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Paper short abstract:

We discuss a local NGO's critical learnings of mentoring slum-women's groups in India. Collective efforts secure social justice but unequal power dynamics can exclude socio-economically weaker women. We will share practical methods on prioritizing weaker groups in development practice.

Paper long abstract:

Introduction: Local NGO led urban poor groups in Global South are developing capacities to access essential services. This study explores the potential and pitfalls of urban poor groups in reducing poverty and securing social justice.

Methodology: Urban Health Resource Centre (UHRC) mentors slum-based women’s groups in Indore and Agra, India. We conduced 20 FGDs with women’s groups to assess their capacity in pursuing collective savings and political negotiations to pull municipal services.

Findings: Women group members utilized collective savings in pursuing social justice through ensuring children’s education, upgrading livelihoods, and accessing timely healthcare services. However, over half of groups reported diffidence in bookkeeping of collective savings and loans and expressed dependence on UHRC social facilitators for financial records. In some groups few group members repeatedly borrowed large amounts, leaving little funds for other members to borrow.

Very few groups extended financial support to socio-economically weaker non-group member families in slums by lending money to meet financial exigency. Most women groups acquired capacity to negotiate with authorities for slum infrastructure improvement without relying on UHRC facilitators. Outcomes of infrastructure improvement benefited even the poorest households. Most groups guided socioeconomically weak families to obtain ID and requisite documentation required for accessing services.

Conclusion: The study holds crucial lessons for development practitioners towards the need to address unequal power dynamics in urban poor groups which can hinder social justice for socio-economically weaker group members. Holistic capacity building interventions can aid socio-economically weaker group members and other families gradually address poverty and associated challenges.

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Paper short abstract:

What do community groups do when their funding institution really does 'hand over control'? How do they organise themselves and their work? What forms of power emerge, and how do these forms of power influence the forms of participation and group dynamics that emerge?

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents findings from ethnographic research into a place-based ‘community empowerment’ programme called Big Local. While much development literature has shown how funding institutions have found ways to steer the priorities and practices of community groups engaged in supposedly 'bottom up' development processes, this research found a funding institution that existed only on the peripheries of groups’ realities. Unusually, it did seem as though the funder had successfully managed to ‘hand over control’ to local residents. In this context of institutional flexibility, the research sought to understand how the groups organised themselves and their work and, in the absence of restrictive funding requirements, what forms of power shaped who came to participate, and how? Despite this context of institutional flexibility, common organising practices emerged across the three field sites, imported from other spaces of collective organising that group members had engaged with, both workplace and voluntary. The research theorises an ‘effective governance’ mode of organising that is used to govern the most powerful institutions of our society but also, as this research shows, ripples out to community spaces, constraining their aspiration to ‘inclusivity’; the basis of another mode of organising that is brought into tension with the ‘effective governance’ mode. Given that not everyone has access to the spaces in which they can develop the skills associated with hegemonic modes of organising, participation is patterned by individuals’ relative privileges and deprivations. This has significant implications for the possibility of ‘empowerment’ through participatory development initiatives.

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This paper examines the dynamics of localisation in South Sudan's humanitarian arena. It considers the perils of a localisation driven primarily by concerns around access and cost efficiency, and explores the potential for a more transformative approach.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, localisation has become a prominent discourse in South Sudan’s humanitarian arena. Yet, direct funding to South Sudanese NGOs has barely changed; instead, localisation largely takes the form of an expansion of top-down subcontracting, primarily benefiting those organisations that most effectively replicate the policies, practices and priorities of international NGOs. In many ways, the situation in South Sudan points to the perils of a localisation driven predominantly by concerns around humanitarian access and cost efficiency, rather than by ideas of social justice and transformation. The gulf between the rhetoric around localisation and a lack of meaningfully felt change has undermined trust between actors in a highly competitive humanitarian arena, generating frustration and suspicion around who has ‘captured’ the benefits of the localisation agenda. Nonetheless, South Sudanese aid actors are increasingly using elements of the localisation agenda to claim space and to challenge the terms of their engagement in the humanitarian industry.

This paper examines dynamics of humanitarian ‘localisation’ in South Sudan, drawing on recent ethnographic research, including an extensive set of interviews with the directors and staff of a wide range of South Sudanese NGOs, and with the staff of international aid agencies. It asks what is new about the localisation agenda in South Sudan, where rhetoric around ‘capacity building’ and ‘partnerships’ has been evident throughout four decades of international humanitarian intervention. It examines the evidence around the current implementation of the localisation agenda in South Sudan, and considers the potential for a more radical, transformative approach.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper outlines the experiences of researchers and practitioners in developing and applying a new Decision Mapping Tool (DMAT) to support power shifts in development programming, towards more locally led approaches.

