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Inklings | Why big NGOs are asking to be held accountable

Notes and musings on how aid works, from The New Humanitarian’s policy editors.

The header image for the Inkling's newsletter entry of 17 October, 2024. On the top left you see Inklings written in a serif font with an ink bleed effect and underlined with a burgundy-coloured line. On the bottom right we see a list of the main topic: Why big NGOs are asking to be held accountable

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This is another edition of Inklings, where we explore all things aid and aid-adjacent unfolding in humanitarian hubs, on the front lines of emergency response, or in the dark corners of online aid punditry.

It’s also available as an email newsletter. Subscribe here.

Today: How donors “disincentivise” localisation, the push for a solidarity levy gains steam, and what happened to Development Initiatives?

On the radar|

Hold us accountable, (some) NGOs say: Here’s something you don’t see often in the self-marking world of international aid: Big NGOs are asking – demanding, even? – to be held accountable for broken reform promises. Ahead of this week’s Grand Bargain annual meeting, some 35 major international NGOs issued a statement warning that accountability for localisation promises is “weak or absent” amongst most donors and intermediary agencies – the UN agencies and international NGOs that get the bulk of donor funding and pass some of it down the line. It’s a sort of mea culpa and a constructive proposal: They’re calling for regular progress checks and “mutual accountability” when their promises fall short.

  • DonorsGovernment donors can both help and hinder. “Some donors actively disincentivise steps towards more equitable partnership,” the NGOs say. One NGO might adopt progressive policies on sharing overhead costs, for example, while others do not, which may make the NGO “less competitive” in some donors’ eyes.

  • RebrandsThe statement articulates an awkward reality about big international NGOs and the localisation agenda. Some have changed their policies and shifted their work to be more equitable partners; others sign on to movements like the Grand Bargain but do little to change or even engage in discussions. Some multinational NGOs have been criticised for nationalising country offices as local entities, and competing for grassroots funding. Some “are rebranding sub-granting programmes as ‘localisation platforms’”, the statement notes. The statement includes NGOs from across this spectrum.

  • Who’s involved: Those adding their names to the NGO statement include the leaders of some of the world’s most well-funded NGOs, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children, CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, and Oxfam. 

  • Who’s not: A few notable omissions: International Rescue Committee and World Vision, both of whom have been a bit pen-shy of late; Plan International, which hasn’t signed on to the Grand Bargain; and Médecins Sans Frontières, which pointedly skipped the 2016 summit that birthed the Grand Bargain, isn’t known as a particularly collaborative partner, and generally shuns cash from many of the big government donors anyway.

  • What about the UN: UN agencies receive the most humanitarian donor funding and are the biggest intermediaries, but they (or at least their leaders) are sometimes seen to be less engaged. Former World Food Programme boss David Beasley, after all, is a noted Grand Bargain pooh-pooher. “All we got,” Beasley said on the Humanitarian Fault Lines podcast last year, ”was more red tape, more bureaucracy, more regulations, and it was a bunch of junk.”

What happened to Development Initiatives? Number-crunching group Development Initiatives has suddenly shuttered. A statement posted on the UK-based outfit’s website reads: “It has become increasingly apparent that ongoing financial pressures make it impossible… to continue and so the board is taking the necessary steps to close the organisation.” Development Initiatives has some 50 staff in Bristol, Nairobi, and elsewhere. The group’s analyses are often used as measuring sticks for the sector. Just last week, it published a report that tallied local aid funding (4.4%) and questioned UN and NGO claims (it has been required reading for some at this week’s Grand Bargain meetings; read our takeaways here). In the past, Development Initiatives has also played a role in a global campaign for aid transparency. 

  • Money: The group’s finances were known to be a bit tenuous. Its financial statements for 2022 show that Development Initiatives had a deficit of about £719,000 (roughly $930,000) on an income of about £5.4 million. “We are satisfied that DI has sufficient resources to manage its working capital requirements over a 12-month period,” CEO Adrian Lovett, in his role as a director, wrote in an accompanying note dated 1 August 2023.

Denmark wants a solidarity levy: There’s movement behind a pitch for global governance reform. Denmark is supporting a push to create a so-called solidarity levy – a global tax that could be used to fund public goods (and perhaps even humanitarian action, some hope). Barbados, France, and Kenya are leading a task force that plans to design, propose, and commit to a new levy by next year’s COP30 climate summit. Some form of levy is a core plank of the new version of the Bridgetown Initiative, the Barbadian proposal for global financial reforms – Prime Minister Mia Mottley was selling the levy hard at September’s UN General Assembly high-level week. The task force now consists of 10 countries, including Denmark, which came on board 30 September.

Data points|

A flow chart for Gaza aid bureaucracy: Israeli authorities have blocked or slowed everything from baby kits to adult diapers from getting into Gaza (evidence of aid obstruction could add up to a war crime, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor has said). Aid group Anera has more details here on what it calls the “logistical calisthenics” of getting aid into Gaza. There’s also a handy infographic.

End quote|

This may be the most devastating use of “all the best” in recent memory. Last week, the UN appointed former UK diplomat Tom Fletcher to be the next emergency relief coordinator. Colleague Will Worley and I prodded a range of people for their thoughts on the new relief chief and what he faces. Here’s what Mohamed Yarrow, head of the Centre for Peace and Democracy in Somalia had to say:

“The appointment of this new guy is a manifestation of the system – of political considerations, rather than the cries of the developing world and the context and the crises here. But we wish him all the best.”

Fletcher, of course, will be the sixth straight Briton to fill the seat, despite long-standing demands to dump the practice of horse-trading key UN positions among world powers. Fletcher is an experienced diplomat and a humanitarian newbie. 

Speaking with Yarrow and others on this and other issues in recent weeks, it’s hard not to sense a growing frustration that runs deeper than any one appointment. It’s not a criticism of Fletcher himself – many humanitarians we spoke with are (cautiously) optimistic about what he brings.

Rather, it’s a mounting list of reminders of who in the global system has power – and who doesn’t.

A reform plan for global governance promising “no monopoly on senior posts” is adopted at the UN General Assembly in September, then apparently forgotten by October. The UK’s influence and aid budget wanes, but it is still given a say over the top humanitarian job. Veto power at the UN Security Council. Sitting on panels about shifting power and locally led aid; seeing little change at home. Visa rejections. Feeling disrespected, denigrated, and insulted.

The multilateral system has a trust problem, and so do humanitarians. For many people who may not feel like an equal part of the international aid system, the appointment of the newest relief chief adds to the discomfort.

Have any tips, recommendations, or indecipherable acronyms to share with the Inklings newsletter? Get in touch: [email protected]

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