evidence. Where has working with, or resourcing, a particular kind of local civil society actor demonstrably improved outcomes for affected people – faster response, better-targeted assistance, stronger protection outcomes, greater dignity and agency for those receiving aid? What has made the difference in these cases? And is it transferable to other contexts, or specific to a particular organisation, leadership or moment?
Equally important, and often overlooked, is civil society’s role as an accountability actor in its own right – not simply a delivery partner, but a body that holds international humanitarian actors and state authorities to account for how they treat people in need. We are particularly interested in evidence of this accountability function in action: has civil society advocacy or monitoring changed how an INGO, UN agency or donor designs and delivers its response? Has it changed how a government meets, or fails to meet, its obligations to its own population? What conditions – funding, protection, access to decision-making spaces – allowed that accountability role to be effective, and what silenced or blunted it?
For this first area of investigation, we are asking for papers grounded in documented practice and evidence, rather than general argument, on: the demonstrated value added by different types of local civil society actors to humanitarian outcomes for affected populations; and the impact of civil society’s accountability role on the practices of international actors and/or state actors. What changed, for whom, and how do we know?
Capacitating without compromising: strengthening principled state leadership
The second ambition – state actors who respond inclusively and in a needs-based way to populations in their territories – sits at one of the most contested edges of humanitarian practice. Strengthening state capacity and leadership is, in principle, one of the clearest routes to a more sustainable and locally owned humanitarian system. In practice, humanitarian actors have often hesitated to invest in it, wary of compromising neutrality, independence or the needs-based, impartial character of their response, particularly where state authority is contested, politicised or party to conflict.
This new Focus is looking for evidence that this tension can be, and is being, navigated well. Where have international humanitarian actors worked with and capacitated state and subnational authorities – through co-leadership of coordination mechanisms, investment in technical or planning capacity, joint needs assessment, support to public service delivery, or transfer of leadership roles – in ways that measurably strengthened that authority’s ability to lead, while still holding up accountable, impartial and needs-based response? What specifically was strengthened – technical capacity, political will, resourcing, legitimacy, accountability to citizens – and what evidence exists that this translated into a better, more principled response for affected populations, rather than simply a transfer of responsibility?
We are equally interested in the safeguards and conditions that made this possible: what arrangements, red lines or joint governance mechanisms allowed international actors to invest in state leadership without diluting impartiality or needs-based targeting? And where this has been tried and has not worked – where capacitating the state came at the cost of principled response, or where good intentions produced no lasting change in state leadership – what can be learned from that experience?
For this second area of investigation, we are asking for papers that bring documented examples – across programmes, coordination structures, advocacy or operational partnerships – of international actors capacitating state or subnational leadership in ways that sustained, rather than compromised, accountable, impartial and needs-based humanitarian action, along with honest evidence of the impact, limits and conditions of that success.
Changing from within: confronting the survival instincts of a shrinking system
The third ambition asks international humanitarian actors to add value in ways that improve outcomes for affected people without undermining local civil society or government leadership. This requires a kind of institutional change that is much harder to enact, and far less visible, than a shift in funding allocations: a genuine change in the internal ways of working, incentives and instincts of donors, UN agencies and INGOs themselves.
The drastic funding cuts of recent years have made this ambition more urgent and, in many respects, harder to realise. Scarcity has intensified precisely the behaviours that localisation is meant to correct: sharper competition between organisations for a shrinking pool of funding, an institutional preoccupation with organisational survival that can crowd out principled decision-making, and continued expansion of international actors’ own operational “business” – footprint, brand, direct delivery – even in contexts where local or state actors could credibly lead. If localisation is to mean anything beyond a funding target, it has to survive contact with exactly this kind of pressure, not only exist in moments of relative institutional comfort.
This edition is looking for honest, evidenced accounts of what pushing back against these dynamics actually looks like from the inside. Where have international organisations deliberately chosen not to compete for funding or visibility in a given response, in favour of a local or state actor’s leadership? Where have internal incentive structures – staff performance metrics, fundraising targets, risk and compliance frameworks, country office growth models – been identified and changed because they worked against localisation commitments, and what did that change cost the organisation, or require of its leadership? Conversely, where have funding cuts visibly accelerated self-protective, expansionary behaviour that ran counter to stated localisation commitments, and what enabled that gap between policy and practice?
For this third area of investigation, we are asking for papers grounded in real institutional experience – successes, failures and unresolved tensions alike – of international actors changing their internal ways of working to add value without competing with, crowding out or undermining local civil society and state leadership, particularly under the pressure of funding cuts. What changed, what did it require, and what evidence is there that it made a difference to affected people rather than only to institutional positioning?
Types of contributions sought
Across all three areas of investigation, we are prioritising contributions rooted in documented practice and evidence over position statements or general commentary. We are looking for papers that report on what has actually changed – in outcomes for affected populations, in accountability relationships, in state leadership, or in the internal workings of international organisations – and that are honest about what has not changed, or has changed only in appearance.
We particularly welcome first-hand contributions from WROs, RLOs, national NGOs and state or subnational authorities themselves, reflecting on their own experience of partnership, accountability and capacity-strengthening in their own terms. We equally welcome candid reflections from within donor agencies, UN agencies and INGOs on internal change processes – including accounts of resistance, failure or reversal, which are often more instructive than polished success stories.
We also welcome comparative analyses across contexts and crisis types, critical assessments of the policy architecture underpinning localisation – including the Grand Bargain, the “Humanitarian Reset”, and the metrics used to track progress – and methodologically rigorous evaluations or research that test claims about localisation’s impact against evidence rather than intention. Finally, we invite contributions that draw out, from this evidence, what a genuinely realised end goal of localisation – principled states, accountable and diverse civil society, and a value-adding international system – would concretely require going forward.