Paper long abstract:

This paper outlines the experiences of researchers and practitioners in developing and applying a new Decision Mapping Tool (DMAT) to support power shifts in development programming. By demarcating three different 'Decision Spaces', the DMAT promotes greater recognition of the role and importance of the ‘Local Decision Space’, where local actors have autonomy over decisions that affect them. Efforts to shift power often focus on the Partnership Decision Space, but this can risk reinforcing existing power dynamics and overlooking the role of autonomous local decisions in the Local Decision Space.

Pilots of the DMAT in Ethiopia, India, Kenya and Uganda demonstrate its value in facilitating systematic reflection on the allocation of decision-making power within development programmes. Through practitioner accounts and experiences from these countries, the paper will outline how decision mapping can surface and constructively address power dynamics within programmes, as well as promote constructive conversations for addressing problems, fixing accountability and recognising what is working well. The paper will centre the experiences and perspectives of Global South practitioner co-authors involved in the pilots and development of the tool. It will aim to enable a better understanding of what shifting power means and how it can be achieved in practice.

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Paper short abstract:

We would bring a provocation to the workshop: if we propose 'localisation' as the way forwards, then social justice can never be achieved. We outline a framing of solidarity that can underpin more just approaches to shifting power to local organisations and how One World Together is achieving this.

Paper long abstract:

We start our pitch with a provocation to the workshop: unless we can ‘build in’ solidarity into processes of localisation, social justice will never materialise from these processes. Localisation as conceptualised and currently playing out in the sector is predominantly Northern-led and unfit for purpose when it comes to achieving social justice. Viewed from Leicester’s (2020) Three Horizons framework, ‘innovations’ to shift power can primarily be seen as ‘sustaining’ innovations (that uphold the current status quo) or ‘disruptive’ innovations that may shake things up a bit but can’t dismantle existing inequalities between NGOs across the North and South. Recent research highlights that inequalities underpinning the aid system are rarely being addressed at the roots, to the detriment of Southern civil society (Banks et al 2024). We’ll explore how academic research led to us launching One World Together, a new social enterprise that goes further than many current localisation efforts to transform the system rather than seeking change within the existing aid system, building a new funding system based on trust, solidarity and equity that connects a new generation of supporters of global development with community organisations around the world to learn, connect and share. In discussing One World Together we’ll outline a three-fold framework of solidarity that can instead provide a more solid foundation to a socially just and community-centred system global development.

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Paper short abstract:

Localization enhances the effectiveness of NGOs providing humanitarian assistance to residents of witches' camps in Northern Ghana. NGOs that take a localized and culturally sensitive approach improve their legitimacy and the acceptance of their programs in local communities.

Paper long abstract:

Researchers have debated whether the activities of right-based NGOs exacerbate or ameliorate the experience of residents of witches' camps in Northern Ghana. Some scholars have argued that NGOs overemphasize the individual rights of alleged witches over the concerns of their families and communities. Based on my research on three NGOs working in witches' camps in Ghana, I argue that such generalizations about their approaches to witchcraft-related violence do not account for the diversity within local rights-based NGOs. Some of these organizations adopt a localized approach to address the savage-victim-savior complex in humanitarian practice and human discourses to ensure the local acceptance of their intervention strategies. The Go Home Project, for instance, is based in the Gambaga and collaborates with indigenous spiritual experts, families, communities, and donor agencies to negotiate repatriations and re-integrations and sensitize communities without explicitly rejecting local views about witchcraft. This decolonizing and culturally sensitive approach to implementing their interventions makes the organization effective in dealing with the plight of residents and potential residents of the accused witches' settlement at Gambaga.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the extent and nature of actions undertaken by Northern and Southern NGOs to tackle power asymmetries, explicitly comparing their understandings, perspectives, and initiatives.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the extent and nature of actions undertaken by Northern and Southern NGOs to tackle power asymmetries, explicitly comparing their understandings, perspectives, and initiatives. The research draws upon (a) a global survey that collected 458 responses to explore localisation initiatives, (b) a range of 33 stakeholder interviews conducted across Europe, Ghana, and Uganda to understand perspectives on localisation, local-led development, and power shifts, and (c) three in-depth case studies in Ghana and Uganda that delved into programmes addressing power imbalances between Northern and Southern NGOs.

