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Paper short abstract

Localization in the Rohingya response is undermined by donor control. Despite transformative claims, donor agendas dominate, reinforcing hierarchies, limiting local agency, and producing compliant partnerships rather than genuine power redistribution or co-creation.

Paper long abstract

Recent emphasis on localisation in humanitarian discourse reflects a political-spatial process through which decisions and resources are purportedly promised to shift from the global North to local actors and become embedded within local aid practice. However, these ambitions are consistently undermined by contested meanings and competing interests among diverse stakeholders. Drawing on 20 interviews with humanitarian professionals from Bangladeshi organisations involved in the Rohingya response, secondary data and the authors’ positionality, this article uses reflexive thematic analysis to explore how localisation is enacted in practice. The Rohingya crisis in Cox’s Bazar serves as a case study where power dynamics and the politics of aid are especially pronounced in humanitarian practice.

Findings reveal that donor agendas are routinely prioritised over those of local actors. Through control of resources, donors impose terms and conditions that shape humanitarian responses and structure relationships among donors, INGOs, and local partners. We term this mechanism as donorization of the localisation, which undermines its transformative promise by reinforcing hierarchical aid structures and producing compliant rather than empowered partnerships. Donor-driven compliance requirements restrict local agencies, entrench top-down accountability, and limit meaningful participation.

Although localisation is framed as a transformative approach, in practice, it often results in docile partnerships with the donors/INGOs. This dynamic constrains genuine power redistribution and perpetuates exploitation through patron–client relationships embedded in humanitarian governance. For localisation to fulfil its potential, it must move beyond tokenistic gestures and recognise local organisations as co-creators of policy and programmatic responses, rather than mere implementers of externally defined agendas.