The study finds that despite efforts to address power imbalances, progress has been slow and limited. Actions have been taken in areas such as policy, programming, funding, and language, but the most significant steps have been in programming and funding. Southern NGOs are gaining more influence at the programmatic level, but they struggle to impact the broader policy framework. Northern NGOs are often seen as the dominant force in addressing power imbalances. Challenges include a lack of time, resources, and fear of change. In addition, Southern NGOs feel their voices are not heard and their agendas may be co-opted by Northern NGOs. The question is whether merely being "good partners" is enough to bring about real change in the North-South power dynamic. The study emphasises the need for systemic change involving institutional donors. A call for deeper, more transformative, and Southern-led change is made, focusing on reconfiguring the broader framework in which aid operates.

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Paper short abstract:

Using focus group interviews, this study explored how Korean NGOs and new donors perceive and adapt to the global agenda towards localization.

Paper long abstract:

Localisation is gaining attention as a common approach encompassing resilience building, anticipatory action, and the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus (HDP Nexus) in international humanitarian communities. While the need for localization seems to be agreed to ensure humanitarian access, cost-effectiveness, and accountability, there seems to be no universally agreed concept, allowing diverse interpretations and approaches among different actors engaged and in different contexts. Some in the North view localization as a process of “internationalization of the locals,” while many in the South prefer “locally-led” initiatives, demanding a more fundamental power shift, highlighting decoloniality. Furthermore, there are few studies on the understanding and practices of humanitarian communities in emerging (or “new”) donor countries positioned as middle powers, such as South Korea.

Against this backdrop, this study explores how South Korean humanitarian and development NGO communities (acting as relatively new donors) view localisation, and examines their challenges and values in reshaping policy and practices. We will discuss preliminary results from the qualitative content analysis of focus group interviews with NGO practitioners based in South Korea, who have been engaged in international development cooperation over the last ten years. Among them, we will discuss how the concept is understood, how new donors try to communicate and advance localization with local partners, if at all, any roles they perceive as promising and/or challenges they face, how they address them, etc. In doing so, we also try to delve into any particularities that are distinguishable from what is commonly understood in the West.

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Paper short abstract:

This study shares the experiences of the author’s action research on disaster resilience in Cambodia and questions the validity of promises for localisation without funding in aid-dependent contexts.

Paper long abstract:

Localisation, along with a focus on locally led initiatives, has become a fancy buzzword in the development field. However, without flexible and foreseeable long-term funds to support any local initiatives, it remains a hallow promise.

This study shares findings and learning from a recent three-year multi-partner academic and practical collaboration surrounding a climate change adaptation project in rural communities in Cambodia. This multi-party participatory action research focuses on understanding and building community flood resilience and disaster risk reduction capacity. To measure community flood resilience, we used the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) approach developed by the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance. FRMC measures disaster resilience capacities across five key dimensions of resilience: human, social, financial, physical, and natural capital.

While researchers measure resilience across different times, the particularity of the FRMC is to leave room for local initiatives to bring about changes between the measurement times. Thus, we hoped to provide evidence-based and context-specific policy suggestions to enhance community resilience. However, our expectations turned out to be rather excessive; without donors’ flexibility, patience, and additional funds, any local follow-ups and new ideas would not be implemented. Simultaneously, local capacities to “lead initiatives” were also questioned. This study concludes that localisation without additional funds (domestic or international) for actual local initiatives, in addition to building local capacities, is no more than a hollow promise. Additionally, it raises questions on how to redefine the relationship between international and national bureaus of development NGOs.

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Paper short abstract:

This study explores the meanings of 'locally-led climate solutions' in Kenya, and the dynamics through which these meanings come about in practice, zooming in on the role of CSOs. It points to important challenges and politics in these processes, and thus unpacks 'the local' as advanced by CSOs.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the roles of civil society organizations (CSOs) in Kenya that are involved in articulating locally-owned climate action. It zooms in on the ways in which CSOs contribute to certain voices obtaining the status of ‘the local’, defining locally-led adaptations as ultimately legitimate solutions to climate change. The rationale for this study is that the meaning of local ownership and local voices in the context of climate deserve close attention, to develop our understandings of what ‘local solutions’ are in practice, through what dynamics they come about, and with what implications for the democratic quality of ‘the local’ and ‘local voices’ thus constructed. While efforts centre on local populations, CSOs involved need to engage with multiple legitimacy audiences, and work within specific political and policy contexts. The study is interpretive, identifying patterns across a range of Kenya-based CSOs that work on various subthemes and from varied approaches, capacities, understandings, and regional focus. The study is based on semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis. Key findings of the study are that ‘the local’ and ‘locally led solutions’ are commonly approached in terms of facilitation and inclusion of understandings of climate problems and solutions as understood and identified by local communities that organizations work with, in ongoing climate policy processes. This implies placing responsibility for climate solutions with local communities, banking on local knowledge. CSOs also face important resource and expertise limits, and often avoid challenging questions addressing climate beyond the local, or difficult and politically sensitive aspects.